Here’s a video where Ashton investigates where all this water is coming from:

The best part of having a lake in your front yard is the beauty. Water can sure be beautiful.

We have even had a few flocks of ducks stay with us for a couple days on their way to Canada.

At one time we counted 14 ducks swimming around. They were really hard to get close enough to take good close ups (even with my zoom lens). They were so cute swimming around in pairs.

While large parts of the lake were still frozen, Anna went out into it to retrieve a gate that had floated away. The dogs followed, and Rosco jumped up onto the ice. (He ended up getting stuck in the Ice, but Chief and Anna came back to break through the ice.)

So here’s a picture of the road that used to go to lead us to the neighbor’s house:

And what would an Ashton Anna blog update be without a picture of Mocha?

Enjoy!
Ashton&Anna

After not working on the epic barn project for 20 days, old man winter peaked his head up just to remind me what’s coming. It snowed a few inches in a night on October 9th… Last year we had snow on June 12th. Someone please tell global warming to hurry up, geeze.

This Epic Barn Project won’t be of much help to anyone without a roof… especially if this winter trend keeps up.

First things first: I called my good neighbor Buzz down for some quality construction advice and so he could chainsaw down the excess top of the support poles.

Buzz really let them have it.

(Special Thanks to Buddy for letting me borrow the scaffolding. What a live saver!)
But just after this picture, we hit a ringshank nail and it popped the chain of the blade. =( Buzz let me borrow his brand new DeWalt Saws-all so I could chop down the remaining ones.

During and after we were cutting these poles, I was also working on scabbing the tops of the rafters (where they came together) for some extra support. (The old barn was only toe-nailed together.)

After that it was time to get some purlins. I started trying to salvage the old (real) 2×4 purlins from the old barn but realized it would take forever to try to patch them all together to make 32 feet 11 times. I also only had enough for 6-7 rows of purlins. So I broke down and purchased some fresh 16-foot 2×4′s.

I started putting them up on the roof (Thanks Anna for passing them all up to me =)), and Mocha came to help, or just be moral support. Please ignore the pink ear-warmer, it was cold and I couldn’t find my black one.

Here’s me after I completed putting up the purlins (hopefully they will line up with the screw holes in the old roofing.)

Before I put the roofing on, I wanted to make sure to get the collar beams at least in place. Anna, Mocha and I got all of these up in a couple hours. (Collar beans are the eight short dark horizontal beams below.)

Although you can’t really see the roof from this angle, I now have 4/16 metal roof tiles screwed down.

So close and so epically far away…
Ashton

If you’re interested in more back story: The previous owners lived in our current house for 1 year. The winter that they were here, the father had this great idea of dragging his children behind his vehichle on a tarp. I bet they had a blast, and it ended up killing a lot of the grass in a long strip. So now we have a fairly flat, slightly lower strip of land going through the middle of our pasture. It was this strip that now is home to our frozen puddle.

I think that’s enough details to enjoy our video. Donald and I (Ashton) took our friend’s ATV out into the pasture and had some fun:

Ashton:

Donald:

Here’s the video we made:

Wahoo! What a blast!
-Ashton

I finally was getting used to all the snow. I was hoping to get 3-6 feet drifts, like we got last January… and it starts to thaw… Normally it doesn’t thaw until March or April, but our south-facing hill has been without snow for weeks already.

I saw the sun setting and decided to take a ride up our hill to see what kind of pictures I could get.

In this first one you can see the Mission Mountains and a series of sledding paths that we created in December and January.

Here’s a shot of our house and Bo, the extremely “skiddish” Wild Mustang.

Here’s Jett (Carol’s other wild mustang) in his new head shot with a nice backdrop.

Here’s a poster-style shot of Bo.

Here’s a picture of Aspen, and in the background you can see her baby, Maple, and Onora (Nora).

Well that’s it for interesting photos from Ashton Anna’s Ranch. Now for the Website Updates

Website Updates:

On Friday, Donald and I started working on a side project called “Polson.MontanaFinder.com”. We’re hoping to create a useful directory for everything there is to know about Polson, Montana. There is nothing on the website yet, except a couple pages of broken code. I have put up a temporary design for MontanaFinder.com. I should have a website up by next weekend. *knocks on wood*

Also, I had a breakthrough in designing my new website for WebsitesinaFlash.com. I’ve been trying to redesign my website for at least a year, and I just couldn’t think of anything I liked. Today I started putting together a simple design for the Montana Finder website and liked it so much, I adopted it. I hope to unveil it very soon.

That’s all from Montana
Ashton Anna

Anna got a “Make Your Own Snowman Kit” from Diana Henderson for Christmas, and Anna knitted a scarf to match. Here’s a picture of the builders standing next to their creation so you can see how “ginormous” the snowman really is:

(This was before they added the arms.)

Enjoy,
Ashton Anna

We’d estimate that this slope is 300 feet long. Here’s a video of some of the crazy slopes we took:

Then we got tired of hiking that ridiculous hill, so we had Cory pull us behind his old Toyota Land Cruiser.

Happy New Year,
Ashton Anna

Here are some of our animals in the snow:

We also had a bunch of birds taking shelter on our front porch.
Here’s a sparrow that Anna caught mid-chirp:

Here’s what we’re 80% sure is a hawk:

He is so fluffed up he looks almost like an owl.

UPDATE 7/6/08:

The picture is of an American Kestrel, the smallest North American raptor. I believe it is a female because the wings are rusty and not blue grey.
~Ian

Enjoy,
Ashanna

yea… about that…
ashanna

Anna and I have been in our new house for 7 months and married for 2. It finally snowed. Normally, it snows by Halloween, but this year it came very late… which usually means it’s going to be a short and heavy winter. We’ll see.

Here are some pictures:

Rosco and Pudge sitting in front of our house.

The view from my office window:

Mocha in the snow:

My favorite girls:

Enjoy,
Ashton

Tuesday, the first of May, it was 80 degrees and Anna got a horrible sunburn.

Two days later, on the third of MAY(!), it full on snowed for at least four hours. Then today, it lightly snowed and hailed sporadically throughout the day.

This picture was taken today from my office. You can see the mountain just beyond our property is still white with yesterday’s (and a little of today’s) snow.

And I thought LA weather was random!

-Ashton