Adventures Of Our Life!

I love the hustle and bustle of Christmas! Today I will start the baking for tomorrow's meal, looking forward to all the smells that brings! On our menu this year I decided to make it an International theme. Christmas Bread (Dutch), Patates Spiros (Greece), Potatoes w parlsey & green onions (Italy), Sticky Toffee Pudding (England), Broccoli Salad, Fruit Cake(Harry&David) soaking in Apple Pie(Homebrew) and tomorrow will be a Green Bean Casserole, Rolls(market), Apple Butter Pumpkin Pie(Pilar will do), Sweet Potato Casserole(Pilar will do), Pecan Pie (NM) and Beef Rib Roast (from our ranch-Bobbie Will BBQ).  Well I better get started.......Merry Christmas Everybody! What's for supper at your house?

  Philippians 4:6 Don't worry about anything, but in all your prayers ask God for what you need, always asking him with a thankful heart. 1 Peter 5:7 Leave all your worries with him, because he cares for you.   

After all the chores were done we (Bob, Tom & I) decided to head to the back of the property. Mind you it is 20,000 acres and 13 miles long on very rough roads. We had fun and I took lots of pics...... This last pic is a natural rock formation they refer to around here as "The Bell". And yet another peaceful day!

Yesterday I drove over to Ekalaka, MT to meet with a lady about some graves I wanted to photograph. I love researching family for people and I volunteer my time to photograph graves for others who are eagerly trying to find their loved ones. My way of giving back! Anyways, I met with Sue and we chatted while I photographed and when we found everybody and some she asked back to the house for a cup of coffee. What a treat! When I arrived I see a sign that said something about Emus'. I found it intriguing as I haven't spent much time around such strange looking birds. God does have a sense of humor, which we see in critters and sometimes people. They are attracted to very shiny things and of course I was wearing my wedding ring and earrings so I stood a few feet back. You can't help but keep looking at them with the fine feathers and big feet! While I was visiting Sue & Johnny, I found out that she uses most everything that Emu's offer, it was such a treat to se...

When we were back in Missouri this last visit we toured some Christmas lights and the folks took us to the Clark Family Christmas Light Show. Which in description is nothing I have ever seen before it was fantastic. It was a show of lights dancing to an array of music of Christmas. All of which happened in Kelso, Mo. not a very big town but fun none the less! Cars line up for 2 miles to see this show...all tuned into FM 89.7 and the brothers spend all year to set this display up for all to enjoy. And yes, donations are welcome which go all go to St. Jude's Children's Hospital!!! Take a gander if you get a chance it is fantastic.... http://www.iluvlocalplaces.com/Christmas_Light_Show_HU1C.html

Upon our return we found out that the Misses of the other family had postponed her trip to NM for the following Sunday. And couple days after our return we shipped 199 culls and 5 bulls. Then Monday we received 101 cows from Nebraska. Yesterday we went to town for a "quick" trip. should know better always turns into an all day project. But we got everything we went for including a Christmas tree. Yes, we bought a tree, on the other side of the state where we lived all we had to do is walk out the back door and pick one. And this is the first year we have bought presents for each other, I don't have any idea what he bought me, but he knows most of what I bought him. :) It is hard to Christmas shop for each other when you are together much of the time. And he is hard to shop for...... Well hubby had to run to town again just now, one of the many tires we had fixed yesterday has no air in it. :( Have to have the tire for the tractor so we can feed cows with two tractors in...

I see I am a little bit behind on my blogs...I apologize.....busy girl I am. The month of November is full of fun! After separating out the calves from their mommas, we kept 110 replacements and sent the rest off to market. In the first week of the month, Hubby hitched a ride with a friend who was headed back over West. He spent the night and picked up his 1-ton "brown bomber" that stayed behind for much needed work to her. He came home the following day. In the second week we saw temps drop down in the teens and I believe we saw our first snow then too! The boss decided we needed to get our water system set up and in a hurry so they thought.  A 30,000 gal tank was delivered at the end of Oct beg of Nov and electrical box was attached and line ditched for electrical and all the goodies added to make this work. Unfortunately, it wasn't finished until couple days ago, but it is running none the less! Cows should not ever run out of water!!! In the middle of the month...

This time of the season we have to wean the calves from their mommas. We are fortunate enough to have some good mommas who have already started weaning their babies off. So the process is a bit easier for some, not so easy for others. We started out moving them in on Thursday, Friday we sorted out the calves and shipped off the ones we were not keeping. Today we started sorting thru our momma cows, keepers and travelers. It has been an interesting venture especially for this girl!

