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It must be that time of the year again.

Tap

Well-known member
Been real hectic around this country lately. We are chasing the few spears of hay around that are worth cutting, and trying to stay cool. Our range and hay is about completly dormant, and the drought is rearing it's ugly head again, after a good start this year. Yesterday, it was in the low to mid 100's, and we had lightning caused fires most of the afternoon, and into the middle of last nite. We started out about half way between here and Liberty Belle's ranch, on a smaller fire, then moved to a lightning caused fire that burned two barns and some corrals, about 40 miles in the other direction. They had that controlled about the time we got there so we went home. Then about 11 o'clock last night 50 mph winds started a small grass fire again out of the barn fire, so back over there for us. Then the lightning started another fire closer to our summer range, so back another 30 miles to the SE of here we went. :x That fire took some gettting to as it was an area with a lot of creeks and draws with lots of huge sage to dodge around. It was on a ranch that grazes lightly, so the fuel was incredible. It would torch the sage that was over waist high on me, (I'm about 6'3" tall), and burn pretty wild when the wind would whip up. Fortunately the winds had gone down to about half of what they had been earlier, and there were some light rain showers too that helped some. It could have been really bad had the wind been worse, as the old grass was just incredibly thick.

All in all we covered a couple hundred miles in the brush truck, and got home about 6 o'clock this AM. :roll:

Well, it was too hot to be doing anything else anyway. :wink:
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Wow!! That's alot of fire chasing. Glad everything turned out ok,
except for the folks that lost the barns and corrals.

As I was driving the pickup today hauling bales into the stackyard,
I noticed all the cheatgrass along the railroad track. It's really
flammable. I heard that in ND the trains were watering at they
went along. If they are doing that here, I haven't heard of it.

It's turning out to be a long, hot summer. :(
 

sw

Well-known member
We are in the same predicament Tap, The fire south of us has consumed 10,000 acres since 1:00 this afternoon, the wind is terrible. Just north of Billings around the subdivisions is another 5,000 acre one, some around Hardin, they have gotten homes. The one at Columbus got some of the high dollar homes on the hill, bet those people wished that they listened to the locals now. I hate fires. This place has gone from nice and green to terrible with these hot days and this wind. At this point, I do not want any storms, they just bring us lightning. Last night it rained everywhere in Montana but here and FH's place. better go make sure the dozer is full of fuel, gonna get more of it tonight. yeee haaaa
 

k_ranch

Well-known member
We had a north/northwest wind this morning with lots of smoke blowing through from someplace maybe your fires. Made the sky pretty hazy. There was a big fire around Porcupine, SD yesterday didn't hear how much it burned.

Makes for a lot of worrying every time some clouds show up especialy when it dosn't rain :( Hunting season always makes me edgy about fires too with folks wandering around more.

Are people selling or moving cattle out of your area yet or is that father east. I see some of the salebarns are having some drought cattle already. Hows the water? Is there lots of stock dams, wells and pipeline or both? Our grass is going to get us through but the hays going to be tight. We've bought some outside hay already and looking for more. Its going to cost alot more later I'm afraid.
 

Ranchy

Well-known member
Sounds like you had a busy night. Hope ya get some sleep tonight.......and get rain instead of just lightening and fires......:nod:
 

ranchwife

Well-known member
sw said:
We are in the same predicament Tap, The fire south of us has consumed 10,000 acres since 1:00 this afternoon, the wind is terrible. Just north of Billings around the subdivisions is another 5,000 acre one, some around Hardin, they have gotten homes. The one at Columbus got some of the high dollar homes on the hill, bet those people wished that they listened to the locals now. I hate fires. This place has gone from nice and green to terrible with these hot days and this wind. At this point, I do not want any storms, they just bring us lightning. Last night it rained everywhere in Montana but here and FH's place. better go make sure the dozer is full of fuel, gonna get more of it tonight. yeee haaaa

:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:
Hope you are not getting the wind we are right now or those fires are just gonna have their way!! Will send prayers for some rain to come your way, sw and FH!!! :cry: :cry:
 

Texan

Well-known member
Hearing about someone else's troubles always helps to put things in perspective. I thought it was bad here because of the dry weather and no grass and no hay. Having to deal with the fires would sure make it tougher. Good luck to all of you.
 

lazy ace

Well-known member
I understand how you feel Tap. We had a lightning fire Tues. night. We headed out with our fire unit, offset disk and about 2000 gallons of water in a grain truck. Dad started knocking it down with the offset and my brother and I followed up with the fire unit, we thought we had the west side knocked down and was reaching the head of the fire about 3/4 of a mile in when we looked back and there it went. :mad: It doesn't take much wind to drive a well fueled grass fire.

