50 years of progress?

Fifty years ago, while there was still a dairy farm by the Bristol Highlands neighborhood between Betsy's house and Hope St., the farmers let Betsy take care of the newborn calf, Friday Frolic.  Here we are, half a century later, with Betsy keeping an eye on the new born calf at the Anderson ranch.  The only difference is, Matt probably won't turn over the same degree of responsibility to Betsy today that the farmers did in 1963!!  Not out of the woods yet, but though very premature, the calf is gaining strength and was full of beans yesterday, jumping and twisting and running around!

Friday, we took Ginny's Subaru, with 150,000 miles on it, in to Livingston for work.  A-1 Muffler mechanic gave it the once over, and changed oil, and said it was fine.  Betsy and I did a little catching up on errands in Livingston while he worked on the car- hardware store, leather store to prepare a belt for some bead work Betsy will do, and groceries. Though it was a little late, we stopped in at a tiny cafe, Chadz, for lunch.   About two other people came and went, and we were just finishing up when Betsy jumped out of her chair.  She had heard a voice and ran over to the counter to greet Anne-Marie, a good friend from sabbatical year
three years ago who was ordering a sandwich!!  Even in Livingston, the chances had to be pretty slim for us to drive 45 miles into town, eat late, and bump into an "old friend"!  Great to catch up.

Yesterday morning, when Bets went out to walk Loki, she had four elk bulls coming up the driveway for the hay, and 20 cow elk coming over a fence from the east for the hay- so she and Loki spent some time protecting the cows' feed!  So it has taken one week for us to transform from tree-hugging, "Oh wow
!"  "get the Camera" easterners to "Gol-durn" "Gosh darn varmints" "Get the gun" westerners trying to keep the ranch protected from the critters!

Malou and Dre went with a horse trailer to Bozeman Friday night to purchase 3 horses at auction and to get 10 goat kids (will need to be bottle fed) for a goat herd to assist in noxious weed control.  So we tended chickens and the Great Pyrenees, Ezra, up at the "Schoolhouse" ranch while they were gone. Picture of Ezzie and Bets follows, and the chicken coop that Ken built while we were here on sabbatical.  You may note the weather vane is a little worse for wear, but then we have had three days of Wind Advisories, with gusts over 60 miles an hour.  It does get a little wild up here!

We ventured up the road as far we could yesterday afternoon.  They aren't plowing as far as they used to, but we had seen a dog sled team head up, so we knew vehicles had gone up the valley.  We got to where the dog sledders had clearly decided was the limit for their vehicles, and turned around ( but they had done their sledding).  So we parked there and cross country skied in a few miles.  Now that we know we can get there, we will do more.  We wore Loki and ourselves out!

Snow and wind today.  We will head up at noon with Ginny to see the new horses and bottle feed the goats.

Below is a sunset from out our back door: