Spay your pets, weird friends, relatives, and... heifers?

Did you know you can spay a heifer? I never knew that! Hubby had said something about that last year but I never paid attention until this year. It's simple, quick and alot less painful than what a dog or cat may go through and the heifers won't ride each other and the steers won't ride them either. Low stress cattle herd-age! They also get bigger faster (these particular heifers are destined for a grocers freezer near you!). So in short, they are spaying the heifers today... Hubby gets to be on horseback (a fact which he is very pleased about!), a treat since all winter he feeds in the tractor. The only hitch, it's snowing...hard... in the end of April. Welcome to Montana! The state where the weather changes faster than a hormonal woman! There are not that many things in this world that can change that fast ;) but the weather up here can! It's another hot cocoa day here with the girls! Hope you're enjoying better weather wherever you are!

Cookies, Cake and Bread Oh my!!

On the days that are blissfully quiet, the children are playing by themselves quietly, the house is filled with a blissful peace, I like to bake.

Well... At least one part of that statement was true. I do love to bake (I can dream about the blissfully peaceful house right?). Where I have to slightly limit my experimentation in the cooking arena I can go all out in the baking area. How bad can cookies really be?! And with a 2 year old helper coming in and adding extra sugar while i'm not looking, that means they can only get better! Baking is my tension reliever, the ultimate zen. There are however, many times where that zen get's interrupted by a huge crash down the hall... Children, you know! But for the most part I can just relax and kneed some bread, stir up some brownies, or mix up some cookies without catastrophic mishaps! There is nothing better than something sweet after dinner, or cheating on your oatmeal with a piece of apple pie for breakfast! I have to admit, my hubby is my only true critic and he's not much of one at that. He loves sweets too much to give an un-biased opinion, but that's perfectly fine with me! Who wants to hear that your cookies are over done? He just grabs a glass of milk and says they're great. Those are wonderful days! Not to mention your little girl sitting at the table covered in brownie, reaches over for a huge brownie hug and says 'Mama, is delicious!'. My family makes me day, every day!

I'm sure everyone will agree with me on this... Cleaning up the kitchen sucks! I'm a super procrastinator and I have growth periods where I go anti procrastinating and my house is spotless but most of those are short lived! I can't stand a messy kitchen (as my dishes from last night are still sitting in the sink) but it's so hard after a yummy dinner to pick it up and put everything away. I keep telling myself, just do it! But then I think... I'm not a Nike commercial good grief... Enough of a push off to not do the dishes. Bad me bad me!! Oh well, there's always tomorrow, right! ;)

What side of the cow do You use?

I was doing the dishes this morning and filling up a small bowl with some cold water when I began to think about cows (something I do very very often). The dishes were done and I took my little bowl over to my workstation. I leathercraft! :) As badly as I would have loved to sit on the couch and eaten bon bons I have an order for a wallet I need to get done. So I wet my leather and picked up my water, the girls love love to get into Mama's leather, and saw a tupperware container by the sink. By now I should know better to open things in this house that weren't put there by me but somehow I forget and always do it anyway. I opened the lid and closed it as fast as I could. My husband had obviously forgotten about this certain tupperware container and I was greeted with his soaking rawhide. Which had been soaking for, i'd say, 4 days too long. Oh how it reeks! I ran to open all the windows, the smell of dead rotten cow traveling through the house like wildfire. At this point my leather had dried enough to be tooled and I sat back down. In this household we use alot of cow!!! We eat it, my hubby skins the ones we eat and dries the hide, de-hairs it and uses it to braid rawhide, then I used the tanned smell good stuff and braid or tool it. We'll just say we are not wasteful of cows around here! What type of cow do you use!?

To live in a world without Fences....

Fences... Oh fences. I have heard many a person say how they would love to live in a world without fences. That would be nice, but what would be even better would be if the fences that were up would stay up. Say hello to the Elk herd. I can't count how many times this week my poor hubby has had to fix the EXACT same fence. Some would think to look at an elk they are wonderful graceful creatures. Not so! They would rather barrel through a fence instead of jumping it. I went out to help him with fence today and we found ourselves stapling up what most people would call a mangled chunk of wire that maybe 100 years ago belonged to a fence. It is soooo frustrating, a fence a deer would sail over an elk (4 times bigger) can't seem to fumble it's way across. Sometimes I swear they play Red Rover. I can just see it! Taking turns running into the fence again... and again... and again... and again... until they are satisfied with the mess they made. Not even bothering to walk over the fence, just turn around and run away. Oh to have a video camera....

