Got the Pictures

So, you know the day I complain about having any pictures of Spirit going along with me to irrigate, it works out.  Often she sticks SO close to me it is difficult to get pictures of anything but the top of her head or her back.  But this morning she came down and had a party.

She came close to me several times wanting to be scratched or petted, but also spent some time nosing around the pasture area.

My usual "crew" is Beau (the Boxer) and Tinker-Bell (Tink for short - The Chihuahua).

While I'm half-way down the drive I walk on down to the mailbox to get the morning paper, and of course Spirit wants to go along.  

Notice the tail - straight out.  She is running all the way around me as I walk toward the cattleguard.

Of course, she isn't going to cross the rails of the cattleguard, so she has to wait on the pasture side.

So ... are you coming back on this side or what?

One final check of the water and she "posed" in front of the barn.

Once I had the irrigating done, I walked over to the barn to feed the horses.  Spirit really didn't want to go into the pasture with those great big critters.  I lost track of her for a bit, but she's been out in the pasture and all around the barn before, so she can find her way with ease.

Hay fed, I was walking back to the house, and heard Spirit bawl.  She was on the other side of the horse pasture, across from the house.

Here she comes.  She's walking along the outside of the Horse Pasture fence, toward a cow and calf ahead of her a ways.

She stopped and visited a few moments with Momma and her new baby.

And then it was time to find the gate into the small pasture that has a gate in it that will allow her back into the yard.

But first she had to get a drink of water from the trough.

And then down the fence and through the gate ...

No ... she wanted to play "hard to get" so sauntered down the fence as I waited to get a picture of her coming through the gate.

But after I walked out the gate, scratched her on the back, then walked tantalizingly back through the gate ... she decided it was not such a bad idea after all.

I think Beau wondered if she'd get it figured out too.  

Oh well, Spirit went irrigating, had a big walk all the way around the barn and horse pasture, and got back with no problems.  

Spirit and Irrigation

The advent of spring brings the return to irrigating duties around here.  I have some ground below the ditch that gets flood irrigated all summer, and that requires tending ditches and all that with a hoe or shovel.

I like to go down to the pasture in the mornings before it gets too hot, but right now, it's still pretty cool wading around in wet ground.  I am almost always accompanied by the dogs, Beau and Tinker.  And recently, Spirit has decided she wants to go along with us.

I haven't been able to get any pictures but will try to do so as this is an interesting addition to the Tale of Spirit.

She has gone down at the same time I walk down, and she has wandered down at her leisure, but either way she gets next to me along a ditch.  The other day I was walking toward the barn through the irrigated ground, and she was just prancing along as if she were part of the group.

I'll try to get some pix in the next couple of days.

Today is Column Writing Day around here though, so gotta get busy.

Spirit Doesn't Know She's Not a Dog

Spirit is a welcome addition to the hilltop, even though I have to take a shovel to the front porch and the patio on occasion, .

A few days ago, a friend of mine came up to trim the horses' feet, and brought Breanna, his 5-year-old daughter.  She thought Spirit was really something.

Beau had to get in the act as well.

Spirit spends most of the time here in the yard, but does go out and socialize with the cattle in the pasture around the house.

This yearling Charolais heifer was resting comfortably so Spirit went up to her and began licking her back.  

If she is along the driveway when we go out in the truck, she will run alongside, following us all the way down the driveway then stop at the cattle guard at the bottom of the hill. She simply thinks she's a dog with black and white hair.  She loves to be scratched on the back, or rubbed on her cheeks and under her chin.

She is a chewer though!  I recently left the door to the truck open while I carried groceries into the house.  I came back to find Spirit contentedly chewing on the strap on a small umbrella.  In fact, she had chewed the entire end off it.

Our front door is in the middle of the house, protected by a wide porch the length of the east side.  Spirit has claimed the door mat in front of the front door as her bedroom.  She sleeps with her side against the security door, making a bit of a banging sound when she lays down.

