Sunday, October 23, 2011

October 23, 2011

So far the weather has been holding and it looks like we may actually get our wet hay up without much further delay. It has been an incredible frustrating fall, but we'll make it through it. We spent most of last week building fence around our winter pasture. It's been slow going ... tearing out the old fence and putting in 5 new wires, but we're getting there.

We had a great opening weekend of duck season and the pups did a great job. This weekend ... not a single duck in the area. The irrigation canals were drained this week and I suspect the ducks are feeding in those instead of the ponds. The pups had a rough morning yesterday ... it's tough keeping two 5-1/2 old pups focused when they get bored from no ducks to retrieve.

I had the opportunity to speak at the Perry Tech graduation last week for the Electrical Technology and Instrumentation classes. What a great honor. I also got to tour the new Welding Lab area at Perry Tech ... very, very nice facility.

This week I'm headed over to Olympia on Thursday for a Caucus Retreat on Friday. I'll get to go to Cabela's too ... hehehehe, time for goodies.

My lovely, kind and extremely supportive wife's birthday is tomorrow ... she's turning 29 again! Make sure a wish her a Happy Birthday.

It's time to head out, fill water troughs and keep building fence. Have a great day and week everyone.

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Monday, October 17, 2011

October 17, 2011

Duck season opened this weekend with a bang ... dang, I'm funny. At a little over 5 months old Ruger did better than I could have hoped. Blind retrieves, open water retrieves and open field retrieves and he sat quietly in the blind without trouble. His best retrieve came yesterday. We were packed up and sitting by the trucks with a small group of ducks landed back by the blind. We jumped them and put one down, but it landed about 150 yards away and across the canal ... YIKES! We had it marked, so we drove over and started looking for it. It was an open field next to a thick creek bottom and after about 10 minutes of not finding the duck Ruger started getting "birdy" and suddenly found the bird. What a great weekend with the pup.

We've had a busy couple of weeks. Rain, rain and more rain, not good with hat down. We finally got two fields dry enough to bale ... it's not perfect, but the cows will eat it. We'll be working on fence all week and will start hauling cows home next weekend. I still can't believe it's almost November ... where did the year go?

I attended the third Tribal Retrocession Work Group Meeting last week in Olympia. The topic, Criminal Retrocession. I still have a lot of questions and concerns about the state retroceeding criminal jurisdiction to the FBI, BIA and tribes.

I'll be speaking at Perry Tech's graduation this week and will be at the Sunnyside Republican Clubs meeting Friday morning. We've got a lot to do before the November 28th Special Session, but we'll get there.


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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

October 4, 2011

Rain, rain go away and don't come back until my hay is done! Ugh, the weather is not cooperating and neither is the equipment. We bought a "new" used rake and are already having problems with it. Not good news with the rain we're getting. We still have about 40 acres down with another 20 still to cut. Stupid weather!

Molly and I went to Spokane Valley last weekend where I spoke at a private property rights seminar. The program focused on shoreline and critical area regulations and was really well done. A portion covered the science, another covered the legal issues and I covered policies and politics. The folks who attended asked great questions and are really well informed.

We've got a small load of heifers coming in this weekend and will be sending a load of fresh roping steers to the westside later this month. We've got about 50 acres we need to get fenced before winter gets here, but that should go fairly easily assuming we don't run into new and exciting problems. :-)

Waterfowl season is less then 2 weeks away and I can't wait to get Ruger out for the first time. He's still a little young for "big" water, but he's doing great and ready for short, shallow water hunts. Last night I worked him with a couple of scented dummies, hidden in thick grass. We walked around the pasture and when he caught scent, he quartered ground until he found the dummy. It was really cool to watch.

I only have a couple of meetings this week, bu next week is going to be a busy one. I have to go over to Olympia at least one day (maybe two) and have meetings the rest of the week. The Governor recently sent out an email letting the Legislature know she thinks we'll be looking at a $2 million budget problem in November, instead of the $1.3 billion announced a couple of weeks ago. Is waiting until November 28th for a Special Session worth an addition $700 million in deficits? I sure don't think so.


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