Oh the life of the Ranch wife!

At the moment, we have 8 babies in our family. And who knows how many more (I'm guessing 4) on the way. The general breakdown as of today... 2 little girls, 4 bum ewe lambs, 2 bum wether lambs, and again just guessing, 4 babies still in egg form. So excited to have a hen setting!! For those of you who live in town please send up some 'I'm SOOOO grateful for living close to the store!'!!! I had to go pick up a prescription today and I found myself on the 63 mile drive to town.
The Breakdown:
24 miles= Gravel Road
7 miles=to nearest town
22 miles=to the nearest city with a Wal-Mart, Feed store, and Albertsons!
The girls are usually pretty good in the car but today they decided that Mama was gonna have it. My oldest wasn't seeing as many deer as she's accustomed to so the fit throwing and screaming started. I used a phrase that I swore I would never tell me children (don't you jusst hate when those situations actually occur?). I told her that she need to be good or I would 'PULL THIS CAR OVER'. For those who have heard this phrase more than once in our lives and by both parents please stand up. :) Then the baby.... oh the baby.... she decided that today was NOT the day she was going to sit in her seat and play with her toy. We aren't even to the store yet!!!

While in town I picked up lamb replacer (which has gotten very very expensive), baby replacer (Love enfamil), the fixings for Carne Asada, and my prescriptions. And today.... Today I was the person everyone cringes at in the store. "Sit down! Baby girl, Mama's almost done. For pete's sake SIT DOWN." Right about this time the baby ran out of milk.... yep. Was today the day that I came prepared? Nope!

So that in the nutshell was my trip to town and after driving a hundred some odd miles I came home with hungry babies, hungry lambs, and a hungry hubby going to be home in about two hours! So, Carne Asada is marinating. ALL the children are fed and happy, and I think i'll be able to patch the day together with a workout, a glass of wine (small glass!), and a smile!

Another Day in Paradise

Well unfortunately dinner was a flop. All I can say turned out well were the green beans and how could I possibly screw those up? The steaks were over broiled and the noodles just were flat out awful! I can't stand when dinner doesn't turn out right! It's like the end of the day just hits the floor about as hard as an anvil and you can't pick it up again. In our household Dinner really is the Grand Finale of our day. Sitting together at the table talking about our day and enjoying the meal. BUT, when you don't enjoy the meal no one really wants to talk unless it's to say how awful dinner is! Oh well... Dinner tonight is fool proof so cross your fingers! My family is coming up to visit us so crock pot pot roast and baked potatoes are what's on the menu for this evening.
On that fine note, is there anything better than family coming to visit? My two younger brothers aren't even ten so my oldest gets to run and play all day long... The screams of happy children run rampant through my house, even though my Mom may try and shush them I love to hear it! This house has alot of babies around this spring. My 2 year old, my 6 month old, 4 bum lamb, 2 puppies, and a hen setting on some eggs. We have the most personal animals on the ranch and I must admit I wouldn't have it any other way! There are days as a mom (and many of you i'm sure will agree) that you just want to flop down on the floor and sleep all day, oblivious to the screaming children, dishes needing to be washed, closets needing to be organized, etc. The list is never ending! I really enjoy being busy though! My day usually consists of every hour being bursting at the seams with things to do! Speaking of, my husband bet me a new pair of jeans to get a closet organized and cleaned by the time he gets home, so I'm going to go show him how organized I can be!

Beef Re-invented

My life in a nutshell, I love my girls, I love cows, and I love to cook. I've gone from a girl who hated touching raw meat to my family's personal chef! I love to experiment, yes I am one of those that rarely follows a recipe! Hopefully there are more of you out there... I'm actually trying to figure out what is for dinner tonight, I'm thinking broiled T-bones, breaded noodles, and a fresh salad. It's so funny how these three things intersect so often. We live on a ranch and get half a beef every six months, so I have to get inventive with beef! The stereotype of ranch wives is hamburgers, potatoes, and steaks and I am out to prove that wrong! Though we do eat a ton of the above, my family is willing to experiment with me on many many meals (breaded noodles!).  My husband has been very patient with my experimenting, even through my failures! I once made this ketchup, macaroni and cheese, ground beef, and broccoli dish and after one bite and the look on my husband's face I fed the rest to the dog (who wouldn't eat it either) and we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. The longer we have been married the better in tune I am with the tastes of my family, the object of my journey: Spend hardly any money on other meats and when my family is 'beefed out' re invent it! So this is going to be a little place for recipes and comical stories about the cows, the kids, and cooking!!