Montana For Real

Wearing the Bear

2012-01-29T13:56:00.009-07:00

As I mentioned in my blog from New Year’s weekend, we recently went skiing at Bridger Bowl in Bozeman. On average, I ski once every two years. I’m always amazed my body can remember how to manage skis, poles, etcetera, especially when last week, after decades of riding horses, it suddenly forgot how to walk in spurs. Ouch.

Since I ski so infrequently I don’t have state of the art jackets and pants and stuff, but my sister has spares so I generally don’t look like a complete dork, and last spring she went to Utah on vacation and picked up a cozy new winter hat for me so I was set, except for the part where none of my family members wanted to be seen with me. Or as one of them put it, “Please try not to do anything memorable in that thing.”

Since my sister bought it down by Park City in serious skiing country, I assumed this was what all the cool people were wearing these days. Turns out, not so much. Children pointed People turned to take a second look. Yelled Nice hat! from ski lifts as I schussed down runs. There was no blending into the crowd while wearing the bear. All of which would have been fine if it weren’t for the Magic Carpet.

Bridger Bowl is very proud of this fancy schmancy new upgrade to their quad chair. It is basically a huge conveyor belt that eliminates the need to shuffle frantically forward when it’s your turn to catch the lift chair. You just step onto the belt and glide forward, the motion timed to deposit your butt on the chair as it swings around. The belt is cool. Getting to the belt, however…

You know how at the Olympics the downhill racers are behind those gates that swing open as the timer beeps? That’s what the gates to the Magic Carpet are like. You lean your thighs against them and they release you onto the belt in perfect coordination with the oncoming chair.

Here’s the twist: the gate swings forward. Which is where my ski poles usually are. Which meant when the little gate slapped open, it pinned my ski pole against the divider at the very moment the magic belt was dragging the rest of me forward. I think you can imagine how this ended. Sure glad those lift operators are quick on the kill switch.

The next time around, I was prepared. I stepped boldly into place at the gate, tucked my poles under my arms, racer-style…and nearly poked an eye out on the person behind me. He yelped and I turned to apologize, jerking my poles down from under his chin as the gate opened. My skis went forward, my pole got pinned and the entire lift ground to a halt. Again.

So I gave up on the quad and headed over to the Virginia City lift.

Simple. No belts. No gates. Except Virginia City has center pole chairs and out of habit I turned to grab the outside arm like on the quad and the pole whacked me in the butt and knocked me off my skiis and yep, you know the rest. Another lift stopped dead.

I’m quite certain by the end of the afternoon every lift operator on the hill knew me by sight and was radioing ahead as I fumbled onto the lift.

“Heads up at the top. Bear lady on board.”

This is why when you wear the bear, you shove it deep into your backpack before going in the lodge for a beer après ski. And make sure you’re also wearing goggles.

On My Toes - Part Two

2012-01-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

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And the winner is: the Ariat Legends. Yes, I went with the practical, although these are still flashier than my normal, except other than this picture or if the mud is more than ankle deep you will NEVER see this short-legged gal with her jeans tucked in, so those shiny tops sort of go to waste.

As for the picture, this one is for Cynthia D'Alba because:

A. She has the exact same pair of boots and,

B. She recently informed me that the subject of a certain photo had to be a boy because of the way its toes turned out.

Hah.

On My Toes

2012-01-21T13:33:00.015-07:00

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A long, long time ago writer friend Cynthia D'Alba asked me to do a post about cowboy boots. So long ago that she gave up waiting, wrote her own cowboy book, got published and is due for release next month (and you can go here to preorder!).

But I am finally getting around to doing that post she wanted, mostly on account of CountryOutfitter.com, who stopped by the ol' blog and liked it enough to offer me a pair of Ariat boots in exchange for chatting about them. Couldn't have come at a better time since I'm due for a new pair, although my husband seems to think I have plenty.

Look close though and you can see they're all getting pretty run down at the heels and scuffed at the toes, with the exception of the spanky new Ariat Terrain hikers on the far left. I got those for Christmas and wow, do I love them. Lightweight, warm, very comfortable. Wore them to work all week then on the way home last night I took them out for an impromptu mile hike through six inches of snow on the trail of an escaped calf (come back next week for that story) and they were awesome for both. The price is nice, too, and there are other colors like these deeper brown ones:

Ariat Terrain.

What's cool about these boots is the heel. Look close. Even though they're great for hiking, they're also designed for riding, with the sharply squared heel that won't slip through your stirrup like a regular snow boot. Win all around for calving season, when you never know if you'll end up on foot shoving a new baby through snow drifts with your horse trailing along behind.

In fact, those in the know might be able to look at the photo of my boot line up and realize that except for the pair with the spurs, they're ALL Ariats. The pair with the red tops and the beat up hikers next to them were my first two pairs and I was an instant convert. I have very high arches and these are the only boots I've owned that don't require an additional insert for support. Plus, they last. Those two pairs are seven years and a thousand miles old.

Even my Fat Babies on the far right have some scars, although I consider them my 'dress shoes' and don't wear them for riding. The dog chewed the top tab off the left one and I have a bad habit of tucking my foot under my desk chair which scuffs up the toe on the right. Despite the thick sole and bulkier shape, it is amazing how light these boots are. If I'm in the mood for comfort I reach for my Fat Babies instead of running shoes, and that rounded toe? Perfect for when you trip over the kid's step stool and bust that toe next to your pinky toe and it swells to the point that you can't wear any other shoes for a month. Or so I've heard.

So yeah, right when I decided it was time for new boots along came Country Outfitter. Here's the problem. I have choices, which meant I had to go poking around in their catalog to pick out what I wanted. That was a month ago and I'm just now re-emerging.

I have, however, managed to narrow it down to three options. Okay, maybe four. Or wait, there were those Fat Baby's with the funky zipper top....ouch! (that's me slapping my own hand before I lose another half a day to browsing).

If I go with utility, thinking in terms of something I can wear at the rodeos, there's this:

Ariat Legend

These are a departure from my normal style. I've never owned anything with the square toe and I generally stick with the wider, flatter roper-style heel, so named because they are preferred by calf ropers who have to bail out of their stirrup and run down the rope. Since my event doesn't require me to get off my horse, I don't have to worry about the type of heel and I think these look cool, more like what the saddle bronc riders wear, suitable given my knack for making horses buck.

Plus, I'm loving the color of the tops and I prefer the thinner, traditional sole for roping. That old pair up top with the spurs? I have to let my stirrups down a notch to account for the thick crepe sole and they tend to hang up as I step down from my horse. Since I'm a short-legged gal who has somehow become the owner of a lot of tall horses, this can make for some very awkward moments.

If I wanted to go with something dressier to replace my Fat Babies, there's this:

Showbaby

I know, right? Does it get any prettier, plus you've got all that comfort. Tell me again why women wear stilettos? Then again, as I mentioned I am slightly under-endowed in the leg department so I do enjoy some props once in a while, which led me here:

Dixie

But then I thought, "If you're gonna get fancy, you might as well be serious about it" and I thought maybe these:

Heavenly

Then my husband wandered past, busted out laughing and asked if I was just trying to get struck by lightning the first time I stepped outside what with all those crosses and my somewhat shaky attendance record at church.

You see my dilemma. I could go on like this all day. So feel free to chime in and tell me what you like best. Square toes, round toes, pointy or fat? Slanted heels, ropers, something with a little height? Or go to Country Outfitters, pick out your favorites and post a link in the comments. Can't wait to see what you choose.

As for me, check back next week and I'll show you what I decided to put on my toes.

To keep the FTC happy and in case I haven't already mentioned it a dozen times, here's the official disclaimer: A retailer of Ariat boots for women, Country Outfitter sent me these Ariat women's legend boots to review.

Wave to Me

2012-01-14T17:18:00.114-07:00

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So yeah, I know your dog is cool. Sit, roll-over, play dead. Very nice. But can it do this?

Haystack climbing aside, our dog Max is almost a year old and starting to earn her keep as a cow dog, despite our substantial deficits as trainers. She was raised by my cousin Wayne on the ranch next door and he takes his dogs seriously, so we didn't exactly start with a mutt. He's been trying to give us pointers, including the proper commands to be used with a working dog.

I had foolishly assumed shouting things like "Go left", "Go right", "Go fast" and "Stop, dammit!" would suffice. I was informed I was mistaken. Real dogs prefer something a bit more genteel. An entire vocabulary of commands passed down since the beginning of time back in England or Ireland or someplace where they had no choice but to herd sheep for sustenance (for those of you who weren't around in the early days of this blog, my contempt of sheep is thoroughly explored in The Will to Die).

The main four commands are as follows:

Come bye: Go around the herd in a clockwise direction.

Away to me: Go around the herd in a counter-clockwise direction.

Walk up: Move straight up to the herd in a slow, steady manner.

Down: I'm gonna assume this one is self explanatory.

Now let's talk about me. I have issues with left and right. Didn't really get them straight until I was in the fifth grade and a horse pulled back and rope-burned my left hand so bad it left a scar, which then gave me a permanent marker. Scar = left. Awesome. All these years later the scar has faded, but I've mostly got the left and right thing under control, although I occasionally have to stop and think, "Right. The hand you rope with." And now they expect me to remember "Come bye" and "Away to me"?

Yeah. Sure.

So the dog and I are usually in muddle. Me, seeing a cow taking off to the right, yells, "Come bye!" The dog goes left. I yell, "No, the other come bye!" Then the dog throws up her paws and just chases whatever's closest. (And yes, the first time I wrote this paragraph I had the lefts and rights completely backwards and had to start over.)

On top of all that, I just plain feel stupid yelling this stuff. It makes no sense. And I'm not the only one who gets confused. During shipping one fall my husband Greg, cousin Wayne and the dogs were in the big corral with two hundred head of cows and calves bawling their lungs out, making it nearly impossible to hear. Greg started a bunch of cattle toward the alley when he heard Wayne yell, "Wait!"

So he stopped. The cows and calves scattered, dodging back into the herd. Wayne gave Greg a puzzled look and gestured that they needed to bring more cattle up. Greg headed back into the herd, started a bunch toward the alley, only to hear Wayne yell, "Wait!" He stopped. The cattle scattered. Wayne marched over to where he was standing.

"Why do you keep stopping?"

"Because you yelled Wait!"

Wayne stared at him, confounded. "No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did. I heard you."

Wayne rolled his eyes, pointed at the dogs. "Not Wait. Away to me."

Oh. Whoops.

Then there was the day we were moving a bunch of uncooperative cows. Wayne had all three of his dogs along and he was sending them right, then left, then right, then left again to thwart attempted escapes. My son, riding with my mother on the four wheeler, finally turned to her, looking perplexed.

"Grandma, why does he keep yelling at those dogs to wave to him?"

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There are no "Hips" in "Blackfeet"

2012-01-08T20:50:00.004-07:00

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So yeah, it's the New Year and all that, and while I don't make resolutions per say, I do find it generally necessary to recommit myself to exercise after six weeks of excessive stuffing of my face over the holidays. Since the clinic where I work has purchased a staff membership at the fitness center right down the street, I don't have a whole lot of excuses this winter. While I was at it, I decided to try something new. It's called Zumba, and when done correctly, it looks like this:

Note that I said "when done correctly". Because here's the thing: I wasn't a cheerleader, or a twirler, or even one of the popular girls who got asked to dance a lot. Plus I grew up out here on the reservation where dancing looks like this:

As you can see, Zumba is all about something called 'power hips', while Native American dancing is all about the feet, which makes sense especially for us being Blackfeet and all. Toss in my complete inability to mirror the movements of a dance instructor and I'm telling you, it ain't pretty.

So far, though, the injuries have been minor. A couple of dislocated ribs and a sprained muffin top on my part from doing that shimmy thing. And a busted gut on the part of my classmate from watching me try.

PS: Yes, I know the second video takes a while to get to the dancing, but that is 'my' Chief Mountain at the opening, from a slightly more northerly angle than our view here at the ranch.

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Very Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T10:52:00.006-07:00

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This is a special edition of the old blog, brought to you from Bozeman.

via Bridger Bowl webcam

That's the view looking southwest from the top of the Bridger mountains. We're here for a family ski trip, enhanced by the fact that my brother in law is on the ski patrol at Bridger Bowl, which means we get to park in the employee parking lot and get personalized care when we slam into trees. Win-win, I'm telling you. And tonight we'll be ushering in the New Year from a steaming pool at Bozeman Hot Springs, after which I may almost be able to walk again.

New Year's isn't usually much of an event for us. At least, not intentionally. For ten years we lived in Oregon, on a rented acreage outside of Hermiston, in a single wide mobile home. By this point in our marriage the New Year merited no more than, at most, a second beer and a rented movie. Any suggestion of staying up until midnight was met with mockery from both parties. Thus it was that the end of our first year in Oregon found us snuggled cozy in our bed, sleeping the sleep of the righteous. Or maybe just clueless.

Then the clock struck midnight.

We were completely unprepared when the apocalypse erupted outside our door. BANG! BLAM! BOOM! I shot out of bed like I'd been blasted from a cannon and hit the front deck still half awake, in nothing but barefeet and a t-shirt.

BANG! BLAM! BOOM!

The sky lit up. Volleys of artillery exploded around me. Turns out our neighbors hoarded fireworks for months, just for this purpose. They supplemented their show by firing 9mm pistols into the air. And shotguns. And possibly a few hand grenades, from the sound of it.

At this point, a normal person could have yelled out a few curse words--okay, muttered, because after all these people were armed--then toddled back to bed. I am not normal. I own horses. Three of which had been dozing contentedly in the two acre pasture below the house only minutes before.

Lord only knew what they were doing now.

I grabbed a pair of sweatpants, shoved my bare feet into boots and yanked on my husband's flannel shirt. Forget finding a flashlight. I stumbled out in the dark, sure the horses would have panicked and stampeded through the fence and into the desert, straight to the nearest highway. I was already debating their most likely route when I blew through the gate and into the pasture.

All three of them blinked at me from the corner by the corral, sleepy and puzzled. What the heck are you doing out here? Don't you know it's the middle of the night?

I muttered another bad word. Or five. Then I leaned on the fence and enjoyed the rest of the fireworks display, as long as I was up and all. When it finally ended, I shuffled back into the house, kicked off boots and sweats and coat and burrowed into my bed. My husband grumbled when I put my feet on his leg to warm up.

"Why are your feet so cold? It feels like you've been walking around outside."

I stared at him, astounded. "Well, yeah. I had to check on the horses in case they were scared."

"Of what?"

And then I kicked him.

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Hippie Christmas

2011-12-17T19:54:00.001-07:00

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Every year I dream up great ideas to get all crafty and homemade for Christmas. Ornaments! Stockings! Handmade necklaces for my sisters! A gingerbread replica of Many Glacier Lodge! In my head, they all turn out elegant and dreamy with a minimum of fuss.

Reality goes pretty much like this year. I hadn't bought a Christmas present until Monday, when I ordered one online. Then I hit the hardware store here in town for a toboggan and happened across a popcorn popper at the grocery store. I was on a roll.

We decided to take care of the rest in one big blast. I left work early yesterday and we drove the two hours to Great Falls and spent three hours engaged in aerobic Christmas shopping. Now we are DONE. Until approximately eleven o'clock on Christmas Eve when I will be madly shoving things into gift bags and scratching out last year's names on the tags because I forgot to buy new ones.

The kid and I have propped up our usual scrawny Christmas tree in the corner of the living room, slapped on a couple strings of lights and our hodge podge of cheesy ornaments that shrinks every year thanks to the unforgiving nature of a concrete living room floor.

Ah, holiday traditions.

However, I am proud to say that I did manage to pull off one of my planned Christmas projects, with a little help from my mother. For whatever climatological reason, this year we had a bumper crop of rose hips, so we made rose hip jelly.

First, a little about the roses. They grow wild in our pastures, in quantities large enough that right across the border from us southern Alberta is officially known as Wild Rose Country, as you can see from the logo above. They range in color from pale pink to fuschia and have a typical rose scent. And thorns. In September, after the roses are long gone, the blooms are replaced by brilliant red hips:

The hips are edible, consumed by everything from gophers to birds to coyotes. As you can imagine, on a prairie as devoid of shrubbery as ours is, they also attracted the attention of the indigenous tribes, and were used for medicinal and ceremonial purposes. Turns out rose hips have ten times more Vitamin C than oranges, which is why there is Rose Hip Vitamin C at your drugstore.

Here's the thing: they do not taste good. They are bitter and leave a pasty aftertaste on your tongue, which is why I had never considered harvesting them before. But we had so many this year and they were so big and bright, and I'd seen rose hip jelly in one of the Glacier National Park stores, so I decided to give it a try.

First, I dragged the kid out to the bull pasture with me and we scavenged the fence line for a nice bucket of rose hips. It was almost worth it just to see them all in the bowl. Pretty, yes?

Cleaning them took the length of an entire Montana State Bobcats football game, but it was a good way to keep from chewing off my fingernails (four freaking turnovers!) so that worked out well. I found a recipe for beach rose hips from Simply Recipes, cooked up the berries as instructed, then turned the juice over to my mom, who added all the good stuff and put it in jars. Voila!

With the addition of sugar and lemon the rose hips are transformed into a very tasty jelly indeed, with a bit of a tang and a tea-like undertone. Plus, it's very pretty. We like it best on warm crepes with cream cheese. And if you believe the medicine men, it can cure the common cold, blindness and diarrhea and ward off ghosts and evil spirits. That's a lot to ask from your morning English muffin.

And of course, the best part about the hips that we harvested from right here in our pasture. One hundred percent organically fertilized.

This Blog Temporarily Interrupted....

2011-12-10T10:17:00.000-07:00

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....by the National Finals Rodeo. For those of you who are unfamiliar, the so-called World Series of rodeo is ten days long, held in Las Vegas, and televised nightly on the Great American Country channel. After the nine days of staying up at least an hour past my regular bedtime I am sleep-deprived and brain dead, so you're not missing much in the way of blog posts during this hiatus. For those of you who want to play along but aren't rabid enough to sit up until all hours watching the performances live, there are next day replays during civilized times.

Also this week, and an even greater source of sleep loss, was our son's very first school Christmas program. It is never good when the teacher calls you in a week ahead of time to come up with a plan to minimize the probability of disaster. But may I just say, as the mother of That Kid, our home videos are never boring. And since the program concluded without complete disruption or smacking the kid in front of him on the head with his jingle bells and only partial nudity, we consider the whole affair a rousing success.

As for the rodeo, tonight is the big final night, the crowning of this year's world champions. Then I may sleep until Monday morning. While I'm catching up on my rest, here's a little local scenery for your viewing pleasure:

Coyotes at daybreak. We've got hordes of 'em this year.

The road through the Hole in the Wall.

Winter insulation.

Standoff.

The Elders

2011-12-01T01:37:00.009-07:00

Some of the posts on our ranch were set by my grandfather and his partner, Alec Knox, as early as the 1950's. With our relatively dry climate and rocky soil, some are still standing, like this one. You can see the grooves on the right side where the wood has been worn down by wires that were worked loose and whipped by the wind. This old guy has been around almost as long as the road that runs beside him, originally a wagon track that runs between our house and my cousin's place to the west.

