There's Nothing Romantic or Poetic About Being a Cowboygirl

There's nothing romantic or poetic about doctoring calves in a foot of snow.  When it's cold, and slick.  And you have to keep the vaccine bottle in your bra so it stays warm enough you can actually draw vaccine out of the bottle when you need it.

 

There's nothing romantic or poetic (or even cool poems about....) processing yearlings in the rain.  In mud up to your knees.  With wet gloves.

There's nothing romantic or poetic about classing calves in the alley.  In 6 inches of oozy, sticky, gummy mud.  Buried under 8 inches of snow.  One hour before the truck shows up.

There's nothing romantic or poetic about trailing cows down the highway in subzero temperatures.  Leading your horse because you can't feel your feet.  When you can see your breath.

There's nothing romantic or poetic about calving out 1500 heifers.  In 4 weeks.  Twelve hour days.  Each black heifer looks exactly like the black heifer you just rode past.  In January.  By week 2 you won't remember your own name.

 

But....

It is kind of cool to watch the sun come up over the canyon rim as you trot out of camp in the morning.

There is definitely some poetry in a perfect heel loop that scoops up two feet, or a bridle horse working a cow in a gate.

I'll admit, it is romantic, holding hands with your CowBoss while driving home from the sale after selling a trailer load of your own calves.

I guess drinking Carlo Rossi out of a tin coffee cup by gaslight after a long day doing cowboy stuff is rather romantic and poetic!

Branding at the Neighbors

The best indicator of a good day branding is how dirty the boys are at the end of it, and how long it takes them to fall asleep on the drive home.  I used to judge my day on how many calves I roped, how my horse handled, or how good the company was.  Now I can miss every loop, have my horse’s nose straight up in the air, or fall off in the branding trap (that hasn’t happened yet!) and it won’t bother me too much, as long as the boys have a good time.  It has been so much fun watching them grow in our ranching community.  Funny how your perspective changes as you grow up!

During Spring Break we went to one of the best brandings that the Cow Boss and I have been to in a long time.  We helped Kevin and Kristi Tomera brand a few calves.  The thing that made this branding so much fun?  The ground crew and half the ropers were all kids.  They ranged in age from 5 to about 16 years old and they worked hard! The older kids took turns roping, and the rest of them raced each other to wrassle the calves.  I thought a fight was going to break out a time or two over who got to the calf first and got to sit on it.  It was chaos.  It was loud.  It was windy.  It was wonderful!

TR worked his tail off.  He held the feet on a few calves on QT’s trusty stead “Knothead.”  He got in some good practice dallying and keeping the rope tight.  These old ranch horses are worth their weight in gold.  “Knothead” took pretty good care of TR, and kept him out of a couple of wrecks.  TR carried the nut bucket for a while, and hustled between calves, calling out “heifer!” or “bull!” to keep the castrator on task.  He even wrassled a couple of little calves by himself.  He did good! 

QT.  QT kept track of the girls.  He’s quite the ladies’ man these days.  If you can’t find him, just look for some girls, and there is a pretty good chance he isn’t too far away.  They keep a pretty good eye on him, which was good because mom stole his horse to rope on.  When I told him I would be keeping “Knothead” for myself and he would need to find a different horse to ride he informed me “You can’t have Knothead!  I love that horse!”  I think we all do.

I’m not really sure how the Cow Boss did, or how many calves I roped.  I was too busy watching all of the kids work.  It was a long, windy, dusty day, and we were exhausted when we got home.  The boys were almost asleep when we got to the ranch, and yes, they were filthy!

The Day the Leppy Went to School

We have a Charolais leppy bull calf, and he is kind of a big deal.  His uncle was the Grand Champion Charolais Bull at the American Royal this past November.  “Taylor” as the boys call him has some pretty big shoes to fill.  He comes from Small Charolais of Mountain City, where he would still be if he wasn’t an orphan.  His mom died shortly after he was born, and where my sister commutes from Boise on the weekends, we inherited him to feed for the time being.  Apparently home owners associations around Boise frown on cattle in your yard, no matter how big your yard is!

Truth be told, we are suckers for strays and leppies.  Taylor the Charolais has taken some getting used to.  The horses and dogs just don’t know what to think of him, he’s the wrong color. I hate to admit it, but he has kind of grown on me.  While his white hair will never compare to the eye appeal of a Black Angus, he definitely has personality.  I know we aren’t supposed to make him too gentle, but it is pretty hard not to when you are hand feeding him a couple of times a day.  From playing with the boys to putting his nose low enough for the puppy to lick the crumbs off his face, he has character.

Now that the boys are in school, I do a little cowboy/ranching presentation for 3^rd graders during the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering every January.  The schools go all out during the week.  From guest speakers to roping lessons to dress up days, students are encouraged to wear bandanas, jeans, western shirts, and cowboy hats, or what we like to call “our ordinary, everyday clothes.”  They do a really good job with it, and I am happy to report that their students have a pretty good grasp of agriculture and where their food comes from.  This year I took Taylor and made arrangements with TR’s teacher for him to bring his class out to meet his leppy.

My neighbor Rachel helped me.  She borrowed the Beef Byproducts presentation from the Elko County Cattlewomen so we could show students where beef comes from and how the whole cow is used.  I started out showing students Taylor, and explaining what a leppy is, what breed he is, and what he is used for.  Rachel finished up by explaining how when we slaughter a beef animal we use nearly the entire animal, and how each part of a cow is utilized.  It was a really good presentation, we spoke to nearly 125 eight year olds and answered a lot of questions.

After the last group of 3^rd graders, it was time for TR and his class.  I had tried to prep him ahead of time so he (and I!) knew what he would tell his class about Taylor.  Granted he is only 7 years old, I thought he was well prepared and I wouldn’t have to say too much, or do too much damage control.

