On the payroll....

On Thursday, we hitched the Haffie's to the cart and headed out to feed the cows! Nothing like on the job training! They did a very nice job. We had to go about a mile to the stack yard, so The Rancher let them trot out. He said he really likes the way they move.

So we hooked the hay bale feeder to the back of the cart like we did last year, and then the girls got an idea of what WORK really is! They actually did better than the big team at not flipping out with the weight of the initial pull. Here are the pictures of the event, which are NOT in the correct order... I can't seem to change it either. The second picture should be last. The second bale was very flat sidded, and possibly frozen to the ground or the bale beind it... Either way the girls pulled so hard they bent the double tree, thus ending their work for the day. We fed the bale with the pickup and I ground drove the girls back home. Other than the slight equipment problem, all went very well!

GO TEAM!

No, this post has nothing to do with the Super Bowl. It's about OUR TEAM!!! We hitched our two Haflinger mares to the cart today! We affectionately call them the Haffie's, which you can see pictures of in a previous post.


So first we hitched them to the cart, but since they are so much smaller than our big team of Belgians from last year... they didn't really fit. So rather than have a wreck we un hitched them. I worked with each mare driving single for a bit. Then I took Sis, the younger one out and drove her around the front pasture. The biggest cowgirl came along with the snow sled she got for Christmas, and I had Sis pull her around... pretty soon we had two sleds and three cowgirls behind her!

Then I took Sis back and drove Lil and Sis together again... all this time, the Rancher was working on shortening the tongue of the stone boat (big heavy sled) to fit the Haffies, since the cart is borrowed and the owner may not like us shortening the tongue! By the time I was driving the team back past where he was working, he was ready to hitch them.

They did very well. Lil did try to have a little run away when the sled crossed a patch of gravel, rather than the quieter snow, but the Rancher held firm and all went well.

The camera battery was dead... but it's charged now! So maybe tomorrow I'll get some pictures! They sure make a cute team!

Hold Your Horses!

There may be some activity coming up on my blog! I've been working on my website, and my webmaster, The Great and amazing Ginger, reaalllly thought it would be good to include a link to my blog.

Guess that means I have to start posting again!
There's no time like the present!

Oh and if you want to check out how the beef website is coming along... go to www.BarLLBeef.com and feel free to leave comments or sugggestions here.

The Mighty Hunter!

Today, the Redheaded Cowgirl scored a first! She's the first cowgirl to have shot a turkey! She shot it on her first shot, on opening day of turkey season! She's proud, mom and dad are proud, and the other cowgirls are proud, too!

The Rancher prepared the breast, because we had been told that the rest may be a little tough. It was delicious!!! We roasted it with a whole stick of butter (due to having skinned rather than plucked the bird) and some soup seasonings that the Biggest Cowgirl made a while back and had accidentally read the recipe as ground pepper rather than green pepper. We'd have made a pepper steak rub out of them, but for the celery in the recipe... sooo... Mary Ann's Seasoned Pepper Turkey Rub is born! YUM!!! And just in time for the holidays!

And just so you don't think we tossed the rest of the bird... the "tough" parts are in the freezer and will have a great future in a pot of Mary Ann's Rocky Mountain Cranberry Bean Soup! (Yeah, I'm always marketing!)

Horse Trading...

Some people have it in their blood... The Rancher's dad is one. I'm another. I love to horse shop, but it often means selling one or two in order to get what I want. Sometimes it works out great, and other times, not-so-much.... the jury is still out on this one. Here's what I've been up to...

With the advent of Spring we no longer needed to feed cows with the Belgians. To further the education of our team the Rancher completed the "stone boat", a low clearance sled that will be handy in picking up hay from the field, and feeding it in the winter. On dry gravel it makes a horrid screeching noise! Bowers and Barney handled it all in stride... kind of tough to run off with this thing anyway!

We even gave the Biggest Cowgirl, and the Redheaded Cowgirl some driving lessons! They really liked that!




While we have learned a lot and really enjoyed our BIG team, they are..well... BIG!

For a neat comparison here is the Biggest Cowgirl with the Littlest Pony (one she was "training" for a friend) and the Biggest Draft Horse - aka Bowers!



Being somewhat practical minded folks... we thought that if we had a smaller team we could ride them as well as drive them. So we advertised our big team for sale. Barney sold first to a carriage company in Ft Collins, CO wear he will be giving carriage rides downtown! We'll even be able to visit. So Bowers was here on his own for a while. Necessity got us to hitch him to the cart as a single....

He is a gorgeous animal! We never got the picture "just right" to show how much action he has in his feet, but it was really fun to watch. We hooked the cart to the pasture harrow to spread the manure from the winter feed ground.

Bowers has found a home as part of a team here in Wyoming. He will not have to work too hard, he'll mostly be used for "fun" stuff and a little bit of farming. His new teammate "Duke" is a good match. He's HUGE (heavier, not taller), a little darker, but a nice matching blaze. They'll look really sharp!

Sooooo, this is where I got to go shopping! (I'd MUCH rather horse shop than go to the mall!) I had spent quite a bit of time over the winter researching "small draft horses". I got really interested in the Haflinger breed. The are little... shorter than most of our quarter horses. But STOUT! They probably outweigh our quarter horses. They are very strong, gentle, and used for farming, parades, and often as kids riding horses. So I started looking....

I found lots of teams in the Midwest, but getting them here seemed a challenge. Eventually I found three registered Haflingers for sale in Colorado. The three were a package deal, at a good price. Two mares, mother and daughter, and a stallion! So with the potential of 5 haflingers come next spring, we made the deal. Getting them here was easy, but NOT simple!

