I don't know whose idea it was to short the month of February by two or three days, but it seems questionable to me at the moment. I could certainly have stood those extra days, as my to-do list agrees. The remaining entries are mostly seasonal, long-term projects, but now that it'll be March, the pressure is on. It's (past) time to wrap up our packaging & labeling, get a manufacturing license, and of course I haven't even started on taxes. Right now it's kind of hard to fathom that we could be farming in not much over a month, with not a few things to get ready between now & then...

Except this column is supposed to be about Gossip, News, and Hot Tips, not endless grousing about bookwork.

Gossip...? Hmmm. There's a couple of possibilities, partly political (wildlife related, mostly) but... They'd be at least partly speculation, and right now it doesn't seem very smart to be posting things I'm not sure about. So I know, that's not very exciting.

News...? Oddly enough, none comes to mind. Oh, there's several developing situations, again mostly wildlife related that have unfortunately turned too dang contentious. Spilling beans would put us back in the partly speculative "gossip" mode, though, which in this case would be beyond stupid. No upside there, so moving along...

Hot tips...? ...?? It's February, for crying out loud! The dead of winter. Except wait, I didn't quite spend the entire month behind the desk, finally made it to Norris Hot Springs, which certainly fits the criteria. I'd been there years ago, back in the college days, and was overdue. Well, I had lobbied that we should hold some of the Madison Elk Working Group meetings there, but along with my 6-point rule suggestion, that didn't get traction either. Too bad, I still think they're both good ideas!

So, other than bookwork and bookings, a couple of Farmer's Markets, packaging problem-solving (and related obstacles), lots of buffalo robe and skull sorting and spreadsheet building, data entry and a bit of wrench turning (both mental and physical), well... we did fit in a bit of fun. Went cross-country skiing a number of times. No major expeditions, just late-afternoon loops around the farm or up canyons here on the west slope of the Bridgers. After sitting at the desk all day, sometimes I have my best ideas while kicking & gliding along...

Also made it up to Big Sky for a day of downhilling, and recently took a tour of the Gardiner area, along with some other members of the Gallatin Wildlife Association and Governor Schweitzer's Natural Resource Policy advisor Mike Volesky. We were lobbying for increased habitat for wild bison, long-overdue changes to Montana's bison "management" plan, plus bighorn sheep and elk policies. We have win-win suggestions that protect private property rights and minimize risk of disease transmission, while turning the situation into a huge asset. Of course we've been bringing these ideas up for quite a while now, and slowly but surely, we might be getting somewhere.

So there, I actually may have (just barely) met my column criteria. Gossip, news, and a hot tip, almost all rolled into one. I'd assumed that past February Moccasin Telegraphs might have been somewhat uniformly dull, but looking back through them I see that's not been the case at all!

So there must be something to this "all work and no play" resulting in dullness. Time to do something about that...

p.s.  At least some of us make it out, here's a shot Cody got on top of the ridge at Bridger Bowl.