Miscellaneous June 2017

 I guess I'm not too far behind if I'm wrapping up June! Here are a few photos that didn't make it into previous posts. We enjoyed eating at the new Kerouac's Cafe in Baker, Nevada. The food is delicious and service is great! We've returned several times!

For work, I went up high in the mountains to protect some limber pines from mountain pine beetles. They are part of a proactive white pine blister rust program. Several trees (both bristlecone and limber pines) have been selected and pinecones harvested. The US Forest Service is propagating the pine seeds and then testing them for white pine blister rust, a non-native pathogen that can kill whole forests. The idea is that some resistant trees might be found, then their pine seeds can be stored and grown and resistant trees planted to help when the rust eventually arrives. In the meantime, we have to protect those trees from mountain pine beetle, so we apply verbenone, a natural pheromone that the  beetles excrete to say that the tree is full of beetles and the incoming beetles should select a different tree. So cool! (Bristlecone pines don't seem to be affected by mountain pine beetles, so we don't need to put verbenone on them.)

The bristlecone in this study isn't part of the study, but it looks cool.

We had been having some warm temps, but on this particular day it was really cold. And there were still snow drifts. Bruce and Becca helped us get up the road, moving trees and digging through snow/ice drifts. It was an adventure!

To my surprise, Nevada primrose was already blooming.

The views from Mt. Washington were amazing.

I spent a week near Redmond, Oregon teaching cave rescue. We had a fun day on the cliffs. This was a different type of rock than what we used for the rest of the week.

That's because there are lots of lava tubes around Redmond.


We didn't actually go in many, but we played at the entrances of several, including doing a highline across this one.


We also had some zen time in the gym/exhibition hall, floating students across.


Back at home, we tried out a new (used) sailboat that my husband purchased. It's lots of fun, but also a little scary when the wind gets going.

I enjoyed a trip to an ice cave that has part of its entrance blocked by snow.

It had never been entered this time of year before, so we didn't know what to expect. We couldn't use the bolts at the entrance, so tied off to a tree and went over the snow.

The transition to snow to ice was abrupt. It was an interesting cave, but very difficult to get to. We installed a wildlife camera at the entrance, so we'll learn what else is using the cave.

We've also been spending time with the lambs. We figure if they get used to chaos here, they'll do better at the fair. So we invite friends over to play!

Desert Boy got some lessons on showmanship, but needs a few more! It will be fun to watch him at the fair. He's definitely gotten a lot more confident, and I can see why it's good to start with animals that weigh about 100 pounds instead of those that weigh much more (like steers).

Baby Lambs

Meet our new lamb, Whitie! We got him a couple weeks ago, as Desert Boy had signed up to do market lambs for 4-H. This is his first year in 4-H, and we have a lot to learn! A friend told us where to get lambs that had done well for them in the past.

And since lambs are social, we got two, so they can hang out together. 

It was quite a sight when we unloaded them. My husband easily picked one up to move to the pen. I thought I could too, so I gave it a try. The lamb wiggled out of my arms, past me, out of the trailer, and out into the big open world. Oh, no, how were we going to catch it now? After chasing it fruitlessly for awhile, we left it alone and it went to the other one. Then it was a matter of opening the gate at the right time (first we got the wrong time and had two lambs loose!), but we eventually succeeded.

Our new dog Maggie made fast friends with the lambs.

We've been working to tame the lambs, so they've been eating grain out of Desert Boy's hand a lot.

Although sometimes they get distracted.

They have really sweet dispositions.

This sign was near the pen, so I couldn't resist putting it up.

Desert Girl wanted in on the action.

Desert Boy even got the halter on one day. We have some work to make that easier and start taking the lambs for walks. I'm sure that will be exciting at first!

The lambs have been welcome companions. The kids are learning more responsibility. We'll have them until the fair, the third weekend of August. We're all learning more about lambs, and are looking forward to having a lamb expert come live with us for awhile. More about that soon!

Visiting Pattern's Spring Valley Wind Farm

The local schools went on a field trip to Pattern Energy's Spring Valley Wind Farm. I had wanted to learn more about it, so I arranged to take most of the day off work so I could attend. 

The school bus pulled up to a tan-colored building in the middle of the wind farm that is easy to miss from Highway 6 and 50.

We went inside and they had chairs arranged for us in their big open part.

But before we listened to a presentation, we did the morning stretching. That was a nice way to get started!

Then we learned a lot of interesting things about the wind farm. There are 66 turbines, each with a turbine size of 2.3 MW for a total project capacity of 152 MW. The blade length is 49m/161 ft. The project area covers 7,673 acres, and during operations 77 acres are being used. They have a 20-year contract and are in year 5 now. The project generates energy equal to the needs of about 40,000 homes.

The turbines were manufactured by Siemens, and they have a 10-year contract to do the maintenance. One of the maintenance workers showed us his industrial harness and all the attachments and explained what it was like to climb up inside one of the wind turbines.

Then we went into the work room and saw the monitor that showed nearby lightning strikes. They stop operations if lightning strikes are within 30 miles.

The turbines are also monitored by Pattern's home office in Houston, Texas, and by Siemens' home office in Denmark.

