Provider: Jason Williams
Profession: Rancher
Hometown: Kaycee, WY

April 2007 Diary Entry

Greetings once again from the Cowboy State!  I hope this finds everyone enjoying a healthy and prosperous springtime.  We have certainly been enjoying a wonderful Wyoming spring here at Brock Livestock in Kaycee.  If you have read many of my previous journal entries, you will know that we have been enduring a rather prolonged drought here in Wyoming, and like any other natural disaster, it has been a source of concern for us in the agriculture industry.  I am happy to say that this spring has brought good moisture not only for us, but for much of the West.  The great thing about this moisture has been not only the quantity, but the quality of the moisture as well.  What I mean by quality of the moisture is that it has come at a good time for us (a 2-inch rain in July doesn’t benefit us nearly as much as a 2-inch rain in May), and much of it also came as a wet snow a few weeks ago.  Here at the ranch we had about 18 inches of snow “on the level” (before the wind made snow drifts), but I heard reports of several feet of snow from neighbors (keep in mind that our neighbors can be dozens of miles away).  This particular spring storm closed all of the highways and interstates around Kaycee for 3 days, and closed nearly all of the roadways in the state for at least 24 hours.  This was a great storm for us, because the fact that it came in the form of snow allowed the ground to absorb the moisture slowly as the snow melted.  We have received a couple of other nice storms since then (as I type this entry on the first Saturday of May, we are getting a nice storm of snow and rain with temperatures in the low 30’s), and I am hopeful that this will be a productive year in terms of grass growth for many of us here in the West.

Of course the highlight of my spring so far has been my trip to Little Rock, Arkansas, and getting the opportunity to meet all of the great folks at Mabelvale Middle School!  We own some cattle that are in southeast Kansas, so I was able to incorporate my Provider Pal visit with a trip to see them as well.  Due to the widespread drought I mentioned earlier, we did not have enough grass here to feed all of the cattle we owned, so we had to find another rancher who had extra grass, and pay him to feed our cattle that grass.  I enjoyed my trip from Little Rock to Kansas, and it was good to see the cattle and visit with the rancher who is taking care of them.  Plus, it gave me a chance to see more of the beauty of Arkansas, as well as Oklahoma, Kansas, and even a few miles of Missouri!

Here on the ranch, things have been starting to get busier with the warmer temperatures and the thawing of the ground.  Our cows don’t start having their baby calves until the first week of May, so we have been busy repairing and building fence, repairing irrigation ditches, and irrigating our hay meadows.  Our busy season begins about now – the first of May – and will last until about the end of October, and this is when we will put in the most working hours.

Our daughter, Marilee, turned one year old on April 12th, and she is growing more and more every day!  Radona and I are sure excited to take her to New York City to visit all of the great folks at the Center School there later on this month!  Take care, and I will write again in a few weeks and send pictures of our baby calves so be sure and check it out!  Thanks and God bless.

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