Her name is Tree

She kicks.

We interrupt this hiatus for a random observation

While driving to campus the other day, a commercial advertising cow milk replacer caught my attention. It starts with two farmers talking about their calves. One was scrawny, the other was big and sturdy. With great flare, the announcer explained the difference. I don't remember what the difference was, some mineral or something. That's not relevant. What really caught my attention was the fact that I had just found myself listening to a commercial advertising cow milk replacer! What kind of niche audience is that? Then I realized that the proportion of farmers who listen to country music radio while doing morning chores is likely high. I turn it on sometimes when I'm down milking the cow. There's nothing like milking a cow to the tune of Cowgirls Don't Cry.

Then, my next thought was smug. The best way to raise a calf is with a milk cow. Almost no work, and a healthier cow, plus you only have to milk the cow when you want some of the milk yourself.

Yes. That milk cow was the best birthday present ever.

Poor little Buttercup...

Buttercup was such a nice little sheep, she lived a long life full of hay and grain. But she had to die.
This was little Buttercup before she died:
This is buttercup after we fed her to the piranhas...What? Piranhas need to eat to!

I always wanted...

I always wanted an island in the kitchen ... but had hoped for bar stools to go along with the island.
I always wanted fruit trees, but I had in mind fruit we could eat, not old shrively fruit. (Alternatively: I always wanted fruit trees but I never expected El Jefe to cut them all down)
I always wanted a horse but I guess I forgot to mention I'd like a horse we could ride, rather than three untrained maniacs.
I always wanted a lake, but didn't expect it to be seasonal: winter time only.
I always wanted to live near a creek but I didn't expect it to be so polluted it wasn't safe to swim in.
I always wanted to raise my own turkeys but I never thought they would be attack turkeys.

Compiled by Elly Mae and Lil' bit whose minds were going in a million ways while washing dishes one afternoon.

There are a hundred million different ways to train a horse. Natural horsemanship - the idea of working along with the horse's basic instinct, working together (so to speak) to come to a mutual agreement about what you want both of you to do. Sort of. Other ideas point to using a crop and whip to coerce the horse to do what you want, not cruelly, but making the horse understand who is in charge. Another philosophy I found via google involves spending a lot of time nuzzling your horse on the neck. I failed to find anything in the instructions that spoke to loading the horse on a trailer, or crossing streams, but at least I now know the proper way of nuzzling a horse.

The point is, horse training is complicated. It is also one of those skills that I have exactly 0 days of experience with. I ride, not too well, not too terribly. I'm the least horse savvy of the family. So naturally, when I buy a horse, I look for one that's already trained. Enter the newest member of the ranch:



She is an 11 year old mustang. What on earth possessed me to buy a mustang, I may never know, but for better or for worse, here she is.

She's scared of the world. Broke and partly trained, as much as I could get really for the price I was willing to pay, amazingly beautiful with a sweet temperament when it occurs to her. She doesn't kick or bite meanly (she finger nibbles which is a habit we'll have to break). She rears a bit if she gets super mad. She'll be a bit of a work before I have a ranch buddy that can tromp through the pastures with me and chase sheep, but el jefe promises to help me and in the meantime I have a lot of books and online websites to confuse me. And you can rub her nose, which is really the most important part of a horse.

The first of hopefully many summer posts

It's summer time now, and with summer time comes HOT weather and yard sales. We tried to have one of our own. It fell with a dramatic flop. For two days of sitting out in the yard perfecting our tans (or in my case: perfecting my sunburn. Lil'bit tans, I just turn pink), we earned less money than I'd like to report. There was a brief scary point wherein I thought we had lost money altogether, including the runs to the store for cinnamon rolls and my purchase of box of lipton to make iced tea.

A lot of people asked if we were moving. We're not. That was before they left without buying anything. They sweetly apologized for not buying anything, remarking that they didn't see anything they could use.
"Oh I agree. That's why we're selling it," I pointed out.

Apart from yard sales, we have been busy. I've spent most of the week shoveling out the barn and the lean-to in preparation for the horse I'm buying (pictures will follow). I, in true city kid fashion, shoved my mp3 player in my pocket, chock full of Disney songs and belted out songs from Beauty and The Beast at top volume while I shoveled poo. It occurs to me now that there may be a reason why our closest neighbors are moving.

