Author: James Wesley Rawles

Here in The Unnamed Western State (TUWS), a BMW or a Lexus is not considered a status symbol, but a Caterpillar tractor is. In winters with heavy snowfall, nothing beats a Cat for plowing out roads. Anyone with a large Cat with a versatile blade is is considered the “go-to guy” after a major snow storm. If you own a Cat and your neighbors don’t, then after the first hard winter they will consider you indispensable.    o o o John T. flagged this from Fortune magazine: ‘It’s going to be much worse’ Famed investor Jim Rogers sees hard times …

We were recently somewhat “snowed in” and ran low on feed for our flock of assorted fowl. So the ever-resourceful Memsahib simply broke out one of our oldest 35 pound buckets of hard red winter wheat from the JASBORR. She soaked the wheat in water for 12 hours, and voila! Soft, plump wheat berries. She is also sprouting some wheat, which is even more nutritious. She mentioned that her maternal great-grandmother, at the turn of last century used sprouted wheat for chicken feed. This kept her hens laying eggs throughout the winter. Before the days of electrically-lighted hen houses, winter …

Yesterday, one of our kids was reading aloud from a “Hunting Safely in Grizzly Country” pamphlet that we picked up when buying some topographic maps at the local USFS ranger station. It was published by the “Interagency Bear Committee” and the Wyoming Fish and Game Department. Most of the advice was good, but some of it must have been written by tree huggers. They opined: “Shooting a bear when it is charging is not recommended. The bear almost always lives long enough to maul the hunter severely.” Excuse me, but what am I supposed to stop a bear with? Harsh …