I didn't...

break any bones, nor did I bounce with any grace. It's been a long time (10 years if I'm recollecting correctly) since I hit the ground from the top of a horse. Until yesterday.

I was in "hot pursuit" of a wayward cow, jumping creeks and sagebrush, having a great time... I don't know what happened next... did we jump a sagebrush and I fouled my horse somehow? He's a colt, in experience if not in age, and is still a bit on the green side. I must have bumped him, but he jumped up and sideways again and I knew I was off. I concentrated on getting my left foot out of the stirrup. It did come, but not until I was somewhat below it. I landed on my pelvis/lower back. My horse continued on at a high rate of speed over the horizon.

There were no witnesses, the Cowgirls, and our summer intern, Shane, were all over the hill, and the Rancher was down the road shoeing the neighbor's horse. So I reached in my pocket for my cell phone and called him to say I was laying on my back in the meadow at the top of the canyon. He was not pleased. I was up and moving before I got off the phone with him. He, being done with the neighbor's horses, drove up the road and found my horse about half way home. The Biggest Cowgirl came riding over the hill to find her mom afoot with no horse in sight. Like a trooper she eased on around the cows and got them turned before they headed down the canyon. I caught up with her and we got them back over the hill in the direction we wanted them. She kept with them and soon disappeared in the pine trees. I spied the other two cowgirls and the intern and hollered for them. They, too, were surprised to see Mommy without a horse. I doubled up with the Littlest Cowgirl, and off we went to help sis with the cows. After quite a bit more effort we got them through the gate, where we found the Rancher, sitting on my horse!

Thankfully, there was ibuprophen in the pick-up and I got to drive the pick-up home! All's well that end's well, and hey, it got me to post on my blog again!!

Swearing In

The Rancher has just sworn in the Cowgirls as Deputies of Ranch Security. They are off to the chicken house to see if the previous night's murderer has returned. Da, da, dum. There is a fresh blanket of snow, so tracking should be relatively easy. Stay tuned....

It's a girl!

Lil, the mare, gave birth to this adorable filly sometime between 8:00pm last night and 6:00am this morning! I think we'll call April 20th her birthday, since that is my trusty old gelding, Woody's birthday, too. (He's 24!)

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!

Success!!

Well, for both of you who read my blog, I thought you might like to know that we lived to tell the tale! We "practiced" in the corral for a minute with a "pretend" tongue to be sure that the feeling of the wood against Bowers' legs wouldn't bother him. Then we hitched them to the fore-cart and the Rancher drove them around the corral! This picture is blurry, but I really like it!

Then we were off to the cows. It's about a half to 3/4 of a mile to the stack yard. Sure was nice to not have to walk it today! Then we hitched to the bale roller, and fed those cows!

The boys did GREAT! We did have a little snaffoo on the second bale. It was a very hard pull either because of the snow in front of it, or it was frozen down. The team didn't pull together like a team should, and they couldn't get it to move. Bowers was thinking, this is WAY heavy, and so after a few tries, he would back up when we asked him to walk instead of trying to go forward at all. It was apparent that if we continued with the same approach we were going to teach him to be very balky about pulling a load. So we unhitched from the bale (not from the cart) and the Rancher drove them around for a few minutes with plenty of stops and starts, so that they could regain their confidence. While he did this, I removed the snow from in front of the bale. Then we hooked a chain between the cart and the bale roller so that the team could walk forward a few steps before hitting the load. This worked well, and they were able to break the bale loose. We then removed the chain and hitched the cart back to the roller, and away we went.

I finally got to drive, and the Rancher took some pictures.

For a friend that asked for more detail about the bail un-roller, here it is. The frame makes 3 sides of a square, with a short tongue on the middle side. The steel is 3" channel iron and the corners are reinforced. The open end has a whole bored in each end that allows a very large "pin" to be placed in it, and locked on one end with a carter pin.

The pin is removed and the frame is placed around the bale appropriately. The pin is then placed in the whole on one side of the frame and lined up with the center of the bale. Then, the fun part. Grab the closest sledge hammer and pound that pin through the center of the bale.

