Ads from the 1930s

Finally, beers were easier to open!

Screw diet and exercise! Tapeworm anyone?

Who remembers grandmas tub of lard in the pantry?

Doctors orders! Light up!

Fag anyone?

FINALLY... ladies some helpful 1930s advice.

Sorry if this ad is small, but I will paraphrase for you. Ladies, listen up! Her husband was indifferent to her so she saw her doctor about her personal hygiene and he told her to douche with Lysol! What a difference, she and Tom found love and closeness again! Use Lysol instead of those homemade concoctions!

Happy Birthday Dylan

Seven years ago! Where does the time go? Happy birthday Dylan.

Super Dog!

We have been doing some puppy training with ol' Cooper. Come Cooper! In another life I want to be a dog. Cooper just does everything to the max. If he is in a chill out mode, it is hard to get him to move. If he is running and fetching, he does it with wild abandon.

We were working on sit/stay here. He has the sit down pretty well, but stay is so hard to do when you are a 3 month old puppy. Our big lab Morgan is best at stay. She will stay all day long. I think that has more to do with her not wanting to move and burn calories than listening to me though.

A boy and his dog. They like to wrestle with each other and roll around like crazy animals. Quite similar these two: wild and crazy.

Down. Good boy.

He still wants to climb in your lap and play and does not realize at 40 pounds this doesn't work too well. I think he believes he is a little chihuahua. He did get in big trouble this week for chewing on the door frame on the back porch. It is now coated in Pam and chili powder, I am waiting to see him chew on the frame.

Life is good!

Roadrunner

HIDEAWAY RANCH ROADRUNNER

Back in the spring I bought a package of purebred Angus cows, heifers and bulls. I moved the three heifer calves to a pasture at our new home and the rest to our ranch in the mountains. Within 5 minutes the gelding chased the heifers, causing one to break out of the pen. We spent hours that evening in the dark trying to track down a wild, scared heifer who had no clue where she belonged! We gave up our search and went to bed for the night, hoping she wouldnt end up as roadkill on the highway.

Daybreak the next morning, we get a call from our uncle who lives about a mile from us. He has a cow outside his house. I saddle up and ride down. The next two hours were spent racing back and forth across an almond orchard trying to get the heifer back to her sisters. Being alone and scared is the worst combo for a cow. Hours later with farm workers, family and friends helping in the efforts, we scared her out where she heard her sisters mooooo and broke back in with them.

The following day, I came up with the name for this heifer. Roadrunner. My kid may looks weird at the fair with her heifer with the odd name. Who names their cow Roadrunner? I do. If I have to chase you for three hours over 2 square miles horseback, I get to name you something fitting.

This would be my introduction of cattle to the ranch. I am sure everyone around this ranch, which does not raise livestock, but rather almonds, corn, wheat & cotton, wondered what the hell was going on. I set out to gentle the heifers down. Obviously they had not been handled much by people. I brought them grain and hay, made them eat grain out of a bucket with me standing right there and even pet them while they eat.

Now I still need to halter break them. I like a challenge and while the sensible thing to do would have been halter break them when they weighed 500 pounds, that would be waaayyy too easy for me. I have now waited until they are close to a thousand pounds, so this should be fun. (just kidding, i was just irresponsible and didnt get the job done and now my punishment for my own mistake will be being drug around a pen by a big heifer).

The heifers now know who their sugar momma is. They got out a few weeks ago when a post rotted and they hit the corn field. I called them twice and they came running. They love me and follow me around the pen mooing at me. A far cry from their first day here.

Ally's Birthday Party!

I am pretty impressed with myself. Today I made a decision and followed through! We planned Allys party, I made these super cool invitations and already pre-paid for movie tickets through Fandango. Even though its a few weeks before her birthday, it seemed like the easiest (for me) and most fun (for them) birthday party! Pretty cool invites huh?

Puppyhood

Oh to be a puppy. Life is so grand, everything is so exciting and when you are tired, you just crash in whatever position and place you feel the need.

He has made good friends with his labrador cohorts, Morgan and Grace. Grace is the more fun, rough house and play friend and Morgan is the matronly, bossy, leave me alone unless you want to cuddle in the dog bed and let me lick your ears, friend.

This is the whirlwind at which puppies travel. Its either all or nothing. Cooper is three months old now and such a good puppy . We have made it a month without any major damage and not too many accidents. My new floors have survived.

He LOVES to retrieve. I know, hes a 'retriever' but he really does love to go get the ball and bring it back. He's working on releasing, but I just ignore him until he gives me the ball and then he gets tons of 'good boy' praise!

Good boy Coop!

Moooooooooo

So I am sleeping, as all creatures should at 130 in the morning. The air is cooler at night finally, so I have the windows open.

"Mooooooooooo"

"Mooooooooooooo"

"Mooooooooo Mooooooo Moooooo"

and I awake finally hearing this odd moo. So I listen and she continues to moooooooo.

This is weird, I think to myself. Why aren't they all mooing? Or better yet, why aren't they chewing their cud in the quiet of night?

So I get up to pee and I look out my bathroom window into their pasture. I see one heifer... but where are her sisters?

"mooooooo"

So I put on some velour beater sweats and make the choice to go bra-less. It is 1:40 in the morning, I pray I wont run into anyone other than the animal kind. I toss on some vans, 'cause that's what all cattle rancher folk look like: blue velour sweats, black skull Vans and a white wife beater tank without a bra. never-mind the hair!

Out I go into the night, thanking God the moon is bright enough for me to see.

