When one is nearing 70 years of age, time should never be wished away, but June has been exhausting, and I'm eager to flip the calendar to a fresh, untarnished, anxiety-free month.

As for this past month, June 2017 marks the all-time earliest haying season for us. Conventional wisdom holds that one should never cut hay before the Fourth of July, but such thinking predates current climate realities. When Jim and I emptied 1.10 inches of water from our rain gauge on 06/14/2017, we made a decision to harvest out first cutting of hay before irrigating. Perhaps that decision irked imps, angered angels, and vexed vengeful gods, for our June haying season has been rife with problems.

Though our equipment is not new, it is not archaic tired iron, and Jim is diligent about maintenance--greasing every zert and oiling every chain, checking pressure in all tires, cleaning every intake, blowing out each screen, and monitoring gauges and levels of all sorts of crucial factors and fluids. Nevertheless, shit happened. 

In the process of cutting hay, one of the hydraulic cylinders began leaking on the swather, necessitating a trip to Great Falls to rebuild or replace. Just like our nation's healthcare, the task was more complex than anticipated, not least because one of the two pins holding the old cylinder in place was seriously warped and not anxious to be removed. It took two hours of creative collaborative problem solving to extract that demon pin, proof-positive of the power of Jim's and my marital synergy.

In the process of baling hay, belts twisted often, requiring much clambering atop and within the baler and ripping at plugged up hay. We undoubtedly need to replace the belts, but at $310 per belt for eight belts, we opted to carry on. Additionally, the bale-forming drive chain broke, requiring two trips to Great Falls and many gobs of GoJo grease remover. Lastly, while baling, a front tire on the tractor went flat. I should be thankful that the flat was a front tire that we could remove and haul to a tire shop for repair; a rear tire would have demanded a service truck to remove and something like a thousand dollars to replace.

We have another 50 acres yet to bale, but on the acres thus far baled, we are trying to irrigate. When we started the irrigation pump, our buried mainline began leaking such a volume of water that the pump could not maintain adequate pressure and, hence, shut down. That demanded digging. Jim contacted a backhoe operator and made arrangements for work to start early the next morning. He then hurried out to pump standing water out of the mainline before dark.  

Later that night, during dinner, we made plans based on a similar leak last year that was caused by corroded bolts. Since I had to go to Great Falls the following morning for a routine dental exam, I added stainless steel bolts to my list. That allowed Jim to stay home to work with the backhoe man. (In hindsight, I ask myself, "Who else uses a dental appointment as a relaxing get-away from anxiety," but I did, indeed, close my eyes and relax in the hygienist's chair while she picked at bits of plague and buffed with gritty paste.) Afterward, I scoured Great Falls for the necessary dozen bolts. I found exactly that many, bought the entire inventory to be found in Great Falls, and arrived home just before the backhoe operator departed, only to learn that this year's leak arose, not from corroded bolts, but from a worn-out gasket between the riser pipe and the mainline pipe. Jim dashed to town, with six foot riser pipe and blown gasket on board, hoping to find a replacement. He telephoned shortly before 5:00 with news that he had found the needed gasket and asked me to call our ditch rider for permission to divert water from the canal to our pump so we could again start irrigating.

Two hours later, with permission granted, the riser reattached, a skidsteer bucket load of gravel gently shoveled around and over the pipeline, and wet gumbo globs pushed back into the dug out hole, we re-opened our headgate, started the pump, pressurized the line, and sprinkling commenced . . . until the pump shut down for lack of water . . . three times. Finally, just before dark, we accepted the fact that current demand for irrigation water exceeds the canal's capacity to deliver; we closed a valve that cut off half of our irrigation and hoped that we could get through the night without the pump shutting down.

