Weekend Additions

It was a productive weekend on the ranch. Saturday morning, the Bag Lady went out to check cows and discovered this fellow had arrived:




And so had this one:


Sunday brought this little guy..... the Bag Lady can't resist calling him Moonie because of the white half-moon spot beside his nostril.

Sunday was a bright, sunny day, so the Bag Lady and the Rancher took a little stroll along the path the Rancher had plowed for the cows to get to the waterer.


And this little guy found a puddle to paddle in. (You may have to click on it to enlarge to actually be able to see the duck!) The ducks and geese are returning, but they aren't finding much open water.

Hopefully the weather will warm up soon for all the creatures (including humans!)

Photo-Finish Friday - Winter

The Bag Lady wanted to show you a comparison between last year at this time and this year. Now that Blogger has finally allowed her to upload the pictures, she realizes they don't really appear all that different.... they both look wintery!

It's winter. That's probably why.







And there doesn't really appear to be an end in sight for quite a long time yet.

The Return of Winter

Winter keeps returning to the Bag Lady's world! The other day, she woke up to more snow.



The wet, sticky snow clung to everything, including the gate to the hay-yard:




It was a gray, dull day.


Here is a cow's-eye view of the Bag Lady's house:


Later on in the day, the clouds cleared away and the sun came out:


As the sun set, the fog started to roll in:

The temperature this week is supposed to be more seasonal, unfortunately. The Bag Lady has to keep reminding herself that February is the shortest month, and when March arrives, spring can't be too far away.

Brrr!

Winter has arrived in the Bag Lady’s neighbourhood. The little skiff of snow we had last time was just a precursor. It was fairly mild from then until now. The grass was still poking through the little patches of snow. But the temperature dropped steadily all day yesterday, and it started snowing in the late afternoon. It is still snowing this morning, and the temperature is minus 20C (-3 F). The wind is blowing, so with the wind-chill it feels more like minus 30C (around -22F). This does not make the Bag Lady very happy, but she realizes there is nothing she can do about it. Well, actually, that’s not true. She could move to warmer climes, but that is not feasible. Sigh. Looking on the bright side, winter arrived a full month earlier last year.
So the Bag Lady will distract herself with other things and try not to look outside too often! She has two orders from the craft sale that she needs to fill, and can always find something else to do.
Of course, once the sun comes up, she will have to bundle up and go out to feed the cows. And sweep the steps. This snow is of the light, feathery variety that is easily swept away.

The weather has turned the Bag Lady’s sights toward Christmas. She and the Cowboy are spending Christmas day away from the ranch, so the Bag Lady doesn’t have to do much in the way of decorating or cooking. She will do some baking – Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas for her without butter tarts and shortbread cookies. Perhaps that is a good project for today…

What constitutes Christmas for you? Do you love fruitcake? Or is it the sugar cookies cut into Santa Claus shapes? Gingerbread? Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas for the Cowboy without his mother’s Steamed Carrot Pudding with Caramel Sauce. (That is one of his family traditions that the Bag Lady embraced with enthusiasm!) What's your favourite Christmas food?

Oh, No...Snow!

The Bag lady had a post written for today about cattle and ranching, but when she woke up this morning it was snowing. So she changed her mind about that post. The Bag Lady hates winter. She doesn’t like the cold, although the last few years it hasn’t been nearly as cold as it could have been. And it occasionally serves a purpose on those days when the hot flashes drive her around the bend. (Just step outside for a minute and cool off!)

The Bag Lady doesn’t know why she lives here in the winter. She doesn’t ski, or snow-shoe, or skate, or even curl (which seems to her the second most boring game invented, next to golf). The only good thing about snow is that you can use it in biscuits in place of eggs. If you ever run out of eggs and want to make biscuits, use 2 tablespoons of snow for each egg…
Just about the time she starts looking at real estate somewhere warm, she remembers the summers here and hesitates. Her mother always said “He who hesitates is lost”, and that’s what happens. The Bag Lady starts thinking about the 20 hour-long days in June (and conveniently forgets the helicopter-sized mosquitoes) and decides to stick it out one more year. She knows that the warm places don’t have those long, long summer days, where it doesn’t get dark until almost midnight; then the sun starts streaking the sky pink at 3 in the morning. Where the northern sky has a glow for those 4 short hours, and, if the full moon happens to coincide with the summer solstice, it doesn’t really seem to get dark at all!

But that is half a year away, and it is snowing and dark outside. Conversely, at the winter solstice, the sun seems to rise about noon and set at 3, but of course, that isn’t really true. It gets light after 9 am and is dark again by 5. This is the time of year that the Bag Lady finds depressing. Mind you, the last few years, she starts getting depressed around the first part of July because she knows it’s all downhill from there! The days are getting shorter, and the cowboy keeps reminding her that the summer is almost over…

The Bag Lady knows that she will eventually get accustomed to the weather, sort of. She will never like it, though. She will have to force herself to leave the house every day. She knows there will be warm winter days, when the sun shines so brilliantly off the snow that it can cause blindness. She knows that the crisp air will fill her lungs and taste as sweet as an apple. She knows there will be days when the frost covers everything with a glittering coat of diamonds, and the snow crunches underfoot. There will be days when the snow squeaks under the cows’ hooves and you can see their breath rising like smoke. There will also be warm days when the Chinook winds blow down from the mountains, melting the snow and shaping it into dunes and waves; making a treacherous crust of ice everywhere. And there will be days when the sky is such an incredible shade of blue it seems to make the snow even whiter. Or is it the whiteness of the snow that makes the sky seem bluer?

The Bag Lady knows that there will be picture-perfect days, and there will be horrible, dark days when the clouds roll in and it seems the snow will never stop falling, and hey, didn’t my car used to be there under that snowbank somewhere? But she also knows that eventually it will melt, and it will be muddy and horrible, and the world will be reborn.

Perhaps that is why she lives here. What's it doing in your world today?

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.