Hitch 3

This hitch, we got to camp in a beautiful pine forest in Toiyabe Nat’l forest with wonderful camp hosts, Ed and Loretta. We’ve been very thankful for the generous people we’ve been camped near and working with. Our “Supreme Leader”, Casey from the BLM has been bringing us some fresh produce from his farm, as well as a giant bag of chocolate covered sunflower seeds left over from his brother’s wedding, which has been a nice treat for us! An older couple at our campsite, who are good friends with the hosts, has been giving us tree ripened fruit from their orchard in southern California. We’ve never had such sweet, juicy, delicious fruit!
At the beginning and end of this hitch, we got to work with our good ol’ friend again, barbed wire! We took down more old wire, put up more new wire, and fixed a lot of breaks along some wires. We got a little break from it, and got to do some restoration work on a burm that diverts water to Kirkwood Meadows. We used sandbags, rocks, logs, and whatever else we could find to build up the banks from overflowing into the wrong places, as well as destroying beaver dams. We were a little apprehensive about destroying the property of those cute little things at first, but they’re not native to the area and the meadows are in more need of the water. On Monday we got to work with the botanist of the BLM, Martin Oliver, who showed us some of the native, invasive, and rare plants of the area. It was very nice learning from him! That day we restored some head cuts, which was fun for us, puzzling together rocks and such.
During a couple of days doing barbed wire, we all got to feel like real cowboys and cowgirls by herding some cattle! So much so, that we all came up with southern family names for each other…. Grandma Prune, Mammi, Uncle Noodle, Bubba, Cayenne, and Critter. Guess who's who!