Water's on.

It's windy, cold & time to change water lines! Sounds like the end of March (or first of April this year) at our house. Jeff enjoys multiple showers throughout the day. When the kids and I went by today Jeff was perched on a ladder working on an end gun along the edge of the road. 'Gotta fix stuff where all the neighbors can see.

We still have handlines & wheellines on our place so the fun of daily moves.

There are a few flowers blooming - notice the still leaveless (not sure if they are alive) bushes in the background. The 15 below in November may have done in some of my poor bushes yet again. The tulips are getting ready to bloom also. Love the fly on the flowers - did I ever mention we have lots of flys at our house in the summer. In the morning the East side of the white house is often covered with the little critters - oh well!

The lawn is covered with sticks and until the rain we had last night the lawn was so dirty, Trevor running across the lawn put up a little dust cloud with every step. Bad when you have to wash the lawn first thing in the spring.

Jeff & I took a long weekend to visit the bull studs & Midland Bull Test last weekend. Lots & lots of black bulls. We also visited a ranch south of Billings with directions that began with "what are you driving". Needless to say 4 wheel drive necessary.

We also stopped at the "Land of Magic" Steakhouse in Logan, Montana. If anyone is ever in the area it is a must stop! Awesome CAB steak and multiple courses for a reasonable price.

The kids and I planting some cool season vegetables in the garden. The strawberries and raspberries we planted last spring look good. More than one day that the kids would like to spend more than 15 minutes outside would be greatly appreciated. Can't wait to eat our own berries. The few we had last summer were AWESOME!!

Anyway - May will be lovely - as it usually is! And the locals were quite happy with the rain in Montana. Happy Spring from the Sackmanns!

WOW & THANKS

The 2011 Red, White & Black Bull & Female Sale is in the books!

A HUGE thanks to everyone; the buyers, bidders, JR Ranch, everyone who came to work & to eat! We had a great sale! It was great seeing everyone on a pretty nice day (for March!).

Here are some of the cuter pictures - other pictures will be posted on our website http://www.sackmanncattle.com.

Molly was a super helper - all day - at the sale. She came with dad & I first thing in the morning and played & helped until after the last heifer was sold. Bigger jobs next year!

Nana Robyn went home with Trev & Lila but the rest of the grandparents hung around. As usual they know tons of people - even if they haven't heard a name since college. Or in some cases knew other people's parents from college. GO COUGS - by the way! We'll take the NIT.

The other big helper & his dad (who helped too). Levi helped his mom in the office all day and reported he was ready for a bath that evening. So cute!

Sid & Jeff discuss the days happenings.

What a great day - yes, we are glad its done for another year. The rest of the crew has been planting wheat & thinking about turning on water. Here comes irrigation season. It actually felt like spring here today so I guess it is time.

Busy day!

I was raised with pigs, as were multiple generations of my dad's family. I've heard raising pigs is just in your blood and a habit that can be hard to beat. I fit that category! So we have a very small pig herd. But today half of our sow herd farrowed! For real hog farms three litters in one day is a bad day - but around here its kinda crazy!

So 22 new little pigs are running around, would like more, but two were gilts so I won't complain too much.

The kids were good helpers processing litters this afternoon. Molly is finally big enough to sort-of be ok holding the little monsters. Trev and Lila just want to pet them.

On the cattle side - the Red, White & Black Sale Catalog is off to the presses!! A feat worthy of celebrating. Check out the catalog online http://www.sackmanncattle.com/. Jeff & Jeff have semen testing on the docket for tomorrow. Bulls are mostly clipped - soon it will be time to cook that awesome sale day lunch!

Welcome March - loved this blog format - because that is what it looked like here today!

Spring?

Let me whine - it's been winter here since mid-November. Can it be over yet? The wind has started to blow. We picked up the branches off the lawn - so its probably our fault! Back to single digits and below zero with wind chills. But we didn't have the snow other places did, so I guess we should be thankful for the dirt we see. The tulips that were popping through are probably wondering what they were thinking.

But spring should be on the way - last week while running errands in Moses Lake we had a less than 30 minutes snow/rain/sleet/hail storm. The last few minutes included sunshine. Ahh, spring in the NW - if you don't like the weather wait a few minutes! And for the lady who, on her cell phone at the store, was changing all of her plans because of the wet stuff falling must be new to the NW.

We're almost done with spring calving. Jeff & Trev check the new pairs. Before the bull sale we should be done calving, farrowing & maybe started farming. The guys need to plant wheat this spring. For our dry-land friends and relatives planting is just part of the game, but for these irrigated hay farmers planting is a big event!

Bull catalog is down to final edits & I promise baby pig pics in future posts!

Happy Valentine's Day!

It is catalog time again (I thought we just did that!).

So we headed out to the pasture with the new babies (25 in less than 2 weeks - including twins with a project for Molly). Taking pictures of these crazies is a project. I have plenty of pics with a piece of {Molly or Trevor}. This was my fave - it is the true Molly!

This is going to be our "family pic" in the catalog. They are much cuter than throwing in the adults. Everyone got cowboy hats for birthday or Valentine's (thanks Nana Robyn & Papa Hal). Lila isn't quite sure she wants to wear hers but I have convinced her to wear tiny, skinny ponies sometimes.

Another cutie! Lots of bull pictures to put up on the website and sent off for catalog & flyer publication to go with the kid pictures.

Yes, that's two n's.

