Pat & Sharon O'Toole

Christmas Spirit
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Just before Christmas, most of our family traveled to Denver to visit our nephew, Kevin, who ships out for Kuwait in a few days, but was home on leave. We arrived just in time for the big blizzard. Kevin is the one shoveling in his shirt sleeves.

Unlike the poor folks stranded at the airport, we were comfy, warm and full of good cheer!

Kevin, 27, and Seamus, 5 months
photo by Pat O'Toole

Kevin and Siobhan, 2 1/2
photo by Sharon O'Toole

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Sheep Mountain, Below Zero, Early Morning
Home Ranch, Carbon County, Wyoming
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Rain-making is an enterprise that has been forever fraught with magical thinking. Here’s mine: twice I have complained bitterly, on this blog, about the severe drought conditions plaguing the West in general and our operation in particular. Both times were followed by an onslaught of rain and snow. Of course, this week’s storm might have been influenced by the cloud seeding over the nearby Sierra Madres.

Mr. Chips leading the way
photo by Sharon O'Toole

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Castle Rock looking south from Powder Rim
Sweetwater County, Wyoming
photo by Pat O'Toole

Sandrock on Powder Rim
photo by Pat O'Toole

I have written about the several landscapes where our ranching operation conducts its business. Powder Wash is especially dear to my heart because Pat and I lived there for eight winters (see “Another Rural Issue”) when our girls were small. This should be ideal winter country for livestock and for wildlife. It is country that is sheltered by a small east-west mountain range, Powder Rim. Animals like it and are drawn here. Sadly, these days, it has been hit by a triple whammy: drought, wild horses (outside of their Herd Management Area), and now, extensive energy development.

Drill site with halogeton, wild horses
Wasatch, Sweetwater County, Wyoming
photo by Pat O'Toole

We used to winter several thousand sheep here, but now have one bunch, while the others make the long trek north to the Red Desert (where they find even more energy development). Powder Wash lies about 65 west of the home ranch. It is one of the early gas fields, and in fact, that field was discovered by the man who homesteaded the Powder Flat headquarters, Wiff Wilson. We still use his original cabin.

Sheep behind Chivington homestead
photo by Pat O'Toole

Sheep on the trail at Wasatch
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Pedro & Wendy at the Chivington Place
photo by Pat O'Toole

In case you have noticed that all the place names are almost the same, here’s the explanation. The water and soil is high in alkali, giving it a distinctive gunpowder flavor. I haven’t tasted gunpowder, but the water isn’t very flavorful! None the less, I’m sure it was a welcome refreshment to the trekkers on the Cherokee Trail, the early homesteaders, and the even earlier Ute Indian inhabitants of the region.

Robin Boies asked about the red powder coloring the bucks in the last blog entry. It is to make them easy to count. Every day, each herder counts his “markers”—the black sheep, ewes with paint numbers stamped on them, and now, the bucks. Since sheep are herd animals, strays are likely to take a marker with them. If a herder has his count, it is likely he has them all. If a marker is missing, it’s likely that a group has wandered off.

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Pat unloading Rambouillet bucks
Red Desert, Sweetwater County, Wyoming
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Bucks in their working clothes
Red Desert, Sweetwater County, Wyoming
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Today we tooks to rams out to the ewes. A sheep’s gestation period is five months, less five days, so bucks in on December 12th means lambs on the ground starting May 7th. We raise our own Rambouillet and Hampshire rams, who basically hang around all year waiting for their six-week breeding season. The ewes have a heat cycle every three weeks, so they are exposed to the rams for two cycles. In our breeds and climate, the conventional wisdom is that sheep will breed in any month with an “r” in it. We have a long winter, so May is the optimal month for lambing on the range. Everyone was glad to see each other, although for the ewes, it means five months of pregnancy and another five or six months of motherhood.

True love
photo by Pat O'Toole

The drought has returned, and for the first time since we started wintering on the Red Desert, we are pumping and hauling water for the sheep. Normally, they survive through the winter months by eating snow. We are ready to hold a “snow dance” in hopes of enticing the heavens to bless us with exactly the right amount of snow. My Dad says, “More sheep have starved to death in a snowbank than on dry ground.” Still, hauling water is a time-consuming and expensive operation.