This isn't as hard as it seems. I can do it, but the Rancher really makes it look easy!

Once you are through the whole bale, you line the other side of the frame up with the pin, attach it, and secure it with the carter pin. Hitch on to your pick-up, or your team of draft horses, and pull the bale to the desired location for feeding. Cut the strings, and move on up. Your bale should unroll nicely.... unless you have it on backwards! In which case you unhitch, and just flip the bale un-roller to the other side of the bale (you don't have to remove the roller to do this). Move your team to the other side, hitch 'em back up, and away you go again. We had lots of experience at this today, because both bales were "backwards"! It was great training for the team to line up, back up, stand still, and then pull.

This is a good picture of how it all looks. (Photo credit on this one goes to the Rancher!)

Oh, and just because the sun was shining doesn't mean it was WARM! Yesterday was a big goose egg when we left the house, and today was a whopping 10 degrees F with wind chills below zero! But we had so much fun, we didn't think of the cold (okay, 6 layers of clothing and Carhart Extremes help, too).

The end.

Dreams Come True...

I remember the day, about 13 years ago, on our first ranch job when I rode Woody up to a wire gate and opened it from his back. It hit me at that moment that a dream had come true. I was riding the first colt I had ever trained (he was no longer a colt by then) and doing real ranch work with him. All those years of training where we just dreamed and pretended that we were doing something that had a purpose, and now it was for real.

Today, another dream came true. About 17 years ago I worked a summer internship for Bowers Bros. Horse Training. At the time, twin brothers Mike and Steve Bowers were training saddle horses and draft horses. They had enough hay ground to put the teams to work mowing, raking, and hauling hay in from the field. I fell in love that summer... with driving teams for a purpose. (I also fell in love that summer with the Rancher, but that's another blogpost.) Today we fed our cows with a team of horses!

That's "Bowers and Barney". Bowers is the one on the right (in the photo) with a blaze face. He came to us early last fall. Sadly, Steve Bowers passed away about a year and a half ago. This 3 year old Belgian colt was one that he had bought, but hadn't yet started. Peggy, Steve's wife, sent him to us to "give him a purpose". I don't know who has gotten more of an education, Bowers, or the Rancher and I! Like I said, it's been 17 years since my internship and I have only used a team a handful of times since. Thankfully, Steve Bowers, lives on in the books he has written. We have poured over and over the one we have, to learn and re-learn how to do this so as to teach Bowers the right way.

Barney, we bought at a draft horse auction in October. He's a tried and true sleigh ride horse, and who knows what he did prior to that! He's about 15 and has been-there-done-that. He's a good horse, but truth be told, Bowers is well on his way to being better. But they are the team we have. We've been ground driving them while the Rancher has been building all of the equipment neccesary to get the job done. He's built single trees, double trees, and a neck yoke. We don't have a sled to hitch them too, but we have pulled a small pasture harrow with Bowers, and hitched Barney to a borrowed cart.

We decided last night, as we looked out on the foot of snow, that today would be a good day to hitch them to a hay bale, and feed the cows. We hooked the double trees to the home made bale roller that the Rancher uses behind the pick-up. Then we hitched up the team. Bowers seemed to notice the new weight behind him, but didn't let it bother him. We fed two bales this way and then headed 'em home. It was quite a workout for the Rancher and I since we walked the whole way to the cows, walked for the feeding, and walked home. The Rancher replaced the shaves on the borrowed cart with a tongue later this afternoon... so tomorrow we won't have to walk as far! If all goes well! It will be the first time Bowers will be hitched with a tongue and to a wheeled vehicle, but we're counting on the deep snow, the breaks on the cart, and of course, his good training to bring us through!

If we live to tell the tale, I'll post about it!

Ahh, That Country "Moo-sic"!

