This past weekend we were busy. Friday, we finally moved the last of our stuff into our house after 6 months. Ron, Maggie, and Hayden came over and helped. They were such good help. Chris and I really appreciated their help. The stuff that was left in the old house was our food storage and washer and dryer. Didn't want to move them in 2 ft of snow, so we had made arrangements to keep them in our old house. After the moving Ron and Hayden went out to the pasture with Chris to feed the cows. It was Hayden's first ride on a four wheeler.

I just love this picture of the two of them. They look happy.

Saturday, Chris was with his dad checking out the headgate to our canals. We had water in our ditches, and there should not have been. So they went to check it out while I stayed and raked up my side lawn. When they got back, they told me that the head gate had been washed out because of the flooding in the Willow Creek. In all of the years I have lived here, I have never seen it so high, John (my father-in-law) said that in his life time he had never seen it that high either. So we called the water master and told him of the situation and he had it fixed with in the next couple of hours.

That afternoon we headed over to a guy who was selling hay. (We have ran out because of the elk and had more cows than we normally do. We usually sell off some of the previous years yearlings when we bring them home from the ranch, but we gotso much snow so early (remember our Thanksgiving blizzard) , we didn't ever get them to the sale. More mouths to feed more hay used.) Anyway we baught 40 3/4 ton bales and when we went to pick them up on Tuesday, someone had stolen 10 bales while the farmer was at church on Sunday. I guess with the price of hay($200/ton) and the shortage of it, people are getting desperate. So we got only 30 bales.

After we bought the hay, we decided to see if we could get up to the cabin. By this time we have already started repairing the fences, but we could not get up there two weeks ago, so we thought we would try it again. The creeks along the roadway were running full and fast. As we drove along, we came to the big bend of the road and it had a pretty good sized drift. We didn't dare going over it so we drove around it. when we finally got to Avery Acres we found snow in the trees, a full pond, a raging spring and a huge glacier/snow drift up above the cabin. None the less, we concluded that we won't be able to bring the cows up for at least 3 to 4 weeks. We will begin fencing sometime next week, hopefully.

Chris and John out on the glacier. They were 35 to 40 feet in the air.

The ruts from getting stuck in the wet mud and snow drift.

We had to backfill them because they were about 3 feet deep. I thought for sure we were going to high center the truck.

After we got stuck, we decided we didn't want to risk it further and so we headed home.

When we drove past our fields we found some of our fields had been flooded by the creek.

Willow Creek cresting, but you can see the field with the flood water in the background.

More pictures of the flooding.

So we are preparing for more water as the snow pack melts. Luckly our home sits on edge of a hill so we won't have to worry about the flooding reaching our home.