April has certainly been an interesting month. As I often mention, farming just isn't dull at all anymore, at least in our case. It's been a bit of a marathon lately though, and at the moment I am suffering fatigue, so please bear with...

Last week was a sprint; getting our air seeder set up for seeding camelina. Maybe it's just because I'm pushing 55, but wrestling a bunch of heavy stuff around kicked my ass. And then we seeded inbetween storms, some quite brief opportunities. But of course we never complain about rain in Montana! And then we had a 3-day booth at the new Montana Farm and Ranch Show here in Bozeman this past Friday-Sunday, as well as the last Winter Farmers' Market of the season Saturday morning. We've pulled off having a booth at two events simultaneously a few times previously, but it's definitely a project.

We're glad we did, though. Besides good turnout and sales, we made some more small-world contacts that will likely prove beneficial.

Backing up, though, early in the month we made a run up to our old Hi-Line haunts, picking up a seed cleaner among other things.

A relative had tore down the old Cargill elevator in Conrad, and so we now have a drastically higher-capacity seed cleaner. It needs a little work, but once that's completed we'll be spending a lot less time cleaning seed.

Plus I've been looking for a set of mounted harrows for quite a while. Those used to be common, back before most everyone went no-till. In fact after most everyone started spraying instead of plowing, I could have bought all kinds of them for next to nothing at auctions. I'd decided some time back they'd still be just the ticket for organic farming here on the Rockpile Ranch, though, and then... couldn't find any. Not cheap, anyway. I ran an ad in the Billings Gazette a couple winters back, and only got one call, from a guy who wanted $4800 for a set. At the auctions I mentioned, I could have bought all kinds of them for a couple hundred bucks, which fits vastly better with the tightwad model.

So, I had some prospects tentatively lined up with former neighbors up in Napi's Country, except after sorting through some amazing collections, it turned out theirs were pretty much junk. I toured a couple implement dealer lots, but again, these things are pretty much "obsolete", except in our case. So among a few other prospects, the next morning I gave Huggy Bear Hughes a call. He's a former implement dealer in Cut Bank, who instead of retiring still runs a fairly substantial farm equipment consignment/appraisal business. No big surprise, he'd just had some harrows listed the day before, which almost couldn't have been handier, at the Benjamin place just five miles east of Shelby, where I'd spent the night.

More than that, it turns out they're fellow organics! We also made some good connections with that crowd at the Farm and Ranch Show this past weekend.

So I know, the above photo isn't that great, but at least you can see what mounted harrows look like. Those spring teeth are just the ticket here on the Rockpile, as they flex around the rocks just fine, and also work superbly for a light harrowing to incorporate camelina and clover seed.

Plus they help to prepare a good seedbed and get a better weed kill when pre-plant plowing. Of course, most farmers don't do that anymore. They spray, and then no-till seed. I did that myself quite a bit back in the day, in fact before it got popular. As I've mentioned, I'm over that now, in fact we've been chemical-free here on the Rockpile for going on eight years now.

The above photo was when we started pre-plant plowing on April 9. As usual, I was struck with the contrast across the fence, where cost is no object. They spent a pile of money that day, topdressing winter wheat with petroleum-based fertilizer, spraying and seeding spring crops with more fertilizer and...

I got a newsletter a while back predicting that wheat prices this year won't be quite break-even for conventional (make that industrial) agriculture. I just don't miss writing those big checks for chemicals and fertilizer at all!! In fact I'm getting to be more of a fan of interseeding clover all the time. With our camelina, we interseed about a pound and a half of red clover per acre. That costs a little over two bucks per acre!! Versus chemicals and fertilizer that runs...

I don't even know anymore. Somewhere up in the $75/acre range. Ag expenses have gone through the ceiling, not to mention machinery costs ($300,000 for a sprayer!!?). So no, I'm more enthused with this organic model all the time, and guess what? When you meet fellow organics, there is a connection on far more than a superficial level. There's an exchange of information, but far beyond that, there's an instant sense of "community". We've long commented how the Farmers' Market crowd is a vibrant community that we're proud to be part of. The enthusiasm for this only continues to grow, and with farmers who've made the transition, I'd say there's a fairly deep connection.

So even though it's approaching bedtime, and my earlier primary sensation was fatigue, I'm even enthused again. So we'll get the rest of the crop squeaked in between storms, keep up our marketing campaign, and even have fun! Nope, farming's just not dull at all anymore...

Here it is the end of March already, and I swear, it almost feels like June out there! Well into May, anyway, as it's pushing 70 here going on 6:00 PM.

So, I should be out there plowing! And have given that serious consideration, at least until a day or so ago when I went out there with a shovel and ascertained it's still mud around here. Or at least was, but now...