AHA! Two asshole heifers have toppled a post in their pen and they are now out in the just chopped corn field. Thankfully, they relate ME to FOOD and they moo at me, causing the lone good abandoned heifer to moo (hence the mooing, she had been ditched). I show them hay and they come running to the gate.

I utter some expletives, like 'you f*cking whores' and let them back in their pen. I then reward their behavior with three flakes of hay. This shuts them up so I can go repair the fence. I realize this is not something I can properly fix in the middle of the night, so I spend 20 minutes fixing the fence good enough to contain the bitches until dh can put new posts in in the morning.

Sweaty and tired I wander back into the house about 2:15 and I lay there awake. I finally put the TV on and watch two episodes of House Hunters... love that show.... and finally decide at 3:30 to get up, get a Diet Pepsi and tinker on the computer. I haven't heard anymore mysterious mooing from Rooster, Roadrunner or Robin, so I hope they are in their pasture.

Wild boars

A Sow with her piglets

Our ranch is abundant with wildlife. One thing the environmentalists and many city dwellers do not understand about ranchers, is we are one of the largest conservators of rangeland. The cattle ranchers are the caretakers of millions of acres of oak woodlands, rolling hills and grasslands that are home to all the various species of wildlife across this nation.

Sow & piglets

Any given trip to the ranch, I try to bring my camera and have it ready to shoot. I have seen mountain lions, bears (rarely thankfully), bobcats, deer, bald eagles and wild pigs to name a few.

The wild pigs are a problem because they root up the pastures and it looks like someone took a disc to the field. They also populate like crazy! They can be bred by 12 months of age and have 2-3 litters of piglets a year. Typically they can have 8-10 piglets, but due to nature, I usually see 3 or 4 piglets per sow. I am guessing there is a high piglet mortality rate. This is the one animal we have to 'thin' out on the ranch routinely.

This year is particularly bad because of the draught. There have been news articles in our local papers about them coming into rural residential areas and destroying landscape, sprinklers. They can even be mean if provoked. Lately I have seen dozens of wild pigs. They are usually night animals, but this time they just looked for a minute before heading into the brush . People in subdivisions are having to call in help to control the populations.

On our most recent trip, we came across a dozen in the middle of the day. While I have always seen some pigs on occasion or seen evidence of them, they are so overpopulated now I have seen no less than 10 on every visit to the ranch! We have been working to 'thin out' some of the pigs. Such is life on a ranch.

Cows

We love our cows. They are so funny, sweet and predictable. I drive a deisel truck to the ranch to check on them, and I always bring two bales of hay (or more) to feed them.

The reason I do this is two fold (or four fold). First, its the best way I can get them together and check on everyone. The other is so when I have to gather them, my job is easy. You see, instead of having to chase cows across the land, through brush and rocky hillsides, they are spoiled and want hay. We just honk the horn, toss out a little hay and they come following into the corrals. Usually we only need a horse or two or a quad to follow up the straglers in the rear. You see this also alows me to be lazier and not work as hard. Lastly, the cows need a little extra supplement this time of year.

Somehow this calf has eluded the brandings and castration, as well as weaning!

We are in a draught and the grass is lean this year, so I typically give them hay once or twice a week to supplement. The lake is low, so this time they decided to take a 'short cut!'

A face only a mother could love!

You see their faces and ear tags are blackish and dirty? The yellow flowers you see are not beautiful flowers, but rather obnoxious weed we call 'tar weed,' I dont know the exact name of it, thats my husbands department. We are looking into ways of eradicating it. Anyhow, the cows dont eat it, but it is everywhere they do eat, so the sticky tar on the plant sticks to their faces and every late summer the cows look like this. It has a pungent smell as well that stays on the truck and follows me wherever I go. I get out at the grocery store and smell tar weed.


Somehow her pretty fance has managed to stay clean, or can you just not see it?

MMMmmmmmmm hay!

Decorating

We are finally getting settled into the house. We are now into month 11 of the remodel. Most of the interior is done except for the 4th bathroom which make be years before we have the energy to rip out tile and tackle it. Its a 4th bathroom, it doesnt really matter as much. It serves its function of bathroom off the laundry room and bathroom for the pool.

Here is our dining room. I am pretty happy with it and it is finished. I used the sage color from my adjacent couches on the wall and picked a rug with some rusty oranges in it. I wish I had found a bigger rug in that pattern, but oh well.

Here is the front living room. Its cozy and serves as the tv (inside the armoire) with the Wii, all Wii games and the pool table is next to this living room area. You can see the corner of the pool table in the below photo. I wish dh had hung the picture above the couch a little lower, but again, oh well. I need something for the big blank wall next to the armoire.

Here is the entry. It is barron and I am far from being happy with it. Any thoughts? I love the art and the console table, but otherwise it is boring and drab.

Here is my messing living room. Can you tell I was doing laundry, vaccuuming and the puppy bed and toys are here? This is my reality. I love this rug and couch though. I need to add another couch in here and have been strugging to find one that 'goes' with the couch and rug. I think I found this one I think will work.

Here is the all important TV and bar area. I can see this tv from the kitchen, which I love. My old kitchen was in an old house isolated with swing doors on both ends of the kitchen to keep me in my place. I love that I can be making dinner and watching Oprah or House Hunters or something equally important! As you can see, yesterday it was the Bears beating Dallas.

This has been my biggest headache. I can not figure out how to decorate this monter without it looking cluttered. On the very top I am going to put my antique saddles (once I clean them). I am pretty happy with the top shelf. Thank you Target for your 75% off clearance items. The rest seems like a cluttered mess to me. Any thoughts?

Finally, for today, here is our kitchenette. This table is pushed against the wall with a bench underneath. I can pull it out and put 8 kids there if need be. If I were insane, that is.