On Saturday we drove south and east of Mandan to attend Mary's sister and her husband's auction sale; they have decided to move off the farmstead where he has lived all of his 69 years and build a home in Mandan. Over the span of years a good deal of machinery and hardware accumulated so they liquidated to make room for their successors. I have always enjoyed hanging around auction sales and listening to the cry of the auctioneers, rubbing elbows with the crowd, and hearing stories being told. Flood stories floated: one I hadn't heard yet - deer are climbing the dikes and punching holes in the plastic with their little, pointy hooves.
I visited with the executive v.p. of the ND Stockmen's Ass'n (she happens to be my niece); her story of knowing one rancher in the northern part of the state who is forced to sell 350 cow-calf pairs illustrates the severity of the season and the hard conditions that have settled in. And rain it does! Last night a strong thunder storm dropped another inch of rain at our place with a strong chance of more rain each of the next seven days showing on our weather map. I thought the thunder and lightning had knocked out our wireless computer modem, but no... the tech guy came this morning. The only thing wrong was my screw-up in connecting wires to accommodate the new tv we hung in our kitchen yesterday.
On Saturday we drove south and east of Mandan to attend Mary's sister and her husband's auction sale; they have decided to move off the farmstead where he has lived all of his 69 years and build a home in Mandan. Over the span of years a good deal of machinery and hardware accumulated so they liquidated to make room for their successors. I have always enjoyed hanging around auction sales and listening to the cry of the auctioneers, rubbing elbows with the crowd, and hearing stories being told. Flood stories floated: one I hadn't heard yet - deer are climbing the dikes and punching holes in the plastic with their little, pointy hooves.
I visited with the executive v.p. of the ND Stockmen's Ass'n (she happens to be my niece); her story of knowing one rancher in the northern part of the state who is forced to sell 350 cow-calf pairs illustrates the severity of the season and the hard conditions that have settled in. And rain it does! Last night a strong thunder storm dropped another inch of rain at our place with a strong chance of more rain each of the next seven days showing on our weather map. I thought the thunder and lightning had knocked out our wireless computer modem, but no... the tech guy came this morning. The only thing wrong was my screw-up in connecting wires to accommodate the new tv we hung in our kitchen yesterday.
