Travel Days/Harvest Host

 The last two days were travel days from Theodore Roosevelt National Park to Red Lodge Montana.   The driving was uneventful.  I will take that every day.  We stayed at Holmes Farm Harvest Host on Saturday night.  That was not quite uneventful.  We took the long way to the farm (7 miles on the dirt road) and the GPS said we were there when we were nowhere.  We found out that there was an easier way to go that after 2 miles we are back on paved roads.  At least we were able to go out that way instead of back the 7 miles.  When we finally found the host, we got set up and their dog made sure we didn’t need anything.

She is on the steps of our camper.  She was very gentle, didn’t bark at all, so I was ok with it.  

We then got to see the metal work that the hostess, Patti, did.  She buys junk metal and cuts designs out of it.  She had a hood from a jeep, a front of a small tractor, metal wash tubs, saws, metal drums, etc.  It was very unique.  We bought a two person saw that says welcome and has lots of trees on it.  We already have it safely wrapped up, so don’t have any pics, but it will hang in the entry of our house at some point.  

Then the evening got interesting.  There was some dark sky rolling our way and the weather channel said severe thunderstorms.  Ok, it’s a thunderstorm.  Well, the wind was insane.  We had no thunder, no rain, and no hail like they did 30 miles away (thank goodness) but the wind gusted up to at least 50 miles an hour.  We put our slide in and hunkered down and we were fine and our camper was fine when it passed.  It was quite nerve wracking though.  We were lucky the back of the trailer was to the wind and not the side because boy it was rocking just hitting the back.  I don’t care to experience that again.

Unfortunately, the hosts did not fair as well.  The wind blew in the “garage” type door on their one barn.  With the door gone the gusts blew off half the roof.  Dave saw it happen, as he was looking out the window. I think the storm lasted about 45 minutes, but it felt like a really, really , really long time.  The temperature went from high 90s to low 70s.  That was lucky since the electric went out.  

Here is a barn that they had that was built in 1910 that had no damage and is a beautiful picture of the calm after the storm.  We walked around and tried to relax a little so that we could eventually try to get some sleep.

The next morning we spent quite a while talking to the owners, learning all kinds of things about farm life.    The owner, Mark, said that there were a bunch of trees down and one large one in particular in one of the water ditches, so that would have to be a priority.  He explained how the water system works, coming from the Yellowstone river to his property and others property to water their fields.  Mark owns over 3,000 acres.  Yes, that is the right number of 0’s.  He is the 3rd generation to run this farm.  He grows hay on 220 acres of the farm and has about 225 cattle.  He produces about 1,500 bails of hay a season.  He keeps about 600 for his animals and sells the rest.  They rotate the crops and the cattle to help the land recover.  He started driving some of the farm equipment at age 10.  His stories and knowledge were very interesting to me.  He works a good 12 hours a day in the summer and 2-4 in the winter.  They said it can get down to 30-40 BELOW zero in the winter.  I can’t even imagine going out in such a temperature and he just said it’s not that bad.  This is why we like Harvest Host, you get to meet such different people and learn so many things.  They like Harvest Host because they get to meet different people and different lifestyles.  Mark said before he met Patti, he could go days without talking to anyone because their nearest neighbor is a mile and a half away.  He told a story about rattlesnakes that was second nature to him, but would have been panic to me.  He saw two snakes and they were mating, kinda winding around each other like you would twist two pipe cleaners.  He hadn’t seen this before, so he watched it for a bit, then he killed the snakes.  Just part of farm life.  Here are a couple other pics from the farm.

We then headed off to Red Lodge, Montana.