They had this really cool poster on the wall. There are blinking red lights on top of some of the turbines  at night for air traffic, but they try to keep all other lights really low so as to not disturb the night skies.

I like how the poster features bats. This project was quite controversial because it is located near Rose Guano Cave, a migratory stop for more than three million Mexican free-tailed bats each summer and fall. When they started in 2012, they were getting over 500 mortalities in a year (mainly due to bats getting close to the turbines and the change in barometric pressure causing their insides to rupture). Fortunately this story has a mostly good ending. Pattern Energy agreed to installing an infrared beam across the entrance of the cave to count how many bats are exiting. As many as 2,000 bats per minute can leave at a time. When the counts are high, the turbines don't start at 7 mph, but at 11 mph instead. Bats fly more at the lower wind speeds, and Pattern isn't losing as much revenue at that lower wind speed. The result has been a decrease in bat deaths, to about 100 per year. Bird deaths have always been lower than permitted, although about one golden eagle per year is killed. (This LVRJ article has more info.)

We saw a screen showing the status of each wind turbine.

While we were loading the bus, I got a photo of the substation. A big reason this wind farm was located here is that there are major transmission lines that pass through from Delta, Utah to Los Angeles, California. Pattern Energy sells all the energy they produce to Nevada Energy.

 It was a stormy day, with lots of passing clouds. The turbines were turning. They can turn up to wind speeds of 56 mph, then they are turned off to prevent damage.

We got off the bus at the last wind turbine before getting back on the highway. A few lucky kids got to wear helmets and get a little closer. Notice the snow on the ground, it was a cold day for late April!

Everyone else stayed by the bus.

We craned our necks up to look at the very tall wind turbine. Each turbine is taller than a football field--about 426 feet high!

Here's a truck for scale, but it still is hard to process how big these are. The blades at the ends can go up to 200 mph.

We watched, mesmerized.

Overall, it was a super interesting field trip, and I was glad to learn more about the wind farm. The employees there seemed very concerned about being good stewards of the land while they extracted energy from the wind.

Our day wasn't over, though. We headed further north to Cleveland Ranch, a ranch started in the mid-1860s by Abner C. Cleveland. This became the largest fenced ranch in Nevada for a time. Cleveland was a Nevada State Senator. You can read more about the history here , or for the definitive history, check out this free 440-page PDF by Lenora Healy (paperback version costs $18). The LDS church now owns this ranch.

The kids were treated to a hay ride.

The ranch is beautiful, but it was cold that day, as evidenced by these icicles.

We also went on a walking tour of the historic structures, including Cleveland's original log cabin and some of the storage sheds.

The kids were fascinated by the animals, and in the words of Desert Boy, "how cool all the old things were."

Labor Day Kids Rodeo at Leamardo Days, Leamington, Utah

 On Labor Day, we went to Leamington, Utah for their Leamardo Days celebration. We bought tickets for the BBQ dinner, rodeo, and raffle. We also signed up the kids to participate: Desert Girl in mutton busting and Desert Boy in calf riding.

Mutton busting (little kids riding a sheep) was up first, and one of Desert Girl's classmates also participated. He rode the sheep backwards to get a better grip, and he sure did hold on tight.

What a face! He was bound and determined to stay on.

Eventually, though, he started sliding off, but he stayed on a good while, good enough to earn $20!

He had a little jaunt walking back. He had done it!

Desert Girl was very nervous about doing this, but she wanted to give it a try. She wore her cowboy boots and cowgirl shirt and some decorated leggings (she's going through a not-liking jean phase).

That sheep moved fast, and soon she was only holding on around the sheep's neck. (That darn railing was in my way for the photos!)

And then her arms weren't even around the sheep.

She was on the ground and getting up.

She was not at all happy about the falling part of the ride. But she did better than some of the participants, who didn't really even make it out the gate. She was awarded a package of Skittles, and that helped make her feel better.

Next up was the calf money run, where a calf has tickets on it and the kids try to pull them off to earn a buck. Kids were running all over the arena, including Desert Boy.

Next up was calf riding. Desert Boy was very nervous about this.

He loaded up in the chute.

And then he was off!

I mean literally off! He had a rowdy calf.

Ouch!

He didn't like the falling part either.

He said his calf riding days are over.

Soon after was the greased pig competition. Whoever tackled the pig got to take it home. Desert Girl was motivated. She wanted a pet pig.

The kids ran around and around in circles.

This kid dove for the pig but didn't quite get it, but eventually someone did.

There were other events like barrel racing, saddle bronc, and hide racing, but I didn't get photos of those because the kids really wanted to have snow cones and we were kind of worn out from the camping adventure the night before (more on that later). After it was all said and done, Desert Girl was really glad she had done the mutton busting, and wants to do it again. She's near the weight and age limit, though, so I'm not sure she will. Desert Boy is upset he can't do mutton busting, as that seems to him a lot less painful than calf riding. I'm glad the kids got the chance to participate, and I'm quite all right if they don't decide to take up rodeoing for a hobby or career, it's not an easy sport and the chances of injury are pretty high! It was great having an event where they could give it a try.