An Adventure & A Story

You guys. Do you ever have a morning where you find some weird amount of motivation and energy and get so much done?

I know, it's like the unicorn of morning conditions.

But this morning, this unicorn showed up on my treadmill at 6:15 and I wish it would stay. Wacey and I had to go to town to get some important supplies for Bert, so we made an adventure out of it (I always feel like running to even the close town is an adventure since it's forty miles round trip, haha, it makes it more fun).

Our objectives:

Okay, fine, we really only needed a box of calf electrolyte packets (on the left), but you can't tell me that I'm going to town first thing in the morning and not stopping by SB for Productivity-Inducing, Mood-Booting, Coffee Drink.

The Adventure to Accomplish Objectives:

Wake up early, hop on the treadmill and knock out 4,000 steps and half of Downton Abbey before 7:00. Lament the fact that I can't do this every day, but then resolve to try much harder because it's seriously the best. Also lament the fact that Downton Abbey is ending this season and there's only one episode a week even though it should be like Friends and have hundreds of episodes. Lady Violet, y'all.

Scoop up Wacey, and get him dressed in his hilariously cute little track suit because nothing says ADVENTURE like baby-sized exercise wear, gather up allthethings because we can't leave without, you know, everything, and zip out the door.

Wave good morning to our favorite cowboy ever.

Wave good morning to the road grader and get SO EXCITED because the roads have been so rough since the last snow storm and this guy makes them so smooth!

Wave good morning to our resident deer herd--there's a guy that lives right here who feeds them, so they camp here and I like them. 

Take a beautiful picture of what was supposed to be Pikes Peak but is actually an oddly huge fog bank.

Take a picture of my toddler being unhappy about the hood he is wearing, but not so unhappy that he wants to take it off. The struggle is real, y'all.

And then, stop and take a picture of the exact same spot that was sunny and gorgeous less than an hour before. Huh.

And now we come to the storytelling portion of today's post. I am about to tell you a story about one of the oddest, most hilarious shopping experiences of my life. 

For our wedding, we got a starter set of cobalt Fiestaware (which I registered for, thank you very much! Actually, thank the Wanbergs very much for buying it for us). When I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond to get three more place settings, they sent me back to the china department to order what I needed. While I was there, a girl about my age struck up a conversation about weddings and such. She said "Oh, are you here registering for china?! Me too! What's your pattern?" And I was like "No, just, ah, completing my Fiestaware set." According to her face, I said "No, just here smearing boogers on the counter" while simultaneously kicking puppies with knock-off shoes. She and the salesperson went on a passionate pitch to try and persuade me to buy a real, twelve-person set of china, complete with gravy boat and silver soup tureen, which simultaneously waxing poetic about the lost traditions of china patterns. I tried to explain that everything we own must be durable and dishwasher safe, because of the ranch and the cowboys and the fact that I hate handwashing. Oh and because of life and our lack of staff or aristocratic titles. You know. 

Insert the girl asking "Wait so your husband is, like, a cowboy? Like for his job?" 

I also tried to explain that the only time we would have twelve people over would be at a branding, in which case Chinet will be used. Whaaaaaaat?! However, I will say that we spring for the heavy-duty, pounds-of-meat-holding Chinet.

"I don't see why it matters. Everyone should have nice dishes."

(I do. My "company" set is gorgeous. My "everyday" set is half aforementioed Fiestaware and half Waverly toile. Not china, but gorgeous, and durable.)

"Besides, it's not like your dishes will end up at your barn or whatever." 

 When I was dropping off the electrolytes at the barn, I noticed this:

 

So there's that.

Spoiler alert: I didn't buy any china, and we are still not in possession of either a soup tureen--silver or otherwise--or a gravy boat. Le sigh. 

Happy Tuesday, may you have many happy adventures, and may you always feel free to buy the dishes you like!

The Weather Outside is Frightful

It was fifty degrees and sunny today, with no end to the good weather in sight, so we're far enough removed from freezing our hineys off that I can write about snow!

Storms in calving season are the worst, but we expect them, since we sort of live in a snowy state and we calve in the winter, when it, you know, snows.

A question we get asked a lot is "What do you do with the cows when it snows?" They stay outside, we just take extra good care of them!