Except it's going to rain tonight, so plowing right now would be stupid, even if it would set a personal record for "early" springs.

But no, instead we had a Farmer's Market today.

It started off kinda slow, as you can see above, but picked up nicely toward the end. That's when my wife Kim, at right in our booth above won't let me leave for photography, and I don't blame her.

That next photo is from the other end of the Emerson Ballroom, home of the Bozeman Winter Farmers Market, possibly the most challenging photography spot known!! So I can't help but mention those two photos above don't even utilize auxiliary flash, and although some long-time, faithful repeat customers are blurred (if they were moving), these digital cameras might be OK after all.

Speaking of early springs, though, it's certainly acting like one out there. Plus of course, camelina lends itself to early seeding, is very cold tolerant (assuming we're not quite done with that yet), matures early and...

So that's mainly what I'm leaning toward seeding this spring, the sooner the better. Oh, we'll seed a little wheat and barley also, and probably some mustard and of course we're interseeding red clover with most everything, although also using camelina meal as a natural fertilizer with some of it, and it should be interesting...

So at least we have the tractor fired up, and are making a run to the Hi-Line next week, picking up organic clover seed, a decent-sized seed cleaner we'd stumbled into via the usual small-world connections, plus some machinery items we've been looking for, for years, recently discovered under the same circumstances, part of some amazing collections in our old haunts, so that should also be fun!

So although as usual, we didn't lack for things to do in March, at least it wasn't utter madness, unlike some years. Our oil pressing upgrades are coming together, we're going to get our crops seeded perhaps record early (knock wood...!), and it's going to keep raining regularly, right?

So with that, I believe I'll call March a month, and let spring fever fully kick into gear!

Leap years are a good thing, there's little doubt around here. We could certainly stand the extra day this February, not least because writing a Telegraph didn't dawn on me until this morning. If February had ended yesterday, I assume this would have occurred to me in time, but I'd have missed a meeting.

As I am right now, or will be shortly. No question, not least because we just had what almost passed for a blizzard, or at least a snowstorm around here, a rarity of late.

In fact even the above photo isn't exactly representative, as the snow has all but been gone most of the time.

At least until a few minutes ago, when a cold front passed through! Late afternoon, there were wild cloud formations surging around the Bridgers, from multiple directions! I should have taken pictures, although video could have been noteworthy. Maybe not like tornados, but still...

And then the snow hit, temps dropped, and we stoked the fire.

Except now, chores and a brief bit of writing later, not even sunset yet, all that is over, it seems! Good grief, the sun's not out, but...

This really is the "Valley of the Flowers". In fact in recent days a fella could have almost seeded camelina, at least if you weren't averse to giving things a shot of Roundup first.

We're organic, though, so need to plow first, and luckily that's still out of the question! I kinda suspect we could have an early spring, though, vastly different from last year.

So, in a year like this (might be), I'd think an early seeded, tough and tolerant low input quick maturing crop might not be a bad idea. Especially if you press the seed into a healthy, moreso all the time we're learning, Omega-3 supplement.

Good grief, you'd think I have spring fever or something, except I haven't even been skiing yet!! And am beginning to wonder... My private ski resort, here in the backyard... seems to be one extreme or the other; bare ground or near-suicidal avalanche danger.

So we tend to just stay home and work, barring the odd meeting. And thankfully besides computers and such, actually got somewhere with an ongoing project or two.

Our oil pressing operation has always been kinda semi-portable, running it off various tractor PTO's. Finally we're moving it "indoors", though, and after great deliberation, running it off a biofuel power source.

So that will be interesting, and maybe even fun! Plus our packaging and sundry other issues seem to have sorted, so we're back on marketing track, and...

But as mentioned, if we're not at the computer or on the phone, working or (as of late) welding, eating or sleeping, we seem to be at meetings! At least the one I'm missing right now is about motorized use on the Gallatin National Forest, in this case the Gallatin crest, some familiar country I used to frequent, on foot or horseback.

So this is better, as I try to stick to non-controversial things like buffalo!!

One very interesting meeting we had on that topic this past Friday was when the Interagency Bison Management "Plan" partners responded to the Citizen Working Group answers to their 34 questions about our recommendations, arrived at through a year-long series of (usually all-day) meetings of an extremely diverse working group, open to anyone who would commit to participating.

We'd presented these recommendations back in December (scroll down, and I will get around to archiving prior months one of these days...). As mentioned, the partners responded with a lengthy list of questions, which at yet another meeting, earlier in the month, we met and came up with answers to. Mostly...

That was another all-day meeting, in fact early on we established we only had something like twelve minutes per question if we were going to get them all answered. We ran up toward twenty minutes or more on some of the more contentious issues, like whether we should go with large-scale wildlife vaccination and immunocontraception campaigns (except skunks!!), or concentrate on the risk factors we actually have some "control" over.