In places the ruts are worn so deep the axles drag on our four wheel drive pickups. It's definitely not the interstate, but I'll take it anyway.

Today's my day over at the other blog, so if you'd like to know why my husband has that black eye, tune in here: For Worse...or Maybe Better

Tell Me the Truth Honey....

2011-11-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

How was your Thanksgiving?

Simple Things

2011-11-24T13:07:00.002-07:00

Where the Wind Comes From

So here we are, the whole family gathered up at the ranch for Thanksgiving with the exception of my brother's family because he's still deployed in Khandahar, Afghanistan. He may be home by the time this turkey is done. Mom got it fresh from the Hutterite colony and they grow 'em big. Dang near thirty pounds of bird. In the meantime, we're tiding ourselves over with the cheese curds my sister brought from Washington. Yay for squeaky cheese!

Given that we've had two consecutive days of wind hitting 80-100 mph, we're pretty thankful that it finally died down and most everything we own is still here and not somewhere in Minnesota, but more on that later. A couple weeks back a friend invited me to contribute a post to her blog about what I'm thankful for. Rather than repeating it here, I'll send you on over to Shawna Thomas's place to check it out. And while you're there, take a look at her book, Altered Destiny. My husband says it's the best thing he's read all year.

So here you go, my take on The Simple Things.

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I've Got Nuthin'

2011-11-22T21:14:00.001-07:00

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What does a writer write about when they can't think of anything to say? Well, if you're me, you write about coming up with stuff to write about when there's nothing to write about. Which is what I did HERE. Which is the link I'm giving you because I"m too lazy to even come up with excuses not to write about anything tonight.

Enjoy.

Random photo inserted because studies show you people like that sort of thing.

Signs

2011-11-19T17:30:00.005-07:00

One of my amusing little hobbies. Signs. Of what, I'm not sure. (Trouble reading? Click on the picture to enlarge.)

Not that anyone would reconsider getting flung sixty feet in the air.

Kids are fine, but you gold panners stay the heck out.

Thank God. Don't know what I'd do if I couldn't get refrigerated worms at three o'clock in the morning

Hannibal Lector, instructor?

What, you thought it was only a song?

And people say we have no culture out here.

This left me speechless. And I think the lady behind me was packin'.

Cow Mad

2011-11-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

This cow is driving me crazy.

A single cow, in contrast to my normal cow-induced insanity, inflicted by whole herds. I prefer to exist in a world governed by common sense and cow behavior defies most attempts at logic. For example, if you’re standing in a pasture full of knee high grass and clear, cool running creeks, why would you jog a mile to rush through a hole in the fence to get to the neighbor’s already combined barley field, which is dry as a bone?

(And thank you, Anonymous Hunter, for that full afternoon’s extra work courtesy of the wires you cut. Your hunter friends can all thank you too, the next time a rancher blocks a road or nails up No Trespassing signs and says “No way” when they call to ask if they can hunt there. Oh, and here’s those beer cans you dropped, too.)

It is even more difficult to grasp why a dozen cows would stroll across an oat field ripe with heads too short to be picked up by the combine, ford a lovely little brook, scour the fenceline until they find that one wire flattened by the snow, hidden in three foot high timothy grass and second growth alfalfa, and hoist their big fat butts over it to get to the neighbor’s already combined wheat field. Cows don’t even like wheat.

But Lord knows, they’ll eat plenty of other things. Three hundred acres of grass, but the yearlings find it absolutely mandatory to chew up any chunk of rope or twine you leave hanging on a gate. And bones. They go after them like a dog on a…well, bone. Which is sort of creepy since the majority scattered around our pastures are cow skeletons and I prefer not to contemplate cannibalism and cows in the same sentence. Plus they usually manage to get the stupid bone stuck in their throat and then they die, but only after working up a good vet bill.

Still, the bones at least make some sense. They are made of calcium, and so is milk, so it’s sort of like a supplement. Which means they eat chunks of rusty barbed wire for the iron, right? And the electrical wiring off the hay swather for the…okay, I’m stumped on that one. I can’t think of a single dietary benefit to plastic, copper and battery acid.

So yeah, Cow Madness is not an unusual state for any rancher (as opposed to Mad Cow, which at our place is usually that high-headed brockle-face with the bad attitude). This particular cow is a special case in that she is not my cow. Or my problem. Which apparently doesn’t matter to the compulsive part of my brain that insists all cows must be kept—as much as humanly possible—in their proper place, which is not the barrow ditch.

This cow has been standing alongside the highway for two weeks straight. All by herself. Hasn’t moved more than fifty yards in either direction the whole time. Every morning and every night I drive past, sure by now either the owner has seen her or someone else has given them a call. But no. She’s still there. Every single morning. Every single night. Right across the fence from a herd of cows that appears to include her calf, since it was having breakfast through the barbed wire when I drove by on Tuesday morning.

There’s a gate right there. Wouldn’t take more than five minutes to chase her through it, even on foot. So if you know who runs cows out on the Chalk Butte highway and has blue ear and brisket tags and they don’t find their black white face cow on the side of the road, they can thank me.

I couldn’t take it any longer.

So It's Been a Crappy Day...

2011-11-08T19:19:00.003-07:00

You're telling me?

The Week in a Snapshot (or seven)

2011-11-06T17:56:00.004-07:00

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The end of October signifies a lot more than Halloween around here (although if you've ever wondered what it's like to Trick or Treat in ranch country, you can read about it in Thar She Blows). Mid-October to mid-November is shipping time for ranchers. Most of the calves around here are sold on contract to buyers in Nebraska or Iowa for a specified delivery date.

We were scheduled for today, November 6, but shipping is really a three to five day process at minimum, because we can't do it by ourselves. We need a crew, and our crew consists of my cousins who have ranches east and west of us. Which means, in return, we go and help on their scheduled shipping day (and this is me using the royal We, since I am generally required to be at the evil day job for all except our own).

So today we gathered and weaned. Sold all but the lightest of the steer calves. Brought all of the heifers home to feed for the winter. It was sunny, chilly, but no wind, no snow, no mud and no dust. You can't get much better.

I took some videos that I'll hopefully get edited and posted before the cows in question die of old age. In the meantime, here's how the rest of the week looked:

Keep your eyes wide open. Fall turnout time on the fields along my highway.

A sunset swim.

Fire in the sky behind Many Glacier mountains.

Southbound from Calgary.

A lot of wide open space between here and the Sweetgrass Hills.

A few of the neighbors are hanging out in our summer pasture.

What? Is this bothering you?

Traveling Light

2011-11-03T21:46:00.000-06:00

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Once upon a time I lived in a magical kingdom called South Dakota, where the corn grew ten feet tall and the sunflowers were bigger than a dinner plate and the pavement ran clear to my front door. Well, within twenty yards, which is close enough. It was a mind-boggling experience for a dirt road girl. I washed my pickup and it stayed like that, all clean and shiny, and I didn’t walk around with streaks of mud on the inside of my left pantleg all spring and fall from rubbing up against the door frame. Amazing.

My husband had never lived more than half a mile off the highway, so he didn’t really grasp the sheer wonder of it all. This difference in our upbringings became apparent the first time we went to a rodeo together. I told him I was entering Bismarck and he asked if he could go along. I said sure, although there might have been a condition or two. Something about a haircut and a new pair of jeans. I bought him a new shirt myself, quite sure he would come home with one just like every other shirt he owned at the time. A bachelor should be more careful about telling his mother and four aunts that red plaid is his lucky color.

It was two hundred miles to Bismarck. The rodeo started at seven. I proposed that we leave at one-thirty, which meant I’d actually get myself into the pickup and ready to go by two.

“That’ll get us there awfully early,” he said. “It only takes three hours to drive that far.”

“Plus an hour for changing tires and fixing the trailer lights,” I said.

He gave me a blank stare. “Why would I have to fix the trailer lights? They work fine.”

“Well, sure, they do now. But by the time you get to the end of the gravel—“

And then I remembered the gravel was only twenty yards long. I may have done something like the touchdown shuffle that one guy used to do before the NFL got all cranky about showing off. Only with a lot less rhythm.

Gravel roads are brutal on trailer lights. Wires get beaten in two by rocks and yanked loose by mud clods. Plugs get packed with dust. Right up until I was in college, if asked how a weekend on the rodeo trail went I might smile and chirp, “Didn’t win a dime, but the trailer lights worked the whole way.” Any trip that didn’t include sprawling flat on your back on the side of the road with a flashlight in your teeth and dirt falling in your eyes while you wiggled wires was considered a success.

I am reminded of this because in August I hauled my sister and her broke down car home to Bozeman, then circled back through Big Timber to pick up a couple of horses. A round trip of around eight hundred miles…seven hundred and fifty of them without trailer lights.

Three helpful hints to anyone heading that direction in a similar situation:

1. A Mini Cooper will fit in a stock trailer.

2. Thanks to the road construction around Townsend, it is actually faster to travel from Cut Bank to Bozeman via Big Timber.

3. If all else fails, spit on the light plug. It probably won’t fix the problem, but you’ll feel better.

Strollin'

2011-10-30T19:14:00.001-06:00

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A couple of bonus pictures from my afternoon walk. Max and I went down the coulee and up across the flat picking rose hips to make jelly (more on that later). On the way back, we started up the road to the corral and encountered a road block:

Ninety five percent of my brain was thinking, "No big deal, just old roping steers. They're harmless." But the other five percent was screaming, "OH MY GOD THEY WEIGH A THOUSAND POUNDS AND THEY'RE ARMED AND THEY'RE BETWEEN YOU AND THE FENCE."

I am happy to report that the majority was correct, in this case.

This is Timber and Doc as the sun sets.

Gathering the North Forty

2011-10-29T20:12:00.002-06:00

Gathering day, bringing the registered cows and Longhorns in from the far north pasture in preparation for weaning and shipping next Sunday. How far north? That barbed wire fence IS the Canadian border.

Steep climb up the side of big coulee.

All the cowhands I need to get my part of the job done.

Time to wean when you can hardly tell the calves from the cows anymore.

Max says, "I'll get you, you wascelly wabbit."

Giving it Up

2011-10-26T12:47:00.001-06:00

There comes a time, assuming you’re lucky enough to live that long, when you are forced to admit you may not be one of the young guns anymore. For me, that moment smacked me upside the head like a Louisville Slugger when I was still an athletic trainer. Upon being introduced to the incoming class of baseball players at Blue Mountain Community College, it occurred to me this was the first time in my career no one made the stupid joke about having a groin injury and needing a massage.

Wow. Right there on the third base line, I realized I was too old to warrant sexual harassment. Not that I missed the tired jokes, but still…it ranks right up there with when the construction workers stop whistling.

After a suitable period of grieving for my lost girlhood—which may have included an aborted and very painful attempt at taking up jogging—I came to terms with my new status as a non-chick. With acceptance came freedom. After all, if no one was checking me out, did it really matter how I looked?

Ah, glory days, those. At the rodeos, I no longer had to wonder if anyone but me would notice that this year’s jeans were a smidge wider between the back pockets. They were too busy eyeing the twenty-somethings. Makeup? Totally optional

Sweet, sweet freedom.

Then this year, I went and joined the Senior Pro Rodeo Association. The masters division for cowboys in the over forty crowd, with the majority of contestants in the fifty plus range. Suddenly, I’m the incoming freshman all over again, stumbling into Senior Study Hall by mistake while all the other girls know exactly how to get through gym and on to English looking like they’ve never broken a sweat.

And the peer pressure. Sheesh. The quest to be the coolest girl in school was nothing compared to the effort some of these women put into being the hottest thing on the old circuit. Emphasis on the ‘old’.

Lucky for me, the senior rodeo season is fairly brief. I only have to diet and dye a few weeks out of the year to avoid being labeled a total loser and relegated to the table at the back corner of the concession area. Although it is nice and quiet there, an excellent place to observe my classmates and consider at what age I will once again be too old to worry about such stuff. Also to memorize the instructions on the box mounted on the wall that holds the emergency defibrillator because, well, at our age one should pay attention to those things, too.

I’ve decided seventy is my next give up the fight mark. And if someone tells me there’s a Homecoming Dance and a prom queen at the nursing home, I may just throw in the towel now.

The World's Greatest Mouse Trap

2011-10-22T19:54:00.006-06:00

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Out here in the sticks, all of our water comes from wells. We have four, two at the barns and one for each house. Our pumphouse is a little wooden building shaped like a miniature barn. With all the record rains we've had in the past two years, we have discovered that a pumphouse with a dirt floor is not the optimum in design, usually after a downpour when we turn on the kitchen faucet and mud runs out. So while we've got a concrete truck coming to pour the foundation for our new porch (this is me doing a very happy dance), we're going to put a slab under the pumphouse, too.

The pumphouse doubles as the garden storage shed, and was jammed with dead lawnmowers, kayak oars, broken rakes and hoes, a fertilizer spreader, a rusted out table top grill, a dismantled plastic pipe roping steer, three bundles of asphalt shingles (oh my freaking back those things are heavy!), two mangled extension cords, several sections of hose less than six feet long, three horse leg wraps (for all those three-legged horses I own) and a variety of abandoned yard ornaments, amongst other things. I backed one of the horse trailers up to the door and loaded up the whole mess. (Sign ups next week for the betting pool on which day next spring we will finally drag all that stuff out of that trailer, regardless of when the pumphouse is actually finished).

In the very back corner, likely undisturbed since the shed was installed about ten years ago, I found these:

They are ceramic, with walls over an inch thick. I believe they're also called stoneware. I can't even lift the larger one. We call them butter crocks, but they were also used for storing salted meat or curing sauerkraut back in the days before refrigeration. When we raised pigs and did our own butchering and smoking, Dad used them for brining bacons and hams. At some point, they were shoved into the back corner of the pumphouse and left there, uncovered.

The uncovered part is the key.

The pumphouse always smells bad. Not surprising, considering it is damp and freely accessible to varmints of all kinds. I never really thought much about it until I grabbed the smaller of the crocks and hauled it out into the daylight.

Oh. My. God.

You see, a mouse can easily fall into one of these things, but there is absolutely no way it can get back out. Apparently, this has happened quite often over the months and months those crocks have been sitting in that pumphouse, because the inside looked like this:

Yes, those are mouse carcasses. Nothing but mouse carcasses. And skeletons. And skulls. Little tiny vertebraes. Hundreds and hundreds of them, in varying states of decay, a layer over an inch deep in the bottom of that crock. They were stuck in there, requiring that I chisel them out with the broken hoe.

And they crunched.

Thank God the wind was blowing, to lessen the stench. Now if you'll excuse me I'll just be over here hurking in the bushes.

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No Brain, No Pain

2011-10-20T21:34:00.000-06:00

Last week my mother ran over my dog.

No need for sympathy cards, Max is fine. Mom was on the four-wheeler and only going about five miles an hour when a cow tried to hook the dog, who dodged around the front of the four wheeler. Then the cow went after the four wheeler and when Mom gassed it to escape the cow she hit the dog. Max gave one big yelp and ran all the way home, no sign of physical damage. Any emotional scarring appears to be solely on the part of my mother, because Max was right out there in front of the four wheeler again the next day.

Which leads me to wonder…does she have a very high tolerance for pain, or a very short memory? Either of which could easily be mistaken for inability to get a clue.

I’m leaning toward high pain tolerance, since the day after we got her spayed she took herself for a three mile rehab jaunt at her usual breakneck pace with no sign of discomfort. Maybe those spare parts were just slowing her down.

Weighing in on the other side of the argument, though, is a recent Saturday when I was packing the camper, requiring approximately eighty-seven trips in and out of the house in order to properly equip a family of three for a twenty four hour excursion. If we ever left for a whole week I’d have to start packing a month ahead of time. (Cue howls of laughter from my family as they contemplate the chances of me ever planning that far ahead). The dog was right on my heels every single step, even though I forgot and slammed her head in the door three times.

Which puts us firmly back in ‘too dumb to feel pain’ territory.

There was also the night we went for a walk up the gravel road. Max likes to run. Even better, she likes to chase things: birds, rabbits, gophers, imaginary beasties only she can see. Creatures that, despite her better than average speed, she doesn’t have a hope in Hades of catching. That night she took off after a grouse, making a big loop through the hay field, running flat out. She circled back, still flying when she hit the shoulder of the road.

Unfortunately, she misjudged the height of the gravel berm on the edge. It buckled her knees, took out her front legs. She skidded face first all the way across the road, looking up at me with an expression of utter What the heck? on her face. I swear she still thinks I tripped her.

When she finally stopped sliding she laid there for a moment, stunned. Then she jumped up, shook off the dust and bits of rock and bailed off the other side of the road in hot pursuit of a low-flying sparrow.

Last week, she and Greg headed out south to gather cows out of the neighbor's barley field because that knee deep alfalfa they were standing in was apparently getting boring. Halfway home, they jumped a coyote up out of the buck brush.

And Max was off.

Finally! Something she could catch! Which left Greg no choice but to floor the four wheeler on the off chance the coyote decided to stop, turn around and catch Max. He figures they were doing around twenty miles an hour when Max hit a badger hole and rolled end over end at least three times. He wasn't sure she was going to get up. When she finally got her air back, she staggered to her feet, looking a little embarrassed. She hopped on the back of the four wheeler and rode the rest of the way home. This time, he thought, she learned her lesson.

Then they popped over the hill above the house and she spotted the whitetail doe and fawn that live in the trees behind the house. She launched off the back of the moving four wheeler and hit the ground running.

The evidence doesn’t lie. We’re going to have to settle for the No Brain, No Pain theory.

Chief's New Coat

2011-10-08T10:22:00.004-06:00

Last weekend we wallowed in one last blast of summer. Sunshine. Temperatures in the eighties. Almost too hot for this time of year, because when the cold weather hits the change tends to be dramatic and the horses and cattle aren't acclimated. Sure enough, Tuesday night the clouds started to roll in, which made for some great photo ops at sunset.

As pretty as the views were, when the clouds start to pile up behind the mountains we know we're in for a change in the weather.

The rain hit Wednesday afternoon right as our crew finished gathering the cows to pregnancy test, which gave them a solid three hours of working out in the cold fall rain. The rain was nearly continuous from then until late last night, a total of over three inches, temperatures in the forties and fifties. I expect we'll have a few sick calves, going from hot to cold and wet so fast, but most of them are big enough now to take the stress.

First thing this morning the sun cracked through and as expected, Chief Mountain has his first shiny new coat of snow. Pretty, yes, but all I can think is "Here we go again."

Gate Crashers

2011-10-05T21:26:00.003-06:00

Imagine you were walking into the mall and just as you reached for the handle on the front door a pair of linebackers slammed into it from the other side and the edge of the door caught you square in the middle of the forehead, hard enough to send you flying into the nearby trash can.

Now imagine that the linebackers are1000 pound cows and the door is a sixteen foot steel gate, and you'll have a pretty good idea what happened to my mother today while they were running cows through the corral for pregnancy testing.

I got home from work and found my son watching cartoons on our living room couch. "Did grandma pick you up from the school bus?" I asked. "Yep," he said, never taking his eyes off Dora. "But she had to go to her own house because her head was bleeding too much."

