DUELLING DUGOUTS

The spring melt is underway and the low spots are starting to fill up. It's hard to tell how much water is actually in the snow until the end of the melt, but we're hopeful that this winter's snowfall will be plentiful.

Glen is busy trying to stay ahead of the melt just south of the house where he started digging a dugout last fall. He did get a nice start to it, and was building a bit of a ridge to hold water in a natural depression in the field too, when the CAT he had leased was needed elsewhere and he had to quit. A week ago the CAT was delivered back here to finish the job, but in the meanwhile the first hole he had dug had filled with water. Instead of inlarging that one he had to move over and start again - which, two days into that dig, is filling as well. We're not complaining about the water, but this project is going to be shut down by sundown tonight - CATs are not amphibious.

Over the Christmas holidays a year ago, our daughter Jesse wanted to learn how to run an earthmover so Glen had leased this CAT and showed her the ropes up on our pasture. It took her the better part of a week, but she ended up with a sizable hole. And that's all it's ever been; just a dry hole. All year she has taken a lot of kidding about this lack of water in her dugout. At one point we even found a deer skeleton at the bottom and told her that even the wildlife were dying of thirst in her "watering hole" (although it was more than likely the work of coyotes).

The truth is, that if we had had any decent precipitation last year, that hole should have been at least half full by now - it is dug in a low spot, right along the edge of a creek that normally runs every spring. Although we've given Jesse the blame, it's been Mother Nature who's been holding out on us.

This spring, though, looks more promising. I texted her this morning to tell her that she has three feet of water! Within the hour, her dad reported that he has three feet in his brand new dugout as well - hence he was still the best dugout digger in the family. As he races to finish his dig before he's swamped, I'm pretty sure that he would rather the water would just hold off a little longer. But he'll never tell Jesse that.

We have had our first new calf of the season. Two years ago we bought a bull that (according to statistics) was going to sire smaller calves - something you want with fist time calvers. He didn't live up to his stats - we had more trouble with calves too big to be born that we've ever had before. Every heifer needed assistance and we lost 1/3 of the babies. Last year we bought another bull and put him with the heifers, and it's his baby out there - definately smaller than usual, but bright, perky, and very much alive. I think this new guy gets all the heifers from now on.