The coming winter season always gets me stirring come the end of Aug. beginning of Sept., which causes me to start getting serious about resupplying my food storage, pulling out the winter wear, putting away the mower, garden tools and gathering wood. So I started buying from online, Amazon is so awesome for this. I am a thrifty shopper buying local, in these parts you can buy from "Western Family". Had to hunt down the closest place to buy the "case good sale", Ekalaka-Main Street Market is the closest here and so happy I found them. It has already been down to 21* here so we are moving pretty quickly to get the rest of our prep done. The Guys are getting the rest of the hay hauled in and stacked. Fences mended which is on going, watching the cows and buttoning up the houses for winter. I am helping with the latter on our place, we live in a double wide that is a few decades old but has been well taken care of. Some things are outdated but still nice none the le...

It's Sunday Don't Ya Know! Sundays are our days off as much as you can have one on a ranch. The "Boys" have decided to get on the horses and go find whatever cows haven't drifted down. Us "Girls" and her boys are staying home to do whatever we do. Today I am gonna try to finish up this quilt that someone ordered this last spring. It is a memory quilt of sorts, kind of cool to see someone else's memories in full color. This will be a queen quilt when I am done. Last night I got the strips sewn together, today I will sew the strips together to make one piece. I really am getting excited to see this one done.......pretty cool! This morning I had to get my head screwed on straight so to speak, when the weather gets like this it takes some adjustment for my body. Many aches and pains, but I keep goin no matter what, "Cowgirl Up". Just takes me a bit longer than some and shorter than others! LOL! As I was sayin' just get my mind r...

Woke to another day of dreary. No I am not complaining, we need the moisture! But it makes for a day of inside projects that I have been dying to get to. We are all ready for the cows to come in for preconditioning, just waiting out the weather. The guys went up yesterday and opened the gates so the cows could drift down this way, and thank goodness the weather has pushed down closer to us! Last night I was reminded of an event that someone asked me to make some jewelry for. I forgot because we were so busy! Well today I have managed to get it together, I had a barrette in my stash that I made this last year and it was the right colors so I made a pair of earrings to match. Turned out beautiful if I do say so myself! After doing his morning chores , my hubby is getting into his leather projects and getting some saddles ready for this weeks ride up the way. Saddles were dropped off for him to fix! What a fun day we are having so far! Hope you have a great weekend! Off to wo...

Oh, What a Beautiful Day! We are preparing to bring cows in from way up there, as far as you can see in the pic is how far we have to go to get our red cows. It is that time of year to separate the mommas from the babies and to ship them off to their new homes. Shorty ,my little dog and I ran around on our 4 wheeler taking care of chores. He really likes to go for rides, so I made him a place to ride.  Got the barn cleaned out, the bottle babies pasture is revamped with new feeder and mineral barrel. Planted the flowers I bought yesterday.Took lots of pics. Just generally had a nice day!

September was a difficult month didn't have anything to do with weather really. Mostly it was due to equipment failure. You expect that to happen on a ranch but not this much. It became rather frustrating to try and complete the task of haying. Already behind the "eight ball" so to speak, then we deal with faulty equipment. Oh, well part of the job! Finally after 3wks of fighting it, the swather broke for good. We ended our haying on the 16th! The rest of our hay is being hauled in from the other lease ground we have, so hopefully we will have enough for all the cows we will winter here this year! On another note, we traded in our black toyota pickup on a FJ Cruiser. Ol' Toyo had over 260,000 miles and hubby owned it since it had 32,000 miles so it was a bitter sweet goodbye. But the FJ is a nice rig! It has a bit on the higher mileage 95,000 but if it works like the other it is just broke in! When we left the dealer it was clean, but we have 38 miles of dirt road...

It starts the morning of Saturday, June 4th. Tom takes off early for a shoeing job before his prison job. Now he has been telling me for at least three weeks that he wants to find something else to do as the prison is getting under his skin. So I decided to pray about this for a bit and come Saturday morning my answer was given, start putting out resumes for him. I would do this for any friend who I saw wasn't happy so why not my husband. This mind you is not something he knows about YET! About an half an hour after I put out 12 resumes Tom receives a phone call on his cell, the fellow and him talked for an hour. After this call Tom called me and asked if I wanted to go ranchin'? I was beside myself...well Hell yes I did! He said well now wait a minute before I jump the gun and start packin' we needed to go and check the place out! He said we will be moving 600 miles away and the move will be expensive etc, but lets go check it out! Then the conversation mov...