After spending the morning in Pendarais installing wireless Internet, I stopped in at Jack’s house to see how he was coming along on his adobe fireplace project.

We talked about the mud-work there at Jack’s for an hour or so. Then my children appeared to be having some sort of squabble, which thankfully I came in at the tail end of. Something to do with the Rainbow Gathering, I really don’t know, but it is sad to hear brother and sister fight, especially  during preparation for a hippie event like the Gathering. I hope they got it worked out, I think they did, Brittany, Desi, and Vidal took off at 1:00 PM for Cuba, then they came back at 3:00 or four saying everything that could go wrong had. I suggested they depart the next morning early after things chilled out.

After they left for the second time we continued our conversation around the adobe fireplace. One of the subjects was diplomacy, and how to steer communication in a forward and positive direction.  Jackson has had to listen to a bit of naysayer static while he is trying to keep on task as best he can. We all know how  easy it is to come off sounding critical even when we don’t mean to criticize. I believe Jack’s project is awesome. Honestly I don’t think there is a wrong way to do adobe work. Sure there are things which can go wrong, but what is the point of noticing it for the guy doing the work?

Thankfully, Jackson loves the conversation, and maybe building an adobe fireplace in the living room as a conversation piece was part of his plan all along.  Whatever the plan, the fireplace is totally cool. After I saw Brittany’s car come back to the ranch for the third time I left Jackson’s to see what was happening with her and her gang. It turned out they were simply having troubles with the details, and decided that getting an early start the next morning might be a better plan. I volunteered to feed her kitties and she picked up whatever it was she forgot, and they took off again.

Earlier while down at Jackson’s the conversation turned to ranch management stuff. We were sitting on his porch looking over the pasture and noting how good the field of hay looked this year. I’ve been wanting to get more involved with the management of the ranch and have recently told my parents as much. Not receiving the response I hoped for, I plod ahead. After all, I’m the adult with the notion that if I can’t convince family about my plan then I need to try again from a different direction because it must be my shortcoming  and lack of communication skill keeping things from moving in a direction I see as forward.

Jackson and I decided to sell the hay to Joe from up the valley. With no truck onto which we can load bales of hay we are completely reliant on others for the entire hay project. This year barring a multitude of events that can go still go wrong,  we ought to get 300 bales of hay from our field. This is half the quantity of hay cut, the other half goes to the people who do the cutting and baling. After thinking about what 300 bales which we intend to sell for $3.50 per bale, will do for the ranch, it occurred to me that we might use half the cash to put back into the ranch in the way of fence repairs, prior to the cattle grazing phase of the season.

This wasn’t just a brilliant revelation from yours truly, but a culmination of the conversation with Jackson. The more we talked about this new plan the more possibilities came to light.  In the past couple of years we have struggled to keep 50 pairs of cows in the pasture for one month, mostly due to the decrepit shape of some of our fences.  If we can keep the cows on the pasture for an extra month we should see the return of the cash outlay from the hay money into fence supplies and perhaps pay for a couple of helpers for a couple of weekends to help us rebuild certain sections of fence.

Of course I’m happy that I was able to come up with this plan which incorporates many of our old systems here at the ranch as well as an evolutionary move in a better direction. Now there is nothing to do but wait and see if the responses are positive and I can overcome the traditional naysaying of the past. My hope is that I’ve done and may continue to do good job of stating my case and all of the family will come on board, so we can get this decided and done before the hay money is spent and the opportunity passes.

Pretty exciting huh?
See ya next time
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