Mother Nature finally drove the elk out of the mountains last week. There is so much snow up there that the elk cannot dig their way down to fodder. When this happens they move to lower elevations which means wheat fields, hay patches and CRP. The real problem with this is the elk are very destructive. Not only do they just tear down fences by going through them but they dig up the ground looking for food. We have about 80-100 animals on our property. 
My real worry is that they will find the 14 acres of planted grass I put in this fall! I don’t mind the deer nibbling the green tops of the grass but I certainly cannot afford for the elk to go down there and dig it up by the roots. It would cost me about 2 weeks of time and another $1000 to replant but the hard part is we would lose the growing time. Which would mean we would lose an entire first cutting on the grass fields, maybe even both of them which could cost us 30-60 ton of grass at a minimum loss of $4500-9000. This would hurt us on top of the extra feed costs we are incurring now due to the late and deep snow. So far we have put out for 2 ton of bagged feed for the sheep and may need to buy another ton still so we are out about $850 so far. We have just enough alfalfa to keep the cows going for another three weeks, longer if the snow will go away.
Several of my coworkers have offered to come kill elk if if I had land owner depredation tags. The problem with that is there are thousands of elk in the area. Me killing a handful is not going to make them go away from our property. So we just suck it up and hope they don’t tear up our fields. 
The problem with the snow going away is there is a lot of snow! At this point we want a nice gradual warming up or our back creek will flood and try and rip out fence. I know it seems like a farmer is always bitching about the weather but in all reality they live or die or succeed by the whim of Mother Nature therefore giving them more right to complain. That is my take and I am sticking to it. 
The damage to the fence is gonna cause me problems. I had the upper fence all repaired and tight. So far I have not noticed any damage to the lower sections but I cannot get to the upper fence without just hoofing it up there and there is currently nothing I can do about it so I am leaving it for a surprise later this spring when I can inspect it on the tractor.
Annmarie tells me that last night the elk came down into the orchard to eat grass. We have been seeing a couple of them here or there but she said they came down en masse. I didn’t see any this morning when I went out to feed except for a lone cow elk down by my Mother-in-law’s house. She ran off when I came with the tractor to feed our cows. 
The sun was shining today and melting snow despite the temperature only being 30 F. The elk are still on the back hillside. We have mostly cow elk with the occasional bull, there are larger bull elk in other fields, just not ours. 
We are getting so much moisture that the bottoms are starting to create wet spots, this one below is in the 7 acre barley patch that we are going to turn into alfalfa this spring. This wet spot is going to delay planting. The deer are hanging out in the bottoms away from the elk.
No horrible raging runoff creek yet. It is very sedate and clear at the moment and we hope it stays that way for the next six months. 
I need to get in the room and clean some more. I want to wipe down the walls and ceiling another 2-3 times to make sure I have gotten all the sawdust off of the walls and wood trim. Once all that is done then I am going to stain the door trim in place. Its a pain to do but I opted to do it in stages as I wanted to get the floor done first. I don’t think I will need a bunch of coats of stain and varethane on the trim. I will probably only do one maybe two coats. Unfortunately, I am not going to put the furniture back in the room until I am all done cleaning. I can do the door staining with the furniture back in place. 
It turned out very nice. I think I am going to add 1-2 more shelves in the closet storage room also. I will be able to store stuff all the way to the ceiling that way. I am also going to add a shelf between the intake and output duct. This will gain me five feet of shelf 18 inches wide and 20 inches deep. That is a lot of space! This has spurred me to reconsider building another narrow shelf next to our refrigerator. We currently have all our reusable bags just stuffed into a 7 inch wide gap. To minimize space loss I should use 5/16 plywood. The trouble is I like the look of old doors but that will cause me to lose 3 inches which is too much. So I am still arguing with myself on what to put their that will not cause a loss in decor. I am considering a frame type shelving unit using the old floor kickboards. I found a bunch of them in the rafters of the old woodshed when I was installing the weather station. I just need to figure out how I am going to put them together. That project is going to preoccupy my mind for the near future. 
I went around this morning after chores and moved more snow! I made it a point to go behind the machine shop and clear that gravel road, so the trash guys can just drive around the loop. Having the trash picked up every week is a luxury in the country and I need to spoil those guys whenever I can because we really appreciate it. The cows are starting to get covered in snow as they are not going down to the old school house or the willows to shelter from the weather. I think they think they will miss out on a meal if they go down there. I can now open the gate wide open, leave it open and just drive out into the pasture and all the cows follow the tractor and ignore the open gate. the food is with me and they all know it.
The two bully alpaca are stuck out in the orchard. They have melted down a body wide hole in the snow and maintain it. I hardly every see them up and about. I suspect this is what they do in the wild. The rest of them just go into the machine shed and find cover. It is supposed to snow another 4-6 inches of snow tonight. It is official this February we have received the most snow on record about the last 125 years. We knew it was not normal and we were right. Now it needs to melt off slowly in the mountains or we are going to have some major points of flooding. 
On Monday I was trying to clear another 6 inches and got the tractor stuck down by the cow gate. Annmarie had already had to pull me out with the pickup once 30 minutes earlier. So I called her again and she tried to get me out to no avail. She almost got the pickup stuck and had to apply a judicious amount of gas pedal to get it to clear out of its predicament. I tried to call the Tractor dealer to get them to come pick it up for repair but the phone was busy all day. So now we have two vehicles stuck!
So now that the tractor is stuck we are using the pickup to move hay to the cows. The problem with this is you have to carry the hay about 100 feet. We are just tossing it over the fence, I usually feed farther into the pasture but I am not walking and carrying hay that far. It takes about 12 trips to get two bales fed. We feed two bales in the morning and two at night when there is snow on the ground, no snow they get three bales.
Stewart Creek Somethings 