Christmas

Ok, here's another post... since everyone has been checking in again! Lots of things for this time, starting with some Bear Hunting Pics.
At a bear tree (we turned this one loose, it was a little bear).
Stella taking a break, she really dosn't look comfy...
More laziness. Hard to believe these two would bite a bear.
Did some riding, I worked with Spice ('cause Shasta keeps stealing Bounce from me). She is going to make someone a good horse with a few more miles on her. She rides nice and smooth, just needs some confidence.
Heading home...
Then winter hit... We have been up to about a foot and a half of snow. We are sick of it already. (Temps have been down around 5 degrees at night and our water lines have been frozen for 2 weeks)
Even though it is pretty.
We headed to Sacramento for Christmas, and to get away from the snow. The boys were being too cute x-mas morning, even in their sleep.
Opening Presents...
And more presents. They had way too much fun!

That's it for now, I'll put more pics up when I can, though being winter and all I can't promise to take too many, especially with the snow limiting our riding. We are joining the Golden State Draft Horse & Mule Club but I didn't take pics at the last meeting (there were a few teams there but the meeting was mostly an informational indoor meeting), but I should get some this time so I'll put some of them up, and hopefully I'll be doing some more work with the big Girls now that we have some time, we hope to get Holly going good so we can go on a wagon train in April with them (they are trying to put on a 4 day trip), aparently the last one was a lot of fun.

Bear Pics!! Finally!

Finally made it to real internet! So here are some pictures of the Great Bear Hunt...

The bear in the tree. She was just taking a quick breather and wasn't going to stay there long!

A couple of dogs treeing.

After the bear was dead the dogs got to go chew on it for awhile as a reward. (I didn't have the flash on so some of the pics are blurry, sorry)

My trophy pic! And Dink got in the pic too since he was the only dog that went all the way through and got her treed by himself! He's been the champ this season.

Gutting her.

Got a little Captian in you?

And another Trophy pic.

Hanging the bear to skin her.

We have been eating a lot of bear meat, can't get enough of it!
No other pics right now, we went to Redding for Thanksgiving, and went bear hunting again last weekend, caught a small bear, I have some good pics from that but didn't bring the camera down with me...Oops! So those will be for next time I get down here... As far as the horses, we finally went riding last weekend, just a short ride since our good saddles are at cow camp still, so I had to ride in the darn english saddle to try to go track down a bull and herd him home... We didn't find the right bull (found out he is on the other side of the valley...) but got to run from charging steer. Lots of fun in a postage stamp! And I am working with Spice to train her to drive, and will probably teach Sugar too. They are both for sale so that should help place them. I think that is all for this time, and I will update again when I can!

Bear Hunting!

Last weekend we went Bear hunting, I got a preally pretty dark red bear, she was 240lbs (gutted) with lots of fat! We aren't even half done rendering the fat off of her and we already have just shy of 3 gallons of grease. We will be eating good this winter! I have already made bear spaghetti and Jarrett made some fry meat, Yummy!!! She was a little mean though, came within 10 ft of Jarrett and Jason and swatted at them (I ended up a bit downhill of the action and couldn't get into it quite fast enough), and ended up beating on one of Jarrett's dogs giving her 2 broken and 3 cracked ribs. She is recovering well, though she will be out for the rest of the season. I will put up pictures when I get to highspeed, just didn't have time when I was in town last week.

Winter is coming!

Wow, it has been a few weeks since I have been able to post! I notice a lot of people checking in for updates.... SORRY!! Between icky weather (we have been getting snow already) , finishing all that we have left to do before winter, and only having dial-up internet in the mountains I have been slacking. But here goes an update: Jarrett's cousin asked for some help gathering cows so we have been camping out in some nasty weather for the last 5 days! But in spite of the snow, rain and cold it has been so much fun!This little guy was discovered while clearing a log out of the road on the way to the start of the ride on Saturday, he was quite mellow and hung out on my finger for awhile. This is on Saturday, I didn't get to ride since we had the boys, I hung out at the trailers and played with them while everyone else hunted cows.This was a small batch, they are headed up to the holding pasture.
The boys being hams!

Then it decided to storm! This is on top of South Fork Ridge, on Blake Mountain heading back to camp. We only got a few inches of snow, then it rained all day Sunday.

So we went sledding! I had been out helping find firewood and came back to this, and got drug in to try it out... This was the hill right out of camp, it was nice and muddy, and yeah, it was fun! It led to some good wrecks.

Monday I got to finally go, this was at the start of the trail, which was way overgrown so the boys took chainsaws to it, while we started a fire and watched the horses. They got a good chunk of trail clear but we still had to do the next section on foot as the brush was so thick we were almost crawling through it.