We had roughly about 30 fire trucks plus tankers and very good neighbors fighting the fire. A large gravel road helped it from going any farther north. All in all our neghbor and us lost about 1185 acres of grass.

We hadn't grazed the one pasture and was saving it for fall, but there isn't enough grass in there to turn in on now. If it would have jumped the road it would have taken out our other pasture that we are saving for fall and probably would have gone for another 3 to six miles until it would have hit the grand river.

You can't put a price on good neighbors and a good volunteer firemen. :D

The paper is reporting that the water pumps in Eagle Butte can't keep up and are asking people to conserve water and the fire departments are looking for alternative sights for getting water. (dams and lagoons were mentioned) People using that pipeline for cattle waterers have flow restrictors being put on there tanks.

If I am correct Timber Lake is reporting less percipitation this year than in 1936, and it is barely above 1934 which was the driest on record in the state of SD. I can't remember acutual precip amounts but I will find out.

Have a good one

lazy ace
 

HAY MAKER

Well-known member
Tap,sounds like you had a very busy nite,I been worried about this TX Hill country having some fires,tinder box dry and these canyons are full of cedar,with summer just starting ,it looks like its gonna get worse before it gets better,I dont believe I have seen it this dry before,you men that fight these fires are good neighbors and friends,we have a little volunteer dept here in Sisterdale,do what we can with what we have,like most volunteer fire dept's budget wont allow much more than bare necessities.........good luck
 

Tap

Well-known member
Just as I had entered my post, the phone rang, and I heard that the fire we got back from this AM had broke out again. So off we were again. :roll: It burned about 3 times more today than it had last night. I would not care to guess the acres, as I would be proved wrong. :wink:

This area we are in has good grazing so far, but just east of us, the grazing gets very poor. We probably are more used to dealing with dry conditions than the rest of the state, so we just need to not stock too high even on the good years. There will probably be a mediocre year just around the corner. Usually not this many in a row though. So k_ranch, I would not say that the drought is forcing any cattle to market in this area so far. We will have winter grazing too, but it is just very dry, and we have had no good moisture since our spring blizzard. They say that it could get to be over 110 degrees in some areas of western SD this weekend. :mad:

lazy ace, I read where Mobridge has had 2.21 inches of rain so far this year. Now that is DRY!!! Sorry to hear about your fires. That was a bummer to lose your stockpiled grass. Was it lightning caused?

I better get to bed, 2 hours of sleep in two days just doesn't cut it.
 

lazy ace

Well-known member
Tap yep it was lightning seen it hit, counted to three, heard the thunder and basically headed that way. As you know it sure doesn't take long for it to really get rolling. Kelo land news has had several interviews about the drought in our area and east of us. Here is the Web sight.http://www.keloland.com/ It actually has pretty good weather also. I can't get it to link directly :oops: but that is the web sight.

have a good one and get some sleep

lazy ace
 

kolanuraven

Well-known member
We had 3" of rain in 1 hr last nite and still a hay barn got smacked by lightning....virtually melted it in a matter of seconds.

And OF COURSE it was full of hay!!!!
 

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
Tap, how is everything looking over that way today? We've still got a lot of smoke here, but I think it's probably coming from the big fire down by Sundance.

Tuesday our historical society met to plan our fall tour and the second place on our tour was going to be the old Ashcroft/Olson rock house west of the Hackamore. The very next day, I stood as close as I could to that historic old building full of memories and watched it burn to the ground.

You wouldn't think a solid rock building could burn down (or up either!) but the prairie fire that started just south of it rolled under the foundation and ignited the wood floor. When I got there I could see just a little smoke coming from the roof and fire shooting from the stove pipe. It burned from the inside out while I watched and it wasn't long before the walls started to fall down.

Thursday the shed south of the house burned down when the wind switched and all the other buildings in the ranch yard are gone, except for Uncle Claude's achive building, made entirely of concrete and steel. As of last night, there were still firemen watching the four fires that burned here.