Well, if you live on a ranch this time of year, you know what that means! The Rancher and I will be serenaded all night... oh, the romance of it all. It's weaning time and not more than 100 yards from our bedroom window there are 128 bawling calves and 128 bawling cows. Now, we do this with as little stress as possible (to the cattle that is!). We use a method called "across-the-fence-weaning". We gather all of the cattle into the corral, and then sort the cows and calves apart. We then turn the cows into a pasture on one side of the corral, and turn the calves out on the pasture on the other side of the corral. These pastures share a fence. A really, really stout fence. This way the cows and calves can still "talk" to eachother and touch noses. Beyond the fenceline they have fresh grass and water. "Makes perfect sense," you might say. How would it be done differently? Well, more often than not, cattle are weaned by locking the calves in the corral and hauling the cows far off to the other side of the ranch. The calves bawl and walk for many days, stirring up the dust as they do. The results are a lot of respiratory problems and other sickness in already stressed calves. Then the calves need to be "doctored" or treated with antibiotics. Well, since we sell our cattle as beef directly to the customer, with no hormones, and no antibiotics, that would significantly reduce the number of cattle we could sell that way. So we need to use a lower stress, healthier for the cattle, method. While we will be serenaded tonight, tomorrow there will be significantly less "moo-sic" and by Thursday or Friday all should be quiet on our peaceful little ranch again. (No laughing from the peanut gallery, please!)

EARTHQUAKE!!!!

Okay, as shocking as it is that I am actually posting to my blog, we REALLY DID have an earthquake here this morning. I had just woken up, barely, and was still lying in bed when everything started to shake! It only lasted about 5-10 seconds, but I heard things on the walls rattling and felt the whole world shaking! I asked the Rancher, "Did you feel that?" he was mostly still asleep and said "No." After I got up and started the coffee, I checked the USGS website and sure enough there was a big red dot in the middle of Wyoming indicating an earthquake within the last hour! It was recorded at 6:13 am, and when I thought enough to look at the clock to mark the time it was 6:14 am. I talked to a neighbor this morning and though she didn't feel it, apparently it isn't as uncommon as I would like to think living here in central Wyoming. She had some great stories of one or two "doosies".

A picture is worth a thousand words....

So, I'll limit the words (a little) and post about a thousand pictures... The Rancher has been telling family and friends how "We got some great pictures, Wendi'll be posting them to her blog..." And I haven't. The guilt is more than I can take, so enjoy some photos....

This is the "cowboy crew" of the Bar Double L, although the cowgirls outnumber the cowboy! From left to right is the Redheaded Cowgirl, the Biggest Cowgirl, the Littlest Cowgirl, and the Rancher.



Another important member of the crew is, Bud. He's a 1996 model Border Collie/McNab who has covered a LOT of miles with the Rancher and I. This is him after helping us move pairs out of the north pasture, he found a shady spot to rest.



This is Blackie, she is Bud's daughter. The Ol' man still has it, 'cuz she was born on the 4th of July just two years ago! She's learning the ropes from her dad.

The dogs weren't the only ones resting after the move. This photo shows the two oldest members of the crew (well, except the Rancher and I). Woody, the black horse, was the first horse that I ever bought on my own. He was 5 months old and I was a young teenager (we're both MUCH older now!). It's pretty cool to me that the Redheaded Cowgirl is riding him and enjoying it. He's a little too arthritic to carry me anymore. The bald faced sorrel, is actually my mom's horse, he's 18 and we've had him around since he was three. The Rancher and I have had "custody" of him for many of those years and he has been a great asset to the crew. The Rancher is on "Peanut Butter" a mare we have owned for about a year. She's cowy, but she likes to buck occasionally.... thus, the Rancher likes her!

Fast forward a month or so, and we trailed the pairs up the mountain after branding (pictures of which are on my nephew's camera, and may or may not appear someday). This is Pastor T. riding Ace, and having a great time helping us out!

This was my first trip up the mountain since we've lived here, so I was awed, to say the least, by the scenery here in our backyard!

This picture is reminiscent of a western print my mom has in her living room, which includes a cowby resting near his horse in the forground... wonder if the artist had ever seen our ranch?

Speaking of resting cowboys!

Oh yeah, I was there too... who do ya think was taking all the pictures?