Surprise

Olympic Trials at DPN

It has only been a week since my last blog post, but I am trying to keep things a little more up to date here. It is hard to use this as a journal to look back on when I only say a few words every two or three months. Last week I wrote we had finally finished the haying here at Dogpound North (DPN), and the last bale had hardly hit the ground when the snow started. A lot of our neighbours and fellow Albertans and even folks over in Saskatchewan are caught with their crops still in the fields. The news reports say the harvest is about 80% finished so that means most of the profit is still laying out under the snow. In the past the oil patch has served as a fall back position for many in the agriculture industry, you could always pick up a few months work over the winter to pump up the cash reserves. Well this year that might not be easy, although the price of oil is playing with $50 it is still pretty slow out there in the patch. Canada desperately needs pipelines that reach tidewater, Canadian tidewater. For the most part our oil has been sold to our neighbours to the south, but that necessitates taking a discounted price and they are less inclined to buy our product as they have a lot of their own now, since the fracking has taken off in the Bakken and Texas. So it really doesn't make much sense for us to sell our oil to them at a discount so that they can in turn export their own production around the world at world prices. Well enough of that topic.

Up here north of the Medicine Line we don't just use Scarecrows in the Garden

Another piece of news that I thought I would share, this year for the first time since we bought our place down in Arizona, five years ago we are not taking a horse south with us. Brenda, because of her CRPS can't ride, and I am not much on riding by myself so I thought it would be a good time to leave the horses home. We are still taking our LQ with us and if the mood strikes us we may get out and visit some of those old spots we liked to boondock in before we sunk roots into the Maricopa soil. We have no plans to give up Dogpound South (DPS) but might not be tied so tightly to it. Just blueskying but that is one idea anyway.

We are doing what all snowbirds do at this time of year, visiting with our medical teams, planning our departure, and readying the rig for travel. Who knows when we are going to head out but Max is looking at me like, what's the holdup old timer, there is snow on the ground and we should be heading for that warmer place with no grass.

And with those thoughts in mind we have been bringing our security detail up to speed here at DPN, surprisingly the dogs don't seem to mind the company.

On Patrol

Just checking