Bummed...

L to R: Festus, Annie Light, Daisy

Do you remember my bum calves? This picture was taken in July, I think, when the grass was beautiful and green. This is just after they got their bottles...you can see all their tongues sticking out and the milk foam.

Well, this is the rest of the story.  You know that Festus met with a sad end; he was just malformed from the beginning of his life and the summer heat and stress really took it's toll on him. So we had to say goodbye to Festus early.

We weaned Annie and Daisy with the two-year old bunch, the Sevens, and their calves.  It was funny to watch them try to integrate with that herd. They came back several times, for crumbles and Nutra-Lix Plus, and when I talked to them in the pasture, they knew me and came closer.  Daisy was the leader, and sort of the mother figure for Annie. They kept track of each other through everything, and looked for each other when we gathered the bunch. 

Today we sorted the heifer calves for keepers and shippers.  We sort off the obviously runty or large heifers, so we'll have a nice, even bunch; very uniform and all black, no baldies allowed! Vern and I have been going round about whether or not to keep one of my bums. It's going to be a real pain for him, because I have a different brand and we'll have to have a different color tag to track.

It has been several weeks since I saw all the heifer calves, and when I walked through them today, I knew right away that Annie was a shipper. She never did gain the height or muscle she needed, and she had to go. Daisy was tougher, because she didn't stand out as obviously. She fit in the lower end of the average, and all the while we were sorting, I was having an internal dialogue with myself.

 It went something like this:

"Really, she should go. She's just not as big as she should be. But we can't pick her out that easily, so she must not be THAT bad. No, she's a bum, and bums go down the road. But when we were kids, we raised a couple bums and put them back in the herd; they did alright. She's going to have to be fed all year, and she may never breed up. Or she may fill out and breed up very nicely and I'd regret having sold her. She's really a good little calf. She has a lot of heart, and she's smart. But I need to be an adult; Vern told me not to get that attached and I know this. I think she'll make it. Oh, look at her! She's got to go. No, I need to give her a chance...."

In the end, Daisy made the cut. Not because she's a spectacular specimen of a calf or because we see a lot of promise in her, but because Vern has a hard time watching me have a hard time. He said we could always sell her later, if she didn't work out. That was very generous of him because we'll have invested quite a bit of feed in her by then. But for now, the OC herd is still intact...it's miniscule, but intact. 

Annie called and called for Daisy, once they were sorted apart, and that was hard for me to watch. She'll adjust, though, and she's going to the sale barn on Monday. I can't think too much about it; I need to sell her to pay for the food that all of them consumed this spring and summer.

Next spring isn't far off, with new calves and bums, and we'll see how it plays out!

True Confession #269..or something like that

I make really ugly pies.

Some of you can attest to this, from personal experience/trauma.

It's not that I can't make pies; I can. It's just that they look like they've been made by a seeing impaired person with no dexterity. 

My home-ec teacher in high school, Mrs. Bray, rolled her eyes (Yeah, you alumni are grinning...you got the eye roll too, at one time!) and said, "Mary Dutton! You make the ugliest pies I've EVER seen!" That was my Senior year, after she'd seen 4 years of my sorry little attempts at them. And that woman had seen some ugly pies in her day! You know she had...

My mother makes lovely, Betty Crocker picture perfect pies. Her pastry is flaky, rolled out to the perfect thinness and her scalloped edges are a work of art. I used to watch her whip those pies out with no more apparent effort than making, say, pancakes. At branding time, she'd produce at least 3-4 pies and they were so pretty I hated to cut into them.

Pie crusts are the wickedest, most vexing creations in the kitchen! Whoever started the phrase, "easy as pie" had obviously not spent a lot of time making crusts.  I'm assuming that person's job was the filling, because filling is glamorous AND a snap! Crusts can cause the most patient of cooks to wail, gnash teeth and hyperventilate. They have a way of looking stable on the rolling cloth and disintegrating into a mass of 1/2 inch pieces on the way to the pie plate.  You can't re-roll, because whatever adhesive quality was there during the first go-round has absolutely dissipated during the collapse, and you're better off starting with new dough. If you even have the desire to go on, that is...

