That time of year: Winter Cattlemen's

And so it begins.

This is the time of year when the paper gets busy. It's convention season, which keeps us traveling around the state and listening to many speakers at the annual meetings of several Wyoming ag organizations, like Wyoming Farm Bureau, the Wyoming Association of Conservation Districts and Wyoming Women in Ag.

It's also the time of year when we try to attend all the conventions, put out the weekly paper AND squeeze in two dozen extra interviews and articles for Winter Cattlemen's Edition, which has a deadline in early December. 

Last week I started on my Cattlemen's interviews. This year we're in Converse County, which I planned so that I can drop Levi off at his Grandma Shirley's house for the day while I go out and about to visit with people and take pictures. 

Of course, the day that I scheduled my interviews for had a winter storm warning, which made it a little iffy for driving, but at least I got some wintry photos out of the deal. I was able to get five interviews that day, and only one on the other day I'd planned for interviews.

Because our Cattlemen's editions have grown in size since we first started them five years ago, Saige and I now have 15 articles each, while before each of the Roundup writers only had to do 12. Trust me, the extra three really do make a big difference in time and effort. 

This is my 12th Cattlemen's edition. It really doesn't seem like that many - now I've been in on featuring over half of Wyoming's 23 counties. I enjoy the interview part of it - driving around in new country, visiting with new people at their ranches and businesses. It's the transcribing and writing part of the project that's the killer. Each year I tell myself I'll be more on top of it and get them written gradually, but somehow that's never happened yet.... All the other day-to-day tasks of the paper tend to take higher priority, as they, in themselves, are a full-time job and take up my entire week. There's not much 'spare' time left over for such a big project as a Cattlemen's edition, so I usually end up writing it on the weekends.

And, of course, I haven't started the writing part yet. For now my goal is to get all the interviews accomplished by Thanksgiving. I have seven done, so here's hoping the rest will fall into place in the next couple weeks!

This squirrel was at the Wyoming Pioneer Museum, and he was so upset that I was taking photos of him that I thought he might jump on me to get me to stop.