A lot of family memories went up in smoke along with the old house. Craig Mollman stood beside me and took pictures with his cell phone since I never thought to grab my camera in the haste to make sure my EMT bag and the fire fighting gear were all loaded. If he gets the pictures to me I'll try to post some "before and after" pictures for you.
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
That is really sad, Liberty Belle, to hear about an old historic place like that going up in smoke. I only got to see and hear Claude Olson talk on one occasion, and that was at least 35 years ago. He gave a very humorous presentation at the Tri-State Oldtime Cowboy's breakfast that year, at the museum in the city park in Gordon, Nebraska. As I picture him in my mind's eye, he reminded me a lot of Will Rogers. Seems like he had quite a bit of white hair and was of moderate height and build. He had a wry grin and twinkle in his eye that just made you want to know the guy.
 

Tap

Well-known member
I heard about Claude's old house from Gary M. He said that someone saved all their machinery around there by moving it, at least.

We had plenty to do down at Jim and Jack's when we got back there in the daylight the other day. They sure are easy on their pastures. Lots of grass. Now that we have been to a fire, we have our fire trucks working a little more smoothly this year.

The poster known as littlehouseontheprairrie, and her husbands ranch were in the fires sights, had it came back this other direction. Then we are on this side of them.
 

Tap

Well-known member
I was thinking that I should have been more clear in my earlier posts about the FS. Our local Forest Service people really are good about fire, but when the big ones have been taken over by outside teams, that is really who I was commenting on. Our local people(FS and BLM) know what the country means to us, and have been very good about jumping on the fires, and helping out on private land even. They are a valuable bunch of people to our area.
 

CattleRMe

Well-known member
As dry as it is this year the fear of fire in our area has been ever on the minds of everyone with the first strike of lightning. However, so far with lightning rain has also been very close behind. So we are all thankful for that.

In this area the fire department places fire rigs on area ranches. I think this one is a 1976 model and once it starts lol sometimes you have to pull it ......it's off to the fire.
 

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
That is really sad, Liberty Belle, to hear about an old historic place like that going up in smoke. I only got to see and hear Claude Olson talk on one occasion, and that was at least 35 years ago. He gave a very humorous presentation at the Tri-State Oldtime Cowboy's breakfast that year, at the museum in the city park in Gordon, Nebraska. As I picture him in my mind's eye, he reminded me a lot of Will Rogers. Seems like he had quite a bit of white hair and was of moderate height and build. He had a wry grin and twinkle in his eye that just made you want to know the guy.
Sorry I’m so late answering you Soapweed. We’ve been pretty busy moving hay and cows and monitoring the fire channel on the radio. Another thunder boomer went through here this morning and most of the guys are out fighting fire again, although I think most of the fires are either contained or under control by now. Who knows how long the calm will last though. The temperature is supposed to be in the triple digits again today and the dry grass is just waiting to explode into flames.

I stopped by Claude’s old ranch yesterday after the paper called me to take some pictures and was surprised to find that the two remaining sheds had burned since the big fire on Wednesday. I’ll post a few before and after pictures of the historic rock house.

This is a picture of the west side of the house I took last summer.
westside.jpg


Here’s the picture I took yesterday of the same side of the house. Notice the cable near the top of the house?
burnedwestside.jpg


Years ago the rock house developed a crack in one of the walls so Claude took a couple heavy duty cables and tightened them around the top of the house to hold them solid. It worked. When the fire burned out the inside of the house, two of the walls crumbled down underneath the cables but the other two are still standing. Uncle Claude would be tickled it worked like he intended it to.

This is the south side of the house. From the small round window up above, you could look down toward the river and watch for company driving across the swinging bridge. The green bushes around the base of the house are what we call “Matrimony Vine”. It was planted near every old house in this area. I have no idea what it’s true name is, but it was a hardy plant that could survive the hot, dry summers and harsh winters out here on the prairie.
southside.jpg


After the fire, south side again. Those are two of my grand daughters touring the ruins and finding treasures like old melted aluminum and an old bathtub that had fallen into the cellar.
southwithgirls.jpg


The swinging bridge Claude built (using more heavy duty cable!) across the South Grand River just south of the ranch buildings hasn’t fared so well, but it was an engineering marvel at the time, especially when you realize that Claude had only an eighth grade education from the little Olson School here on our ranch, where Olson’s made up the majority of the students. There were fourteen Olson kids, so the school was active for a lot of years.

This is all that remains of the bridge that we used for so many years. Now the only place to cross the river is a trail through the river you can only use when the water is down or has frozen to ice.
Claudesbridge.jpg
 

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