Grouse Herding, Tar Weed Control or What I Did all Summer

I have been missing for most of the summer on this blog.  So now is the time to catch up!

Since I'm now retired I decided I need to do more to help out on the ol' homestead.   I first attacked the tar weed this fall.  It's a noxious weed that grows here and the buds and flowers are covered in a sticky sap.  It gets in the forelocks, fetlocks in the horses and covers our dogs at times.  I HATE it.

So I spent a lot of my time pushing the DR mower/trimmer.  I must say it was great exercise but I did get  most of it cut this fall.

Tar weed

I mowed it anywhere I found it growing on the pasture around the house and then moved back about three feet along the lane to the highway on each side.   I feel like I mowed 3 acres of this stuff!

While I got it cut this fall, it comes back quickly.  I think this stuff could survive a direct hit from a nuclear bomb.  So come spring, I need to put weed killer on it.   After mowing I know where it lives!
The stems are really wire like and I had to frequently change the string in the mower as it would just obliterate it in a short time!   Tough stuff I tell you.

The really great thing that happened this summer was the sage grouse came back!  They used to raise a brood of chicks on our place every summer.  In fact I used to have to stop the car on the way out to the highway and chase the chicks off the road sometimes so I could get to work!  They have not done that now for many years disappearing shortly after West Nile hit Wyoming.   I think it decimated their numbers.

Sage Grouse Hens

The species here is the Greater Sage Grouse.  There are several sub-species and grouse is found all throughout the Rocky Mountain West to the Sierra Nevadas.

We discovered a hen and several chicks on the highway coming home one evening.  So Hubby did some grouse herding and got them OFF that highway fearing they would get hit.

Hubby grouse herding!

The hen and several of the chicks headed off the highway towards the back of the pasture!

They must have gotten the message as they did not go back to the highway again and stayed back near the barns all summer.   One day towards fall, Hubby was working in his shop area and heard a male 'booming' which meant it was breeding season for them.  They use the same area for generations and the areas are called 'leks'.  Since they are an endangered species, the government and State of Wyoming controls these areas and allows no disturbances by mining activites around the leks.  We never knew we had one near us.  Hubby did not disturb and we saw them only a few more times in the summer after herding them off the highway.

Photo of an active Lek with male birds 'booming' their chests to attract females.

We did have an active hawk that prowled around after they arrived and one day a Bald Eagle was obviously hunting/swooping the area.  I hope they found good cover and not too many of the chicks were lost.  They were pretty good size when they arrived so hopefully they all survived.   We hope they return again next summer!

I did some container gardening using an old 350 gallon leaky stock tank, five gallon buckets, and two old cattle mineral tubs which are about 30 gallons.  It was a learning curve.  Next year I will do some things different in the stock tank.  All I harvested out of it was lettuce and swiss chard which I had planted wayyyy too close.  The tomatoes in the five gallon buckets did okay but I need to get them out earlier.  The mineral tubs - strawberries did fine in one.  We will see if they survive the winter.  Cucumbers did not like theirs too well.  I think it needs more potting soil to bring the level of the dirt up to the rim so they are not shaded.  Some successes and some failures.   I now have apple seeds in the five gallon buckets to see if they come up after the required stratification over the winter.

I'll post more in a few days...............

Hope your summer went well also.

They Are Back -- and apparently Recovering!

One of the delights of living North of Nowhere is the Wyoming Wildlife and getting to watch it.

For quite a number of years, we had a small group of sage grouse raise their young somewhere around us and they were frequently over by the buildings.  Several mornings, I made a s-l-o-w drive to the gate because the young grouse were in the road.  And young grouse do not move fast and tended to slowly mosey down the road ahead of my car rather than leaving the roadway.  Why they do that I don't know but it must surely make them a sad target on Wyoming's highways.

Grouse have become endangered in Wyoming due to 2 factors:  West Nile virus, to which they are highly susceptible, and oil and gas drilling, which disrupts their breeding/rearing.  In our area, I think West Nile hit the populations very very hard.  To the east of us, there was a lot of coal bed methane drilling and that probably affected the population also.  We have had NO grouse sightings for several years until last year when a large male and two females came through briefly.

But look whose BACK! This was taken out the back door Friday morning.

West Nile virus had 'died' down in our area so I am sure that has helped the population.  The coal-bed industry has died due to low gas prices and all those wells are now idle and shut-in with no new drilling.  That must have helped also.  This was the group of eight that showed up Friday morning.  Later, when we drove out the gate to go to a doctor's appointment, we saw four young grouse and there may have been more lurking in the brush we could not see.  That's 12!!!!

Sadly, now horizontal drilling is starting to take place RIGHT here where we live and also east of us.  Horizontal drilling take a much larger 'bite' out of the land requiring 20 acres for a drilling pad rather than one about the size of a half football field like the coal-bed.  If coal bed bothered these birds, what will all these large rigs do to them?    And what will it do to our sub-irrigated pastures that we rely on the water and the wildlife relies on also?

Frankly, I'm worried -- for us and for them.

The green line is our water hose and the tires are the horse trailer.  That's how unafraid they are!

We have had some rains over the past two weeks and in places the hills have gotten just a 'tad' greener; which lowers our fire danger!!  Hope we get more.

Over the years, we have seen antelope, deer, elk, badgers, red fox, otters, ducks, canadian geese, sand hill cranes, pelican(?) (couldn't get close), egret? (wasn't sure); sage grouse, turkeys, rattlesnakes (could do without them!); weasel, prairie dogs (not too fond of these either!) all on our little slice of Wyoming.  Sometimes in the summer we like to just sit out on the porch and watch our wildlife TV.  It's GREAT!

So I guess I will enjoy while I have it.  And hope for the best.