It’s That Time Of Year
Time to take the flocks up to summer grazing and the highway is the best path. The state Rangeland Resources Commission helps coordinate the move which will be repeated in the fall when the flocks return to winter grazing. It’s just a short distance up and across the highway anyway.
I post this because just last night I was talking with an acquaintance from California and his Santa Fe girlfriend and they were disdaining “cow and sheep” country … yet they want to move here. So I sent them this news article.
Yes, I consider the guy a business friend – but stay where you are. At least keep your “I’m from Santa Fe” girlfriend away.
Eagle used to be a remote small town on an island far away from Boise city. It’s now a special (expensive) “place” within the metro area. But it also has the Old State Saloon that celebrates “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” in June to the discomfort of those preferring “Gay Pride Month” so the Boise blue hasn’t fully infested the area.
Of course, any such happening has to turn into an “event” – I imagine sometime in the near future they will sell tickets in a park celebrating “our agricultural past” … while outlawing the actual movement of livestock. Someone will sue for blocking the highway.
But still … for now, we remain sheep and cow country once out of the metro area.
I always thought that if I could own an animal farm it would have sheeps and maybe goats. You don’t have to kill the animals to receive some benefit, in fact, the opposite.
You let them graze, then once, twice a year, hire someone to shear em down, sell the proceeds. Goats? Milk em, sell it or make “cheese”.
I’m talking small, manageable herds, maybe 20 of each. 1-2 person operation.
Regarding the goats cheese. I don’t like it. Only tried it a few times but it has a certain element in it that I don’t like.
Years ago some friends of ours moved to the Santa Rosa area of Calif and they sent us 2 wheels of very expensive cheese from a place called something like, Cowgirl Creamery.
One was called Humboldt Fog and the other one had the word Hawk in the name. Both were goat cheese and neither my wife nor I cared for it. I think the wheels cost about $60 each and I kept trying little tastes but just could not deal with it.
After laying in the fridge for a couple weeks I rolled em down in the woods for any curious wild creatures to check out. Never had goat milk but I imagine I wouldn’t like it neither.
Mrs DT is Turkish by birth and upbringing and likes things like yogurt, feta cheese, and keçi peyniri (feta being a mix of sheep and goat; keçi being all goat and peyniri being Turkish for cheese). She makes her own yogurt. Can’t stand the stuff myself. Had BBQ’d goat in FL when I was there. Tasted like … goat.
One of my favorite places in Arizona is just west of a dot on the map called “Sheeps Crossing“. It used to be a one lane bridge, but maybe 15 years ago, they completed the work on a proper modern bridge. Google Maps has a couple’o pictures from there and they’ve even driven their car past, so you can place the Little Man there and take a look around yourself. [And the fact that Google Maps has such an intimate view of one of my favorite places makes me wonder if I should re-examine my list of Favorite Places.]
We have often fished there in the Little Colorado and one year SonofAzlib and I went deer hunting there following the Little Colorado upstream to the west. It was super cold that day…..I don’t think that we saw 15°F. The only thing we saw, besides some of the most beautiful country in my experience, was a coyote who paralleled our path, I’m sure hoping that we’d be successful in taking a deer (we weren’t) and leave him a yummy carcass.