Monday we took some sheep to the butcher, but with this somewhat sad occasion came babies. Chicken Mommy's little bantam hen had been sitting on her eggs for about a month, and three hatched, much to our surprise. They were so cute, and there was a lot of squealing as we discovered them.

That's enough random updating for now. I will prod the rest of my family into updating more regularly. I've been out of town for the past several months, and it's apparently up to me now to motivate everyone. And I promise that there will be more pictures in the next post.

It's Cold Here!

I know for most of the nation that 34 isn't really cold, but for here it is. It has been averaging 34 degrees here for over a week. This has created problems for us. We can handle keeping the water flowing so all of our critters can drink, we can even handle going out and feeding in the rain, but what we can't handle is our babies dieing.
We have baby lambs out in the field. Most of them are about 2 months old and I love to watch them jump and play. They aren't used to snow. We have had snow off and on for the last 2 weeks culminating in about 4 inches! These babies are still with their moms and nursing frequently. They have been getting cold and lose those precious reserves rapidly then they can't keep up with their mamas.
We find them in the snow and bring them into the house and try to save them. Our hospital is a bathroom that is in the (long) process of being remodeled. Most have died... But the last 2 have been successful! They have recovered enough to jump out of the bathtub! It is really gratifying to finally save some.

As I was driving up our drive yesterday I saw something which compelled me to call my mom even though I was only a few feet away from the front door.

"Hello?"

"Hello," said I. "Why is there a grizzly bear in the turnout?"

It wasn't a grizzly bear, which I knew. But it sure looked like one. The biggest bull I had ever seen was pacing nervously back and forth in the turnout that didn't currently house any of our animals. I thought. My mom explained briefly on the phone. Lil' bit explained more later.

It seems that the neighbor's bull had escaped and had been running around in the street. So lil' bit ran out to the street just as a truck plowed down and managed to miss the bull (whose name happens to be "Sammy," apparently). My sister and I have already made friends with this bull. Last summer he chased us through the back field and treed us and my friend (who was pretty unhappy with the whole thing, I must admit). But in retrospect we realized that he had wanted cookies. Sammy is friendly and sweet and scary. He's the kind of cow that would kill you by accident and then apologize.

Anyway, there lil' bit was, calmly herding Sammy back down his drive with two sticks. "Really, Elly May," she told me later, "with a cow this size, you don't make him do anything. you just hope he agrees with your ideas." Sammy turned back into the streets again, so lil'bit finally decided to herd him down our drive where we have a gate to block his escape. She told me that people were slamming on their brakes and leaning out their car windows with deep concern.

"Oh my goodness! Are you alright honey? Do you need help?"

I guess you can't blame them. Lil' bit lives up to her name. She's very petite for a 14 year old and looks more fragile than she is. These people haven't ever seen her carrying 50lb bags of feed.

My darling sister assured all of the bystanders that she was fine and could handle this enormous animal. And she did, calmly encouraging him to go up our drive. My dad came out and together they convinced him that the best course of action was to wander into the turnout, which was where I found him, pacing nervously around and snorting, as I returned from classes.

The next day the neighbors came to retrieve their bull and we haven't seen him since and life on the funny farm has returned to normal. Whatever that is.

Putting my education to good use

This morning I was headed out the door towards classes at my university when I realized I had forgotten to complete an assignment for my microbiology lab. I grabbed my environmental sampling kit and tried to remember the instructions. My professor had briefly explained what to do last week, so I figured I remembered it pretty well. I took my RODAC plate and squished it onto the bathroom counter. But what should I use my wet swab culture on?

Obviously, being a rancher, I went to the most obvious: the animals. I opened up the door to my rabbit's cage and swabbed his nose. Then on my way down to the gate I stopped at the barn and dashed in to our quarantined sheep. I rubbed their back ends with the swab. I concluded this sampling by attacking the two turkeys perched on the fence.

None of this would have been a big deal except that I read the instructions later and realized we were supposed to sample four of the same type of items, like four pens, or forks, or something. Oops. I wrote "Farm animals 1-4" on my lab notebook.

This was right before when my professor made her announcement. Over the last week she had been contacted by a news crew hoping to do a show on environmental sampling. So, she concluded "next week there will be a tv crew in lab with cameras talking to you about your samples and what you sampled to get your results."

I have this vision of holding up my agar plate and announcing that I sampled "Sheep butts."