Today, this last day of June delivered yet another Catch 22 situation. I drove our old pickup to Great Falls to purchase additional baler twine, buy a hundred gallons of off-road diesel, and try to find a replacement filter and cap for the broken one on our tractor's air intake pipe. The John Deere dealership in Great Falls did not have a replacement filter, but their parts man, in consultation with his computer and after phoning the Choteau dealership, assured me that it was available in Choteau. I sped home, satisfied that I had completed every job, except for the filter. After switching to a more efficient vehicle, one with a functioning fan and air conditioning, I zoomed north to the John Deere dealership in Choteau. There, a former student, now parts woman, took one look at my broken filter and realized that the filter she had on hand was far too small. She made a call to Great Falls and confirmed that the needed part was, in fact, available in Great Falls. Surely the tail wagged the dog today. I sped back to Great Falls, and, in a deja vu moment, returned to the John Deere dealership to pick up the part that had been there all along.

I am glad to report that my tale of June woes ended positively. We may suffer breakdowns in the July baling and irrigating ahead of us, but on this last day of June we celebrated, for a case of a particular sort of wine that Jim ordered shortly after Christmas, 2016, arrived in Great Falls half an hour after I initially checked on it, on my first trip to Great Falls; I picked it up before leaving town on my return trip. We toasted the end of June with a luscious glass of Don Ramon with dinner.               
Tomorrow, we plan to move cows and calves out of their dry lot and back to their dryland pasture. Hopefully, all are bred, because our walkabout red bull will be staying behind. At least that's the plan. We think our corrals are sufficiently stout to withstand bull challenges, but the less-than-polite adage about assumptions is tailor made for bulls, so our best laid plans could, indeed, go awry. In any case, calving next March will be tightly condensed into a one month window, unless, of course, a neighbor's bull comes visiting.

Now, I must get this posted for the hour is late and July is upon us. I say, "Welcome!"          

A wealth of communication options squanders precious hours and wastes entire days if I succumb to the endless options tailor-made to fit my every need and whim. If I feel succinct, I can tweet; if words are bubbling unfettered, I should blog; if internet scratches my itch, I must share my findings with friends. If I need transport, I'll hail Uber. For directions, I have audio escort from Google. A delivery? Surely an Amazonian drone can be summoned in the near future. Dial, send, email, text, tweet, share (Instagrams, Snapchats, etc., etc., etc.) attach, download, upload, and, most importantly, have funds at hand in order to maintain position on the leading edge of whatever is next. Such ever-expanding technological possibilities for communication pique my interest, but mostly I read about them rather than embrace them.

More fascinating to me is the seagull grapevine. How do those airborne opportunists learn about, and then share their news, that someone is swathing or baling hay or doing any fieldwork, all of which attracts them en masse? Perhaps I should be satisfied with the reassurance of knowing where Jim is working, even when his equipment is out of sight, thanks to a gull entourage that I count on to arrive within moments, to wheel overhead, and pinpoint his location as reliably as any GPS monitor. Of course, the keen-eyed gliders converge with brazen confidence that something tasty and easily nabbed--even an occasional snake--will be exposed as compensation for their efficient networking. 

We welcome their rodent control, but cringe when one of them captures a young killdeer or curlew, partridge or pheasant. Every time a precocious hatchling sprints under an adjacent windrow, we applaud its courage in the face of daunting gull power and hope that it will survive the hazards of adolescence and grow to plump maturity on Prairie Island grubs, grasshoppers, and grains.

For now, the local gull communication network is safe from my curiosity, for its users neither leak classified secrets nor record private conversations, and, as yet, I have been unable to hack into their system.           