But we got 'er done, although didn't reach total consensus on a few items. Still, for as mentioned, an extremely diverse group, including representatives from the Montana Stockgrowers, we didn't do too bad.

Luckily at the meeting Friday, the Chronicle reporter left before things went kinda haywire, so her report was very positive. And now there's some new developments, although they don't go nearly as far as the Citizen Working Group recommendations, possibly because this goes before a judge in Livingston tomorrow, but if you don't watch TV you have to do something for entertainment!

Gotta admit, this one almost snuck on up me! Oh, I knew it was the end of the month, but somehow the Telegraph hadn't made it onto the list. But now it's still only 3:00 or slightly thereafter, and next up is perhaps an extremely interesting project.

So this Telegraph is going to be shorter than normal! Not least because we have next to no photos, tsk!

Luckily, most if not all of the issues I mentioned last month have more or less sorted out. Or at least still might, yet today, and if not, I'd think not long into February...

This "bottle denting" issue we inexplicably ran into, when shipping down to where the pressure is higher, in more ways than one (hah!), we find works in the opposite direction also. In fact back before someone came up with this obvious solution, we're told even potato chip bags first exploded when sent across the divide! hahahahaha...

But now we also recently learned this common compound that makes up ~80% of the air you breathe (unless of course you're once again at high elevation, and then who knows...?), when compressed into bottles comes at way higher pressure than we've encountered before, but what else is new?!

Luckily someone invented pressure regulators, which fortunately still work in many cases, and we'll find out again here shortly. At least we're incredibly grateful, and still slightly amazed at near-invaluable advice we've received, and yes, it remains a small world in many ways.

That's commonly encountered at the Farmers Markets, and we're glad the Winter one is going again, even if the Emerson ballroom is one of the more challenging photography spots I've ran into, and the few times the media have shown up, they tend to bring auxilary studio lighting. That would be overkill in our case, though...

But, speaking of markets, the camelina oil market has been decent today, in fact I need to get to bottling! Except this next session promises to be more interesting than usual, although we're told the pressure equalizes rapidly, so I don't think you'll hear any loud bangs out this way.

So I know, I should be filming it & putting it on YouTube, where you can "broadcast yourself". Especially if we got loud bangs and explosions, we could get great ratings! All the same, I'm also told that doesn't happen, so need to go find out...

Good Grief, 2011 is over already?!

Well, we still have another fifteen minutes or so of sunshine. It still looks more like possibly October out there, and until last night we didn't even have any snow to speak of. But then it rained!!

We recall it raining once before during the Holidays, that time on New Year's Eve back in about '80 or thereabouts. Similar mild year, we were having a back-yard barbecue party, which got crowded once it moved indoors.

At least last night the rain finally turned white. Only a dusting down here, but at least Bridger Bowl finally got almost a foot, nearly doubling their snowpack!

Here on the west slope of the Bridgers, there hasn't been nearly enough snow to even consider going cross-country skiing, somewhat to my dismay. In fact we went for a hike Christmas Day.

We've also been horseback riding a few times. No expeditions, just here on the farm. In fact Cody came home with a new horse a few evenings back. We've kinda been looking, & he came across this not-quite-four year old Andalusion/Paint cross mare. Andalusions are interesting, they were the preferred "war horse" for European royalty back in the day, at least until the armor got really heavy and they went to draft horses.

Fortunately this one was owned by a horseshoer, so is completely used to that, and has also seen quite a bit of mountain use for her age, including packing deer and elk. Completely calm, steps out nice and smooth...

The above photo was right before I took her for our first ride yesterday. She wasn't too crazy about leaving her newfound pals, although mostly cooperated. She far prefers them to the prior arrangement, where a more dominant mare was bullying her, resulting in a near-starvation diet.

That's not the case here, in fact the boys are utterly smitten, and will even share their camelina concentrate/winter wheat dessert with her, previously unheard of. We're still amazed at the amount of height, and size in general Buddy put on after he arrived here at age five, and kinda expect the same thing again.

For these end-of-the-year columns, I've stuck with the Prediction Theme, versus reviews and Best & Worst of lists for quite a while now.

This year, we could have quite a striking list though, which is tempting. Still, complaining is near-useless at this point, and I far prefer to end things on a positive note. Just briefly, though, I have to touch on a few things that went on in December, if for no other reason than that's what I mainly have new photos of!

We're largely out of the buffalo business, although have a neighbor with a few, & skinned one a while back, causing flashbacks.

As you can see Molly is absolutely thrilled! So are the chickens...

I used to joke that skinning buffalo paid better than anything else I'd done except for farming in the '70's, although it wasn't really a joke.