I made haste to my Mom's, found her sitting at the kitchen table with a bloody towel pressed to her face. She has a two inch gash on her forehead, a big scrape and bruise on the bridge of her nose, and a swollen right calf from getting slam-dunked over the top of a steel barrel. Concerned with concussion, I asked if it knocked her out.

"Oh, no. I got right up. It was time to get Logan from the school bus."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why none of us has ever talked back to my mother.

September Scenes

2011-10-01T12:56:00.002-06:00

Yes, I know September is over. In case I had any doubt, the weather made sure and reminded me with a cold, damp wind this morning in place of the balmy sunshine we've had lately. But here are a few shots from the last month.

Didn't even have to Photoshop this self-portrait to make myself look petite.

Thanks to all that snow and rain last spring our creeks are still running clear and fresh, a real luxury this late in the year.

What, there aren't stock trailers full of cows in your kindergarten drop off lane?

The neighbor's field, otherwise known as where your canola oil comes from.

We did a six week stint as soccer parents. Our last, unless the boy has an extreme change of heart. He looked good in a uniform (and excuse me, that is WATERMELON, not pink), but he seems to have an issue with running until your sides ache. Can't say I blame him, same reason I never much liked the game.

Grain harvest is in full swing, this is the neighbors combining barley with the mountains of Waterton Park in the background.

The View from a cowgirl's perspective. And that's all I'm sayin' about that.

Making Work

2011-09-27T12:34:00.000-06:00

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I seem to have a special knack for making work. And no, I don’t mean making ‘it’ work, or ‘things’ work. I mean the actual process of creating work for myself and others.

This is not a conscious choice. I know people who get up in the morning looking for something constructive to do. Strange creatures. I’d rather perfect my couch slouch. Given a choice, work is something I prefer to avoid in almost any form, so manufacturing more of it is never intentional. And yet, it is one of the few areas in which I appear to have a natural talent.

Take computers, for example. Better yet, take the one I use at work, all its little friends and its server, too. A couple months back, the software company did a major upgrade. In case you’ve never experienced one, let me translate. ‘Upgrade’ in layman’s terms means ‘completely, totally screw up everything you finally got to function since the last upgrade’. But I can’t blame tech support for the fact that we have to re-enter certain basic information in every account because a certain someone clicked a certain button before knowing for certain exactly what the result would be.

Oops.

Of course, when it comes to creating work a computer can’t begin to compete with your average farmer or rancher. Or even his wife. Pick up one good sized rock with a hay swather and in less than five seconds you’ve supplied two days of job security for the person who untangles chains and straightens shafts.

And then there are cows. Cows are the original make work specialists. They devote a sizeable percentage of their limited mental capacity to guaranteeing that their owners never feel un-needed. For even one single day. Otherwise, why would they push down a fence to get out of a field full of knee high grass and into a crop of canola, which appears to be the cow equivalent of eating your Brussels sprouts because they refuse to touch the stuff.

But just in a case a rancher can’t seem to drum up enough to do on his own, he can always count on his dog for help. Especially Max, because everybody knows a half grown dog is twice as good at creating work as one with a full set of brains.

My husband proved this last week when he saddled a horse to trot up and gather a couple of yearling heifers that had crawled out of their pasture. Quick, simple. Might as well take the pup along, on the off chance that a three mile jog would reduce the number of household items she chewed into plastic confetti overnight.

First off, he had to find the hole in the fence where the yearlings crawled out. Also simple, a couple of boards knocked down in a corner. While he was contemplating the best way to fix said hole, Max wandered down to examine the rest of the herd. And being yearlings and the bovine equivalent of a pack of junior high kids, they returned the favor. En masse. Twenty head of large, curious calves trying to get a sniff of her.

She backed away. They followed. She started to run. So did they. She ran faster. Ditto the yearlings. She was nothing but a black and white streak when she blew past Greg and out the hole in the fence.

And all twenty head of heifers followed.

A mere hour and half later, he got the last yearling shoved back into the pasture and finished patching the enlarged hole. And to think he would have wasted all that time on something foolish like dinner if his dog hadn’t been there to help.

Break Out the Defibrillator

2011-09-16T15:17:00.000-06:00

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Due to a combination of technical issues and LIG (Life in General) I closed up shop here on the blog for awhile, until I had time to take care of some housecleaning. Now the blog is breathing again, but the owner is still a little winded, so it might be another week or so before you see any new content. In the meantime, all of the more recent posts should be readable, but I can't make any promises if you go back more than six months.

And for those of you who are also bloggers, don't ever click that button in the dashboard that says "Remove Formatting". Because it will. From every single post on the entire blog. Duh.

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USO

2011-07-08T22:08:00.001-06:00

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The day we moved our cattle out to the lease, my son and I spent our requisite half hour skipping rocks in the reservoir. In case you haven't experienced it, 'skipping rocks' with a six year old means finding one the approximate size and shape of your head, standing close enough to the water to get your toes wet, and heaving. Then giggling hysterically at the splash. Even more so if it douses your mother.

In the midst of our rock skipping, we found this Unidentified Slimy Object floating in the shallows, dead. It was about six inches long, looks like super-sized salamander with a crest around its neck. My dad thinks its called an axolotyl, but I can't find information on any of those except in Mexico. Any of you seen one before?

Gone Roping

2011-07-03T10:48:00.000-06:00

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Despite the fact that daylight arrives around four thirty in the morning and doesn't give up the ghost until almost eleven, I am finding once again that there aren't quite enough hours in my days. July is my rodeo month, and between work and trying to squeeze in a few practice sessions here and there, you've probably noticed that I've been pretty scarce around here. Such will most likely remain the case until at least mid-August, but I will try to pop in once in a while with some pictures and re-runs of my newspaper columns, which I do every other week.

For now, I'll leave you with some footage from last night's rodeo at Hook's Hideaway, up near Babb, Montana. Gotta love horses that buck, as long as I'm not on 'em.

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Aliens in Antelope Clothes

2011-06-14T21:47:00.004-06:00

Every morning and every night I drive a ten mile stretch of gravel road on the way to and from work. A couple months back, during the first big snow melt, water ran over stretches of the road, washing gullies through it. The county crew came along and filled them in and packed it the best they could.

Then it rained. And rained. And rained some more. I’m pretty sure all of you in the northern plains noticed. The spots on the road that had been backfilled turned to mush, especially a fifty yard stretch along a slough we fondly refer to as Olsen Lake. The ruts there are so deep my Jeep drags bottom if I don’t straddle them right. Plus a nice set of washboards on either side from unwary drivers slamming on the brakes when they see the pit of doom opening before them

In other words, my road is like every other dirt road in the county, with one possible exception: In the ditch across from Olsen Lake, beside the pit through which no one could drive more than fifteen miles an hour without coming out the other side upside down and missing an axle, there is a dead antelope.

I have yet to determine the cause of death. No one has stepped forward to confess to running it down. And honestly, who would? If you hit an antelope while moving at a speed slower than my six year old can run, would you tell anyone? Unless you were texting your BFF the latest awesome Weiner joke at the time, the thing would have had to lie in wait and fling itself under the tires at the last possible second to pull it off.

I can absolutely imagine an antelope doing just that. They are the sheep of the wild kingdom, a dangerous combination of stupidity and suicidal tendencies.

Have you ever really looked at an antelope? They’re sort of freakish, awkward, like an artist’s first attempt at clay sculpture gone horribly wrong. A round, lumpy body stuck on toothpick legs. A neck that doesn’t quite meet meld with the shoulders. And those weird, bulgy eyes.

They have a disturbing habit of staring into space. Standing. Alone. Motionless. For hours. Like they’re in some sort of trance. Or communing with beings from another realm. I can see antelope as inhabitants of an alien planet. Make that former inhabits. I can also imagine they were exiled here for being too stupid to live on Selenium Six.

Alien Lieutenant: “Sir, we have to do something about those funny looking deer-like creatures. This is the fifth shuttle they’ve wiped out this week, throwing themselves under the hydroboosters.”

Alien Supreme Ruler: “Round them up and find some primitive planet to dump them on. And tell my son no more fooling around with genetic modification until he’s in grade school.”

Which at least explains why antelope stare into space. They’re looking for a ride home.

The Best Day Ever

2011-06-05T13:57:00.001-06:00

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Every year, my favorite job is moving the cows out south to our summer lease. No, that is not sarcasm. For some reason, we always seem to get a gorgeous, sunny June day, with the grass brilliant green and sprinkled with wildflowers and the mountains so intensely blue and white and stark against the sky they look like they were painted up there. The whole trail drive is only two miles from the farthest north fence to the big reservoir below Twin Buttes where we leave them to mill around and mother up again, cows with calves.

I could go on and on about how great the calves look this year, and how the grass is going to be fabulous after all the rain we've had, and how I wish they would invent a camera that could do it all justice. Instead, I'll let you enjoy the best I could do with my little pocket digital, along with a great song by Brenn Hill that seemed to fit the mood.

If nothing else, you'll see that it's true what your Granddaddy always told you: When you're at the back of the herd, the view never changes.

For more from Brenn Hill, or to buy this song, go to

BrennHill.com

Dog Tired

2011-06-03T12:55:00.001-06:00

I realize now why we waited so long to get a puppy. Actually, I realized it a month ago, when I walked barefoot from the bathroom to my bed and stepped on a turd that squished up between my toes and got stuck. I spent the next twenty minutes scrubbing my foot with a wire brush and lye soap and still when I went back to bed my husband said, “Don’t even think about touching me with those feet.”

We got the puppy in large part for my son, but also because she's out of my cousin's excellent cow dogs. About a year ago my son decided he was afraid of the dark and started getting up two or three times a night to beg me to come and lay with him, which I would, until he fell asleep again. Then I'd lie awake for another hour in my bed. So we figured if we got a puppy to sleep with him, he wouldn't need his mother.

Worked like a charm. The kid has only gotten me up in the night once since the dog arrived. The dog is another matter. Three times last night she came wandering through my bedroom looking for new shoes to chew. At two-thirty I was hanging around the living room door, waiting for her to finish a tour of the front yard.

Somehow, this hasn't worked out quite like I planned.

I don’t recall having this much trouble training the last dog that was allowed in my house. But then, Weezy was special. In so very many ways. First off, she was a red tic coonhound, which is what every single girl with a full time job should get for a dog. I realized we might have a problem the day I came home from work and found the entire Aberdeen, South Dakota phone book reduced to one inch fragments. Aberdeen is not a small town. The phone book is a couple of inches thick. It looked like the New Year’s baby had taken a confetti dump on my living room floor.

Then I met my future husband. He also had a dog. A ‘real’ dog named Squeak who worked out in the feedlot and slept in the barn. A dog that, five years after we got married, still operated on the assumption that she knew more about cattle than I did. She may have had a point, but she didn’t have to be quite so rude about it.

Weezy did not work. Her sole purpose in life seemed to be to irritate everyone in earshot. Squeak hated her on sight. Despite reservations about the appropriateness of dogs in houses and coon hounds in general, my husband started out cautiously optimistic. After all, pheasant hunting is big in that part of the country, and he’d always wanted a good bird dog. And it went reasonably well at first. His pointed her at a cornfield. Weezy plunged in and flushed up a bunch of pheasants. Greg shot one.

Given their prior relationship, I felt she was justified in assuming he was aiming at her. Even more so after he had to pack up his gun and spend the next two hours trying to find where she ran off to. Then he belly crawled under the deck, dragged her out of the back corner, and took her back to the cornfield for another try.

He found her under the wooden granary the second time.

The day was pretty much history by then, and so was Weezy’s career as a bird dog. She went back to rambling around the yard baying at rat holes (but only when my husband was outside working where he could hear her because, Hello, what good does it do to tree a rat if no one is there to see?) and lounging on her couch. And I do mean her couch. An old loveseat left behind by my husband’s former roommate and shoved over in a corner of the dining room with vague plans of hauling it to the dump someday. The first time Weezy jumped onto the real couch, my husband swatted her with a magazine. She never slept on anything but her own couch again.

Somewhere along the line, she learned to drink from the faucet in the bathtub, and afterward refused to drink icky stale water from a bowl, although slimy green feedlot puddles were perfectly acceptable. This was problematic, in that she would get up at two in the morning dying of thirst and there was no answer for it except to come into our bedroom and get someone to turn on the faucet. My husband slept on the left side of the bed. The one closest to the door. The first time she stuck her nose in his face while he was sound asleep, he smacked her upside the head.

She never went to the left side of a bed again. And after I booted her outside instead of giving her a drink, she stopped asking in the middle of the night.

Now if I could just figure out how to get that point across with the new puppy. And my son.

Fix or Repair Daily?

2011-05-26T21:34:00.001-06:00

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At least, that's how it seems around here most days. Things get broke faster than my husband and my dad can patch them back up again.
Between Blogger's periodic breakdowns and few other minor chores like branding the main herd and the artificial insemination of the registered cows, I'm afraid there hasn't been much going on here at the ol' blog. Plus we're going to hitch up the tractor to the pickup and trailer and drag it through the mud and out of here for a little Memorial Day getaway.

And of course, there's what you get when you take one half ton round bale, add a tractor with a grapple fork and an "Oops!"

Have a great weekend. Hope it's warmer and slightly less soggy than it appears ours will be.

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Rockin' and Rollin' on the Ranch

2011-05-14T19:20:00.000-06:00

Yep, it's that time of year again. The snow is mostly gone, the tractors and plows and seeders have been fired up. Commence farming.

I am not a farmer. I have mentioned this before, in much detail. (see Tractor Crazy). If you could just go out, climb on the tractor and go, it wouldn't be so bad. But no. The getting ready to go farming takes longer than the actual farming itself. Hook up this and fill that and oops, the hydraulic hose is leaking on the air seeder and darn that tire on the plow is low again and the battery is dead on the truck with the fertilizer in it so we have to dig out the jumper cables and by the time it's all finally geared up and headed out to the field I'm already fried.

Despite my best efforts, I do occasionally get tagged to help with things that involve farm equipment. Today, it was moving the rollers over to the far north hayfield. I am pleased to announce that for the third year running, my marriage has survived the process of hooking these things up. If you're not sure why this is a major accomplishment, pop over to The Hazards of Getting Hitched.

So, yeah, hooking up any towing vehicle involves hand gestures. Pointing and waving, palms up and down and out. Most are easy to interpret. Forward. Back. Left. Right. Stop. Go. And, as my niece calls it, the tall finger wave. In case you weren't sure, when your wife gives you that one you probably shouldn't expect dinner on the table at the usual time. Or ever.

So today we went through the usual routine. Husband on ground, me in tractor. Hand gestures slightly more complex due to using the tractor bucket to lift the hitch into place. Finally, he gave me the thumbs up to indicate the hitch was in proper position. Then he pointed back. I backed up. Then he pointed straight down, then waved a hand toward him. And I went, "Huh?" He did it again. I went, "HUH?" He walked over to the tractor and yelled up through the window.

"That means put it in Park and come down here!"

Next, we lined up the second roller. He backed it into place. I gestured for him to stop. He did, but when he put the tractor in park it rolled forward a couple of inches. I waved that he needed to back up again. He did. Then he took both hands and made a circle and bounced them up and down like he was trying to smash a coconut on a boulder. And I said, "Huh?" And he did it again. And I said, "HUH?" And I walked up to the tractor and he yelled out the window, "That means grab one of those big rocks and stick it front of the roller so it doesn't move!"

Of course. How dense of me, not to figure that one out.

So the rollers are hooked up and he's happily squishing rocks and I'm happily pecking away at my keyboard. All is well on the northern front.

What's that you say? You don't understand why anyone feels the need to drive around squishing rocks with massive steel rollers? Well, it's like this:

Need I say more?

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Stupid Isn't Fatal

2011-05-08T17:44:00.003-06:00

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At least not this time.

Those of you who've been following along here for a while might remember Roo, of the tiny little brain and barbed wire fence. New folks can head back to last June to catch up, but before you click the link: Hurk Alert. These pictures are not pretty.

Several have asked how he's been doing. I've sort of put off posting anything until I could say, without reservations, that this particular story had a happy ending. The worst of the cut had closed up by Labor Day, but there was a part on the front of his hock that he kept rubbing open, and even as late as February I wasn't sure it would ever heal. Plus I was worried that the circulation was compromised and the foot and leg might freeze when our temperatures dropped down to twenty and thirty below. But when I went out today to catch Scotchman and Julie, he was back to his old obnoxious self.

I'd show you pictures of the scar, but I could never get that close. Which is a good thing, in this case.

In case you couldn't tell, the left hind is the one he injured. It's still stiff and his gait is a little odd, but overall he's doing great. Could probably even be ridden, as long as you kept it slow. We're not much for pleasure riding around here, though, and he was never that much of a pleasure to ride anyway. Plus, he's twenty two years old.

We're just glad to see him trotting off into the sunset.

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Tell me again about your monster pothole?

2011-05-06T12:14:00.000-06:00

This is what happens to a gravel driveway when the spring thaw hits and all the snow on the hill above slowly melts and seeps into the ground. And really, the picture does not do it justice. These ruts are knee deep. The clay soil beneath the gravel is completely saturated and the water is actually coming up from underneath.

Not that I'm complaining about the warm weather. Just sayin'...

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Monsters and Music

2011-05-05T02:00:00.002-06:00

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Ah. Sunshine. Green grass starting to poke its head out from under the crust of mud and dried leaves on the lawn. Crocuses. Yes, folks, spring may actually come one more time, though it seems like it drags its feet a little longer every year.

I'm still winding down from the Montana Storytelling Roundup last weekend. Still eating leftover Hutterite dinner rolls for breakfast, lunch and dinner thanks to a minor misunderstanding on what constitutes a dozen small buns. And still mulling over the wonderful experiences and lessons learned in putting on an event that included fifteen artists: singers, musicians, poets, painters and writers. I shared a few of my thoughts over on my group blog:

Monster on My Back

Weather permitting, I'll be out tomorrow night taking some pictures so you can see what this place looks like when its not covered in snow, and sharing my new favorite song.

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May Day!!

2011-05-01T08:54:00.005-06:00

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I have a degree in secondary education. I spent much time in classrooms and seminars being told that learning should be enjoyable. An adventure in mind expansion. Except for organic chemistry, because even the biggest science geek in the world couldn't stand in front of us with a straight face and say that memorizing carbon compounds is more fun than Hermiston's annual watermelon wrestling tournament.

So when I say that the last month has been a real 'learning experience', you're all gonna assume I've been out having the time of my life, right?

Yeah. Right.

Actually, most parts of organizing and producing the Montana Storytelling Roundup were interesting, if not always easy. But when, in the stretch of weeks prior to your event, the committee suffers a bereavement, a critical illness of a son, a broken leg and the passing of a founding member, things get a whole lot more than interesting.

Plus, they had me blundering around trying to figure out how all this stuff was supposed to work.

Ready or not, all things eventually come to pass. For the past ten days I've been running full blast, doing radio interviews and slapping up posters and, since Thursday, hauling performers to school presentations, including one photo finish that had us skidding into Browning High School at just past the nick of time. Oh yeah, we also dished out approximately two hundred meals on Friday and Saturday.

