Long time no see!

Gosh it's been a while since I blogged! Sorry folks, living in the middle of nowhere can kind of make one a facebook junkie! Where to start? So many new recipes tried, so many battles with the kids, so much new cow stuff!

I guess the best place to start is at the begining so here goes! We finally got our half of beef for the next six months and I'm (kind of) proud to say i'm just about halfway through it! I've made everything from homemade sloppy joes on homemade hamburger buns, to stuffed hamburgers (yummy!) to pot roast, and all sorts of nummy beef recipes! I have to admit though, I'm definately craving some white meat! My mother was nice enough to purchase me a copy of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French cooking so i'll be cooking up some yummy french cooking in the middle of a cattle ranch in Montana. Is that an oxymoron? :)

Children.... Oh my children. We started potty training. Enough said. I love my little girl to death but I can only clean the carpets so many times in the month! The highlight of her life, however, has been the beginning of riding lessons! Our old gelding is serving as Sarah's pony this summer so (with Mommy in close attendance) we have started her adventures in horses! Our youngest started crawling a few weeks ago. Isn't it amazing that after a mere two years you totally forget how to baby proof the house. The DVDs, the stove, the entertainment center, and we won't even start on the kitchen! Swiffer is my new best friend! She is unique in the fact that she HATES with a passion basically any form of baby food. Makes life a little harder for me, but I feel that i'm up to the challenge.... I hope.

Oh the moo-cow-cows... off to greener pastures! With calving coming on in full force, the only group close is the first calf heifers that he takes care of while calving. Total, there about 2,000 cows on the ranch before calving, a little over 3,000 afterwards. Besides not seeing my husband for 4 months out of the year, I have to say summer is the funnest season on the ranch. It's fun to watch them grow all winter, but there's something about they itty bitty calves running and playing with their very concerned Mamas running after them hollering! Then there are the gatherings and brandings (always a ton of fun!) as well as working the cows and calves in the corrals behind our house. the girls and I are frequent attendees!

Hubby got the weekend off so I'm off to finish cleaning up dinner so we can make the 60+ mile trek to town tomorrow! Adios!

I'm overrun with babies!! Help!

Well, the hen finally hatched out her nest, five adorable fuzz balls are running around like little crazy people! I may not have told you but this hen didn't have the sense God gave a crowbar in the fact that she made her nest in the top nestboxes right in the middle (the top nestbox is about 2 1/2 feet high). She got confused multiple times and sat on eggs that the other birds had laid in other nest boxes and the goofy bird switched nests on me about half a dozen times! She finally settled on the top middle nestbox and settled in for 28 days... This meant that I had to go out to the coop around 10- 12 times a day to keep all the eggs cleaned up so she wouldn't switch nestboxes again. Finally, the 28th day came and one after the other chicks just popped out, two black ones, a yellow one, a red one, and a kind of speckly striped one. I don't have another bird like it so I have NO clue where it came from!! Then came operation Evacuate. The remaining 14 hens and rooster needed to be evicted because they were already trying to kill the babies. I threw food in the other side of the coop, I tried to herd them in there, I tried to reason with a chicken. That doesn't work by the way. So we had to do it the good ol' fashioned way. By hand. My two year old came in to help and had loads of fun helping mommy chase the chickens like a mad man! I chased and grabbed and dove, and jumped, and ran and ran until I was dripping in sweat and I had two birds left. I eyed my prizes think there's only two left now.. how bad could it be? I stepp toward one of the hens, I took another step closer, I slowly reached down, aannnndddd I got flown at. Right in the face. Angry I grabbed the first thing I could catch, and it just so happened to be her tail. While trying to get a better hold on her she kept fighting and fighting, then all of sudden I was left in a shower of...... feathers. Whoops.... I accidentally pulled out her tail! She's none the worse for wear, she was actually alot easier to deal with after that but every time I go out to the chicken coop I have to smile, because there she is, in all her tail-less glory!