During the day, she has chosen the front flower bed for a resting place.

She doesn't sleep in the dog kennel anymore, but since the bottle holder is in there, she returns there for morning and night bottles.

The red rubber nipple on the bottle is showing her teeth marks so badly, it is leaking like a sieve so will have to replace it before too much longer.

The highlight of this update on Spirit occurred yesterday.  Sharon was not at home, and I had retired down the hall having brought the dogs in from outside.  Suddenly Beau started barking as if someone were coming up the drive.  I couldn't hear a vehicle, and wondered what was going on.

Thinking back, his next bark was almost as if he were startled, and said, "WHAT?"

I hastened to see what he was barking about. I turned the corner from the hallway to the entryway, only to find Spirit inside the house, with her head through the kitchen door into the hall looking for me.

When she saw me she realized she'd better scram, so quickly turned and after one slip on the kitchen linoleum floor, trotted out the back door again.

When I came in with the dogs, I had failed to latch the back security door, so Spirit took the opportunity to come visiting.

After all, the DOGS go in there.  Why shouldn't she?  I suppose that makes sense to a calf/dog.

As you can see, The Saga of Spirit sports quite a few pictures.  Sharon and I are of the opinion that one fine day this might make an interesting (and hopefully salable) children's picture book.  If nothing else, it will make a great record for my grandchildren.

New Family Information

The genealogy of the Gill family has long been an interest of mine, but there have been limitations to what we could find.

My father was Vernon, his Louis, then Levi, and finally Samuel.  And that was about as far as we could go in tracing the family.

My grandmother was known to have done some exploring, but supposedly when she learned that some parts of the family may have been "Scottish Pirates" she dropped it.  She didn't want to dig too far, I suppose, in fear of actually finding out more than she wanted to know.

There were rumors and intimations that John may have been Samuel's father but no proof.  My middle son, Louis, had also done some searching using a variety of methods, including Ancestry.com.  As genealogists often lament, we couldn't get "across the pond" to find out from where the family emigrated.

Until today!

A cousin from down the Fred Gill line (my grandfather was Louis, a brother to Fred - we're all related to Levi), Linda Gill called the other day saying she had read some of the information I had written and published in the Daunt to Dillonwood column in the Recorder.  She was traveling in Ohio, not far from the town of Circleville, where our Great-Grandfather Levi lived, married, then emigrated to California.

She called to get a little more information explaining she was nearby, and might as well go into the community and see what she could learn.  I gave her everything I thought she might like to have in a rush of information.  When we finished, she said she was "...38 miles from Circleville." She later laughed that they had intended to be in Circleville a few hours, and ended up staying two nights.

In her searching information in Circleville, she did confirm that Samuel's father was indeed John, but still couldn't get any link to Scotland, Ireland, or any other place for that matter.  But by confirming John as being in our chain of family, she opened some doors.

In a series of excited calls this morning, Louis finally found the link "across the pond."   But it was not to any place we had expected.  It turns out that John's father was Edmund, and Edmund was born in 1680 in the northern part of the Isle of Man.  That would make him my Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather.

So, it turns out that the Gills emanate from a little rock in the middle of the Irish Sea, nearly equidistant from England, Scotland, and Ireland.  IOM, as it is referred to in most of the Genealogy listings, is not governed by any of the three, but is their own entity.



Like the folks on the TV show "Who Do You Think You Are?" this info had to be dug up.  If it were not for Linda going to Circleville, searching out the proof that John Gill was indeed the the father of Samuel, Lou would probably not have found the definitive link to Edmund.  It is fun to finally get enough information to actually be able to track our ancestors back to where they were living when they emigrated to America.

In fact, we found they lived in the Lezayre province, near the town of Sulby roughly five miles inland from the port of Ramsey on the northeast coast.  Digging around on one of the web sites, I also found the John Gill family emigrated through New York on June 28, 1831, having sailed on the ship Meridian.