Now it is done, I've emerged from the the other side relatively unscathed, and all I can say is...thank the Lord for Caffeine.

And honestly, all the work and the nerves were worth the opportunity to meet some wonderful artists and watch them do what they do best. Here's a wave and a thanks to Arch Ellwein, Bill Cameron, Brenn Hill, Tim Joyner, and all of the guys from Leftover Biscuits. If you ever get a chance to hear them, see them or read them, grab it.

And now, hopefully, back to my regularly scheduled monotony.

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Puppy Love

2011-04-08T17:03:00.001-06:00

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Yep, we have a new addition to the family! Meet Max. She's a Border Collie. Yes, she. My son was in charge of the naming ceremony, and six year olds don't have a real firm grasp of gender-specificity. We'll just assume it's short for Maxine, okay?

My mother also got a new puppy at Christmas. She's a Shitzu. Her name is Sammi. Yes, the kid was in charge of that name, too. So here for your Friday evening viewing pleasure is the World Federation of Puppy Wrestling championship bout. After much debate, the judges called it a draw.

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The Definition of Insanity

2011-04-03T18:04:00.002-06:00

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Sigmund Freud said the definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Which is why someone ought to come and take me away for entering yet another winter rodeo.

(Yes, I am aware that it is supposedly spring. That's where you live. Here, it is late winter. As opposed to early winter, which runs from Labor Day to Halloween, and The Dead of Winter, which encompasses November through March.)

As I was saying...I entered a rodeo last April. Paid over a hundred bucks for a health certificate to get my horse into Canada. And spent that particular Saturday slogging around in knee deep snow tracking down calves that had wandered off in the massive blizzard the day before and watching the snow plows rumble right on past my driveway without even slowing down.

But here I am, a year later, once again dragging the rope horse in from the far pasture and trying to remember where I stashed my rope when I packed it in at the end of last summer, which was right around the first of August. I'm having a hard time getting excited about this because I fully expect a winter storm watch to pop up two days before we are due to head north to High River, Alberta. But I'm a sucker, and yes, slightly insane, so I will practice, and I will drag the horse to the vet and pay out another hefty chunk of change for health papers then use them to start the woodstove while I sit in my house and sulk and watch the snowflakes fly.

And next year, I'll probably do it all again.

Wrangling the Wild Bunch
(As you can see, it is a touch difficult to produce high quality video from the back of a horse. Especially when there's a herd of other horses blasting down the hill toward her.)

The Cure

2011-03-22T12:27:00.002-06:00

“Mommy, why does the medicine that makes my throat feel better taste so yucky?”

This from the kid whose vitamins are glorified gummy bears. His idea of ‘tastes bad’ is when the cough syrup is grape-flavored instead of bubble gum. He should’ve been around back in the old days, when we were forced to choke down cod liver oil for everything from sniffles to sprained ankles.

Okay, I confess, I’m not quite old enough for the cod liver oil, though I do remember a bottle in my grandmother’s cupboard. The same bottle. For all of the years in my memory. Shoved clear into the back corner where the younger members of the household hoped its existence would be forgotten. Come to think of it, since my mother now lives in my grandmother’s house, it might still be there.

When you live an hour’s drive from the nearest medical facility, home remedies become a necessity. If we were true pioneers, this is where I’d tell you a harrowing story about the time my mother removed my brother’s appendix with a pocket knife by candlelight in the middle of a blizzard, then patched him up with a sewing needle and baling twine.

Sadly, nothing that exciting ever happened. I would have been glad to hold the candle for a chance to see a real live appendix, especially in the middle of blizzard, which were downright boring, being stuck in the house and all. Except that year we were snowed in at Christmas and the blister on my hand got infected. There’s a surprising amount of entertainment value in watching a red line creep up the inside of your arm when you know you can’t get to the hospital.

Thank goodness for the Epsom salt. It was our cod liver oil. Upset stomach? Mix it with water and drink it. Infection? Warm water and Epsom salt soak. Hemorrhoids? Um, well, you get the picture.

Close behind the Epsom salts came Mentholatum. The miracle in the little green jar, a mixture of petroleum jelly and enough menthol to melt the paint from the walls, let alone the congestion from your sinuses. I’ve been told to rub it on everything from the bottoms of my feet to underneath my nose. For sore throats, our family tradition is to massage a healthy dose on your chest and throat, then warm a tube sock in the oven and pin it around your neck. Can’t guarantee it’ll cure what ails you, but it sure feels good. I highly recommend, however, that you remember to take it off before you get to work the next morning.

My dad preferred to treat us with hot whiskey and honey. I’m not sure it had any medicinal value, but it did shut us up.

Then there was that time a couple years ago when I had a persistent sinus infection. My older sister sent me a recipe for a warm water and salt solution which, once mixed, I was supposed to shoot up my nose with a syringe. Flush the infection right out of there, she said.

Or I could just go jump in a swimming pool feet first without plugging my nose. Same general effect.

I’ve tried a lot of home remedies, and I will admit, some work really well. Ginger ale for nausea is a proven winner. The chunks whacked off my Mom’s aloe vera plant soothed burns and scrapes and stinging nettle rashes. The jury is still out on whether it was the WD-40 or the Celebrex that healed up my uncle’s sore knee. But there is one remedy I can swear by.

Start with one frazzled mother. Fill a bathtub with nice steamy water. Bubble bath is optional, but never hurts. It also helps if she pours a glass of her favorite wine. Submerge the mother in the hot bath. Recline. Close eyes.

Guaranteed to instantly cure constipation in six year old boys.

My Cheatin' Heart

2011-03-14T16:10:00.002-06:00

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Yeah, yeah, I've been a little scarce around here. And I confess...I've been off fooling around with another blog.

About a year ago I lost my head and volunteered to help with the Montana Storytelling Roundup. Last week I got even more stupid and offered to set up a website for them. Those who know me are now giggling hysterically. Yes, email generally pushes the limits of my techiness, and this blog drives me to near distraction on a regular basis. But a couple of more savvy friends chipped in with advice, and I now have a mostly functional site up and running.

Soooo...*drumroll*....without further ado, here it is: Montana Storytelling Roundup

Pop over, check it out, let me know what doesn't work. Better yet...mark the dates on your calendar.

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Stylin'

2011-03-08T18:13:00.001-07:00

Fellow writer and frequent visitor Bill Kirton has done me the honor of nominating me for the Stylish Blogger Award. To any of you who've been around a while, this makes perfect sense, style being practically my middle name, summer or winter.

There are two catches to this award. First, I have to pass it along to a few of the blogs I consider most stylish. So in no particular order, here are four you really should check out:

For the real dirt, as in red Wyoming dirt, on ranching.... Red Dirt in My Soul

For true style and great food..... In a Miniskirt

For gorgeous photos and custom jewelry and HORSES...... The South Dakota Cowgirl

And because she always makes me laugh.... A Rock in My Pocket

Assuming you haven't wandered off to one of those great blogs and failed to return, part two of this award is to tell you seven things about myself. Unfortunately for you, they didn't specify that it had to be seven interesting things. So...hmmm.

1. I have worked as a cook, a bartender, a cocktail waitress, an athletic trainer (sports medicine for those who are unfamiliar), a physical therapy aide, an insurance salesperson and a medical biller.

2. My college degree is in secondary education. I am supposedly capable of teaching any kind of science to high school students. I spent one tortuous school year in Grande Prairie, Texas proving this supposition wrong.

3. If I'd known it was going to take me that long to get through college, I would have gone ahead and went to veterinary school.

4. Last week, my son said, "Mommy, I hope you're a doctor when I grow up." Either he's having a little trouble keeping his pronouns straight or he's also hoping for a BMW when he graduates from high school.

5. I refuse to watch movies or read books where they kill the horse or the dog or a main character. This pretty much rules out anything written by Larry McMurtry or westerns starring Kevin Costner.

6. Forget vampires and zombies, Jurassic Park gave me nightmares. For weeks.

7. I actually remember life before cell phones. And some days, I remember to turn mine on. Sorry, honey.

The Answers

2011-03-05T18:07:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that a lot of other blogs have occasional question and answer sessions. Since I have no idea what else to write about, I figured I'd do the same. I've been accumulating questions for a while now. Here are the answers to some of the most frequent.

Q: Do you still have snow?
A: Just a few drifts around the yard.

Q: How can newborn calves survive in that weather?

A: Indoor arena = spoiled cows

Q: I bet all that snow makes working cows a challenge.

Q: Going to any rodeos this winter?

Q: Are cows mean?

Q: Why in the world do people become Montana ranchers?

Lights Out

2011-02-27T20:38:00.003-07:00

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We’ve had some wind lately. If you live anywhere on the east slope of the Rockies, you’ve probably noticed. It certainly got my attention the night the west end of my house lifted off the foundation. Or maybe it lifted the foundation, too. I couldn’t tell for sure because the power was out. It’s never a good thing when your local news reports mention power poles and matchsticks in the same sentence. I was amazed we only lost our electricity for a few hours, the way the lines were snapping in the breeze.

Luckily, we hadn’t started calving yet. We sort of cheat when it comes to calving. You see, we have this indoor arena, and it’s big enough to hold all of the cows closest to giving birth. Instead of stumbling around a dark pasture with a flashlight, tripping over frozen cow turds and skidding across patches of black ice, our night cow checks go something like this:

*Start the pickup.

*Drive up to the arena.

*Leave the pickup running while you get out, go through the side door and turn on the big overhead lights.

*Stroll down through the arena and look at the cows, most of whom are kicked back in the straw, chewing their cud.

*Flip off the lights and drive back to the house with the heater running full blast.

We have been known to go as far as parking the camper inside the arena so the night man can just reach out the window, flip on the lights and look the girls over without actually going out in the cold.

The wind throws a bit of a kink into this routine. The nearest power pole is about twenty yards from the arena. The line between the two is strung along a series of tall fence posts. Somewhere along this trail, something has been rubbed bare by frequent swaying in balmy breezes, and on windy days, it sometimes shorts out and trips the breaker.

One night my husband was checking the cows, and lo and behold there was a brand new calf. He grabbed it, intending to slap an eartag in place. Mama was not entirely sold on the wisdom of this plan, and scooted up real close to stick her nose in his ear and express her concerns in a loud voice.

And the lights shorted out.

Turns out, when you are inside a large cavernous structure without electricity, you don’t even have the moonlight on the snowdrifts to help you spot a black cow. And all of our cows are black The arena went darker than the inside of an Angus cow…which was where my husband was going to end up if that mad mama located him because she couldn’t find her kid and she was fixin’ to eat whoever took him.

He didn’t dare move because he didn’t know exactly where the cow was. He had a flashlight, but turning it on might just give her a target. Plus he only had one hand free because he was still trying to hold onto a slippery, squirming calf. If he let go, the cow might really mow him down.

And somewhere out in the void there were those other twenty cows that had gathered around to observe the proceedings. He could hear them, snorting and rustling all around him. He just couldn’t see them.

And that, folks, is what you call a real dilemma.

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What Was I Thinking?

2011-02-24T01:30:00.010-07:00

If anyone happens to know why February exists please share, because right at the moment, I'm having a hard time figuring it out. All it's got to show for itself is a whole lot of cold, snow and wind, and a couple of made up holidays. My drive to work the past two weeks has looked a lot like this, except the train is me and the tracks are my road. Just aim for halfway between the power poles on one side and the fence on the other, it'll be there somewhere. Since I'm not a big fan of Valentine's Day and have never worked for anyone who considered President's Day worthy of paying me to lounge around on my couch, I say "Bah, Humbug" to the whole month.

One thing about winter, it does leave a person plenty of time to hang out in the house and ponder the mysteries of the universe. You can pop on over to the blog I share with a few friends to see What I Was Thinking.

Besides "Bah, Humbug", that is.

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That time again...

2011-02-18T21:42:00.013-07:00

Yesterday was officially the first day of calving at our place. Or should have been, according the to the artificial insemination schedule. Luckily the old girls were smart enough to keep their cheeks pinched because the temperature never got above zero.

