Water Woes

Last week I told about getting the cows down to the Mesa and Jekyll’s journey. I think our Mesa pasture is pretty nice. It is higher in elevation, but not so high that the grass comes too late and the snow comes too early, but it does have one problem: it has, basically, one source of water. The water is all pumped out of a canyon to fill the stock tanks in the pasture. We have a storage tank that we try to keep filled so that if the water system has problems, the cows aren’t out of water while we fix it.

The other day we had to use this storage tank a little because the pipeline coming out of the canyon broke. It broke at a spot where we had fixed it before with plastic pipe so we weren’t too surprised that it gave up. It did happen to break on one of those cold, damp, misty days that aren’t too much fun to work in. Working at the top of a canyon does provide a good view though.

As we began to work on the pipe, taking off the broken piece, I heard something beneath me. I looked down to see a very large bull elk running down to the bottom of the canyon where it disappeared into the brush and made its way up the creek. I wish I had thought to take a picture of the big bull while I was above him, but I just stood and watched. It was pretty cool to have a bird’s eye view of an elk like that. After our brief break to watch the bull, it was back to work.

A pretty simple job: take off the broken piece then replace it with thick-walled black poly pipe that we had brought. Being toward the top of the canyon, we were able to use poly instead of steel because the pressure isn’t as high. The old plastic pipe had, luckily, broken in a way that made it easy to take off. Unfortunately, we hadn’t figured correctly on our fittings and had to walk back to the pickup and head home to get more. While the walk isn’t too far, it is steep and you don’t wan’t to do it too many times. After the drive home and back to the Mesa, we managed to get the new piece put into place.

When all the correct pieces were there, it didn’t take too much time to put them together. Just some heating, pushing, wrenching, and retightening got the job done. Of course, that’s a little easier if you aren’t standing on the side of a canyon. It’s all fixed now and the cows had plenty of water for their stay on the Mesa. This week, that stay will come to an end as we gather them and bring them home to sort. Some of them will go to the badlands and some of them will stay in the fields for now. It’s all part of the transition to winter, which looks like it has arrived right now. We received several inches of snow last night along with some wind and cold.

I hope you all are staying warm and don’t forget to get in touch with us if you would like to purchase beef for our December processing date!

by Brandon Greet