Chow time Montana style

Let's call it "5000 mile spaghetti".  I figure we drove 2400 miles to get here, and Hannibal flew 2600 miles from Alaska, so when Hannibal made his world famous spaghetti for last night's ranch potluck, I can assure you it was worth 5000 traveling to eat it.  Delicious. Here's Steve, Dre, Hannibal and Ginny digging in:

Others in the basin are intent on feeding as well.  Steve bottle fed a calf yesterday,to supplement what the surrogate mother was providing:

It turns out calves are bigger than baby goats, and it takes a little more strategy and strength to make it work. But all went well, and the calf and surrogate mom have now been turned back out into the pasture- they're on their own!

Feeding the kid goats this morning, I said to Hannibal " Goats 9, Steve and Betsy 2.  But that's only the count; actually I think the score was kid goats 35 Steve and Betsy 1"  but that worked too.

Betsy continues her dedicated birdfeeding, and the gray capped rosy finches, pine siskins, redpolls, and chickadees are regular attendees- incoming graycap here:

We continue to get incredible fresh greens from Jill's greenhouse up at the B Bar.  Her "Reflective Selective Mulch" which reflects the deep red light back up to the plant where chlorophyll absorbs just that color for photosynthesis works like magic!  We are having the Doolittle's up for supper tomorrow night, with fresh salad greens, fresh bok choy, radishes, meslun, and mustard greens as part of the chicken fajita menu.

Heading in to town for shopping today, we caught sight of the newly collared big horn sheep down at the mouth of the Tom Miner.  I have to say, science is good, knowledge helps us to manage wildlife, but really I think this collar is excessive:

We have both goat feeding duty and most of the day calf watch through the weekend- as Malou is off to Washington DC, Matt's wife is away and he is celebrating his daughter's birthday with a trip to Bozeman, Julie's at a conference in Big Sky, and Hannibal has joined her there to get in some skiing. 

So blogging may be sparse in the next few days.

Sunrise this AM:

We are revving up hopefully for a trip to FreezeOut Lake in the coming week.  Today's report indicates 1300 tundra swans, and 60,000 snow geese have arrived on their epic migration to the Arctic.  We hope to catch the peak of that migration- when numbers of geese may exceed 200,00!