Friday irrigation water was turned on

We are fortunate to have irrigation water rights and get the water delivered from the Swalley Irrigation Co. via a ditch runs through the property between the house and the barn adding some ambiance to the place. There is usually water running in it from March to October. There are a couple of bridges over it that are neat. The draw back is every year the pine cones, needles and leaves need to be cleaned out of it. This year I tried burning the stuff, which was almost as labor intensive as just pitching it into the tractor bucket to be taken to the burn pile.

Cousin Tucker inspects the burning process

The first two years I was here when the water was turned on, it would fill the pond and overwhelm it and flood the horse paddocks from the initial volume of the water in the ditch making a big mess. Last year i got smart and built a flood irrigation type dam at the entrance to the pond to prevent the initial ditch waters from going in the pond and voiahl-lah... no flooding. Then the next day after the waters leveled out, I could pull the dam and fill the pond. I learned this from my early ranch days working for the Willis' in Vale, Oregon Success

Lucy the water dog -

On a different note, most cow dogs enjoy cooling off in available water, whether it be a ditch, pond or trough... Dottie my last dog that was killed last summer, absolutely hated water and no matter how hot she got, would not get in the ditch or a trough. I assumed it was something in the breeding, and figured that Lucy being a full sister would be the same way... Friday the water came down the ditch for the season. I needed to do a lot of cleaning as there were several jams of debris. While I had worked really hard a few weeks ago to clean our ditches, obviously some upstream folks did not. While I was out there shoveling a pitching the crap out of the ditch, Lucy was chasing pine cones and sticks down the ditch. She didn't seem to have any inhibitions about the water at all and bailed in several times after stuff. While the day was nice weather-wise, the water was really cold.

Lucy was very intrigued by the water that has suddenly appeared in the ditch. She ran up and down the ditch very excited about the change of scenery. The tree hollow in the background is a foot bridge that granddaughter Taylor and I built (placed there) last year.

I was really surprised when Lucy acted like she might jump in the water... and a second later ... she dove in and came out with a stick. She was so pleased with her self. So then began the game of my throwing the stick in the ditch for her to chase down and get. A very pleased Lucy with her stick

I figured after her first plunge into the water, she wouldn't go in again. but she fooled me and went in several times. Then it was kind of funny when, she didn't realize the places that the pine needles and other stuff covered the water wasn't solid footing and she'd try to walk across and fall in. Lucy is 7 months old. She is a McNab stockdog, raised by my friends the Porter Willis' in Tracy, CA. Now I need to get the sprinkler pipe back together, flushed and running on the front pasture.

Covered wagon at Amarillo

Camp Life & Little Dutch, 1923 Amarillo, Texas
Ansel's brother Baily is sitting on Little Dutch and Papa is holding the horse. You can see a dog poking it's head out from behind the wash basin near the fence post. Ansel said she's a "Scotch Collie" and says her name was Fannie. He can't remember what happened to her, but that she didn't leave Amarillo with them.

In their days after leaving Okemah, Oklahoma, they moved north to the Pawnee, Fairfax, and Ponca City area. Papa had started to train races horses in addition to running his freight wagons. After Ansel finished the third grade the whole family left Pawnee, Oklahoma in the covered wagon. Taking only what they could fit in it. They were a family of five; Papa and Mama, Vivian, Baily, and Ansel.

Ansel says he remembers being in Amarillo, his family living out of the covered wagon on land near the tracks and stockyards. They were squatters and there wasn’t hardly anything to eat. He and his brother Baily were in school. Baily was 12 and Ansel was 9 years old. He remembers many times the only lunch his mom could make for them was biscuits with bacon grease slathered between them like you would peanut butter. Sometimes there wasn't much to eat, but he remembers they were never were hungry. Not long after they got to Amarillo, they were down to nothing, Mama only having flour and water and bacon grease. He remembers that Papa had a big black percheron workhorse and he sold it for $3.00 to the coal company. They had plenty to eat that night. After that Papa went to work in the coal yard as a teamster delivering coal around. So things got better. From the time they left Pawnee, Ok. they lived out of the wagon a total of approximately 2 years.

There weren't any coal mines in the area, it was all shipped in by rail car. The coal was shipped in on the train in open topped bins, it was unloaded in the coal yard and then distributed around the city and ranches by horse and wagon. There weren't any trees or burning material around for cooking. They tried to burn cow chips and buffalo chips... but that didn't work very good. So every time a coal train would come to town, someone from the squatter camps would be delegated to throw the rest coal. When the train left out of Amarillo it had a really steep grade to climb up, and while it was getting up steam it went really slow. There were several squatter camps all along the sections butting up to the tracks. When the train would leave the station, and while it was going slow up the grade, one of the squatters would get on top of a full coal car and throw coal out as fast as he could, all along the tracks where the squatter camps were. Then all of us kids, we would all have to run up and down the tracks with gunny sacks collecting the coal for our family to burn in our camp.

visit with Willy and Toni at Burns

Last week was a busy one. We went over to Burns on Wednesday and stayed with Will and Toni Brown. Will and Toni were married last June 21 in Lehi, UT. They met at a series Mountain Man Rendezvous events, and found that they have many things in common. Toni was ranch raised, a rodeo queen and loves camping and canoeing. Will had moved to Lehi in Feb 2007 to heal up after his heart attack. We had visited them during the summer of 2007 and I immediately bonded with Toni, it was like we had known each other for years. Last September Toni retired from her life long career of hairdressing and they moved to Burns. (Will and former wife Laurie raised their family on the ranch next to Ansel and Martina off of Foley Drive north of Burns. You met Laurie on the Oklahoma trip, when we went to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Museum)

Toni makes a terrific corned beef and cabbage, and we always get a special homemade cake for dessert. This last time, it was sort of an orange/pineapple pudding thing that was to die for. Ansel especially looks forward to her sour dough pancakes.

They had lots of time for visiting and catching up while I did my presentations at the high school.