In honor of the season, here's a sneak peek into the pages of the Never Ending Novel. Alex is a girl. The following scene occurs on her parents' ranch in Oregon. Chase is a city kid who just moved out from Seattle. They are both in high school. The cow is a heifer, meaning she's only two years old and this is the first calf she's had, which is when trouble is most likely.

~~~~~~~~

The heifer stood in the pen in the barn looking hunched and miserable and confused. She’d never done this before, and nobody had explained how it was going to work.

Or not work.

Alex cursed. “We’re going to have to pull it.”

“We?” Chase echoed, panic squirting adrenaline into his veins.

“Not you and I,” Alex said, as if it went without saying. “We’ll have to run back to the house and call over to Walkers’ for help.”

For some stupid reason, Chase bristled at the suggestion he was all but worthless. Plus, it would take ten minutes to bounce back up rutted road from the calving barn to the house, and then another half hour or more for someone from the Walker Ranch to drop whatever they were doing and drive ten miles by road or ride three miles cross country to come to the rescue while the poor cow suffered. And who knew what was happening to the calf.

“Isn’t there something we can do to help her?” Chase asked.

Alex shot him an impatient look, already starting for the door. “Sure. You can shove your arm up there and figure out why the calf isn’t coming out.”

Oh. Chase looked at the cow. She looked back at him and gave a low, pitiful moo.

“Okay,” he said.

Alex stopped. “Are you kidding?”

“No.” Chase squared his shoulders. He could do this. Maybe. “Tell me what to do.”

Alex stared at him. Then she laughed. “What the hell. Can’t hurt to try.”

Okay, that was a lie. Which Chase learned shortly after they’d maneuvered the cow into the squeeze chute, and Alex had helped him adjust the sides so the cow couldn’t move, then opened the back gate and showed him which, um, opening he should stick his hand in. He held his breath, prayed a little, and worked his hand into place.

“There’s a foot!” he exclaimed, when his fingers encountered a hoof just inside the passage.

“Only one?”

He felt around some, worked his hand past the hoof, along the leg, searching for its mate. The next thing he encountered was a nose. Then a vise clamped down on his arm, mashing it between the calf’s leg and something hard and immovable inside the cow.

Chase sucked in air and tried not to scream.

“Contraction,” Alex said. “It shouldn’t last too long.”

If Chase ever got his arm back, he was going to wipe that grin off her face with his very slimy hand. Forget caution. The instant the contraction ebbed, he shoved his hand deeper into the cow, past the calf’s head. Still no second foot.

“It’s got a leg back,” Alex said. “It won’t come out like that. You have to push the calf back in, find the leg and pull it straight.”

Right. Piece of cake. Chase found the calf’s nose and pushed. Then pushed harder. The cow mooed in protest.

“Sorry,” he muttered, but kept pushing, until his whole arm was inside the cow and his cheek was pressed up against her butt. Finally he had space, and he slid his hand down the calf’s neck, its chest, found an upper leg, then a knee, then a hoof. He tugged and pushed and maneuvered until it popped free. The leg straightened. The two hooves were side by side, leading the way.

“I got it,” Chase said.

“Get out of the way.”

He felt the next contraction starting and yanked his arm free. The calf slithered halfway out, dangling head down. Chase caught it in both arms. The cow hunched up and pushed again and the calf squirted loose. Chase staggered back, tripped, and landed in a heap with the slime covered calf in his lap.

Alex grabbed a burlap bag and crouched awkwardly, her injured leg stuck out to the side. The calf lay motionless as she scrubbed the rough cloth over its body.

“Is it dead?” Chase asked.

“No.”

She rubbed its ears, over its muzzle. The calf moved. A weak lift of its head. A twitch of its legs. Alex grabbed a piece of straw, slid it into one nostril. The calf sneezed all over Chase’s leg. Within a few minutes, it was on its feet, swaying drunkenly as it rooted at the cow’s udder.

Chase plopped onto his butt in the straw. “Holy shit. We did it.”

Alex raised her eyebrows. “That’s the first time I ever heard you swear.”

“My mother says only idiots need to swear. Smart people use real words.”

Alex grinned. “I can’t wait to tell Trey.”

Chase was too dazed to laugh. Or to care that he was covered with stuff that had turned his stomach when he’d watched the childbirth video in first aid class. None of it mattered when the calf latched onto a teat and began sucking, his tail twitching in pleasure.

Alex lowered herself into the straw beside Chase. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, watching the cow try to angle her head around in the chute to get a look at what had caused her so much trouble. They would let her out to lick and nuzzle the baby to her heart’s content as soon as the calf had filled its belly.

Wow. Just…wow. Chase had never imagined seeing something like that, let alone being a part of it. After less than a month, Seattle felt like a distant planet, inhabited by aliens, none of whom he’d had time to miss since he’d met Alex. And if friendship was all she had to offer…well, for this, Chase could live with it.

He angled a sideways glance at her, fighting a smirk as he thought back to his phone conversation with Jason. “Now that we’ve experienced the miracle of childbirth together, do I get to call you Allie?”

Her face went beet red. She narrowed her eyes, bared her teeth.

“Only if you want to know what afterbirth tastes like.”

Postscript, Saturday February 19: Our first babies arrived this morning. This is number two.

#8294

Avoiding the Obvious

2011-02-09T22:24:00.002-07:00

Ten Minutes Old

I don’t know about you, but I find most days life is nothing but a series of problems to be solved. Mostly little problems, like how do you keep the kid from eating a dozen cookies while you’re up at the arena roping? But the occasional big one tossed in for excitement, like the hefty bill from the dentist you thought your insurance paid a year ago.

Problems are a constant challenge to my creativity. Especially the dental bill. And over the years I have learned to be suspicious of the obvious solution. Obvious solutions have a way of turning little problems into major issues. Let me elaborate.

Remember that time you were halfway across the state and trying to get the back off of your kid’s handheld video game so you could change the batteries and save the sanity of everyone in the car, and there was this big screw, and it was stuck, and you didn’t have a screwdriver but your car key fit in there just right and…snap!

Which was when you remembered you left the spare key to the car in the desk at home. And the obvious solution became a HUGE problem.

Nowhere do obvious solutions taunt you more frequently than on a ranch. Especially because you often don’t have a whole lot of time to ponder your options. When you’ve got a horse, a rope and a calf that just dove through the barbed wire fence with the nearest gate half a mile away, you may do the obvious before taking a minute to contemplate the result. Which is, in case you wondered, a not very impressed horse on one side of the fence, a bawling, bucking calf on the other, a rope stretched in between, and the gate STILL a half mile away. And if you’re really lucky, a mama cow playing jump rope on your side of the fence and a couple of busted posts as a bonus.

Yeah. That was helpful.

About ten years ago, my dad had a few yellow cows he picked up somewhere, as part of a bigger bunch. They were some kind of cross between Charolais, Limousin and a wolverine. Except meaner.

We put numbered ear tags on all of our calves as soon as possible after they’re born so when a big blizzard blows through and separates momma and baby, we can match them up again. Most of our cows are pretty understanding about the process. Old ranch hands will tell you this is because a cow won’t maul you as long as you’ve got ahold of her calf. They failed, however, to tell the yellow cows.

One afternoon, my dad and I went out in the old brown Ford to tag new calves. Of course, one of them was a yellow cow. We pulled up by where she had stashed her baby in a clump of buck brush on the side of a hill. Dad opened the door a smidgeon. She blew snot through the crack, then took off the rearview mirror in case we didn’t get the hint.

The solution was obvious. We had a rope, and we had a pickup with a roll bar. How hard could it be for Dad to stand in the back of the pickup, rope the calf and drag it up and out of reach of mad momma?

Simple. Until the cow dragged junior out of the brush and started across the hillside, which was conveniently mined with badger holes and huge rocks. Little bugger could move for being only three hours old. I yelled at Dad to hang on then gunned it, bouncing around in front to slow her down while Dad clutched the roll bar and the rope and made like a water skier hitting some seriously choppy water. As I rolled up alongside he let loose with one hand to swing his rope.

Whomp! The front tired dropped into an old buffalo wallow and nearly ripped off the front axle. Not to mention Dad’s left arm, which was the only thing that kept him from flying out of the pickup and landing on the ground right under the yellow cow’s pawing hooves.

I made another pass. Similar and equally jarring result, with the addition of a fat lip from smacking Dad’s chin off the roll bar. Luckily, at this point the yellow cow adopted an obvious solution of her own. She took her calf down across the bog where we couldn’t follow.

We then went with the second most obvious solution. We decided her calf really didn’t need a tag all that bad.

Think about it. How many times have you seen a minor irritation turned into a major structural damage to human, vehicle or animal due to the obvious solution? And if you don’t believe me, ask Rex. He can explain in great detail why, no matter how bad that foot rot cow needs doctoring, you should never throw a leg over that saddle cinched to the top of the stock rack on the back of your pickup.

Postscript:

For those who aren't familiar, this a stock rack. In the old days they were made of wood slats. Don't see much of them anymore, now that stock trailers have become the preferred method of carting farm animals around. And no, the llamas aren't mine.

Magical Disappearing Leftovers

2011-02-06T16:25:00.005-07:00

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Today I cleaned out my refrigerator. It was sort of frightening. But in the process, I realized I have been sitting on a gold mine. Forget Harry Potter and his flimsy little cloak. I have an entire set of Tupperware storage containers that make anything placed inside them invisible.

I'm serious.

Why else would a man eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for supper when there was a pork chop right there on the refrigerator shelf, complete with mashed potatoes and gravy, and in the plastic tub right next to it, creamed peas? All of which he would normally wolf down with enthusiasm and compliments to the chef, even if it is a day or two old. This is not a person who is too good for leftovers. Otherwise, he would have starved to death back in my athletic trainer days when I worked sixty or seventy hours a week and cooked only on Sundays. When I met him, his idea of home cuisine was to fry up a pound of deer sausage and leave it--uncovered, mind you--on a plate in the refrigerator where he could whack off a chunk whenever he got hungry.

And yet, I just tossed out a moldy tub of his favorite brown sugar garlic sweet potatoes and another of the chicken fettucine that he loved so much he ate until he had to nap for two hours afterward to let it settle.

There is only one explanation. It's the Tupperware. It's magic. And think of the possibilities, if I can only figure out how it makes itself disappear. How much would you pay to never find that someone has filched your totally awesome clam chowder out of the break room at work...again? And mothers...imagine being able to stash your chocolate right there in the refrigerator knowing it won't ever be raided by a ravenous toddler.

I'm telling you, as soon as I discover the secret to the magical Tupperware, I'm gonna be rich. For right now though, I'm putting the leftover prime rib in a big square plastic tub in the middle of the top shelf of the refrigerator where I know no one else will touch it.

Mine. All mine.

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Scenic View Ahead

2011-02-02T10:24:00.001-07:00

Today you get pictures, because my cousin sent me some fabulous new ones that I have to share. This is our ranch, looking west and slightly north. Those are the Rocky Mountains, of course, with the big square one being Chief Mountain. The Canadian border runs just to the right, along his base, so Chief and everything left of him in the photo are in Glacier National Park, and everything right of him is Waterton Park in Alberta, Canada.

See the hills in the foreground, between our ranch and the mountains? That ridge is part of the Hudson's Bay Divide. It angles to the north and east, almost parallel to the Canadian border. Rain and snow melt beyond that ridge but east of the Rockies runs into the St. Mary's river, which goes north. All that moisture will get carried clear across Canada and dumped into the Hudson's Bay. Rain that falls on our side of the ridge drains into the Milk River, which dumps into the Missouri, which dumps into the Mississippi, which dumps into the Gulf of Mexico.What a difference a mile makes, huh?

Here's a slightly closer view of the home place. You can clearly see two of our most prized possessions. The first is the big red thing to the right. That's our indoor arena. Almost a must if you're serious about training horses or roping in this part of the world.

The second is the trees. Look at both pictures again. Notice how many trees you see besides the ones right behind our house. Yeah. Precious commodities out here on the barren, windswept plains. Emphasis on the windswept. It works up quite a head of steam rolling down off that mountain front. There is no quicker way to get yourself in big trouble around here than to mess with the trees.

Just ask the porcupines.

And in case you get the impression from these pictures that we live on a big flat plain, here's a view of the place looking south and east. It's a gain of two hundred feet in altitude from our house to that little black spot in the upper left corner of the picture, which is a pair of granaries. This ridge is the edge of a large plateau about three miles in diameter. My cousin was standing on top of it to take the first two pictures.

So there you go...the lay of the land.

Good Dogs and Brain Mush

2011-01-30T20:44:00.001-07:00

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In the past three days I have revised approximately three hundred pages of my manuscript-in-progress. If you took an MRI of my brain right now it would look like a big lump of cold oatmeal. I'm pretty sure none of you want to read the kind of blog post conjured up by brain mush.

Worse, you might not notice the difference from my usual posts.

Anyway, the other day I was poking around on a couple of old thumb drives and ran across some short stories I'd completely forgotten about. The kind of thing I used to write for fun before I started a blog and a newspaper column and the Never Ending Novel. Which, by the way, did finally end, and is currently the subject of the revisions mentioned above. Which brings us back to the brain mush and today's post. So instead of rambling on any longer, I'm going to share one of those short stories.

I might even give some kind of a prize to the first person who identifies the story from a previous post that inspired this little nugget of fiction.

Hope you enjoy. The brain mush and I are going to bed now.

Good Dog

Two dollars and seventy-seven cents. That and a crumpled gas station receipt were all Joe Buckley had in his pockets to buy dinner. He’d used the last check blank in his wallet to pay his entry fees at tonight’s rodeo, and he seriously doubted the little wood-framed concession stand was set up to take credit cards.

If he were back home in Minnesota, there’d be a dozen guys who would lend him five bucks for a double burger and fries. But if he were back home, he wouldn’t have this problem, because he wouldn’t have been the new guy who got stuck working overtime on a Saturday afternoon, wouldn’t have had to rush back to his rented apartment to throw on clean clothes and haul butt in order to get to tonight’s performance on time. None of which had left time for a stop at an ATM for cash.

You knew it wouldn’t be easy, moving halfway across the country to Oregon, starting fresh.

All his life he’d dreamed of living in a place where cowboys weren’t an oddity; where rodeo was a proud tradition. When his boss had announced that he was closing up shop in favor of retirement, Joe had figured it was a sign. He was almost thirty years old. All but a handful of his friends were married. The time would never be better to make his dream come true.

The trouble with dreams, though, was reality hardly ever measured up.

He’d expected it would take time to get to know people. But he hadn’t expected there to be so many of them. Back home, a good rodeo might draw thirty contestants in each event. Out here, in the heart of cowboy country, it was eighty or a hundred, each one tougher than the next. Joe felt intimidated, doubted his own ability. Was he good enough to compete with these guys?

Not if tonight’s performance was anything to judge by, he brooded, still stinging from his failure to take advantage of a good draw.

He rounded the corner of the arena intent on joining the hungry patrons clustered in front of the concession stand. A woman crossed his path a few yards ahead, sending Joe’s pulse tripping over itself at the sight of sun-streaked brown hair and long legs just made for blue jeans.

Katie Kasper.

Now there was a face Joe wouldn’t mind getting a lot more familiar with. Him and every other single-minded cowboy east of the Cascades. If there were such a thing as a blue blood in rodeo, Katie Kasper would qualify. Both her father and brother were world champions in Joe’s chosen event—steer wrestling. Her mother had made multiple appearances at the National Finals Rodeo in the barrel racing. And Katie had made a splash in her late teens and early twenties, winning national rookie of the year honors and qualifying for the Finals.

All of which was a long-winded way of saying she was out of plain old Joe Buckley’s league. Even at his cockiest, Joe would’ve been hard-pressed to muster up the courage to try his charm on Katie. With his self-esteem bumping along in the lowest rut it’d ever stumbled into…well…forget about it.

But it wasn’t easy to forget considering he saw her at least once a week when he picked up supplies at the lumberyard her mother’s family had owned for generations. According to one of Joe’s work mates, Katie had been the only one who offered to give up the professional rodeo circuit when her grandfather’s health went downhill a few years back.

Joe admired her loyalty. Almost as much as he admired those brown eyes and the warm smile she flashed whenever she happened to be the one who signed off on his purchase orders. Which had become more and more often lately, the one real stroke of luck he’d had since coming west. Too bad Joe’s admiration was so intense it invariably turned to glue on his tongue, making him incapable of anything besides a nod and a goofy grin. Lord, what a moron.

Joe’s mood sunk a notch lower as he watched Katie disappear into the parking lot. No doubt she had places to go, people to see, just like everyone except Joe.

Give it time, he told himself as he pointed his feet toward the concession stand. That was his mantra these days, muttered a hundred times between daybreak and dark. Eventually, he would get to know some folks. But every weekend it seemed like he ran into a fresh batch of strange faces and they were all hurrying off to the next rodeo the minute they finished competing at this one.

He’d give anything to hear someone call out “Hey, Joe Buck!” the way his old friends had, slap him on the shoulder and urge him to join them for a beer after the rodeo.

He fought off a suffocating wave of loneliness while he studied the menu scribbled on a chunk of cardboard and tacked to the wall of the concession stand. “Give me a hot dog and a Coke, please,” he told a skinny, freckle-faced boy who could barely see over the counter.

“We’re out of hot dogs,” the boy said. “Would you like a hamburger instead?”

Would he ever, but three dollars was over his budget. There was only one thing on the menu he could afford besides a candy bar. He sighed. “Nachos, then.”

The boy scurried off and was back almost immediately, proudly presenting Joe with a can of Coke and a paper tray of tortilla chips swimming in gluey orange cheese sauce. Joe stuffed his last seven cents into his pocket and carried his feast to a wooden picnic table a dozen yards away. He’d barely sat down when he realized he’d forgotten napkins. With a disgusted grunt, he stood and stalked back to the concession stand. He grabbed a fistful of napkins, turned…and froze.

Right before his horrified eyes, a sleek black and white dog picked up his tray of nachos, eased to the ground, and trotted off under the bleachers without dropping so much as a single chip.

Joe wanted to shout, but the only words that came to mind would have had mothers slapping hands over their babies’ ears. He stared after the dog for several long seconds before allowing himself one heartfelt, whispered curse. The long, frustrating day at work, the weeks of loneliness and one disappointment after another all boiled up inside him, set off by this last, ridiculous insult to his pride. A lump swelled in his throat, threatening to choke him. He was sorely tempted to sit down, fold his arms on the table, bury his head and bawl like a baby.

But every kid who’d ever watched John Wayne knew cowboys didn’t cry, so Joe swallowed hard and slumped at the table to stare glumly into the Coke can that had become the sum total of his dinner. He’d always considered himself a positive, upbeat kind of guy, tried not to whine and pout and complain. Right this minute, though, he was having a real hard time picking out the silver lining in the gloom.

For the first time, he was unable to silence the doubt demons, those shrill little voices in the dark corners of his mind, mocking him, insisting he’d made a mistake, he should head back to the Minnesota boondocks where he belonged. Where he was the baddest shark in the local rodeo pool.

He clenched his teeth and stiffened his spine. Not yet. I’m not giving up until I’ve given it everything I’ve got.

As he toasted his new resolve with his Coke can, a female voice called out, “Excuse me? Did someone lose their nachos?”

Joe’s head snapped up and his heart jumped into double time. Halfway between him and the concession stand, Katie Kasper stood holding his empty paper tray. The dog beside her looked as guilty as a dog could, head hanging, ears drooping…and a telltale smear of orange cheese across her nose.

Joe cleared his throat. “Those were…um…mine.”

Katie turned, spotted him, brown eyes widening. Her lips curved into a tentative smile as she stepped closer. “I’m so sorry. I’ve never been able to convince Stella that just because she can reach it, doesn’t mean it’s hers. She didn’t take it right out of your hand, did she?”

“Would she?” Joe asked, surprised out of his usual tongue-tied state.

“Usually only from small children.” Katie took another step nearer. “You wouldn’t believe how many hot dogs and ice cream cones I’ve had to replace.”

“I’ll bet.” Somehow, Joe found himself standing, holding out a hand. “I’m Joe.”

Katie started to accept the handshake, only she was still holding the nacho tray. She fumbled, gave a giggle that sounded almost nervous, then switched the tray to her other hand so her fingers could close around his. “I’m Katie Kasper. And you’re the guy from Three Rivers Construction—Joe Buckley. I’ll bet your friends call you Joe Buck.”

Joe could only nod, nearly fainting from sheer joy. She remembered him! But he regained his senses quick enough to keep from grinning like an idiot. Of course she remembered. Three Rivers spent a lot of money at the lumberyard and Joe volunteered to fetch supplies every time he got the chance. Any good businesswoman knew her best clients.

And this client had forgotten to let go of her hand.

Joe felt his cheeks go hot as he turned loose and stuffed his fingers in his front pockets to keep them from embarrassing him any more.

Katie waved the paper tray. “So, I guess I owe you some nachos.”

To his absolute mortification, Joe heard himself blurt, “Dinner.”

“Excuse me?”

Oh, Lord. Was he really going to have to explain that he couldn’t afford a hamburger? His face went a deeper shade of red. “That was dinner,” he muttered.

“Really?” She wrinkled her nose at the congealed cheese left in the tray, then gifted Joe with one of her heart-stopping smiles. “Then I guess I owe you dinner.”