I've used Pillsbury crusts. I'm not proud of it. But when I need certain qualities, such as uniformity and relative pie-ishness to look at, they work. Here's the thing about Pillsbury piecrusts: just because they are already made for you, doesn't mean you can pull them out of the fridge and slap them into the pan with no preparation! No. If you read the fine print, you'll notice they need time to soften up; precious time that cannot be gained with a microwave. That's also in the fine print, but should be in bold, red print.

Tomorrow is a big pie day in America! In honor of this, I dug around and found the cheater pie crust recipe (relies on chemical process for flakiness...something about the egg and the vinegar together; don't dwell on it. I don't.) and made two pies. One pumpkin and one Georgia peach streusel. They are acceptable, but not photographable.

The GOOD thing is that I ALSO have plenty of heavy whipping cream to turn into real clouds for disguising any and all pie-flaws. If Mrs. Bray were to show up, she'd just be so gosh-darned thrilled I wasn't using Cool Whip that she might not notice the ugly pie underneath....

Happy Thanksgiving, and I hope you have some really pretty pies to work over!

Here's my list

I've been thinking about writing a post about what I'm grateful for, in honor of Thanksgiving and all. But I'm contrary, true to my name; generalities bug the heck out of me.  When I read lists of what people are thankful for, I'm looking for details, you know? Everyone is grateful for family, health, home and coffee. And it's true and sincere! But don't you want a little more specificity? (Which is a hard word to type, by the way...and to say! Go ahead, try it out loud. You spit all over yourself.)

Thus inspired, I give you my specific (but not exhaustive) list of Thanksgiving in no particular order of importance:

1. Running water in my home. (Not the water that is running all over the bathroom floor because my son left the faucet on while brushing his teeth with Irish Spring.) It allows me long showers, clean dishes in minutes, indoor toilets and clothes that aren't laundered in a tub. Glorious luxury!
2. Unlimited books. Think of it: we can go to free lending libraries, bookstores, second-hand stores, on-line stores, garage sales and access more books than our great-grandparents saw in their lifetime. I am afforded the great blessing of more books than I have bookshelves. Riches!
3. Freedom to worship. Honestly, this one gets me all the time...in this country, we get up on Sunday mornings and just take it for granted that we can go to church if we want, or stay home. We can have Bible Studies if we choose. We can have Bibles of 12 different translations laying right out there on the table, in full view of the world.  Our family drives almost 80 miles to go to our church, and sometimes it's only one Sunday a month, depending on roads and chores, and I stand there in worship crying because I'm so glad to be there. There are many places in the world where that cannot happen, or there's penalty of death. I can choose! I can worship freely!
4. Cows. You know I like them. Moving on...
5. I absolutely soak up the sound of my childrens' laughter. Is there anything better than a belly-laugh from a preschooler watching Sylvester and Tweety? 
6. I sink into my bed every night and breathe a sigh of complete bliss. I LOVE my bed. When Wayland made me take our wedding money and buy a good mattress, I thought he was the biggest fuddy-duddy in the world. We could've gone to Jackson Hole with that money! Or Bozeman! It turns out, the man was looking forward to when we were older and creakier. He's so smart.
7. Cordless phones. Do you remember watching your mom talk to your aunt on the phone, and that big, long cord wrapped around the house so they could talk and do housework? We could find Mom by following the cord and the empty coffee cups. Now I can take the phone anywhere! But still, the kids find me...
8. Grandma hands. I love to hold grandma hands; they are so soft and kind. Grandmas are a lot younger now than when I was little, so I guess the hands I'm holding are great-grandma hands, but you know what I mean. 
9. I adore hugs from friends who really, truly love me. I gather up all the hugs I can from Bookclub and they fuel me for a good week. Not polite aquaintance hugs, mind you. When I was a kid, my family called them bear hugs. That sort.
10. My husband's crazy inventive spirit. We are the same kind of weird, only he carries it off with a lot more style. He surprises me constantly with his projects and ideas, and I think he underestimates his talent. If only he'd let me market for him....