Traced Elements

Author: askafarmer123

Dad’s Cabin

Boy, oh boy, Dad was mad that night. He arrived home in the dark as per his MO. He was back early from his trip because a Grizzly had damaged his trapper’s cabin.

He spent a week down in the basement building a snare and talked about what the hide would fetch at the fur auction. It seems it was the insult as much as the damage done and it seemed personal. The Grizzly had come in through the roof, destroyed everything, and, without consideration of the time it would take to fix the place, left through the window.

Dad took some consolation in the one can of beans that the Grizzly missed in his rage/romp. We have an old cooking pot on the wall of the shop with teeth holes in it that dad brought home to show us the power of his new pal on the trapline.

My dad had a trapline from North Creek to Meager Creek. I think he started it around 1949, when he came back from the war. Trapping was a pretty common way to make money back in those days in Pemberton, and farming was real tough. He would walk in on snowshoes for 17 miles, spend about a month trapping and skinning, then walk out with the pelts. Once the pelts were safe at home, he would head out and do it again. Usually one of his nephews would meet him on the trail and help pack out. One nephew was eager to show his strength but after dad split the load in half, couldn’t carry the weight. My dad was pretty strong.

Most of my trips to Dad’s Cabin were as a teenager on spring fishing trips.We would walk the crust and fish for Dollies. One time I took two of my nephews fishing up there and had to crawl a mile out because the snow had weakened the crust and I crashed through every step. They were light enough to scoot along on top and found it pretty amusing.

He used to piggy-back me on all the slippery river crossings. When I was about sixteen or so, I shakily carried him across, and was pretty proud of myself. We weren’t real huggers, our family, so it was wrestling and river crossings, and it was wonderful.

April 25, 2018
Alpine Cattle Drives

I ended the cattle drive around 1995. I couldn’t keep it up. It was too much work. We had a growing farm and a growing family and we just couldn’t justify it any more and it made me sad.

When I was young, our every summer was spent driving our herd of cattle to alpine grazing at Goat Meadows (aka Miller Creek ). We thought it was normal for children to push big old bellowing cows up a mountain. We were little ruffians with rocks and sticks and running shoes. We darted and loped across the brushy hillside, cutting off escape, alway trying to make the cows think we were impassable.

Dad was alway there, in charge, and always at the back, patiently trying to instruct us on the instincts of cattle and how to use them to make this job easier for all.

When my sisters and I were small, we mastered sleeping on horseback double (although that may have been mostly me.) I remember how a horse’s shoe can turn the pitch black into daylight as they struggled in the dark on the steep rocky trail. We took a lot of these trips in the dark, after Dad’s work day on the farm was done. Our old workhorse type horses had no problem travelling in complete darkness.

The cattlemen had a cabin in the Second Meadows where we would camp and cook and play while the adults did the hard work of cutting out trails or building bridges.

Our destination was the Third Meadow which overlooks the Pemberton Valley. Our cows knew the way and once their memories of last year in the meadows kicked in, it became a slow walk to paradise.

Coming into the Third Meadows was uplifting – the smell was amazing of alpine flowers and grasses. The view opened up to grassy Meadows, and far below at the end of the Second Meadows was the massive Miller Glacier which roared constantly on the breeze lifting from the Second Meadows.

March 25, 2018
Farmers Staycation: why the best place to find the Millers is on the Miller’s farm

For some reason most of our family breaks from farming are taken on the farm.

Actually there are several reasons for it – like checking the cows, checking the fences, checking the back field, scouting for saw logs and firewood trees for next winter.

But mostly its about experiencing the beautiful place that we live and farm.

We have a fishing hole, a beaver pond, a forest, a river.

Our short little trips on a sunny Sunday are the things we remember more than the 30 seasons of Potato Fields we have planted.

We work here so we can live here. We work too hard. We are working on that.

This is the the fishing hole at the river. It has always been a great spot for a kid to catch their first fish.

The Waterfall hike usually coincides with some irrigation intake repairs.

Every fall we try to get a mushroom picking hike in across the creek and up the hillside. Last fall Jesse and I came upon this spot.

Feb 2018 – a walk across the creek to the upper swamp. This is where most of the coho fry from Ryan Creek spend their first summer growing. We were checking out the tracks and trying to figure out what all the animals were up to.

February 25, 2018