Later in the day, after we found some cows & headed for the holding pasture. I didn't get pics of most of the country, it is some nasty rough ground and there is no time to mess with the camera! I rode Bounce and she did stellar, she loves the cows and is incredibly surefooted. She impressed me a lot this weekend.
Putting some cows back in the holding pasture, some of the little black dots are cows... some are horses... As usual, click on any of the pics to make them bigger. And yeah, it really is that steep! I had just gotten done riding up it once, then went back down to help get another group of cows, then right back up it again.
That's it for this week!

A Birthday Weekend

We had a very busy weekend,  we celebrated Hyram's Birthday!

Getting ready to blow out his candles!

Dad got him a rocket, both of the boys absolutely loved it! They took turns launching it both Saturday and Sunday. 

They kept trying to catch it on the way down! Good thing it had a parachute...

Supervising to make sure Dad hooks it up right!!

CJ shooting his rifle that he got for his birthday. That is the cutest little rifle, it is so tiny! And is really fun to shoot!

Lisa, Johnathan and Becca came out so Hannah gave sled rides, she was a perfect girl!

It was late and I couldn't find her lines so I had to drive her from the side with a set of riding reins, but she did just fine! 

I took old Serina for an outing on Friday after I got done trimming her feet...  She likes to go!

Sunday we took the boys riding, Serina was a champ as usual... Hyram about launched himself onto us right after the pic...

And of course she had to look extra cute for her pic with him!

Bounce didn't want to pose for their pic... CJ did though!

A quick update

No pics this week, we didn't do much with the horses and I left the camera in the mountains, so the few pics I got will have to wait. Mostly they are of an Alligator Lizard that decided to take up residence in the bathroom. Friday I had to work so we lost that day, Saturday I just worked with Bassira and trimmed some Hooves while Jarrett finished up some leather cuffs that were ordered for someones Halloween costume, they came out really nice. Then Sunday we spent the day helping one of Jarrett's cousins frame a house. Hopefully this weekend we will saddle up and get out to ride, but who knows, we have a million things left to do before the bad weather starts and Jarrett will probably be heading to Redding for some work real soon, so if we have to buckle down and work all weekend we will. We have to build another barn for the horses, build a shed for our wagon, do some work on Black's run-in, redo the steps on the big barn, possibly finish framing in the porch on the house and turn it into another small room, & cut firewood for the winter. Yay! 

A few pics

Sorry I didn't update last week, we didn't do much that was picture worthy. We have some personal stuff going on that has been taking a bunch of preparation so haven't had much horse time the last 2 weeks, but here are a few pics!

So Holly figured out a new trick! Hannah likes to back up the the water trough and bump it with her hind feet to make noise, well Holly decided to get in the trough! She thought that was just wonderful, and stood there for a good 5 minutes, just until I found the camera, put batteries in it, and got back outside...And then of course Girlie had to get in the way. But you can see her behind stepping out of the trough, and Hannah studying her technique for future mayhem plans.

Dinner! Finally got to do a little hunting. Now if we can get time to go after some deer...

Sunday we made cookies with the Boys, they had WAY too much fun!!

The icing attacked! 

Some early snowmen.... Just getting a head start for winter! But we made spiders, dinosaurs, and lots of other stuff too!

Back to the Alps

We spent the weekend in the Alps again, it was beautiful as always! We went back in to our "usual" spot but got to do some exploring in some new areas from there.  As expected there were a lot of people , so we didn't try to hunt much, instead we just rode and enjoyed the scenery! We carried the rifles just in case but weren't worried about not getting to hunt, we have other rides planned for better hunting!

On the way in... I ended up riding Bailey because Gus ran her under one of the hitching posts at the trailhead and she skinned up her backbone a little and my saddle pad worked the best to clear it. 

Bounce and Jarrett coming up the trail, just a little climb there...


Me and Gus Gus... I ended up riding him the rest of the weekend just to give Bailey's back a chance to heal good, she wasn't sore but no reason to  use her when we had another horse to use... He was actually pretty good for the most part, I was shocked!


Jarrett and Bounce again, what a cute pair!


Melissa and Zeta on another steep spot (we did a lot of climbing on Saturday).


Another basin, we rode up to the top of the ridge behind that basin, 

And found the most spectacular view!! Once you peak the top of the ridge it drops off into a deep valley with those knife edge ridges past that. Just amazing, the pictures don't do it justice at all!
On the way out we ran into a group that was having a little trouble with their pack slipping and the horse not liking the back cinch, so we helped out and threw the load on Gus, and I rode Tex, A big paint. They were a lot of fun, and we had a great trip out and no more pack wrecks! We hated to leave though, one of these summers we are going to have to saddle up and head in for a month and explore!