I have delayed this post for more than a week, waiting for black smoke to dissipate from my ears, waiting for positive thoughts to displace my plots for cruel vengeance, waiting for appropriate word choices to delete the vulgarity that falls out of me so easily. It should be noted that all this waiting for time to dull my fury has not worked; my blood pressure is rising at this moment. Perhaps writing will help me to cool off and move on. Here goes:

Shortly after moving twenty cow/calf pairs and a newly-purchased yearling red angus bull onto our dryland pasture, Jim noted that the bull had gone through the fence and was in with the neighbor's cows and their older bull. We sped forth on ATVs, hoping to move him back to "his" cows. We got him separated and our tag-team, eastward chase worked until, 20 yards from the wide-open gate into our pasture, he jump-plowed the fence into the neighbor's dryland pasture and headed west, back toward the cows we'd chased him away from, but on the opposite side of the fence. We raced beside him, and Jim managed to get ahead of him in time to bail over the fence and close a gate into recently-seeded, irrigated crop ground that the bull was headed toward. The gate was not much of an obstacle, but Jim's waving stance in the middle of it was enough to stop his immediate progress. I abandoned my 4-wheeler, climbed over the fence, and sent the bull east again, this time following him on foot and wielding an old wooden fence post and a handful of rocks. He moved along the fence while Jim paralleled him on the other side to discourage any thoughts of another fence crossing. We'd have paid handsomely for a well-placed gate about that time, but none was available. If I'd had my wits about me, I would have suggested that Jim get a bit ahead of the bull and me and cut the wires, after the bull had moved beyond the point where a crossing would put him onto our property. Instead, we got to a corner, and the bull took off to the NW, intending to circle back to his adopted comrades. He was pooped from our previous ATV chase so I was almost able to flank him, all the while entertaining thoughts of deflecting him at the canal bank and sending him back to our ground by an alternative route. Such thinking was wishful or delirious. He out-trotted me and arrived back at the pathetic gate where Jim once again met him with much waving. Again, I got behind him and sent him east along the fence, with Jim driving parallel on the opposite side, a deja vu interlude. This time, however, I shouted my plan for Jim to zoom ahead at just the right moment, cut the wires, and . . . It worked. Bull crossed into our pasture, and Jim took up the chase, dogging him east toward our cows, while I retrieved my 4-wheeler. Then I dogged while Jim repaired wires and closed the gate. Our thoughts? Whew; that'll teach him; mission accomplished; this calls for a nice bottle of wine with dinner . . . until two days later when the bastard again flew the coop.

I stayed home while Jim went looking via ATV. To the west, he scanned with binoculars among the neighbor's cows, now out of sight from our pasture, behind an electric fence, and across several rough canal-like obstacles impassable by ATV. He spied no red bull; likewise to the east. Then Jim and I searched together, accessing the pasture into which the bull had originally escaped via a different route. There rested our bull, cudding contentedly among his adopted herdmates and their older bull, hidden by trees from being sighted on Jim's previous fruitless foray. His location was inaccessible by ATV and nearly impossible from horseback unless we could get in via an adjacent pasture owned by our neighboring Hutterite Colony. The farm boss granted us permission to do whatever we needed, and, by way of their pasture, we located the simplest possible access to our runaway. With bull located and access available, we now needed cowboys--real cowboys, not ATV cowboys--well-mounted, skilled cowboys to head and heel and get our repeat offender loaded into a trailer. After much phoning, messaging, and anxiety to the point of nausea, I located a willing team, and we agreed to meet at 5:00.

The action after we met sounds simple--they roped the bull and got him through the canal and loaded into our trailer with impressive efficiency, and we were home before 6:00. Such spare accounting conceals the reality and its beauty. I intended to take pictures but managed only one before getting lost in the moment. I was mesmerized by the quiet, long-distance loop to the head, the perfectly timed hind leg catch, the finesse of directing the bull's angry momentum into forward progress, the pas de deux of each rider with his horse, of the two ropers working in perfect tandem, of the two young sons of the header, spectacularly mounted on matching roans, moving as a pair to provide just the right amount of encouragement. I am so grateful for and appreciative of their skills.  

Later that evening, over a less-than-celebratory glass of wine, Jim and I pondered options. Put up solar-charged hotwire? Probably not, for the turd seems pinheadedly determined to travel and wrangle with other bulls. Ship the shithead and buy a replacement? Not a good option, for it's late in the season to buy bulls and none come with guarantees of fence compliance. Bring the cows back home and drylot them with the peckerhead. What a sorry option! For the first time in years, we have received decent spring moisture; our grass is good, and the cows need to be out on it.