Apparently my Great-Great-Grandfather Samuel and his wife Isabella had already emigrated and settled in Circleville, Ohio.  When his parents, John and Isabella, and the rest of the family arrived in America, they settled around Warrensville, Ohio.  Today, it is apparently known as Warrensville Heights, and is a suburb of Cleveland, some 170 miles north of Circleville.

A search for Warrensville simply brought up a main road in Cleveland, Warrensville Center Road.  I enlarged that map and poked along up and down that road until I found an area, presumably a suburb name, that was Warrenville Heights.  So apparently when it became a part of the city of Cleveland, the name was changed a bit.

The interesting part of all this is that much has to be assumed, though many different things can be proven. Still, it is exciting to know that the Isle of Man was home to the ancestors, and that the Gill clan is neither Scottish, nor Irish, nor British.  Instead we are Manx, the name given to residents of the island.

And, yes, the Manx cat, the flat-rump, tailless cat, was a breed originated there too.

Snow in Springville

When I got out of bed this morning at 5:30 a.m. and went to the back door for wood for the fire, it was snowing steadily.  Not hard, but steadily.

But the air temperature was 40 on the porch, and the driveway never did allow snow to accumulate. But, as it does once in a while around here, it dusted the hillsides nicely.

In the early morning light, the iPhone camera takes a pretty grainy picture, but you can see the accumulation on the pasture, and the top of the entry light.

A few minutes later, the light was better, but you can see even that fast, some of the snow was melting off the pasture.

 The view the other way down toward the barn reveals even more of the lower ground is melting off quickly, and the driveway is not accumulating any snow at all.  But if you look carefully, the top of each post is holding a little dab of snow.

It is precisely this condition, when followed by a warm "Pineapple Express" storm coming right up out of Hawaii which rains up to 10,000 feet altitude, washing off a good snow pack, that causes major flooding in the Tule River.  And the river bottom ground is definitely ripe for flooding.  With all the little brush, and a solid 20 years of big tree growth, the pieces are all in place.  Whether it happens or not depends entirely on the weather.

Rain, Horses, Trip, and Diesel. This and that.

With the rain yesterday, my gauge shows about 0.60 inches, so a good bit more than the Recorder is reporting fell in Porterville.  But then, that is the way the foothill rains work.  As the clouds and associated moisture approach the barrier of the foothills, and ultimately the entire Sierra Nevada range to the east, they "hang up" on the hills.  And while they are "hanging along the hills" they give up moisture.  The further you go up the canyons in the area, the more you observe the additional moisture.  A friend of mine who lives several miles up Balch Park Drive will often find 25-50% more in his gauge than in mime.

This morning, I had to chuckle at my big gelding, Dandy.  First thing in the morning I feed his mother, Shiplay, a bit of Senior Mix for horses, aiding in both her digestion, and nutrition.  Shiplay came up to the pen when Sharon was leaving for work, and the big drafter Strawberry was there too.  But no Dandy.

Then I realized, he was making all sorts of racket from down at the barn.  When I looked, the barn door had blown shut during the storm, leaving Dandy inside, and Shiplay and Strawberry outside.  And let me tell you, Dandy was NOT a happy camper.

Of course, he's a big baby anyway.  If Shiplay is out of his sight for even a minute, he's upset.  And he doesn't ever suffer in silence.  With great whinnying cries, he lets everyone within a country mile know that Dandy is upset about something.

When I went to the barn to feed hay to the cattle and the horses, I opened the door and let him escape his storm-imposed imprisonment.  You'd think the Governor had issued him a stay of execution.  Out the door he dashed, as if he was heading for a fire.  Then he discovered Shiplay and Strawberry standing passively in front of the barn.  He set up, sliding to a stop, then tried to act as if he knew that all the time.

