A familiar scene in the morning. They are hollerin' cuz it is really cold on this mornin'. Their caretaker, ME, needed to hurry up and get them fixed up! The temp was 11 degrees! Our weather has been crazy lately. Temps from the 70's to the teens within a week or two. Crazy. Some of you know what I am talking about with the snow in areas that are having their first snow ever!! Hay and water coming up! M.E. in the shadows yes this farm girl drives a tractor....hay is coming girls and boys P-Nut is here to keep everybody in line When we stick the bales out, we always have to cut the strings. What strings? Well, the bales have continuious strings on them to keep the hay from unraveling. When they are baled up in those funny box looking balers. The hay is packed in wide rows which are then wrapped up into a bale. At the end the strings wrap around the bale ...kind of like wrapping a ball of yarn. We, then, have to cut these strings off so the critters don...

Mtn Man decided to smoke some lamb today. We have had some bad experience with mutton in the past but today that has changed our minds about lamb. It is a really rich meat but was so tasty! This leg piece and lamb chops were smoked for about 7 hrs. Really nice crust and moist meat! Served it with a sweet potato and spring mix salad! Copyright © 2014 M.E. Masterson All Photographs Copyright © 2014 M.E. Masterson

Yesterday realty hit with a thud!  Let me explain, we took our sheep and goats to sale. This is one of the biggest sales of the year for these parts. Farmers and ranchers alike come from all around to this sale to buy and sell sheep. Yesterday they had buyers as far away as Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Idaho, North Dakota and Minnesota. The comments goin around was this was the highest priced sale that they had seen in this year. So we got real good prices for our livestock yesterday. For me it was a bitter sweet especially selling my goats! Today the chickens are traveling 3 hrs to go to their new home......and in a couple weeks we start sending the cattle to market. Hopefully we will get top dollar for them too! I am trying to look at this as it is not the end but a beginning. We look forward to the quiet life that is so needed and family that is so wanting.

Spring has sprung here on the ranch! The little bits of green can be seen and the brown is slowly disappearing. Yeah! In the last couple of weeks I decided to try Ranchwife's Panbread and I added a little bit of Italian herb after rubbing the bread down with olive oil and then baked it....it was delish! We have been busy with guests in our house, so I have been doing a lot of cooking on top of helping the guys with chores and such around the ranch. This girl has been truly busy!!! We so appreciate the help that has been coming, they have been helping with the much needed fencing. Takes a bit of stress of my hubby.......so he can spend the much needed time calving that will continue into the end of June it seems this year. Hopefully we can get that tightened up for next year........  I also have been able to get "Nana" a friend. Another goat named her Cecilia, she is sweet and so soft, thinking she has some sort of Angora in her. She was a 4-H kid in Billings a...

Today started out with sunshine then as the day progressed the Cold front moved in. By this evening I froze riding around on the 4 wheeler looking for new babies, we had three new ones, two alive and one born dead. The other family as I have mentioned before, are moving out by the end of the week. So today we made our final deals on some critters they wanted us to have.......whole flock of birds like chickens, geese, and a duck. I also bought a pair of sheep and a goat! I love goats, never really had experience with sheep but my hubby has and he tells me that they are pretty easy keepers. Not planning on getting to many, but am excited to get a couple more this summer from a neighbor.  Thought maybe some of you would be happy to see how the twins are doing. They are pretty girls! Our new ranch assistance have brought this gorgeous stud(Happy Fred Hancock) that we are contemplating breeding to my Lyfa. If so that will start in April.....still thinking about it co...

 We seem to have lots of babies on the ranch....The Allis Family Sheep are spittin them out left and right! I love it! The babies are so cute.....  The little one here curled up under the light is a "babydoll south down" , so so cute! They are so little!!!  This is a little black babydoll, not a spot of white on him! Has the biggest yapper in the barn! LOL! We have had a lot more calves too, Big and little, seems these heifers had accidentally gotten in with a Big Bull which caused these girls to have such large Boys! Our biggest one was 106 lbs bull calf..... Shorty was taken a rest after working in the shop with mom and dad....he was ready to be done, seriously so were we!!! We branded our 46 that came in last week, which puts our numbers a bit over 600+ now.....500 of which we should have babies from......will be a busy year!!! Sun is shinin today and looks like we are gonna have nice weather for the remainder of the week....Have bangs testing and bu...