​Sorry or not, it's the best idea we came up with, so that's what we did. The cows are getting bred, carry-over hay is disappearing, and I have calmed to the point of name calling, rather than active plotting of vengeance against our red, renegade, roistering, rascal.

My singular picture does no justice to the principals. Jason, the header, is the speck on the left; Matt, the heeler, is the speck second from the left; Jason's two boys are furthest to the right; El Torro, visible only with magnification, is nearly concealed by Matt and his horse.                                     

For the past decade, Jim has been itching to burn a large pile of brush and debris located unfortunately close to our hay lot. Finally this year, the planets for that project aligned: during the winter, we diligently fed hay bales that were stacked closest to the pile, spring moisture encouraged the surrounding crested wheatgrass to stay green and palatable, our sheep nipped the greenery close to the ground, a local family with several truck-mounted water tanks wanted to trade their expertise with burning such accumulations for our retired swather, and the weather forecaster predicted light winds from a favorable direction.

Of course, weather forecasts are predictions, not certainties. On the day of our burn, the wind switched shortly after ignition and drove the flames a bit too close to the haystack. After hasty concurrence that caution demanded a wider buffer, Jim moved 35 - 40 bales while the tanker crew cooled the flames with sprinklers. Within a couple of hours, the conflagration died down (in fact, I made a quick grocery run and nearly missed it), but we maintained on-site vigilance and kept the tankers available through the night and most of the next day, before dousing the char with several thousand gallons of water.

The rabbits and skunks previously lodged securely within the pile have sought shelter elsewhere, and our utility trailer is heaped to capacity with scrap metal exposed by the fire. That load is a testament to Vern Fleming, the last Fleming to live on what is now our Prairie Island and whose ancestors homesteaded the place. Among the sundry Vern-contraptions found in the ashes are: heavy iron wheels welded to lengths of railroad track attached to monster gobs of concrete; galvanized water tanks welded together to serve as culverts or filled with concrete to use as uprights in constructions; leaf springs welded into something that might have been used as a harrow; a heavy frame for something globe-shaped, perhaps a bathysphere for exploring the depths of nearby bodies of water. (I ponder 20,000 Leagues under Gibson Reservoir, by Vern, a sequel to earlier sci-fi by Verne, of Jules fame.) We have been told that such surface treasures are but a mere sample of the iron wealth that was buried in vast trenches several years before we got here, a mecca beneath our hay stack awaiting someone with a yen to mine. We have no such open-pit plans. We both are eager to forget the eyesore and to reclaim the site with something lovely and green: crested and sanfoin, bluebunch and vetch, needlegrass and clover, anything but scrap . . . after the deep heat from our project cools, that is.

That said, we hope to always remember the finest moment of the entire project, the moment when Jim's favorite old swather--unused for the past five years and retired only because the open, crow's-nest, pilot's seat was forbidden following melanoma surgery--roared to life. Its carburetor needed a bit of hand-delivered gas, and I was aware of Jim either praying or whispering to the engine as he finessed the throttle and choke, pushed the starter button for a breathless eternity, and hoped that his long-time friend would deliver. With a great clatter-banging of dry, weather-checked belts, whining under the load of wide-open throttle, the engine caught and then settled into its familiar purr. Jim was ever so proud to put the machine through its paces for the new owner, and it responded like a well-bred champion, first bucking energetically out of the deep wheel ruts where it had patiently awaited this phoenix moment and then tossing off some impressive moves: crisp 180-degree turns, decisive header up-sees and down-sees, reel spinnings, and sickle bar scissorings. I view the memory as irrefutable evidence that trustworthiness pays dividends, hope springs eternal, and usefulness add zest to life, especially for retirees. 

Included are pictures of the burn (Thank you, Ebert for sharing your pics with us.), the aftermath ash, Vern's bathysphere, and Jim's trading stock.