Dry conditions for December
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Unloading the water tanks
photo by Pat O'Toole

Guard dog puppies at camp
photo by Pat O'Toole

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Crossing I80
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Faithful blog readers may wonder at the various places that appear in our photos and accounts. Our ranch is a transhumance livestock operation. We move with the seasons, as people and livestock have done from time out of mind. To see all the photos, click on “Continue reading.”

The sheep and cattle have spent the summer on our national forest permits. In the fall months, they trail back to the home ranch, which lies about 24 miles east of Baggs, Wyoming and 54 miles northwest of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. After grazing on pastures near home, being worked and with their calves and lambs shipped, they are ready for the winter season. The cows stay home and eat the hay which we raised last summer.

The sheep head for the “desert.” We take most of the sheep north to Wyoming’s Red Desert, spending a few weeks in a leased pasture on the “checkerboard”—so known because every other section for 20 miles in each direction was given to the Union Pacific railroad when it was built in the mid-1860’s. This pasture is known as “Badwater.”

Leaving Badwater
Sweetwater County, Wyoming
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Coming onto the highway
South of Creston Junction, Sweetwater County, Wyoming
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Crossing the railroad bridge
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Train passing by
photo by Sharon O'Toole

This week we left Badwater, which is located right on the Continental Divide at the eastern edge of the Great Basin. The Great Basin is an area which is bounded by the Divide as it splits and runs in two formations before coming back together south of the Haystack Mountains.

From Badwater, the sheep and the sheepherders head north to spend the winter. This trail takes about four days and necessitates crossing the railroad tracks over a bridge, and Interstate 80 at Creston Junction, under the overpass. I think it is one of the most dangerous things we do all year.

This passing used to be merely interesting, with the necessity for the flaggers, front and rear to pay attention. These days the whole area is being massively developed for oil, gas and coalbed methane. Not only does this development have a profound effect on the habitat for livestock and wildlife, but it brings an astonishing amount of traffic to the region.

Due to the kindness of neighbors, and BLM trailing permits, we can mostly avoid the highway, but we must go for about a mile in order to cross these coast-to-coast transportation corridors. When we crossed the first band on Friday, we had trucks backed up about 20 deep in both directions. Today was Sunday, and quieter, and I was able to take some pictures. The temperature was about 5 degrees, with a brisk wind.

Sharing the highway
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Waiting for the sheep
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Under the Interstate
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Passing the on-ramp, and almost there
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Suzie, wishing she were outside
photo by Sharon O'Toole

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Waiting for the Storm
Badwater
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Winter is upon us with a vengeance. We have been praying for snow on the desert. The sheep rely on it for water in the winter, and without it, we have to haul water. Hauling water is expensive, time consuming, and hard on people and equipment. Since only a handful of sites are suitable for placing tanks and hauling water to, it also means that one piece of country gets a lot of use and the sheep can’t range as far to seek feed.

Two days ago, the weather report was calling for a foot of snow and the barometer was plummeting. The storm came in all right, and left us enough snow to get by on. It also brought the coldest temperatures of the season (so far). We woke up this morning to clear skies and minus fifteen degrees. We headed north to Badwater (some 75 miles north and west of the home ranch) to load some cull ewes which are headed for slaughter in Iowa.

Browsing at Badwater
photo by Pat O'Toole

Which reminds me of a story: Several years ago I was taking a trailer of old ewes to the auction in Fort Collins, Colorado. I stopped for gas and noticed the woman at the opposite pump eyeing us curiously. “What are you doing with those sheep?” she asked.

“Oh,” I replied, “they are just a bunch of killer ewes.”

She looked at me, looked at them with a more careful eye, and said, “Really! Who’d they kill?”

But I digress. Today our duty was to put several hundred killer ewes on a semi truck in bitter cold. Luckily it was an otherwise beautiful day, if you don’t count the wind. We were all wearing as much as we possibly could and still climb over the corrals.

The ewes were reluctant to load, perhaps preferring the freezing weather (after all, they were all wearing wool coats) to their fate at the end of the journey. Finally, they were aboard, and we were glad to pile into the warm pickups, even though we still had 150 miles of sheep hauling ahead of us.

Ready to unload at day's end
Powder Flat
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Sheep with moon
Powder Flat
photo by Sharon O'Toole

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