Surprise, surprise, we woke up this morning to find the ranch blanketed in snow! As much as it looks very nice we will be happy to see the weather turn back to being more like we are used to at this time of the year – greening all around and sunshine 
See the greenhouse peeking up over the snow covered slope? a greenhouse full of plants for transplanting into the garden and salads ready for the table.
Yesterday this field was green!
The two pair of gyrfalcons have now produced eight (8) eggs between them, four per pair.
Last year Brian took eggs from the nest and incubated them himself with the aid of a fancy incubator. When you do this the falcon will lay more eggs to bring the clutch up to four again – amazing!
The male gyrfalcon is the smalleer of the pair and can be seen at the top right hand corner, the femail is sitting on the ledge upon which she has laid four eggs.
By the way, we used to have three breeding pairs of gyrfalcons but a bobcat managed to climb to the top of the mews, which is covered with a wire mesh, then kill and half eat a female!
This was of course very upsetting and annoying to say the least, apart from the bond between the gyrfalcon and Brian in particular, the bird is valued at over $25,000 and would have produced four more falcons this year!
Having said that, one has to admire the ingenuity of the bobcat which does, after all, need to eat; Brian figured that the bobcat climbed up a nearby tree (..plans in place to remove it) from which it jumped across to the wire mesh which covered the top of the mews (..mews is a fancy name for places birds are kept in). The bobcat must have then snagged the gyrfalcon when it flew by close to the wire and within range of the bobcat’s claw – the bobcat managed to eat half of the gyrfalcon before what was left fell to the floor.
We have many interesting guests at Echo Valley Ranch and Brenda was no exception; Brenda is from Fort McMurray and when asked what she did back home she told us that she sold tyres.
Later in the day we learned that the tyres Brenda’s company sells cost $60,000 EACH!
Did you know that the big, huge, trucks that move the tar sands around are equipped with six of those tyres and they need replacing every year; that the equipment used to change a tyre cost $750,000 EACH; that the truck carries a 440 ton load. We do now, as well as a lot more interesting facts about tyres used in the mining industry, all thanks to the knowledge that flows through our ranch, brought to us by our guests.
Brenda has managed the company for 8 years now and is taking a well deserved week of rest at EVR, she loves animals and our cat Koda has already fallen in love with her; and we think that Brenda may have already fallen in love with our spa.
Brenda petting the horses
Our horses love Nan
Last Tuesday we drove to the “Horse Barn” tack shop in Kamloops where we purchased two 25kg bags of horse treats! Today our horses got treated
Giving our horses a treat is a real WIN WIN situation, especially when Nan is giving the treats since Nan loves to give and the horses love to receive.
Nan the horse whisperer
We now have 32 horses at Echo Valley Ranch, well, 30 really because 32 includes two donkeys; you will see that one of them, Don, does not need to be served treats because (more…)
January 10th 2010
Today I drove Glen and Jim down to the canyon to show Jim, our guest, how dramatically the landscape changes and hopefully have the opportunity to see some wildlife. The first sign of wildlife was a beautiful California Big Horn ram and I seized the opportunity to try out my new 70/200 telephoto lens, as we traveled on we saw more big horn sheep and mule deer.
What followed after that relates to the title of this blog and before describing what we saw and experienced I offer my thoughts concerning “Nature’s harsh realities.”
