Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Calving season is winding down around the ranch. There are a few more calves yet to be born, and the Bag Lady hopes the stragglers finish up soon.

This little heifer came along on the weekend...

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny evening and she was up and running around in no time.

The Bag Lady's garden is almost all planted, except for a few bedding plants she would like to add. She hopes to check out some greenhouses soon to find some plants that have already been started, and a few flowers to put in pots on her deck.

She and the Rancher planted 75 hills of potatoes, so with luck, they will at least have meat and potatoes to carry them through the winter!

That Monday Morning Choo-Choo

The Bag Lady is glad that it's Monday! She can go back to work and get some rest!

She and the Rancher decided that, after 14 years (and the unfortunate New Year's Eve firecracker incident!) that it was time to replace the linoleum in their house. They shopped around, looked at sales flyers and finally decided to go to town and see what was available. The laminate flooring that they saw in one sales flyer turned out to be the kind that looks better in pictures than in real life, but while they were wandering around the store, they found some they quite liked, so they bought it.

Conssequently, the Bag Lady spent the weekend wrapping and boxing china and crystal, moving china cabinets and tables and chairs and bookshelves and other furniture, cleaning out closets and trying to find places to put things out of the way! It took her two solid days. The Rancher got a call to go to work hauling some equipment and was gone for most of those two days, so she had to do it alone. (She also had to leave the fridge and stove for him and the installers to move - she's tough, but she's not crazy!)

She has never watched the TV program "Hoarders", but some of her facebook friends have pointed out that perhaps she should..... *ahem*.

She hopes to have pictures to share with you in a week or so. In the meantime, here is the newest addition to the ranch:

Little Bobo

A few years back, we had a cold, wet spring. One morning, in a raging blizzard, the cowboy went out to check cows and discovered that one of our cows had calved. The poor calf was lying in a snowbank, half frozen. So the cowboy did the sensible thing – he scooped up the calf and brought it to the house! My fairly new, recently spotless dining room became a nursery.
We cleaned the calf and piled blankets on him and set him over the heat register. The poor little thing laid there, hardly moving, while we worked on him. He finally started to shiver, which is a good sign, then to move a little. Pretty soon he was lying up, rather than flat out on the floor.






The weather cleared up and the sun started to shine and before too long it had warmed up considerably outside. Little Bobo took notice of this and decided it was time he stood up. Well, linoleum isn’t the best thing underfoot for a newborn calf to learn to stand on.

Remember Bambi on the frozen pond? Little Bobo made Bambi look graceful.


Eventually we got Bobo onto the rug in front of the door and with a little assistance; it wasn’t long before he was proudly on his feet.
Soon after that, we took him out and reunited him with his distraught mother, made sure he got a drink of milk, then let nature take it’s course.





Just another day on the ranch.

Mixed Bag (Lady) Day - Life on the Ranch

It's Friday, again, and this week the Bag Lady is sharing (by popular demand!) another ranching story.

Life on the ranch is not always, as John Denver said, kinda laid back! Certainly there are times when it is, but there are also times when it can be rather hectic. And downright exhausting.
Spring is one of the hectic times. Calves are being born left and right, and ranchers are trying to make sure that all the calves survive. Now the Bag Lady is aware that there are huge ranches out there where, due to sheer volume of animals, the cows are left to calve pretty much on their own; but with a small cow/calf operation things are a little different. Losing one or two calves when you have hundreds is not quite the catastrophe that it is when you only have forty or fifty head. So the small rancher has to be Johnny (or Jill)-on-the-spot.
There are all manner of things that can go wrong, but the Bag Lady is nothing if not superstitious, so she won’t talk about the Really Bad Things. One of the things that can happen is that a big calf can get stuck, so to speak. It comes part-way out, then gets hip-locked, which means exactly that. The calf gets stuck at the hips.
Early one spring morning, the Bag Lady dragged her weary butt out of bed, pulled on some clothes and stumbled out to check cows. It was just before dawn, and it was snowing; big, fat, fluffy flakes of snow. There was also a cold wind driving those big, fat, fluffy flakes of snow sideways! The Bag Lady shivered her way out to the little patch of trees where the cows had bedded down for the night.
There was a cow she knew was close to calving, and this particular cow had, in previous years, had some troubles. Sure enough, the cow was lying on her side with her calf half-way out. The Bag Lady was pretty sure that the calf was hip-locked. Now generally, when this happens, if the cow gets up or moves around a little, the calf will turn a bit and slip right out. A lot of times, though, the cow is tired, and she won’t move. Other times, all it takes is for the rancher to give a little tug when the cow pushes, and the calf will come. This is always a Lot Easier if the cow is in a confined space, like a barn, or calving shed, rather than out in the pasture. Cattle are wary of intruders when they are calving, even when they know you.
The Bag Lady quietly snuck up behind the cow and took a firm hold on the calf’s front legs, right about the time the cow turned her head and noticed her.
The cow leaped to her feet and took off, running into the wind, with the Bag Lady determinedly hanging on to the slippery calf’s legs! Blinded by the snow, trying desperately to dig her heels in, the Bag Lady was dragged through the bush until, with a strange sucking sound, the calf turned ever so slightly and slipped out of the cow. The Bag Lady managed not to hurt either herself or the calf, and also managed to be well out of the way when the enraged cow turned back to claim her calf! This is not, by the way, the recommended method for assisting a hip-locked calf, but the Bag Lady was lucky that morning and it worked!
After making sure everything was alright with calf and mother, and wiping snow out of her eyes and shaking it out of her dripping hair, the Bag Lady made her weary way back to the house for a well-deserved cup of coffee.
Just another day on the ranch.