Where-for-art-thou Bambii!

Remember Bambii as a child? Oh the thrill of running through the meadow, the newness of being a baby in a wide world? My eldest, Miss Sarah, recieved this wonderful Disney classic for Easter this year and it's already almost worn out. Living on a ranch kind of put some new perspective on some things. First off, anybody know whether or not Bambii's daddy is White Tail, Mule deer, or part Elk? Those antlers throw me off every time! Secondly, looking at those antlers, i'm seeing $80 or so. The perks of working on the ranch is that when the elk and deer shed in the winter and spring, it's finder's keepers around here! We spend pretty much every nice saturday all piled on the 4-wheeler going shed hunting. And there is nothing more satisfying as the nice man (he's like an adult Santa Claus) that comes around Labor Day weekend and buys them all for $8 a pound. To put it in perspective, most elk sheds weight between 8-10lbs a piece! Christmas in May (it might as well be, too due to the amount of snow we got in May!)! Back to Bambii though, Sarah gets very very upset when Bambii's mom dies and i'm not going to lie, it makes me a little mad too! It is very irresponsible hunting seeing a doe with a fawn and shooting her anyway. That's just plain not right! Overall a great kids movie, and from an adult and foody point of view... Venison is so yummy!!!

Onto life in general! How is everyone out there in blog land? We are creeping in on Summer and the warmer weather is definately agreeing with my little family! We all are getting sun tans, and fun new clothes, and babies all around the ranch. On our latest trip to town me and the girls got to see our first baby fawn of the year. He was all wet and slippery and trying to get up for the first time, he was unbelievably precious! Then there are the baby antelope, complete mini-me's of their mamas fluffy butts and all! Then there are the calves all up and down our road running and playing. The biggest excitement baby wise around here is an orphan that in his short week long lifetime has had three mothers! His real mama prolapsed and that took up all her energy so she went bone dry on him, so we brought in a heifer that had lost her calf hoping that she would claim him and she would rather have kicked him in the head (which she did quite a bit). Now he is with another mama who lost her calf to a bear and they are going splendidly. So something good finally came out of something bad! Little tyke was so hungry he just sat under the heifer milk streaming off his little black face.

Food: Huge announcement in this area! I got a pasta maker. I know this may not be a huge development to some people but it is to me! There is nothing in the world like fresh pasta and now I get to make it myself! My husband sat down to homemade raviolis and sauce and said that he will eat anything as long as I am the one making it! Ego boost and 10 points for this wifey! We made homemade fettucini last night with homemade alfredo and again, so yummy! So for whomever may be reading, do you have a favorite pasta recipe? I used to get a garlic and tomato pasta where I used to work but can't find a recipe that comes close! Real quick though, here is the alfredo recipe (You know you want to try it!) It may be a little high in fat but you have to live a little bit right?

2 cups chopped and cooked chicken breasts
2 8oz packages Cream cheese
1 1/2 C Heavy whipping cream (more or less depending on your desire for thick sauce)
1 1/2 Tablespoons minced garlic (I use garlic salt if I don't happen to have any fresh garlic handy)

Melt the cream cheese into the whipping cream over low to medium heat in a skillet of your choice. Add Garlic. When all Cream cheese is melted and your sauce is smooth go ahead and add the chicken. Cook until you have a low simmer (don't forget to stir the sauce frequently so the milk products don't burn to the bottom of your pan). Remove from heat and pour over pasta of your choice! Yum!

My hubby loves this recipe, as do I and with fresh pasta it can only get better! The mountains of laundry and hungry children are calling my name... Have a great Wednesday!!

For the love of the Cowboy!

A trip to town today! Thank goodness because I was honestly getting tired of the dreary, cloudy, not knowing whether it was going to rain or not, ranch life! Today, however, was not a day of pure bliss (as anyone with a hyperactive two year old would know!), it had a purpose. Get Bryce (Hubby) outfitted for the summer. As a loyal patron of Grizzly saddlery, our local saddle maker has been working long and hard to find Bryce a saddle that will fit all of his horses. This is something that I was completely new to when we moved up here. A saddle is not just a saddle! There are SO many measurements that go into one it will almost drive one mad! Not only that, but there are only so many combinations of measurements that will result in a saddle that fits most horses. After our long hard search we found a saddle that was perfect, so today we payed for it. Handing over a rather large wad of cash can be hard for anyone (unless of course you're a millionaire! :) ), but after the exhaustion of bring home what felt like 20,000,000 different saddles with only one working, I was overjoyed to hand it over and be done with it! Long story short, Bryce has a new saddle! Our next stop was boots. Yet another thing I had yet to realize was the difference between how men and women wear out boots. I have had my pair of Ariats for almost four years and have never had to have them re-soled. Bryce, however, has gone through maybe 5... 7... pairs of boots.... and we're off to see the boot store, the wonderful wizards of boots! We finally found a pair just to find out that they were out of size 13. Bryce's shoe size seems to be just like my 7, no one ever seems to have it!! The salesmen that was helping us was superman, so they are ordered and will be here this coming week. Yay! Cowboying may be expensive, and some may wonder if all the money is worth it, but to make sure my hubby is happy in his job... That's priceless!

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!

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!?