The main thing is food, food, food. Cows eat more to keep themselves warm and keep up their milk supply. Bert will feed the cows extra hay, and then give them a whole extra bale of oat hay or straw for the calves to lay in. He’ll also bring them into a pasture between the pivot (where they go when they’re big) and the barn (where they’re born) that’s mostly trees, to give them more shelter.

In the pens, we’ll bed them deep with straw, feed them extra food, and try to bring the cows into the barn as they calve so the babies are born in the barn where it’s warm and dry. 

The calves are checked a LOT more often, too. Normally, you don’t have to worry as much about the older calves since they are bigger and stronger, but when we get a lot of snow and wind, they can freeze down or get buried, so it’s important to make sure that they are doing well and their mothers are taking good care of them.

 
If a calf gets cold or sick in these storms, there isn’t always time to bring the mother and the calf in together. While that’s always the ideal situation, sometimes it’s more important to get the calf warm and treated than to bring the pair in together. They are reunited as soon as possible, but keeping the calf alive is always the number one priority. One of my greatest frustrations involving cattle is when you’re trying to bring a mom in to her calf and she just won’t go because MOM JUST COME WITH ME I’M TAKING YOU TO YOUR BABY GEEZ.

Cold kills more calves than the snow does, so storms like the one we’re in now where it snows a foot and then gets down to below zero at night are the really scary ones. Checking, checking, checking all the time.

How do you know if calves are cold? A good way is to put your finger in their mouth. If it’s cold inside, then that calf is cold inside too. You can also feel their feet or their ears, since you can tell by touching them if the calf has or is well on the way to having frostbite, which is another good indicator that they need to be warmed up. You can also tell by how they look or how they’re laying if they’re feeling poorly or if something’s wrong.

If a calf gets cold, they come into the barn and get put into the hot box. Every ranch has a different variation of a hot box involving a box with a small opening or a door lined with straw and heated with heat lamps. If the hot box is in use or too far away, the floor boards of the pickup with the heat blasting are also a popular option, as is inside a (heated) vet room, or the kitchen floor!

So, next time it snows, or gets very cold, or next time you hear someone say that ranchers don’t care about their animals, remember that while the rest of the world is taking snow day, they’re working even longer hours—sometimes around the clock—outside in the blizzard taking care of everything.

Drifted In

Y'all. The weather sucks.

They predicted that we'd get snow, but last year the predictions were pretty hit-or miss--the weatherman would say that we're in for a doozy, and we'd get, like, an inch. Or, they'd say "nothing to worry about, just a light dusting!" and eight inches later, we decided to take the weather forecasts with a grain of salt.

Yesterday, it looked like it may not be so bad. I started taking pictures around 3:00.

And then, this morning:

I mean, we have our own personal snowdrift. I recognize this isn't the biggest snowdrift to ever grace the internets, or this driveway, probably, but still. Personal watermelons are a thing, but I wish personal snowdrifts weren't. I don't even know how much snow we've gotten because it's so windy! My guess is about a foot.

So, what to do on a day when you don't dare to leave the house? In a past life, I would have put on my coveralls with Bert this morning, and went out with him to feed the cows. However, babies+blizzards aren't the best combination, so we're stuck inside today. I can't say I hate being warm, but I do miss being able to feed cows because I like it! But, today was a two-man-feeding-crew kind of day, and ain't me and Wacey plus two cowboys gonna fit in the cab of a tractor. I promise I'll get some pictures when it's a pretty, Christmas card-type snow where it isn't blowing hard enough to suck Wacey out of my Ergo carrier.

Or something. I don't think that's actually happened, but I'm trying to convey the magnitude that is the wind today.

Instead, I worked on organizing yet more DNA cards (I'm almost finished, I can't wait to show the final project! I also can't wait to quit organizing DNA cards!) with Christmas movies in the background, obviously, because it's snowing. Snow before New Year's=Christmas. Duh.

Then, I went on a walk to get the mail to a) get out of the house b) look for the snow shovel (where did I put it???) and c) get my steps and active minutes in because I'm obsessed with my fitbit.

oh and 4: to listen to Christmas music while wading through knee+ high snow drifts. 

This is what I discovered:

If you want to get gas at our gas tanks, you're SOL.

 Four-wheel drive is a must.

And there's no way our mail was delivered today, because this is the county road, ha. It's drifted in to about waist height for about half a mile, apparently.

On that note....it's beginning to look a lot like Christmaaaaaaaaaasssss!