We may not pronounce our last name in the old world fashion - but it does end in two n's. Many of our family branches trace back to Germans from Russia - complete with multiple Ellis Island landings near the turn of the previous century. One of the traditions the Sackmann family continues to honor is making sausage. We must admit we are not as dedicated as our ancestors. We don't begin by spending days processing dozens of animals (thank you McCary Meats) and the guys happily use a digital, remote thermometer to watch the temperature in the 100+ year old smokehouse (while they play cards). We use our own beef and this year we did buy pork (thanks http://www.purecountrypork.com/ and Paul) since we didn't have any market hogs at the time. We make a smoked german sausage, summer sausage, and pepper stick. Each family makes their own batch to season as they wish.

The process starts by mixing fresh ground beef & pork in specific proportions and then adding spices. Mix it all up and fry up a sample. Re-season as necessary or stuff. Here's Jeff putting the sausage into the stuffer - being overseen by Molly & Sid.

Not sure how the child labor fits into the health stardards - but they were good helpers!

Or Molly standing on the table. It used to be you had to work your way up the table as you got older and more experienced. But apparently the rules are getting lax since Trevor was "helping" with the top dog job at his first sausage making experience (with help from Nana & Papa).

Trevor is inspecting the summer sausage as it awaits its turn in the smoker.

Tractor in hand of course!

German sausage hangs prior to hitting the smoke house. This is Jeff's sandwich meat for the summer. It's also great in a melted cheese sandwich or as a snack.

And a little fun . . . .

Uncle Paul's days of building floats may be over - but he still has a left over Jack-in-the-box so he and papa Sid climbed up to turn in on for the kids and examine how it worked. Molly hadn't been to sausage making for three years - but she still remembered the Jack-in-the-box. Better keep that baby around!

And Lila is driving Uncle Paul's big red tractor. Before we were out Travis said "oh, I forgot I hooked the horn back up". Oops!

Happy New Year!

Here I am a month behind again!

I promise we've kept "busy" even though some days I don't know what I've done. We made sausage, celebrated lots of Christmas, celebrated an "East coast New Year's", went to the American Farm Bureau Annual Meeting (including a SHUT down Atlanta) and the National Western Stock Show in Denver. And of course fed cows everyday, worked fall pairs, bred & implanted embryos in fall cows and complained about the winter. Why has Moses Lake been the coldest spot in the STATE many times the last two months?

Trying to take pics of kids with cows in the background. Trev prefers to watch the "tows". They are awfully cute even if they won't all look at me to take a simple picture!

More to come!

All in, all out, all done!

The Fall '10 sale is in the books!

A HUGE thank you to everyone who bought animals, worked (especially the crew out back) and who came to visit. All in all another successful sale. And of course thanks to JR Ranch who have allowed us to participate in their production sales.

Yes it was cold. The crew that worked out back were troopers (you can have all the cookies you want anytime!)

JR had the salebarn nice and warm, but from the GREAT collection of hats in the crowd everyone was still dressed to look at cattle in the open air. Although it may have been the nicest weather day of the week (it was -15 three days before).

One of Jeff's good friends from WSU is from Cut Bank, MT. He always used "above" or "below" when referring to the weather. I remember asking what was up with that? The answer was it was just as likely to be 20 above as 20 below. Jeff was using that nomenclature this last week. Great - its bad when you are happy because 15 "above" is 30 degrees warmer than two days before. Oh, well hopefully we've had our winter blast for the year - although that was only November. Enough whining - although I was laughing because many of my non-livestock "friends" on Facebook had great words like "fun" to describe the snow. Somehow the cattle and pig folks I talked to at the same time had different words to describe the weather. Hum!

Lila wins the award at our house - the first day it was cold & snowing the whole crew was all dressed and ready to go to chores. Jeff opened the back door and Lila was closest to the snow that was blowing in. We said "OK Lila - let's go out the door". She said "NO!" Smart girl.

Looks like our last Fall calf should be born today and we've starting synchronizing heifers for Fall breeding. It just rolls from one project to the next.

I'm thinking about getting Christmas shopping done - boring but MOST of it is done on-line.

Hope everyone has a blessed Christmas Season!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Greetings from a winter wonderland!

Today we have much to be thankful for (even if the weather doesn't come to mind!)

Hope to see many family and friends tomorrow at the JR Fall Production Sale.

Enjoy your dining partners & great food where ever your travels take you!

Off to the presses!

Welcome November!

Loving the still nice weather. Water's off, pigs are done farrowing (start breeding for fair pigs this week), and calving well under way. Fall group is about 1/2 done. Synchonizing works great! Here's the first calf born - hiding under the wheelline. Its the first place to look when you can't find one!

The one kid picture I've managed to get every year is in Schmidt's pumpkin patch. Pumpkins are awesome as usual. Kids took some good pictures. This one was the first group shot - imagine that.

For Halloween Molly went as Dorothy - complete with Ruby-Red slippers. She's been wearing her Dorothy dress pretty much for three straight days. I'm not even going to try to identify all the stains. Apparently I've been feeding them alot of things with tomatoes! Trevor was a dinosaur "roar". Lila went as a little girl who refused to wear her sheep costume. Good thing it was a Molly left over! Very cute.

Anyway - the JR Fall Production Sale Catalog is off for printing. If you are looking to purchase cattle this fall check it out! There's a link on the "For Sale" page on our website. The guys are prepping cattle and Elsie, Robyn & I are busy making biscuits & cookies! Num, num. Hope to see you in Othello on Black Friday.