May 15. Moose !

We saw this moose while driving on a gravel road eating grass in the muskeg. Muskeg is a native american word for a swamp area. The moose have large toed feet and can easily stand in the soft. This moose looked at us for quite a while, then headed a bit into the taller trees, but still kept on looking back. We don't see moose very often, but do see their droppings while riding our horses in the forest.

Past week at the ranch: It sure is getting greener and the Longhorns and horses find enough fresh grass on big pastures. We only need to feed hay to the two bulls and their company heifers in the corral. The horses are still shedding their wintercoat. It has been very mild weather, so they don't need all the warm hair anymore. Spring also meens working on the fences. With animals, that push and rub against the post and nibble on some rails, this is a never ending job. We also went on foot on some parts of our riding trails in the forest to cut out the fallen trees with the chain saw. Although our horses are very agile and can easily step over logs, as long as they are not to high, it is still nice to clean out the trails ever so often.
Nearby the ranch we had for the first time since we live here (18 years) a small forest fire. It got started on Saturday evening by a tree that fell on a power line due to a very strong wind. That wind also helped to get the fire going, real fast, mostly burning just the dry, last years grass, but also a patch, where is burned the trees as well. The wind was in all our neighbours favour and moved the fire into Crimson Lake Provincial Park area with just forest. So everybody was save and no smoke was bodering the animals. There are more forest fires in Northern Alberta, one at Slave Lake, 350 km North of us, saddly this one started very near that town and everybody had to evacuate and so far a lot of houses and buildings burned down.