The gal who owned them lived about two hours south of Craig, where we attended church when we lived in the area. She was able to deliver them to Craig immediately. We were already planning to attend a wedding in Craig a few weeks later. So I just needed to find a place to keep them for a few weeks, in order to combine the trip for the wedding and retrieving our new horses. Pastor T and Miss Debby don't own horses, but they do own about 35 acres surrounded by tall "elk" fence. So the horses were delivered there, and Pastor graciously took pictures and sent them to us.

Eclair of Forte - aka "Lilly"

Enchantress of Kildue - aka "Peanut"

Nevado - aka "Little Bit"

Finally, the time arrived and the Three Cowgirls and I headed out with truck and trailer... We delivered Bowers on the way (well, several hours out of the way, but that's life!) enjoyed the wedding, paid the Pastor's pasture bill (say that five times fast!) with a bottle of Scotch, visited, stayed for church on Sunday, and loaded our new horses and brought them home!

While visiting a friend down there, we also acquired a milk goat, "Star" and her doeling kid which the Cowgirls dubbed "Twinkle". Not a surprising twist if you know me at all! LOL!!!

Star

Twinkle

Little Bit and his Girls!

And since we always like a good challenge.... Here's the stats on the new horses. Lilly is 8, and was broke to drive but hasn't been used for some time. Peanut, Lilly's 3 year old daughter, is halter broke. Little Bit, who we gelded this week, is 5 and broke to ride but has only been ground driven. All this means we are back in the training business! Oiy!!!! Plus learning how to milk a goat!!!

Maybe bringing a nice, proven, broke team from the mid-west wouldn't have been so hard after all! But it's okay, I'm already in love with these delightful little horses! They are smart, friendly and beautiful!

"Never a dull moment" is an understatement!

It's tough to have fun in a place like this....

but we try!

That's the biggest cowgirl, sitting on her heifer, Betsy. She bottle raised Betsy from less than a week old. It took Betsy a LONG time to realize she was a bovine, since she lived with horses instead. But now she lives with the cows, and is hopefully in a "family way".

More fun! We hooked the kid's runner sled on behind the cart and went for a make-shift sleigh ride!

Does this look like fun? I took this one from INSIDE the house!
A week ago, Monday, we were blessed with 24" of snow! It came down FAST! About 2-3 inches per hour! Thankfully we had watched the weather forcast and had some idea of what was coming. So, Sunday afternoon in lovely 50+ degree weather, we rode out and gathered the cows to bring them a little closer to home. When the snow started to pile up so deep and fast, we moved them closer to the haystack. By the time we finished feeding, the snow was up to the doors on the 3/4T pickup! I didn't take any pictures for the first few days. But I did finally take the camera along, when the sun came out.

The rest of the week we fed with the team. We actually had a blast! They really improved a lot with each day. Here you can see Bowers really getting down and pushing into the load. This was a huge improvement from just two days earlier.

Another way the team improved was in that we could let them stand without someone on the cart, or trying them to a post. They were quite happy to have the rest between bales!

Even the animals have fun here! The cats, Lizzie, in the window on the left, Mr Kitty, the black cat in the window on the right, Grace, at the end of the tie rail, and Clifford, in the middle of the tie rail, are all enjoying the sunshine!

And today... it's snowing again. We turned the cows back out yesterday in the sunshine. The snow has melted enough that they can get to the grass again. But with the snow this morning they are hanging out at the gate saying, "Hey!" I mean "Hay!" Poor girls, the Rancher and I went out with the pickup to "pull" them over to the area of the pasture where the grass is best. (They'll follow the truck anywhere, even with no hay on it!) They followed us there, and even started grazing. We rolled up some electric fence, and then drove back to the house. Within 10 minutes they were back at the gate saying... "We don't approve of your April Fools joke on us!" And we say... get to work ladies! It's your job!

I love my husband!

And he must love me, because he kindly laughs at my (mis)adventures! Like the day before yesterday when a friend from church came out to have the Rancher show him the chores that he will be doing next week while we run away on a family vacation to AZ! Said friend's wife (who is of course also a friend) came in to visit with me in the house. We were discussing the decor when I lamented once again about my carpet and how I wished that there was hardwood floors underneath, as would be befitting a ranch house of the age of this one (Built in the 20's I think). So I said, "Ya know, I really shoud pull up a corner of the carpet in the living room and see if the floor in here is different from the floor in the dining room" (where I had already discovered plywood). I did, and happy day!!!! there was hardwood!



Well, then I issued the challange to my friend. "You know if (other crazy friend from church) was here, we'd have this carpet out in the next ten minutes." Come to find out I have more than one crazy friend from church! She took the challange and we started cutting and ripping out carpet. Oh how proud the Rancher was going to be! New floors and very little expense!


**It must be noted here, that the plan to remove the carpet and put in new hard floors (wood or laminate) had already been discussed and all partties were agreeable.



I was basking in the glow of polished harwood, when the next tug on the carpet revealed...... plywood. About half way across the room the floor changes to wall-to-wall plywood. UGH! Now I started to sweat! What would the Rancher say when he came back to find heaps of carpeting on the porch and the naked half hardwood/half plywood living room floor! We finished ripping out carpet, but I was nervous! Finally I called the Rancher on his cell phone, so he wouldn't get the surprise visually... Blessed man just laughed at me! That cheerful, loving, I feel for you, you big goofball, laugh. I love my husband!




So, for my friends far away who wish to help me now with my dilema and wanted photos... here we go. And for my friends who were hoping for beautiful ranch pictures... maybe next time!