So now we're working at getting BiOmega3 to that point, which certainly wasn't dull in December!

We're developing labels for a line of new products, when ongoing trademark issues resurrected themselves. Luckily it looks like they'll sort out, but not before we found there's no trademark lawyers in Montana up for this, and even good referrals in Vegas deferred to more qualified associates, but luckily free (and accurate) advice was eventually forthcoming, from Arkansas of all places! Well, there's still another option or two in the works also, so as usual, we'll see. At least now we know all the "competition" have had their trademarks denied!

But then of course like a lot of things anymore, our oil bottles come from China. And, they've gotten noticeably thinner, just in the last year or so. In profound ironies, now we're shipping some oil to China, and apparently the pressure differences between here and sea level cause the bottles to contract slightly, or dent. Obviously, this isn't limited to just China! We thought bottling the oil at cold temperatures might take care of it, but no. Somewhere there still have to be decent food-grade recyclable bottles that aren't a fraction of their former thickness, and so if you know about that, let us know...

Plus we ran into an apparent global shortage of induction foil seals, which we use on the aforementioned bottles. Strangely, mainly just in that size, so someone in China must have misplaced the die or something! Luckily that sorted out also, but not before we just almost ran out of seals.

So school has been in full session. No Christmas Breaks around here...

But again, I need to catch myself... I well know by now, and completely understand that complaining around here remains almost useless!

So, getting back to this prediction theme...

Some are saying that 2012 will be a landmark year, maybe even the end of time. I far prefer local writer Alan Kesselheim's take in the article linked above. The ancient Mayan civilization had some pretty amazing calendars, and they were quite sure 2012 would be the end of one era, and the beginning of another. Of course, no one knows the day or the hour of such things, but I kinda think they may be right. There's some changes coming down the pike... Maybe some big ones.

Perhaps growing up farming in "Next Year Country", up in northern Montana, somewhat surrounded by pessimists instilled this eternal optimism, but I'll take our chances. The healthy, "locally produced" food model continues to take hold in a big way, and who knows...

If the Mayans are right, that could turn real important. Even if not, I'm still optimistic for 2012. It always beats alternatives...

Happy New Year!

See update below...

Holy cow! We're a full day ahead of schedule here!!

Although I tend to leave things until the last moment, it's not just because I seem to work best "under pressure". The schedule overflows with some regularity, but along with numerous other deadlines (there has to be a better word...) I've managed to get out a Moccasin Telegraph by month's end for a long time now. A wholly different model than constant tweeting, I know, but still...

I can't leave this one till the last minute (in case we don't make it back over the pass!), even though tomorrow promises to possibly be the most fun and certainly interesting day all month! The Citizen Working Group is presenting our suggestions to be Interagency Bison Management Plan partners, at one of their two annual meetings at Chico Hot Springs.

So although I'd sworn off going over Bozeman Pass in snowstorms, I'm not missing that one! We got in a wreck a couple of years ago, heading over to participate in the Park County Christmas Fair, which ahem..., we're doing again this weekend, although luckily the weather man says it'll be better by then. Plus he's been consistently wrong lately, so we'll see about tomorrow...

At least the accomodations at Chico are way nicer than the cabin in the photo above!

It's at an old homestead, here in the Valley of the Flowers, where there's a bin of camelina we're buying.

At least the view out that window is hard to beat, and frankly, hasn't changed that much.

Beyond that, the accomodations at Chico are a bit nicer, although gotta admit, I find these old places intriguing.

We're not even taking swimsuits, let alone staying there this time. One of the things I didn't mention last month was that Kim and I spent our 27th out of 29 anniversaries there, so you could say it's a favorite, and so I guess if you have to spend tax dollars on accomodations, twice per year, you could do worse!

In fact I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. Incredibly enough, it's mainly the members of this working group representing the Montana Stockgrowers who are presenting our suggestions to the IBMP partners. We all agreed that would likely have the most significant impact, and so conscripted them to this task, and I tell ya...

We're presenting common-sense, win/win suggestions, same as we've done for quite a while now. Arrived at by an incredibly diverse citizen working group, open to anyone who would commit to participating, through a slightly extended series of meetings, that frankly I wouldn't have missed for anything!

<update!>

Praise the Lord, the weather man was wrong yet again!! It didn't even snow going over Bozeman Pass coming or going. Except coming home, just as we hit the bottom of the pass, where one inevitably gets caught in clusters of semi's, it finally started snowing. Minimally, really...

But at Chico, well... you'd have thought a rainbow ended there today, and I even saw a bit of blue sky (and even got cell reception!) while outside briefly.

It might have been the best meeting I've been at, or at least certainly in the top handful! So watch the news, at least the local NBC outlet was there.