New Year

This is great new year. I bought a house in Clipper Gap, California. I have had one set of new goat kids born 12-30-08. This is a great start to this years herd. Yes I also have a cat. His name is Boots. I adopted him form a family in Loomis. I am excited to own a house. I like to make changes and work on it when i come home. I am more motivated to go home to my own house and clean up. It has been great for the last few weeks. I will have to see about the next few years.

Buck Hunting

Friday evening Jack and I flew in his plane up to Fort Jones. The next morning we piled into the Johnson's Dodge pickup when it was 22 degrees outside. We were headed for the ranch they call the zoo. It is called the zoo because there is an abundance of deer. The deer go to this area to stay alive. This ranch is only hunted once a year and one day a season. I took the first shot at a buck in the morning after climbing the steep grade. I missed that buck. Kayla was able to shoot a nice forked horn buck. Jack and Wendy were team players in bagging another three by two buck. On our final hunt I was able to shoot a dandy 4x4. Small buck with big points. It was a very great experience. Thanks Jack for everything.

My Girl's Birthday

Tomorrow is Shelena's birthday! She is my one and only love of my life. She is my best friend and advisor. She is very busy while she is currently attending medical school in Irvine California. The time apart from each other only makes our bond stronger. I can only wait to spend the rest of our future together. I keep very busy while she is away attending to my goats and working. I wish you a very happy birthday Shelena.

Off to the Auction

So I am trying to purchase a house to make a home for myself. So in the process I decided to sell my heifers. I was able to double my expense in the sale. So I have down sized my small operation to mainly goats. Those little buggers escaped last weekend into a large high dollar community. I was able to gather them up and use the dogs to load them into a trailer after dark. The homeowners thought it was great. I was very pleased with my dogs performance. Stretch and Mitch worked hard and fast to put on a impressive performance while ignoring the annoying ritzy homeowners.

Castle Peak

So I haven't been very active on my blog lately. I have been very busy. Last month Shelena and my dad Jerry went on a training hike to Castle Peak. Shelena is training to hike in Peru for a few weeks while being involved in mobile medical clinic. She will be leaving July 8th These are the few adventures we are sharing with each other. Thanks Dad for taking us up the mountain.

Wet Winter Work

So I haven't used this dang blog site sense I finished my college classes back in December. My sister Marie uses her blog spot all the time and has influenced me to be a computer nerd. I love the outdoors and really can't stand sitting inside to long. I have been working my tail off and just recently bought a few more goats. I am trying to buy a house here in California this year. I love to go horse back riding with my friends when I have the time. Work has kept me busy the last few months. We have been able to survive on our water filteration systems. It is cool to learn new things and take on larger responsiblities as long as there is no child involved just yet.

Federal Land Grazing

I think that land grazing on public land is a good idea. If the public and BLM want to care for the property it will cost tax payers more money. As it goes now the land that is grazed is being cleared of grasses and brush. This helps with fire prevention and with improving the plant growth. I try for myself to get paid for grazing land instead of paying for the feed. It is a service and a lot of work to manage the animals that will be grazing. It would cost millions of dollars in labor and machinery costs to do the same management as the ranchers do. The ranchers are paying for the land and the BLM should give a low cost per head as a small thank you to the ranchers. If any thing it costs the same amount of money to graze BlM property than it is to graze private. The vast area that BlM land covers it take many hours and labor to gather and push cattle around the harsh country. Plus to ship the cattle form private land to the BlM land costs the ranchers a pretty penny. On top of that the ranchers must either stay with the cattle or check on them regularly which take up more fuel and time. We all know that time is money. With this said I believe the ranchers should be charge the low costs that they are paying to graze the federal rangelands.