I throw two flakes of hay for Dandy and Shiplay, who almost always eat their hay together.  I put that in one corner, then put another flake of hay down for Strawberry about thirty feet away near the other side of the barn.  If I don't keep the two locations separated, Dandy will try to control both spots, keeping the hay for himself.  Shiplay on the other hand goes to her corner, head down, and quietly has her breakfast.

Dandy will first go to his two-flake spot, and start eating.  Strawberry peeks in the door, then makes a trotting dash behind Shiplay and Dandy, to get down to her one-flake location.  Some mornings, Dandy will decide it's not worth the effort, and let her eat in peace.

But sometimes, like today, Dandy wants to run between both feeding spots, keeping Strawberry away from either one.  But she's gotten smart.  When he goes to the one-flake location, she strolls to the two-flake spot, and grabs a bite.  When he dashes toward her, she simply circles around and goes to the spot he abandoned to chase her away.

This seems to last for about three or four minutes, and then they all get bored with the game, and peace settles into the barn.

With a crystal-blue sky, not a cloud to be seen anywhere at this hour, it's going to be a beautiful day at least for a little while.  Sounds like things will cloud up and rain again by evening, and that tomorrow is going to be a solidly wet one.  Bring it on!

My monthly dash to Sacramento, attend an Area meeting on Saturday from 10-4, and then dash home again, comes up this weekend.  Sharon and the dogs will keep the hilltop warm, while I slosh up the Valley and back.  I'll leave Springville about 5:00 a.m. and get home around 9:00 p.m. after a dinner stop in Fresno.  But it does make for a long day.

Holy COW!  I came past Eagles Nest yesterday and gaped at the price of diesel!  $3.719 a gallon.  Man, that is just ridiculous.

With the price of Crude Oil futures in the mid-$80 range, where it's been for many weeks, I cannot fathom why distillate prices are so doggone high.  And I don't buy into the concept that all the upset in Egypt has brought this on, either.  If so, why aren't Crude futures shooting up?  That's where the refineries would turn to hedge their purchases.  It has always caused me to shake my head when I hear from friends who live in the eastern half of the US, and they tell me their gas prices are $0.25 to $0.35 per gallon cheaper than right here on top of the pool of oil.  And it's not like the refineries are that far away either.

With fuel costs this high, I have begun to really think about bundling all my "town chores" into one trip, then staying home if at all possible on other days.  That said, today I think I may be forced to get ready and go to town at least two hours before my job starts at 1:30 p.m. so I can run some errands, and pick up groceries, get some copies made and prevent having to go back to town tomorrow.

Spring in the Foothills

This is without a doubt, my favorite time of year.  The hills are green, the weather is bright and sunny, and the temperature is mild, often cool in the morning and shirt-sleeve weather by midday.

Coming up out of the river bottom a week ago I noticed the willows that have stubbornly insisted on growing around the telephone terminal box along Globe Drive, have put out the bright green/yellow blooms.  The long narrow leaves will follow soon, but for now, the stark thin sticks are accented along the tops by the bloom.

The spring season is also a time when ranchers build fences.  The ground is wet and will dig much more easily than any other time of the year.  The weather is not overly hot, so being out in the sun all day is not such a huge job.  And, well, that's just when we've always built fence.

My neighbor and I have a pair of bulls that tend to want to butt heads, and this means fences between us often need repair.  Finally, this winter, we decided one particular stretch needed to come down entirely and be replaced.  So ... that's what happened.

Because we both have other obligations, the project has run out over several weeks to get finished.  But this Saturday is finally "Finish Day" and should wrap it up.

Not a huge length, and the braces at the top of the hill, and also at the bottom , are all in, and the steel posts in between are all driven.  All that is needed now is to pull the six strands of barbed wire tight, then clip them to the steels.  

Fortunately, I have a hillside that the cattle are grazing on now, as my field is to the left of this line, his to the right.

Bottom set of braces, with my transportation parked out of the way.  You can see how pretty it is out here now.