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.

Well, the first month of twenty ten wasn't too bad, for January in Montana. Except wait, people in Havre and numerous other burgs might disagree. If they've thawed out enough to move by now. The weather has been brutal up there...

But speaking of Havre, it's been suggested we change the name to Favre, after Brett Favre, the NFL quarterback. This was proposed (tongue-in-cheek, kinda) as way to boost the economy, assuming Favre would move to Havre, and pay taxes there. Except this would ruin the "you can have 'er" joke, but aside from that sounds like a bully idea! Long as he doesn't visit in January.

It got kinda cold here a time or two, but Thank God we don't get much wind here. Except wait, I even reserve the right to change my opinion about wind. Turns out our old farming haunts on the Hi-Line are high on the list of proposed wind energy developments. Like real high.

There's already a significant wind "farm" by Ethridge, and it appears the next one just might be right up the road there under the rimrocks, where I spent significant parts of my life going round and round on a tractor. Well, I did also spend quite a bit of time exploring, first on horseback and later mostly by motorcycle. Judging by the number of buffalo jumps and teepee rings, I wasn't the first one who'd found the area interesting.

In fact I have little doubt it was better suited to that, than grain farming. Although, we're even more glad now that my Grandpa Mink saw potential up there all those years ago, and that my folks gave it a go. It's not exactly the Garden of Eden, which brings up a memory that's always made me smile, even moreso now.

I was just a kid, high-school age probably, & had stopped in the Derrick bar in Kevin to pick up a Sunday newspaper. The usual contingent of farmers and oilfield folks were there, and our neighbor Archie McLean had just read the yield results from the ag research test plots scattered around the state. As usual, the ones down by Conrad just completely eclipsed the yields in our neighborhood, nearly double in a lot of cases. Archie rattled off a few numbers, and with an ironic grin said "but for 50 miles we'd all be rich!"

Archie got cancer a few years later and passed away, way too young. I hope he's grinning up there somewhere now...

We still have the property up there, although we're farming similarly poor and rocky (if quite scenic) ground now here in the "Valley of the Flowers". Destiny or something, I guess...

At least it kinda forces you to explore doing it different; alternative crops and marketing venues, so maybe it's good. That was certainly the vibe at the Winter Farmer's Market here in Bozeman yesterday. The movie Food, Inc. had shown in the same building, the Emerson Cultural Center Thursday evening. Turnout was reportedly outstanding; ~600 people, with a couple hundred staying for the panel discussion afterward. Alas, Kim and I didn't make it (although we've seen the movie, and yes, it's horrifying). Traffic and sales were good yesterday, and it's more than refreshing to deal with folks who're looking for a different model.

I've said it before, but am becoming more convinced all the time. Once you start eating healthy, there's no going back. After a while you can tell, almost instantly whether food has nutrition in it, or whether it's just "empty" calories. One of many conversations yesterday was with a guy who had lost ~180 pounds since he started eating healthy. The other stuff; there's basically nothing there, and so your body keeps telling you "feed me!!", and you keep eating. Healthy food, it doesn't take near as much to satisfy. We've been buying (or rather, often bartering or trading) a significant portion of our produce from other vendors at the market. I'm telling ya... there's no comparison.

And, we just recently finished cutting up our buffalo, a scrumptious yearling, and oh...! It's off the scale. Tender, but way more than that, it's just loaded with nutrition. Real Meat, indeed...

Speaking of which, buffalo skinning and related labors ate up a significant portion of January, so to speak. That wound up for the season last weekend, though. It's nice to catch a "breather", although I am going to kinda miss the income.

Time to get rolling on cleaning our malt barley and peddling it to breweries. Plus of course it's bookwork season. Bookwork and bookings, barley and beer breweries, buffalo skulls and robes and hmmm... clearly I need to delve further into the alphabet. Just think of the potential...