“No.” When her eyebrows shot up, Joe stumbled on, words tripping out before he could catch them. “I mean, I’ll buy my own dinner. And yours, if you know a good steak house around here that takes credit cards.”

The air backed up in his lungs as she blinked, stared at him for an endless moment. Then she smiled again. “I’d like that, Joe Buck.”

A grin welled up from way down deep inside his chest and broke out all over his face. “Me too, Katie Kasper.”

They turned together toward the parking lot, walking side by side with Stella trotting happily at their heels. Katie stopped, crouched down to scrub at the cheese on Stella’s nose and scratch behind one speckled ear. Joe’s grin widened another notch when he heard her whisper, “Good dog, Stella.”

It's a Jungle

2011-01-26T20:11:00.005-07:00

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A while back I took votes on what you'd all like to see on video here. The Snow Saucer of Doom won, but Haystack Jungle Gym came in a tight second, so here you go.

A couple of words of explanation. We've been going through a bunch of snow/melt/freeze cycles that have turned large patches of what is normally earth into solid ice. You could literally skate down our driveway in the mornings. Plus, we've had winds pushing the eighty mile an hour mark, which have whipped up enough dust to turn some of our snow into mudbanks.

The day we took this video it was in the high thirties, which meant it melted just enough to put a nice glaze of moisture on top of the ice. Then the wind blew. Which is why our action hero is having so much trouble making headway in the opening clips.

Watch it through to the end. I'm sure there's a moral in here somewhere about never giving up, thinking outside the box, yada yada. I'll let you come up with your own. Me, I just giggled.

Now for the good part. If you come here often, you've probably noticed a trend with my background music. The first week in December we went to a dance in the big city...also known as Del Bonita. We were lucky enough to be entertained by Trevor Panczak, whose music you've been hearing. I am generally not a real fangirl, but wow, was that a show. I was content to just sit and listen all night. (Also, it's been so long since my husband and I went dancing we've literally forgotten how, so we took pity on the others and stayed seated).

And of course, I got my hot little hands on his latest CD. Autographed, too.

And yep, I'm giving it away.

Two ways to win. Or you can do both and double your chances. First, the usual, post a comment here about how much you love country music, or snowdrifts, or haystacks. Or really put yourself in contention by admiring the obvious superiority of my genetics. Second, pop back over to Twitter if you're one of those people, and tweet the supersecret hashtag.... #trevortown. (No, I'm not going to force you to spell Panczak correctly. Or even say it.) As is happens, that's also his website, which you'll find here. Trevortown

Entries close this coming Saturday night at midnight. I'll draw the winners whenever I get around to it on Sunday. One person will get the autographed CD. Two more will get a free download of the CD from Amazon.com. Since shipping is nominal, I encourage any of my international readers to enter.

So, without further chitchat...The Haystack Jungle Gym.

Stuff you might like to know:

Each of the bales in that stack weighs around fifteen hundred pounds, and are mostly alfalfa. They are stacked three rows high--three across the bottom, then two, then one on the top. And no, we don't let the kid run around up there without supervision. Or, my husband informed me after watching this video, ever.

Guess I better go take that ladder down now.

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In Transit

2011-01-23T11:52:00.002-07:00

Yesterday, during my lunch hour, I had to run to the drug store. And by run, of course I mean jump in my car and drive, although on days when the wind isn’t over thirty miles an hour and the sidewalks don’t resemble Alaskan ice fields, I can actually run my errands. Oh, okay, walk. From my office in the center of town, there is no location within the city limits that I can’t walk to and from in the length of a lunch hour, if I keep up a brisk pace.

But yesterday there was both wind and glaciated sidewalks, so I drove. I was a little annoyed when I had to park three spaces down from Drug Mart, instead of my usual spot ten feet from the door. And there was someone at the counter ahead of me, so I had to wait at least three or four minutes for my prescription. That’s what I get for shopping at the busiest time of day, but I was still back at the office with most of my lunch hour to spare.

I just spent four days along the Tennessee-Kentucky border, visiting my brother at Fort Campbell. Now I realize for some of you, Nashville is a mere village, but my experience there pretty much mirrored what I’ve encountered in any of the metropolitan areas I’ve visited. The larger the city, and the more surrounded a person is by all of the modern conveniences, the more inconvenient it is to access them.

First off, you have to get there. This requires, depending on the size of your city, either navigating a maze of streets and highways that seem to have been designed to be anything but convenient, or adjusting your schedule to that of a train or bus. In either case, you must take into account the seething masses of other people who are also attempting to travel to and from the same or similar locations, which means adjusting your schedule yet again to account for traffic or crowds. The larger the city, the more your actions become controlled by the mob and the transit authority.

In Nashville, we did the usual tourist thing…the Opryland hotel, then a stroll around downtown, with all of its kitschy shops and restaurants and bars. I could have spent hours wandering from one to another, soaking up the music. That’s the sort of thing you just don’t get in a small town very often. In both cases, though, we had to park farther from our destination than if I walked from my office to the far end of Main Street. And it cost money.

Same for the grocery stores and malls, with the added benefit of also having to remember which of the two hundred white SUV’s in the parking lot was ours. Between that and the lines at the checkout, a quick dash to pick up a gallon of milk was a minimum of forty five minutes.

And the post office? Suffice to say I bribed a soldier behind me to mail my priority envelope so I didn’t have to spend half of one day of my vacation memorizing wanted posters.

I suppose you get used to it, and you get more efficient at juggling bus schedules and dodging rush hour. In the biggest cities, you can find a neighborhood where most of what you need is available within walking distance, so you don’t have to fight the transit wars every time you want a cup of coffee.

I think I’ll stick with all the inconveniences of small town life, like parking across the street instead of at the curb directly in front of the door to my bank.

Hey, y'all!

2011-01-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

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That's me, practicing my southern-speak, because I'm currently south of the Mason-Dixon line at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. My brother will be deploying from here next week, headed to Khandahar. That's in Afghanistan, for those of you who are allergic to the screaming and self-important pontificating we call news reporting these days.

I'm not a huge fan of traveling via airplane. Not because I'm afraid, or even because I dread the whole security screening thing, although for future reference, sending a carry on packed with frozen Montana beef through the x-ray machine in Bozeman a does raise a few eyebrows. I can only imagine the reaction if I tried that in Atlanta. Thank the lord it didn't thaw out and start dripping from the overhead bin...although that certainly would have livened up what was an otherwise pretty dull flight from Denver to Nashville.

Mostly I don't like flying because I feel like I'm missing so much in between where I started and where I ended up, and I always feel sort of displaced when I get plunked down at an airport instead of working my way into a place like you do when you drive.

Also, I forgot my camera, so no pictures for you unless I mooch them from one of my sisters.

So far, the most striking thing I've seen down here is the evidence of last year's floods. Those of you who've been hanging out here for a while may remember when we auctioned off the ranch for flood relief. You have no idea how good it feels to know we contributed in any way to the amazing job these folks have done rebuilding. But still, so many businesses stand abandoned, or have been demolished to leave an empty lot where people once earned their living. And we haven't even ventured into any of the affected residential areas.

Anyway, thanks to the trip and working a couple of Saturdays to make up for time off, my January is pretty well shot. I doubt you've missed my whining about the cold, right? But by the time I get home and get caught up, we'll be starting to keep on eye on the 'heavies', in case anybody decides to pop out a calf ahead of schedule.

Yep, already that time again. Amazing, how fast the years cycle through. For now, I'm off to check out Opryland and find me some real southern barbecue.

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Ayo Ihtsipaitapiyoop - Dear Creator

2011-01-07T19:10:00.009-07:00

(Blackfeet Language - audio below)

Aatsimoihkaan

Ayo Ihtsipaitapiyoop

(Dear Creator)

Ispoommookinnan anohk ksistskio

(Help us this day)

Nitahkayistsisinnan, nitahkayiikakimahsinnan,

(to listen, to try hard)

Nitahkaikimmotsiisinnan ki nitahkawatoyiitaksinnan.

(to be kind to one another and to be spiritual)

Ay ispoommoos nitsitapiiminnaniksi; ninnaniksi,

(Help our relatives; our fathers,)

niksistsinnaniksi ki naahsinnaniksi.

(our mothers and our grandparents.)

Ispoommookinnan nitahkaitapaiksikkysinnan

(Help us to walk toward)

Ikkinapi, iitamapi ki kanaisookapi,

(gentleness, happiness and all that is good)

Ayo nitahkaitsiyikskatosinnan

(to avoid)

Saaipoomapi.

(Bad things.)

Tahkastitaam-atsikaa-sinnaan manatsiwa.

(Let us walk on the new green grass.)

Ai.

(don't look at the fuzzy picture, follow along with the prayer above)

Vocals/Prayer by Megan Lunak Music by Charles Littleleaf

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Del Bonita Rules

2011-01-01T15:00:00.003-07:00

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The whole New Year's thing seems to beg for words of wisdom, especially with this being the end of the first decade of a shiny new century, though we seem to have managed to smudge and dent it up pretty good and it's lost the new millennium smell already. Still, if I must impart sage advice, let it be this: Do not let 2011 pass without eating fry bread and Indian tacos at least once. You'll be a better person. Or at least happier.

Which explains why I'm having a very happy New Year's Day. *burp*

Although technically I am from Cut Bank, I actually live in Del Bonita, a name given to our general area as a nod to both the local port of entry and the gathering of houses just on the other side of the border in Canada, which gets to call itself a town because it has a post office as opposed to our rack of mailboxes at the border crossing. Though we are scattered over a ten mile radius, we Del Bonitans have a strong sense of community, developed through decades of having our own country school (now closed)…and because the majority of us are descendants of or related by marriage to one of two families. Or both.

The community as a whole usually gathers at least twice a year—a summer barbecue and a Christmas party. Plus sometimes there’s a harvest dinner. And weather permitting, someone usually throws a New Year’s Eve party.

People think I live in the back of beyond, but compared to where we went last night, I’m practically an urbanite. In honor of our hardy little group, I developed the following checklist:

How to tell you’re from Del Bonita

1. New Year’s Eve party invitations are not issued until at least noon on December 31st, as the host must determine how bad the road is drifting before inviting a large number of people out to get stuck in his driveway.

2. Party preparations include making sure the block heater on the tractor is plugged in, in case you misjudge #1.

3. The invitation includes, “And don’t forget, right before the first cattle guard, take the track to the right that swings out across the hayfield. It’s a little rough but the snow’s not as deep out there.”

4. The only vehicle you encounter on the way to the party is a border patrol truck and he waves because he knows only a local would be on this road in this weather.

5. During the party, attendees periodically wander outside. Not to smoke, but to check and see if the wind is coming up, which is the cue for everyone to scatter or risk becoming long term houseguests.

6. Conversation during the party will include at least one observation that bears seem to be powerfully attracted to dog food.

7. Instead of party favors, the host offers charcoal-activated handwarmers to departing guests.

8. You have no fear of being picked up for driving impaired on the way home, but be sure and hide those contraband Mandarin oranges you snuck down from Lethbridge in case the border patrolman is bored to the point of wanting to stop and chat.

Happy New Year all, here’s hoping it’s a safe trip.

And We're BACK!

2010-12-30T20:49:00.000-07:00

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Helllooo? Anybody else back from the holidays yet? Personally, I've spent the past two weeks wallowing in calories of every shape and size, from hot buttered whiskey to Marge's To Die For Caramel Corn to prime rib. Christmas Day it was forty five degrees amd sunny, which was hands down the best present of the whole year.

Since our idea of excitement is to sit on the couch drinking Fat Tire beer, eating ripple chips and French onion dip and watching the Hannah Montana movie (honest to God, it was the best thing on television, and how pathetic is that?), it's probably no big surprise that we don't do New Year's parties. And now that we no longer live in the suburbs of Hermiston, Oregon, the neighbors no longer set off various types of large ammunition at the stroke of twelve, so I don't have to stand out in the pasture in my jammies making sure the horses don't run through the fence.

I've also never been much for resolutions, and my husband can't imagine what part of himself he would need to improve other than his bank account and his knees, but either would require doing something other than ranching. Which leaves not much to chat about on the ol' blog in regards to the new decade and all that. Instead, I'll send you over to my alternate blog, where I was equally at a loss so I slapped together a little New Year's story for your reading pleasure.

Lovin' the New Year

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The Snow Saucer of Doom

2010-12-13T21:44:00.002-07:00

Up until about the time I was ten years old, we had two kinds of snow sleds. The first was the old fashioned wood type with narrow metal runners that you could supposedly steer by pushing on the bar at the front. This was a blatant effort by orthopedic surgeons to increase business by leading one to assume that you could veer around that haystack at the bottom of the hill. Their scheme was foiled on most occasions by the steel runners, however, which sank into anything softer than glacial ice and left you pinned to the hillside.

Our other option was the four person toboggan. This was an improvement for everyone except the person at the front, whose legs were wedged under the front curve between the chains, making it impossible to bail out when it became obvious you were heading straight for the creek. And if the others, due to lack of visibility or poor judgment, failed to bail out, the front person always ended up at the bottom of the pile.

Then along came the saucer.

Our first saucer sled was steel, painted orange, about three feet in diameter. It spun willy-nilly as it flew down the hills, giving the rider the distinct advantage of not seeing that they’d pointed it at a drop off, and therefore not dying of fright at the launching point. But the saucer didn’t become a true implement of doom until the day we tied it to the snowmobile.

At first we were satisfied to pull it along behind, bouncing over the dips and ripples in the snow left by the wind. Then someone had to go and boast that they could hang on longer than you could, and the game was on. We went out looking for the biggest bumps we could possibly drag each other over.

Considering the snowmobile had to traverse the same terrain as the sled, you would assume the danger factor would be self-limiting. You would be wrong thanks to Isaac Newton, whose Second Law states that a saucer sled on a long enough rope can be made to go places that no snowmobile need venture.

Our favorite trick was to cut a circle at the side of the hayfield, swinging the saucer across the big drifts along the barbed wire fence. Oddly enough, I don’t recall any decapitations, though there may have been a stitch or two. If that failed—and it often did with my brother, who was stubborn enough to hang on up to and including the point of unconsciousness—you could always aim the snowmobile straight at the side of the coulee, then veer at the last second and send saucer and occupant sailing over the lip of a twenty foot drop off. If they didn’t chicken out and let go, you almost always shook them when they smacked into a wall of snow on the backswing.

By the end of the first winter, our saucer was so scratched and dented it looked like it had been used as a shield during hand to hand sledgehammer combat. Our snowpants and coats were shredded. We had been forbidden to use the snowmobile without adult supervision. Spoilsports.

A couple of weeks ago, we acquired a second hand snowmobile, the first I’ve owned since high school. My brother in law used it for racing. It will go eighty five miles an hour. And my son just got a brand new saucer sled.

However, I’ve encountered a small glitch in the plan to provide you with live action video. My snow melted. In case you’re wondering, this is not my sad face. I am perfectly happy to trade forty degree days for your viewing pleasure. Instead, you’re going to have to settle for last winter’s video.

Here’s hoping I don’t get a chance to update.

Download 'She's Everything You Want' by Trevor Panczak.

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YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE...

2010-12-12T15:57:00.002-07:00

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THIS BLOG IS SUFFERING FROM TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES DUE TO A COMBINATION OF POOR TIME MANAGEMENT ON THE PART OF THE OWNER AND AN EIGHTY MILE AN HOUR WIND THAT IS CAUSING POWER SURGES WHICH MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO GET A WHOLE VIDEO UPLOADED.

WE HOPE TO HAVE THESE ISSUES RESOLVED IN THE NEAR FUTURE. ESPECIALLY THE PART ABOUT THE WIND. PREFERABLY WHILE THERE IS STILL A ROOF ON MY HOUSE.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE. IF YOU RESIDE EAST OF GLACIER COUNTY, PLEASE KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR AN ORANGE SAUCER SLED. IT SHOULD BE LANDING IN YOUR YARD ANY MINUTE NOW. COULD YOU HANG ON TO IT FOR US?

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Cast Your Vote

2010-12-09T19:51:00.005-07:00

Yeah, that one was just for the laugh. Don't know about you, but I needed it.

In case any of you wondered, Windows 7 was designed by the elves that Santa booted out of the North Pole for being devious, cruel and utterly without logic or reason. I was dragged kicking and screaming out of my comfortable XP world last week when the boss foisted all new computers on the administrative department. We are now the only office in town where the clerical staff sports football helmets...to cut down on the work comp claims for bashing of heads against desks.

Argh. My brain cramps just mentioning it.

Anyway...I have made a vow to get myself out to do some videoing and take some pictures this weekend. So you tell me, folks. What would you like to see?

How to load a feed pickup.

Haystack Jungle Gyms

The Snow Saucer of Doom. (Assuming it's not all melted by then. Hey, I can dream.)

Or...a topic of your choosing.

Vote soon. Vote often. I'll contemplate your suggestions and then probably do whatever's easiest.

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Strung Out on Christmas

2010-12-02T19:01:00.002-07:00

Yeah, I know, you're all getting sick of listening to me whine about the weather, so I at least dug up a non-snow picture for you. That would be what we call a ranch kid jungle gym. And I promise by next week I'll come up with something else to talk about besides snow. I hope. In the meantime, you can wander on over to my group blog for a few tips on how to put up those Christmas lights in a less than temperate climate.

Here's why I'm Strung Out on Christmas.

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^*

The Rancher's Remote Control

2010-11-18T21:49:00.008-07:00

I thought I had heard it all. I was wrong. Today I met a person online who has never seen a dirt clod. Think about that for a minute. A life without dirt. It’s stupefying. And sort of depressing, because people who grew up like this get elected to Congress and become, say, Speaker of the House, and they can’t even find Montana on a map but they get to decide farm policy. (Yeah, I know. That’s almost like political commentary. And Lord knows you get enough of that everywhere else so I’ll hush up.)

I have to confess, though, I too have lived in a world without dirt clods. The north end of Hermiston, Oregon is located on what is essentially a gigantic sand dune thrown up by the Columbia River during the floods at the end of the last ice age. For ten years, I had an arena that was incapable of mud. I thought I had found heaven.

Then one day my husband’s rope horse decided he didn’t really need to back up and keep the rope tight while the calf was flanked and tied. I reached for an all occasion horse training device to give him a little reminder smack in the chest…and came up with a handful of sand.

I was stunned. My entire philosophy of animal training had to be re-envisioned. Dirt clods are the remote control of ranch work. Any time you can’t or don’t want to get close enough for laying on of hands, a dirt clod comes to the rescue.

Dog getting carried away and about to run a bunch of yearlings through the fence? Explode a dirt clod on the ground in front of him, he’ll weaken. Got a pair of bulls that refuse to quit fighting and move along? Unload the double-barreled dirt clods on their butts. Rocks will do in a pinch, but they just sort of plunk and drop, without that satisfactory poof! of dust that makes a direct dirt clod hit so satisfying and effective.

Like all training devices, dirt clods require practice, and should be implemented with care. One year at the Glendive college rodeo, the boys from Western Montana College were having a problem with their bulldogging horse. Just as they started to slide from the saddle and grab the steer by the horns, the horse would duck off to the left and drop them on their head. So after the rodeo, they ran a few practice steers to address the issue.

Rooster picked a spot out in the middle of arena, selected a couple of prime dirt clods, and said, “Go ahead. Run a steer and jump him right here in front of me. I’ll nail the horse in the shoulder with one of these clods when he tries to duck out.”

His teammate’s eyes got big. “But you might hit me instead.”

“Not if you get your butt out of the saddle and down on the steer.”

(This is probably where I should put the Don’t Try This At Home disclaimer, right?)

As it turned out, the dirt clod approach did not prove to be effective in this particular case. Mostly because the steer wrestler kept bailing off before they got within range of Rooster’s throwing arm, whether the steer was in a position to jump onto or not. I would like to say I wouldn’t have been dumb enough to get on that horse in the first place. I would be lying.

The horse in question wasn’t ours; we’d taken him in to train. They called him Bear. He was prone to sulling up and refusing to move. One afternoon, my mom and my sister were up at the indoor arena with Bear and another horse or two. I was enjoying the fact that there was no one around to notice I was stretched out on the couch in the middle of the day until the phone rang.

“We can’t get Bear to move,” my mother said.

“Uh-huh,” I said, unsure why this was my problem.

“If we smack him on the butt, he kicks up,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re brave,” she said. “We need you to come up here and get on him.”

“Uh-what?”

She hung up on me.

I gave my couch one last, longing look and went up to the arena. “What exactly is it you want me to do?”

“You ride him. I’ll smack him on the butt when he stalls,” my sister said.

Hmm. That didn’t sound so bad. It wasn’t like he was serious about bucking. I climbed on. Eased him into a trot. He made it half a circle before locking up all four and stopping dead. My sister sidled up and swatted him. He snorted, bucked, and kicked straight in the air with both hind feet.