I wish we would have filmed him.  TR marched his class to the horse trailer like a little drill sergeant and lined them up around the door so they could all see the calf.  He hopped up in the trailer, leaned against the wall, cocked a hind leg, and put his thumbs in his belt loops.  Then he watched his classmates.  Finally after a couple of minutes he said “I’m not going to tell you guys anything until you get quiet and listen to ME!”  You could have heard a pin drop.  He had everyone’s attention and then he started his talk. 

TR was in his element.  While we need to work a little on his delivery and PR skills, he did pretty well.  Mom had to prompt him a few times, and cringed when he was a little too enthusiastic in explaining Taylor’s “mother was DEAD!” and that we would be eating him someday.  He spoke loudly, and clearly, and willingly answered 3 questions, additional questions were answered under duress.  All in all it was a good afternoon, the afternoon Taylor went to school.

Winter Break

The boys went back to school on Monday after a good winter break.  TR was ready to go back, QT was reluctant, and I was definitely not ready for my boys to go back to school!  TR is our social butterfly, he lives for recess and being with his friends.  I worry about QT.  As excited as he was for kindergarten, formal school hasn’t been his thing so far.  Most days moving cows in a blizzard sounds like a better idea to him than going to school.  As for me, I prefer having my boys’ home with me.  I spend most of my afternoon counting down the minutes until they come home.  It is pretty quiet around our house without my wild little boys.

That first day back, QT and I were waiting outside the school for his teacher to come and collect him and his classmates.  I felt like we had done a pretty good job keeping up with where his teacher left off for the break, and really wasn’t too worried about him forgetting anything he had learned in school up until now.  I was listening to other parents talk with each other about what school work they did with their kids over the break. Those parents were busy!  They were working on their letters, numbers, and coloring all break long.

Other than bedtime stories, we never cracked a book all vacation.  While QT’s classmates were watching cartoons, he was sledding behind the feed wagon.  While other kindergartners were practicing writing their numbers to 30, QT was counting cows to 50 on the feed ground.  While they were practicing their letters and sounds, QT was recognizing his cow’s name on her ear tag and reading animal tracks, or looking for “M” words like muskrat, mountain, and mud.  We hunted coyotes, set traps, shot our bb guns, and explored a good part of our big backyard.

QT may write his 3’s backwards, or not always color inside the lines and we need to work on that, but he can find his way home from anywhere within a 5 mile radius of the house, can tell the difference between most of our cows and tell you their names (better than I can anyway!), and tell you the difference between a coyote’s and raccoon’s tracks.  Listening to these parents made me think about my teaching choices over the break.

Should I have spent more time working on more traditional school type activities?  Maybe, but at this point I feel that having a son who is aware of his surroundings and has the tools to navigate this world is just as important as being able to color inside the lines.  Education is important, but I want him to experience life from the outside, not based on what he sees on a video game or reads about in a book about someone else’s experiences.  I want him to know how to work, get outside, get dirty, and play.  Let’s face it.  He’s only going to be little once, and he will have plenty of time later to write a book for someone else to read about growing up on a cattle ranch in northern Nevada.

Frosty Cows

 

 

Ever take a really cool picture, then get it home and realize there is one of the Cowboss's friend's stupid Corriente cows right in the middle?  Yeah, it sucks.  But I am slightly  jaded because the Corrientes make me crazy.  If there is an open gate, or wrong direction to go, they will do it, and it is usually when you are trying to get the tractor through the gate and keep the Corrientes in and you are by yourself.  You will spend an hour getting out of the tractor, chasing the Corrientes off, opening the gate, running back to the tractor, get almost though the gate before the Corrientes get to it, have to jump out, run them off and try again.  It is a vicious cycle.  Hopefully a neighbor driving by will take pity on you and watch the gate as you drive through.  Most likely, it will be on a day you are hurrying to make it to an appointment in town.  You will be late.  True story.

Out With the Old, in With the New

 

 

Where did 2014 go?  It feels like just last week I was sitting down to write my 2014 resolutions and making a plan for the coming year.  Now here we are and it is 2015 and I am trying to figure out where I am and what I want to do for the next year.  I think there will be some big changes for me, and I'm not sure where I want to start.

2014 won't go down as my best year ever.  In March I lost my best horse.  (Yeah, I know it was just a horse and if it doesn't get any closer than the barn, we're alright).  It was a partnership developed over 13 years and I really expected him to be the horse to teach my boys how to rope.  It hurt.  In May, the Cowboss, QT, a couple of cowboys, and I along with a trailer load of horses were in a frightening car accident that we are so blessed (horses included) to have all walked away from.  (Yes, I believe in guardian angels).  Both QT and I can scratch riding in an ambulance off our bucket lists!  Not to be out done, in July we had a 4th ER trip with TR to get stitches in his armpit.  For a bit it felt like we weren't going to catch a break!

Along with the not so great, a lot of great things happened in 2014.  We survived first grade.  That was huge.  At this time last year, we weren't really sure we were going to make it!  QT started Kindergarten and my world didn't end.  Both boys had horses buck with them and they rode them.  I got bucked off, but got back on.  We saw amazing cattle prices and were able to pay off all of our cows.  I got a new dog.  I'm still working on finding the horse that fits me.

As 2014 ends I am happy to report that we survived!  We have made some new friends along the way, learned many lessons (some the hard way!), and are anxious to see what 2015 throws our way because I'm pretty sure we can handle it!  My goals for 2015 are to focus more on myself.  Selfish I know, but I want to be the best wife, mom, and person I can be.  I want to be healthier and happier, so I can be the best person I can.

Happy New Year!  Hope 2015 brings you great things!