Luckily, my sister is not very tall. Especially when she’s flat on her belly in the dirt. He kicked right over her head. She crawled to her feet, dusted herself off and stepped back. Way back. Then she said, “Okay, new plan. How ‘bout I just hit him with this dirt clod instead?”

If there’s ever a time you hope your sister throws like a girl, this would be it.
*

Sortin' Time

2010-11-14T20:15:00.026-07:00

Eleven o’clock this morning, my husband stopped by the house for a Pepsi.

“What’s up?” I asked, from my couch in my attic where I was happily tapping away at my laptop and admiring my view, the mountains being especially awesome this morning.

“As soon as we finish gathering the registered cows from the Bish I have to run to town and get the backhoe.”

Now, here’s the thing. I do try to be a good wife. Really. But also, the backhoe is going to be digging the water lines and foundation for my new porch. Plus, the Bish pasture is only a mile north of the house, so it wasn’t going to be much of a gather and it was a pretty decent day for mid-November.

“How ‘bout I help Mom and Dad with the cows, and you can just head to town?” I suggested.

“I’ll go tell your parents.” And he was out the door.

He came back and called my cousin to let him know he was going to be showing up early to pick up the backhoe. As I was layering on clothes, I heard him say, “Yeah, they’re going to gather up the registered cows, wean the calves, weigh them all and haul them home.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I said. “You never told me about the all that other stuff before I volunteered.”

“Well, duh,” he said. “Like you would have offered if I had.” And he was gone.

So my relaxing little hour of riding turned into a full afternoon at the corrals. The calves on these cows are either replacement heifers or bulls—what will be next year’s herd sires. The best of the best of our calf crop, chock full of high dollar genetics purchased one straw of frozen semen at a time.

They are also the earliest born, which is why it’s kind of hard to tell which are the cows and which are the calves. The biggest end of these bull calves weighed over nine hundred pounds.

The bones of our corrals were built by my grandfather, although every post and rail has probably been replaced at some point and my parents have made several design modifications. We do nearly all of our sorting on foot. Watch the video, and I think you’ll be able to see why a horse would only be in the way.

In cowboy terms, the cows are the ones going 'on by', as in straight down the alley toward the camera. The calves are the ones making the ninety degree turn into the alley that leads up to the working and loading chutes.

Video Notes

*We don’t use electric prods (i.e. HotShots) when we work our cows. We’ve found it's mostly a good way to get kicked in the belly or get someone else on your crew trampled. The sticks we carry are just fiberglass with either rubber tips or a flat, hollow plastic paddle that makes a loud Whack! when you slap a cow on the butt.

*Background music is "Another Day Another Dollar" courtesy of Trevor Panczak. I bought his CD last weekend and cannot stop listening to it, which hasn't happened to me in a long time. You can download this song and the others from Another Day Another Dollar here. Or you can buy the CD directly from his website at TrevorTown.com. I am especially partial to his version of Fire and Rain, which is the only song on the CD that he didn't write. Pay attention, folks. I think you’ll be hearing more from this guy.

Oh, and I purposely mixed in plenty of cow and wind sounds to discourage any of you from pirating it off my blog. So don't be doin' that, you hear?

Open Range

2010-11-12T12:51:00.017-07:00

The first of November signals the countdown to the holiday season for most people. The beginning of cool weather and windblown leaves and big gatherings during which we attempt to eat plates full of food the size of our heads, which has an adverse affect on the size of our butts and the fit of our jeans. Ah, tradition. Gotta love it.

For most ranchers in our area, late October and early November are weaning and shipping time, otherwise known as Pay Day for your year's hard work.

Steers and cull heifers are trucked off to feedlots. Replacement heifers are weaned and put somewhere they can't crawl out of and head straight back to Mom. In our case, they're penned up next to the indoor arena and fed buckets of oats by hand, which makes them a whole lot easier to handle once they become mothers themselves.

Weaning is also the time the cows are kicked out on fall pasture, including the previously harvested grain fields, where they clean up anything the combines left behind. Many of these fields flank the highways and gravel roads.

Driver beware. This is an open range area, meaning if you hit a cow, you're at fault. If a farmer doesn't want cows in his crop, he has to fence them out. Ranchers have no legal obligation to fence their cows in, though most do because we like to know where to find them and are less likely to end up in fisticuffs with the neighbor because our herd is camped out around the water hole he spent a few thousand dollars excavating so his cows would have a place to drink.

I commute fifty five miles to work every morning, and fifty five miles home every night. Several sections of this road are populated by cows. Mostly black cows. And within another week or so, I will mostly be driving in the dark. It can be downright thrilling at times.

Since the subject is on my mind and I missed doing a Wednesday Back Up, today seemed like a good day to wander back almost a year, when we discussed How NOT to Catch a Cow.

Here's hoping all the ranchers out there have a little something left over from their calf check after all the bills are paid, and plenty of hay laid up for the winter. And that good old Mother Nature holds off on the snow for a while, so we don't have to start feeding it to those cows just yet.

Of Kings and Clowns and Kevlar

2010-11-09T18:28:00.011-07:00

*

As some of you may recall, a couple of weeks ago I had a little contest, in which the winner was awarded her very own souvenir Bullrider Koozie Vest from the Pendleton Round Up. The beverage coolers are designed to look just like the protective vests worn by cowboys in the roughstock events of rodeo--bullriding, saddle bronc riding and bareback riding. There is a very touching and sad story behind the development of these Kevlar vests, but it turns out I'm not in the mood for that kind of thing today, so we're going to talk about beer vests instead.

I moved to Pendleton in 1997, which happened to coincide with the height of the career of a cowboy by the name of Ty Murray. The King of Cowboys, as he was known then. And still is, although Trevor Brazile will break his record of seven World Champion All Around Cowboy titles this year. Some people will tell you Ty did it the hard way, competing in the three roughstock events, versus the three roping events Trevor enters. Go ahead and jump into that debate. I'll stand back and watch the fur fly as the roughstock aficionados and the timed event fans go at each other on the subject of what makes a 'real' cowboy.

Because of course, being a roper and all, I have no opinion on the fact that those wimpy roughies get re-rides when they draw a piece of crap animal to compete on, while us timies take our lumps and head on down the road.

Anyway, back when I blundered into my first Round Up as part of the sports medicine crew, Ty Murray was as much of a pop star as his future wife Jewel, who he had yet to hook up with. Being single and famous, Ty attracted a lot of attention from the female segment of the population. Especially the inebriated segment. And since there is no area behind the bucking chutes for the cowboys to lurk, they end up hanging out on these benches behind the North Grandstand, right out in the main flow of traffic between the beer stand and the restrooms. Handy, no?

There was no way Ty could warm up there. He was swarmed by fans every time he showed his face. It was like the rodeo version of the Beatles. He had no choice but to hide out in the Justin Sportsmedicine trailer parked right across the road.

Which is how my job description suddenly went from athletic trainer to bouncer. When Ty was in the trailer, someone had to man the door at all times to keep people from barging in and asking for an autograph while he was kicked back on a treatment table in his underwear icing his knee (actually happened, by the way). And that's why I ended up spending quite a bit of time in his company, and if you spend any time at all around Ty, you will hear some really good stories.

Two of his best mates at the time were Adam and Gilbert Carrillo, identical twin bullriders who stood about five feet tall, with round, baby faces and non-stop grins. I felt like a gorilla next to them. When Gilbert propped his feet up on the table, Ty asked him if his mommy still had his little booties bronzed when he grew out of them.

The three of them had recently been at another rodeo somewhere and gone down to the bar afterward to blow off some steam. As the evening wore on and everyone got good and loosened up, Gilbert got into a scuffle. His friends were smart enough to haul him away before he got creamed because the guy was, of course, much larger than Gilbert. Pretty much everybody is.

Meanwhile, Adam was behaving himself elsewhere in the bar. Unaware that his brother had been antagonizing the locals, he wandered into the restroom, where some guy he'd never seen before took one look at him, called him a not-very-nice name, and knocked him on his butt.

The next day, Ty found a shop that produced custom-made lapel pins. He chose a pair that were about four inches in diameter, bright yellow, and had them printed to his specifications. One said, Hi, I'm Gilbert. And the other? It said, Hi, I'm NOT Gilbert.

Next time you're wondering what kind of a warped person would ride bulls for a living...well, now you know. As it turns out, it's also the kind of person who designs a protective vest for his beer bottle:

The Bullrider Koozie Vest by Adam Carrillo

Ty Murray's Home Page

Mail Disorder

2010-10-29T02:41:00.008-06:00

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Working in a doctor’s office, it is not unusual to encounter patients who have scheduled an appointment for what they delicately refer to as ‘female problems’. I assume they are not referring to the fact that laundry, left in a dark closet, can and will breed like mosquitoes, doubling its volume overnight. Or that pants sold in the women’s section of clothing stores do not seem to be designed for people who have thighs. Or butts.

Those are problems I’m sure any female can relate to. Me, I have mail problems.

Yes, I do mean mail, as in the U.S. Postal service, although I am outnumbered by Y chromosomes in my household two to one, so I occasionally have problems of the male variety, too.

It’s not a complicated process, mailing a letter. People have been doing it successfully for centuries. You put something in an envelope, seal the flap, scribble an address on the front, apply postage, and deposit it into an approved mail receptacle. And yet…

First, there’s the stuff you put inside. Like the phone bill. Which requires that you not only write a check in the proper amount, but also put the check into the envelope before you seal the flap. And position the invoice so the address actually shows through the window. Or remember to copy the address from the invoice onto the envelope, again before sealing that pesky flap.

I use a lot of Scotch tape.

Next, there is the postage. You have to have some. Preferably in the current approved amount, and applied before you drop the envelope into the mail slot. Especially if you are six hundred miles from home when you mail your car payment, meaning the letter won’t bounce back to you the next day in the hand of a mail carrier with a pained expression.

I’m fairly sure my picture is on a dartboard somewhere down at the post office. You could probably go there tomorrow, drop a blank, sealed envelope into the slot, and they would bring it to my office on the assumption it must be mine. I am, after all, the person who managed to mail a letter that was not only not addressed or stamped—it wasn’t even in an envelope.

And that’s only run of mill stuff. Add the pressure of mailing something that’s time sensitive and I really fall apart. Don’t even talk to me about Next Day Air, or FedEx and UPS and their convoluted packing slips. I have to have a telephone number for the recipient? A physical address, instead of that handy P.O. Box number? Aiiggh!

And there are deadlines.

We sold our house in Oregon on a contract for deed. This required much faxing, reviewing and signing of documents, which the title company requested that we return to them ASAP, so they could close the deal before the end of the month. We dashed into town on Friday afternoon to have the paperwork notarized and copied. Carefully filled out the FedEx slip. Checked and double checked that all of the required documents were included before sealing the envelope.

“You’re sure we’ve got time?” my husband asked. “We could take it to UPS this afternoon.”

“Nah. We’ve got another ten minutes before they pick up packages from the Fed Ex box.”

I walked the block down to the box. Carefully slid the envelope into the hatch. And just as it slipped from my fingers and beyond retrieval, I saw the little sign.

Today’s pick up complete. Next scheduled pickup…Monday.

I stared at the box. Stared at the sign. May have muttered a few bad words. Then I walked back to the car.

“Good to go?” my husband asked.

“Yep,” I said.

Because it turns out those women’s magazines are right. Some secrets are good for a marriage.

*

In The Can

2010-10-22T09:36:00.015-06:00

No, no that kind of can, although this may be one of my favorite cartoons of all time:

(If any of you can read the signature, post it in the comments. I'd love to give the cartoonist full credit)

Anyway, what I'm talking about are rope cans. Go to any rodeo and you will find a spot where the calf ropers park their horses and their gear, and it will look something like this:

Rope cans are mostly fiberglass these days, though we still have an old tin one up in our tack room. (We also have harness collars for work horses. We don't use those anymore, either.) Rope cans have two purposes: to keep the rope clean and dry, and to keep it kink free. The poly and poly grass ropes used by calf ropers are much higher maintenance than the stiffer nylon ropes used by team ropers. (For more on the subject of how ropes are made see A Rope by Any Other Name.) Rope cans keep them in a flat position, nicely coiled, and seal out moisture. Even if you hang the can in the tack room, the rope stays put:

That flat round top just begs to be decorated and personalized. Some of the most gorgeous leather and silver you see at rodeos is on the top of rope cans:

Rope cans are also very popular awards. I believe this one was made by Shane Crossley from Hermiston, Oregon, who made most of the Nationals Finals and World Champion awards last time I checked:

Since I brought a few souvenirs home from the Pendleton Round Up, I think it's time we had a little contest. Study the photo below. The guy on the left is a Cooper. Either Clif or Clint, I'm not sure. Your assignment is to identify the cowboy on the right. Even those of you who aren't rodeo fans should be able to figure it out, with a little help from an online search engine. Your clue: It's in the can, of course.

And for the winner: In keeping with today's theme, your very own Pendleton Round Up can cozy, designed to look like the Kevlar vests worn by bucking horse and bull riders. We'll talk more about these vests and the story behind their origin when I announce the contest winner. And since this particular prize will fit in a standard mailing envelope, I'd like to give a special shout out to my international readers to be sure and enter.

You can post your entry as a comment below or email it to me at the link up at the top left of the blog, or even DM me on twitter. I ain't picky. The contest runs until next Wednesday at noon Mountain Time. I will draw a winner from all the correct answers. In order to make it fair, I'm going to hold the comments so you can't see anyone else's answer. (I'll make all the comments visible at the end of the contest, if you've got anything else you want to add.) So as we say in rodeo land...enter up!

Hay Haulers Shape Up Plan

2010-10-16T19:24:00.008-06:00

Thanks to the overwhelming response to last spring’s Ranch Wife’s Swimsuit Diet, we have decided to offer a fall session: The Hay Hauler’s Holiday Shape Up. We know all of you rural ladies will be needing to shimmy into the perfect cocktail dress for your endless round of glamorous holiday parties, and that sexy down-filled witch’s costume you’ve got picked out for Halloween.

Or at least fit into last year’s Carhartt coveralls.

The secret to our program is in our exercise equipment. After decades of exhaustive research, we have determined that nothing can match our device for overall strengthening and rapid weight loss. Ladies, we give you…the 1963 International Harvestor grain truck.

We have had to make a few key modifications to ol’ Yeller in order to maximize the calorie-burning potential of this amazing machine. First off, we had to beat the suspension to death over hundreds of miles of rocks and washboards. The resulting lack of shock absorption allows the operator to experience the full benefits of every badger hole and boulder, blasting those fat cells right off your thighs. (Note to clients: the more well-endowed amongst you will want to bring along your extra super support garments.)

Of course, to achieve those totally ripped arms, the power steering had to go. The clutch and brake have been adjusted to increase resistance which, combined with the extended arc of motion in the pedals on this particular vehicle, provides an experience very similar to the leg press machines you’ll find in those fancy health clubs. The knobs that must be pulled and pushed to operate the hoist are the perfect tool for increasing grip strength and targeting those flabby wrists.

You will begin each workout session at the hay yard. One of our assistants will apply the exact combination of ether, jumper cables and prayer needed to get ol’ Yeller up and running, stick you behind the wheel and point you in the right direction. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to master the controls as you rattle across half a mile of bone-jarring alfalfa field in first gear. The tractor will be waiting to load eight one ton round hay bales, after which you’ll crank ol’ Yeller around and rattle back again.

Round bales, being round, have a tendency to roll. To curb this tendency, each load must be dumped right next to the last load, so you don’t end up with a hay yard that looks like someone blew up a bag of mega-marshmallows. To add that extra level of difficulty, we’ve designed the hay rack so the line of sight through the rearview mirrors is completely blocked by the bales. Shouldn’t take you more than three or four tries per load to get it wrestled into position, back up until the rear of the truck bounces off the stack, and pull forward a couple of feet.

Then comes the good part.

Raising the hoist is a simple procedure, requiring only that you push in the clutch with your left foot, shift the truck into neutral and pull out and hold the PTO** knob while simultaneously pulling out and holding the hoist knob. You may also need to rev the truck a little with your right foot while letting the clutch out with your left. Watch carefully as the hoist rises. At the exact instant gravity overcomes friction and the bales begin to slide, slam the clutch to the floor. The weight of the sliding bales will propel the truck out from under them, depositing the bales neatly in place.

You will get used to that ‘shot out of a slingshot’ sensation after fifteen or twenty loads (complimentary cervical collars and ibuprofen are available from the concierge), and the big ker-bang when the truck bed slams back down. Until then, the burst of adrenaline will give your metabolism a nice boost. And feel free to pump the brakes. It’s excellent for quadriceps development, even if it does nothing in the way of slowing the truck.

As an added bonus, after the first load or two the floorboards of the truck will begin to heat up, emitting a unique blend of baked grease and essence de toasted mouse turd guaranteed to squelch those pesky snack cravings. And since the heater knob has been stuck in the ‘On’ position for approximately twenty years, the cab will soon become your own private sauna. Don’t be surprised to find you’ve melted off a pound or two in just the first afternoon, especially if it’s a bright sunny day.

We guarantee after a few days on this regimen, that party dress will fit like never before. Demand will be high for this special program, though, so sign up now. We’ve only got 247 more loads to haul.

NOW AVAILABLE: The home video version of the Hay Hauler's Shape Up, only $9.99! Equipment plus shipping and handling are extra.

Music by Bill Hammond

**PTO stands for Power Take Off. Pulling out the knob engages the gear that connects to the shaft that spins around and raises the hoist on the truck. Or something like that.

Here Come Da Judge

2010-10-01T14:56:00.004-06:00

*

There are a lot of things that claim to be the ultimate American experience. Apple pie. Baseball. Hot dogs. Tackle football. But for my money, nothing strikes a deeper chord in my nostalgic little hometown heart than the Homecoming parade.

For those of you from other countries, Homecoming is a fall event staged by high schools and colleges, generally linked to football. The original intent was to provide a designated home football game and a few surrounding activities to which alumni of the school could come and mingle with other alumni. Now it's mostly a week long frenzy of school spirit activities. The level of frenzy varies depending on the attitude of the school administration toward sports and the level of fanaticism amongst the followers of the school and team in question. But for most small towns, it includes a parade, in which each of the four high school grade levels enter a float of their own construction.

My class stunk at floats. We are the only class in memory that DIDN'T win as seniors. As juniors, we had a little mishap with the extension hose on the tailpipe and gassed our driver. We are probably the reason the floats are now built on trailers instead of directly over the chassis of the vehicle. That was, of course, the best float we ever constructed, but we were disqualified because it failed to finish the parade. A little harsh, we thought, considering the driver didn't even bash in any parked cars when he passed out.

Given all that, it makes perfect sense that I was asked to judge this year's floats.

It turned out to be a relatively painless and not particularly difficult task. And yes, I voted for the seniors. Hey, they had Axel Rose singing Welcome to the Jungle, monkeys in hammocks, and boa constrictors made out of ventilation hoses. Hard to beat.

Kudos to the sophomores, though, for their sandy beach, cityscape, and an killer sound system blasting Paradise City. (No, the theme wasn't Guns and Roses, just seemed like it).

The freshman did a decent job with Surfin' USA. That blue thing on the front is a wave. There's a wolf (our mascot) on a surf board on top of it.

Mostly, though, kudos to the weatherman. I don't recall a single year in high school when the candidates for Homecoming Queen and the cheerleaders didn't have to wear thermal underwear under their dresses. Or down-filled jackets over them.

*I had to do my judging and get back to work, so all pictures are pre-parade. And unlike the old days when we started our float construction early in the week, this year's classes started at 8:45 am this morning and had only until noon to finish. Not bad for three and half hours' work.

Back Ups

2010-09-29T11:28:00.004-06:00

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Some of you who've been hanging around this blog for a while have probably noticed that I'm not writing as much as I used to. This is at least in part due to a shift from four to five days a week at my day job starting last spring. Part due to trying to finish a book that refuses to end. And part because of a phenomenon known by writers as 'apple picking'.

See, when you first start writing a blog, you have a lifetime of material to work with. It's easy pickins, like plucking the apples off the lowest branches of the tree. The longer you blog, the more you have to stretch and work for stuff to write about, even when you live on a ranch where the humans and animals sometimes seem to live to provide fodder for humorous stories. At the point where blogging crosses over from fun to work, if you're me you have to start wondering why you're putting quite so much time into something that doesn't pay particularly well. Or, um, at all.

But I also appreciate all of you who do stop by regularly and love to hear from you in the comments, and since I don't expect everyone has read everything I've ever posted, I've decided to do a "Back Up" post once a week, in which I go back to this time last year and see what was happening and share my favorite post from that week.

So here we go. Approximately one year ago, plus a couple of weeks. Imagine my surprise to learn that we were all in a state of Spontaneous Confusion.

Also this week last year:

This year? That field is still green, thanks to late snow storms that delayed planting and a cold, wet summer.

Here's hoping the decent weather will hang on for at least another month, or we're going to have a whole lot of barley hay.

**

Rammin' Speed

2010-09-26T16:11:00.003-06:00

**

Sometimes, it just has to be done.

Talking Dirty

2010-09-24T13:35:00.005-06:00

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Heads Up: You probably have a better internet connection than me. Almost everyone does. Therefore, the videos may not take half a lifetime to load for you. My apologies in advance if they do.

Know how you can tell what event a cowgirl competes in? Ask her how the rodeo went. If the first words out of her mouth are, "Well, the ground was...", she's a barrel racer.

Ground as in the arena surface. Otherwise known as dirt (usually, but more on that later.) Dirt is very important to barrelracers, as they are competing in a horse race that requires three very tight turns executed at a very high speed. You want it soft enough that the horse's hooves can get a good grip on it, but not so soft that they get bogged down. Damp enough to pack well and keep the dust out of your face, but not muddy and slick. (Don't even get me started on the idiot in the water truck who stops to chat on his cell phone, creating a small man-made lake around the third barrel.)

The best analogy I can give to those who are not rodeo people is downhill skiing. The Olympics in British Columbia were a testimonial to how course conditions can take you out of competition before you even leave the start house. Sunshine softens the surface of the snow, making it slower. Shadows and cold weather make ice, which is faster, but also harder to turn on. And rain or snow on the course before you make your run is a disaster. The farther down you are in the start order, the more chewed up the course gets and the harder it is to ski well.

So it is in the barrel racing. Run order is huge. Barrel racers call it being 'on the top of the ground' or 'on the bottom of the ground'. On top means you're running at the beginning, before the horses have dug trenches around the barrels. On the bottom means you're chugging through everybody else's ruts.

Like skiers, different horses prefer different ground conditions. Big, strong horses can power through deep, sandy ground, while smaller, quicker horses usually handle hard pack better. Which means no matter how hard a rodeo committee tries to make their ground as wonderful as possible, someone will nearly always be unhappy. Which is one of the reasons it can be difficult to find ~~suckers~~...I mean volunteers to serve on rodeo committees.

And then there's the weather. Rodeos tend to last more than one day. In the case of the Calgary Stampede, more like ten days. Stinks to be up on the day of the rainstorm:

Even indoors you have to deal with the top and bottom of the ground, although many rodeos do their level best to keep it as even as possible. In the video below, notice the men with rakes who rush out behind each cowgirl to fill in her tracks:

And then, of course, there's Pendleton, which is like nowhere else because there's, you know, GRASS. And the pattern is HUGE, because the barrels have to be set clear out on the dirt track where it's safe to make those tight turns. The extra distance, the unfamiliar surface and running square into the blank wall of the bucking chutes on the second barrel can mess with even the best horse's mind. Witness the horse that ducks off before the second and third barrels, which has qualified for the Montana Circuit Finals for the last three years running and is generally dead solid:

Barrelracers are quite, um, passionate when it comes to ground conditions. To the point that more than one rodeo committee member has considered the wisdom of an unlisted number. And a bodyguard. Because hell hath no fury like a barrelracer on a rampage. Worse yet, a whole pack of them.

All of which leads up to the Joke of the Week, which I first heard at Pendleton courtesy of rodeo clown Flint Rasmussen:

"My wife is a barrelracer. When she dies, she will have to be cremated, because there is no ground good enough to bury her in."

**

Buckle Bunnies and Back Numbers

2010-09-23T10:02:00.000-06:00

Sorry, one more click for this one. Head on over to my group blog at Everybody Needs a Little Romance for today's words of...well, not wisdom, for sure.

Running Off the Hill

2010-09-18T18:13:00.007-06:00

Yes, we're back. No, this isn't my happy face. It snowed here at the ranch last night. It was eighty degrees every day in Pendleton. If I hadn't left my kid in Spokane, I may never have dragged myself home.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Pendleton Round Up (and I was one of you until I moved to Oregon) it is a rodeo unlike any other. While I was there, I tried to take some photos and video to demonstrate exactly why this is the case. Keep in mind, though, I am a roper and so are all my family members, so I hope you aren't expecting to see bucking horses and bulls. Also keep in mind I have an inexpensive digital camera, so the video is pretty crummy. But at least you'll get the idea.

So what's so special about Pendleton? Well, there are a lot of very cool traditions surrounding the Round Up, and they start and end with the arena. Let us begin by looking at a normal rodeo arena. This is Ellensburg, Washington, another of the string of big pro rodeos in the Pacific Northwest. Nice facility, grandstands, well-groomed arena surface. Very much a traditional setup.

And this is Pendleton:

Yes, that is grass. With a dirt track around the outside. And yes, roping and riding on a grass surface is a little on the tricky side. On top of which, Pendleton doesn't have regular roping boxes. Or a chute. The calf or steer isn't standing out there in front of you where you can see it.

In Pendleton, you start with your horse's butt cocked up against the wall on the high side of the banked dirt track and run 'off the hill' onto the grass to rope. When you nod your head, the calf comes trotting out of a lane behind you, under the grandstand, and you have to try to time your start on the move. It's almost impossible to describe, so I took video.

Here's the cowboy's eye view of 'running off the hill' in Pendleton:

The reason timing is so important is at the end of that lane, between the white gates, there is a barrier rope shown in the picture below. About twenty feet out from the barrier is a laser-activated electric eye that releases the barrier rope when the calf breaks the laser beam. If the horse hits the barrier rope before the calf trips the rope out of the way, the piece of cotton string just to the left of the orange flag will break and the cowboy receives a ten second penalty. This is called 'breaking the barrier' or 'breaking out'.

So not only do you have to run off the hill onto a slick grass surface and rope a calf that might go any which way, you have to try to be exactly twenty feet behind the calf when you hit the end of the lane.

Easy peasy, right?

*For those who care, I don't remember who the first roper was, but he caught a hind leg in his loop and wasn't able to tie the calf because it was all tangled up. The second was Tuf Cooper, with his dad Roy helping him with his horse in the roping box. He missed his calf.

The View from Here

2010-09-15T21:05:00.000-06:00

Two days of slack and one performance under our belts at the 100th annual Pendleton Round Up. Got a minute to post a few pictures, hope you enjoy.

Of Moths and Madness

2010-09-08T09:05:00.000-06:00

When the men in the white suits come for me with the strait jacket, tell them it was the moths that finally drove me over the edge.

I understand that country living includes critters. I’ve had a lifetime of grabbing grain cans only to have a mouse zip up my arm. I should have nerves of steel by now. South Dakota alone should have made me into Superwoman. I once crawled under a wooden granary to retrieve a litter of puppies with the full knowledge that the dog flushed rats out of the corn every morning. (I worried they might invade the house. My husband assured me they would much rather stay outside, where there was food.)

Thanks to the high water table and a sump hole inexplicably inserted on the high end of the basement floor, we occasionally had to prop open the window to run a hose out from the low end. One morning, I opened the basement door and came face to face with a possum on the landing. I’d never seen a possum before. I assumed it was a rat the size of a Chihuahua. Luckily, we’d been planning on knocking out that wall between the dining room and kitchen anyway.

And then there was the day I woke from a nap to the sound of skittering feet, and looked over to see a pocket gopher scaling my bedroom curtains.

Even the birds got in on the act. My living room door was two steps up from the ground, at the ideal level for sparrows to swoop into the house when I hit the electric garage door closer and scared them off the rails. I got be a real pro at herding them out the sliding glass doors with a broom and a minimal amount of splatter.

In Oregon, it was spiders. Big spiders, little spiders, white spiders, gray spiders. Black fuzzy jumping spiders that could leap from windowsill to toilet in a single bound. Nickel-sized brown spiders that lurked in my shower. Menacing black widow spiders that hid in the dark corners of my tack room.

But it’s the moths that are going to do me in.

The robins started it by chiseling a hole under the eaves of my kitchen roof. By the time I discovered their handiwork, it was too late to seal it up. They’d already built their nests. Call me soft-hearted. Or allergic to the smell of rotting eggs. I got used to the sound of scratching and cheeping above my table and sort of forgot about the hole.

Until the moths.

We came home after dark from a visit to the neighbors, switched on the living room light, and were engulfed in a blizzard of moths. Fluttering and flapping, smacking into lights and walls and ceilings and me. My son ran screaming to the bedroom and hid under the blankets. My husband and I armed ourselves with rolled up magazines and ran around flailing at the things until the floor was thick with casualties.

That was a week ago. Seven nights of terror. Every evening, as dusk falls, they begin to creep out of the cracks and crevices. They hunker along the top curves of the log beams in the living room, where swatting is nearly impossible. When you try, they hurl themselves at your head, tangle in your hair, dive down your collar. After the third time he watched me strip off my shirt and stomp it to death on the floor, my husband decided we needed a better weapon. Once he stopped laughing, of course.

Enter the ShopVac.

I now have a new bedtime routine. ShopVac wand in one hand, paperback book in the other to fend off frontal attacks, I prowl the house, looking for suspicious, wedge-shaped brown spots. It sucks them right off the ceiling beams with a satisfying thwip! And I’m getting better with practice. I can occasionally snatch one right out of the air. Makes me feel like Luke Skywalker, light saber at ready, saving the universe from Darth Vader’s evil minions.

I also have no cobwebs for the first time in living memory.

But the battle goes on. The enemy seems to have endless reinforcements. No matter how I scour the perimeter, a few slip past. I pick up a book from my nightstand and a moth blasts out in my face. I grab the dish towel from the rack and a moth shoots up my sleeve. Two nights in a row, just as I dozed off to sleep, I’ve been dive-bombed right there on my pillow.

We’re talking shriek and freak. Claw marks on the ceiling.

Now I lie here, barely able to close my eyes, heart leaping into my throat at every sound. I’m exhausted. Frazzled. Seriously considering a buzz cut.

Please, somebody, come and take me away.

What's in a Name

2010-09-05T17:49:00.005-06:00

The Indian wars began centuries before white men arrived in Montana. Assiniboine, Cree, Blackfeet, Crow, Shoshone—all separate nations competing for their chunk of the plains, including control of sacred sites and the migrating herds of buffalo, much like a smaller version of the Middle East. Some tribes formed alliances for mutual benefit. Others were engaged in long-standing, brutal conflict.

In the late 1700's and early 1800's, what is now northcentral Montana was divvied up primarily between two tribes. The Assiniboine controlled the area roughly bordered by the current Interstate 15, north of the Missouri River, into southern Alberta and clear out to North Dakota. The Blackfeet ruled the east slope of the Rockies, from west of present day Calgary all the way south to the headwaters of the Missouri in southern Montana.

The Blackfeet were sworn enemies of the Assiniboine because, as one historian stated, the Blackfeet were sworn enemies of everybody, but also because they butted up against each other constantly, following the buffalo herds across the plains. They couldn’t even agree on how to do business. As white fur traders infiltrated the area in the early 1800’s, the Blackfeet traded exclusively with the Hudson Bay Company of Canada, while the Assiniboine practically owned Fort Union.

In 1847, Fort Benton was established in central Montana as the farthest west trading post on the Missouri River. Sometime in the next few years, a band of Blackfeet was attacked near the fort by what we assume was an Assiniboine war party, although that far south Cree were also a possibility. All of the Blackfeet were slain with the lone exception of a terrified little girl named Under Fox Woman.

She was rescued and taken to Fort Benton where she was adopted by the Pambruns. She remained with them until she married Adolphus Joseph Dubray, otherwise known as Tin Cup Joe because he started out in Butte, selling hardware to the miners.

Under Fox Woman gave birth to a child in 1865, a boy named Aleck. The exact date and circumstances of her death are not known, but Joe moved to Sasketchewan with his son, remarried, and had a daughter in 1868, so we can assume Under Fox Woman died within a year or two of her son’s birth. Joe and his second wife would go on to have fourteen more children.

Yeah, I said fourteen.

In the late 1800’s Joe learned the United States government was allotting parcels of land on the Blackfeet reservation to tribal members. He sent his son Aleck back to Fort Benton to find Mrs. Pambrun, who testified that he was indeed the child of a Blackfeet Indian. The land allotment he received was east of the Rocky Mountains, along the north fork of the Milk River just south of where it crossed the border into Canada.

Aleck's son and namesake would later be allotted a chunk of property north and east of his father's. We still call this portion of our deeded property the ‘Aleck Dubray’.

Yes, there was a point to this whole story.

Last week, my aunt invited us to bring our son to a naming ceremony, where he would receive his Indian name. These names are traditionally passed down through families. The last person in my family tree whose Blackfeet name is known to us is Under Fox Woman, so we chose as a name for our son White Fox, or Iks-Sin-Oh-Pah, to honor my great-great grandmother.

There's a lot in a name.

Much as I would like to brag that I know my family history back to front, it would be a lie. I stole it all from my cousin Rhonda Michael. She kicks butt on this stuff.

A Friend in Need....

2010-08-27T12:50:00.002-06:00

One of my online friends, the charming and hilarious Crystal Posey, sent me an email yesterday that made me snort Pepsi out my nose. Since it had a nice agricultural theme, I thought I'd share:

Sometimes, we try a little too hard to get to the greener grass.
In the process, we end up in trouble.

When you find yourself stuck in a situation that you can't get out of,

there is one thing you should always remember...

Not everyone who comes along is there to help.

That Time of Year

2010-08-24T13:02:00.002-06:00

I miss football.

I knew when I chose sports medicine as a major in college that I would never be able to have a career and live on the ranch. There are very few athletic training jobs in the entire state of Montana, let alone this sparsely populated section. At the time, I didn’t envision a future where I would be the one out of the four kids in our family to end up here. I don’t regret the decisions I made that brought me back.

But I still miss football.

You know going into fall practices that the days are going to be endless and you’re going to be tearing around trying to be in four places at once. That you will wish you could clone yourself several times over so you can be at volleyball, football and soccer practice while simultaneously rehabbing a cross country runner’s sore hamstring.

It’s still the best time of the whole year.

School hasn’t started. There is no working around classes. It’s pure sports, morning ‘til night. Drowsy-faced athletes stumbling into the training room at seven a.m. in flip flops and bedhead, yawning through the taping of ankles and wrists. The rhythmic hiss and rip of athletic tape being applied. The alcohol-sweet smell of pre-taping spray, the medicinal burn of Icy Hot. The rattle of ice being dumped into round orange Gatorade coolers.

The echo of a coach’s whistle across dew-soaked grass. The thud of spikes on turf, the crack of helmet against helmet, shouted cadences in a language foreign to those outside the white lines. Grunts and groans and triumphant shouts. Sweat-soaked t-shirts and smelly feet.

And repetition.

The same moves, the same plays, the same techniques, again and again and again, until they become rote, a function of instinct rather than thought. Until muscles are aching and lungs are burning and brains are crammed to the brink with Cover 3 and Cover 5 and all their variations. Until the athletic trainer's eyes cross from boredom and her feet ache.

It’s jammed fingers and scraped elbows, sprained ankles and bruised thighs. And always—always—the awareness that worse could happen at any moment. Where bodies are in motion, pushing themselves to the limit, the worst is always possible. No matter how carefully you prepare. No matter how vigilant you are.

An eye on the sun, an eye on the clouds. Judging the temperature. The chance of lightning. The conditions inside the helmets as well as out.

They won’t always tell you when they’ve pushed themselves too hard. When their vision starts to blur, or their muscles start to cramp. When that last hit rung their bell and they’re not entirely sure which side of the line of scrimmage they should be on. You have to watch them. Know them. Read their body language.

Sometimes you have to make them stop, when they are sure they can keep going.

At the end of the day, you dish out advice, stretches, band-aids and bags of ice. You stretch and massage and strengthen, then deliver an injury report to the coaches. Twice a day, every day, for as long as the rules allow. You arrive before the first athlete, leave after the last. It’s exhausting. Monotonous. Sometimes frustrating. Sometimes heartbreaking. But when the band strikes up and the team sprints onto the field for that first game, you will know you’ve earned your spot on the sidelines, and sitting in the stands will never quite be enough, ever again.

Damn, I miss football.

Still Slogging Around

2010-08-16T12:32:00.001-06:00

Yes, we got more rain. Another inch and a half at the end of last week. The pastures look incredible. You can barely tell there's been a cow on our leases, let alone most of our herd. We already have more hay than we got last year and we're only 3/4 done, at most.

But yes, we are sick to death of mud.

I'm hoping to get out and take some good pictures this week. In the meantime, head over to my alternate blog and you can see why I consider myself the Queen of Half Done.

Calling out the Cavalry

2010-08-10T08:46:00.006-06:00

I'm not a real news hound, but it's been hard to live in the western half of the United States without being aware of the ongoing manhunt for a trio of prison escapees from Arizona and their female accomplice. After their escape, they shanghaied a pair of truck drivers and forced them to drive to New Mexico, where they then appear to have murdered a man and his wife to steal their pickup and head north.

They split up somewhere along the way, and one of the men was captured in Colorado a few days ago. The other three were spotted in the Yellowstone Park area on Sunday. This was a bit of a concern to my family, as my brother in law is working on a bridge construction project down there that requires him to show up at three o'clock in the morning. I do have to give the escapees credit, though. What better place to hide in plain sight than in the midst of throngs of cap and sunglass wearing tourists?

Yesterday the hay was finally ready to bale, the baler and tractor were both functional, and my husband was going great guns on a field over the hill and a mile west from the house. I walked out to take him supper right before dark. He said don't bother to wait up, he was going to bale as long as he could keep his eyes open. So I went home, got the kid ready for bed and was just about to hunker down myself when I heard a vehicle. I went out into the living room just in time to see a pair of taillights going west, down a track that leads to our haystacks, north pastures and eventually, the Canadian border.

Then the phone rang. My dad. The border patrol had called. One of the fugitives and his fiance/accomplice/cousin (eeuwww) had been spotted twenty miles away in St. Mary's and they were warning all residents along the adjacent Canadian line to keep their eyes open and lock their doors.

Did I mention my husband was a mile from the house, in the middle of a hayfield, alone? Without his cell phone, of course.

"Someone just came past, headed west," I told my dad.

"Are you sure it wasn't Greg?"

"I don't think so. It didn't sound like the brown pickup." As in, minus a muffler and rattling so loud you expect to find pieces of it scattered everywhere it goes. Plus, I'm pretty sure it hasn't had both taillights since we've owned it.

After a short debate, we decided Dad should call the border patrol and report the strange vehicle, while I drove out to tell Greg what was going on. It was quarter to eleven. Pitch dark. I went outside and, lo and behold, there was the brown pickup, parked in its usual spot. Oh, right. Greg was driving the newer blue Ford because he'd had to run to town for parts. I jumped in the brown pickup, which ranks amongst its few accessories a .22 rifle and full box of shells. Too bad the dome light in the pickup is broken and I am barely capable of loading the thing in the daylight.

I bounced and rattled out to the hayfield, flagged Greg down and shared the news. He sort of shrugged. I told him about the vehicle we'd seen going past.

"Oh, that was me," he said. "I forgot my flashlight at the shop."

Which was when the border patrol helicopter buzzed us. No doubt in response to my dad's call. Um, oops. But hey, excellent response time.

For complete details on the escapees: http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/apArticle/id/D9HGPS5G0/

Numb with Excitement

2010-08-05T14:39:00.001-06:00

I'm taking a break from my usual programming today. I have mentioned before that I have a literary agent, the awesome and fearsome Janet Reid of Fine Print Literary Management in New York City. Yep, the Big Apple. Oddly enough, I am not her only client, which is good considering I've yet to provide her with a book she could sell. (This one. I swear, Janet.)

Anyway, some of her other clients do sell books, and one of them is celebrating the release of his debut novel, Numb. Sean Ferrell is one of my favorite online writer friends. One of our other writer friends is sponsoring a contest in his honor. You can check out the contest and her review of Numb at Harley May.

And this is my illustration of a few of the key scenes of Numb, all rolled together (you have to look close, Harley. That's a nail in the back of his neck):

For those of you who were counting on finding my words of wisdom, head on over to Everybody Needs a Little Romance to enjoy my latest excuse for why I never get anything done around here.

How to Dress a Horse

2010-08-03T17:41:00.002-06:00

This is a video from rodeo slack at Browning. Sadly, I couldn't get the sound to record, so you don't get the full atmospheric effect. But as you can tell, the pace is fairly laid back at eight o'clock in the morning.

This is a steer wrestler from British Columbia. I never actually heard his name. His friend in the blue shirt is the poor sucker who got stuck pushing my breakaway calf. The stuff in the bottle is fly spray. FYI, I edited this video quite a bit. From the time he started brushing the horse to where it now ends...eleven minutes.

I recommend watching full screen and checking out the background activity, too. The guy testing out his ropes, and the one clear back at the white horse trailer who's shoeing his horse.