Putting out pairs...

This is Eastern Montana in April!

(It's greening up day by day, thankfully.)

See those little black specks? Those are the cows we're about to go around, looking for calves to tag and put out. It's big country, but the wheelers sure help cover a lot of ground quickly.

No calves here! These old girls were mildly annoyed that I interrupted their grazing schedule...

I didn't realize I had changed the setting on my camera; it was tucked inside my coat, away from the dust and I must've bumped the dial....at first I was disappointed to miss all the color, but it has a journalistic quality now. 

Down to business....Wayland just grabbed this calf to tag him.

Through the pictures, notice the cow's head and Wayland's head.

She's not happy.

Wayland has checked the gender of the calf and is ready to put the tag in the right ear for bull calf, left ear for heifer calf. 

He's always got one eye on the cow.

Arranging the tag....

The cow knows what the story is; this isn't her first calf by any means, but she's still going to make sure Wayland doesn't mess around with her calf, beyond tagging it.

It only stings for a minute!

Mostly, the tagging happens so very quickly that the calf is bawling more from the surprise than the sting.

Back off, Farmer! That's all the leeway you get!

(See the tag in the right ear? Bull calf.  Now that number, the gender of the calf and the date of birth will be recorded in a little book that is carried in his pocket all spring and summer.)

Down the fence to the gate, to be put in the pasture on the left (east) with the rest of the pairs from that bunch.  The old cows know exactly where they're going and really take off at a trot sometimes to get there.  You wouldn't believe how fast those little calves can travel!

In the pasture, on her way to find a sunning spot for her calf.

A view from the open gate...

Vern would be horrified I put this picture up; it's not our best fence. But the cow paths on either side, going up the hill, make it so interesting.

(Don't tell him you saw this picture, or I'll be rebuilding fence this summer....)

And lastly, here's a picture of a set of twins we had.

Twins are not desirable, because they are born so small and the cow can't provide enough nourishment for both calves to thrive.  We usually end up pulling one of the twins off and grafting it onto another cow that has lost it's calf.  Or one of them becomes my bottle bum. 

Both of these calves were tiny, delicate little heifer calves....up close, they are so enchanting because they look like little tiny versions of the chubby black calves we usually have. 

Now I have to load Maggie up and we're going to go feed my bum calf, Cosmo, then help the guys put out pairs, just like you saw here....we go around them twice a day.

And now you know what my April looks like!

We had our last calf from the heifers yesterday...pulled it and sadly it was dead.  Maggie wanted to watch the pulling, the calf being born, and it was a very hard time for her AND PopPops. But fortunately we were able to go pet Cosmo and he charmed her out of the sadness.  One of the twins is being grafted to the heifer and we hope it will end happily.

Time Out

Hey, faithful Followers, both public and secret...(And yes, I know there are secret followers....brings a much needed air of mystery to the Chronicles! Ghost readers....ooooooo!).

I'm going off-line until after Easter.

For those who cling to the Chronicles, checking daily for posts, (umm, I don't actually think THOSE people actually exist, but just in case...) you can scroll back through the older posts, some of which are real groan-ers.  (Sara H., I typed a big old long email that's sitting in the "drafts" box....thanks for writing, and don't quit the Chronicles because of the break! I'll try to get the email out right after this....Alice-with-a-little-a, same to you.)

Happy Easter; hope you have a beautiful, blessed weekend!

Rancher Terminology, cont.

Help- What ranchwives attempt to do that generally causes greater difficulty and mayhem.

Sorting Stick- What ranchers throw after getting "help" from their wives.

Gate- A seemingly simple apparatus used to cover a hole in the fence that is always open when it should be closed and vice versa.  Some gates are traps, set up by mean-hearted ranchers, to baffle wives who are trying to "help".  Closing them involves a complicated series of actions and facial contortions. Generally the trap is complicated by the need for speedy closure.

Pairs- Def. 1.- What gloves are bought as but never, ever are observed as after the tag is ripped off.
Def. 2- Cows with their calves. Or with another cow's calf. 

Count- A random number that will always be right when the neighbor does it, but forever wrong when the wife does it. It is procurred by moving your eyes over the backs of the black cows clumped together going through a gate, but without lifting your finger to keep track. (Some neighbors move their lips when counting, and if you figure this out, it's easier to watch the neighbor than the cows.....no matter what, you'll be wrong.)

Cow number- The identifying digits written in black paint on a rubbery, plastic-y tag that's attached to the cow's ear.  (It's written in secret code that I'm about to reveal here on the Chronicles. The first digit is the year the cow was born. Ooooo.)  One must always, always, always look at the cow number on every cow while simultaneously looking at her bag to see if the new calf sucked.  If one encounters a dead cow, cut the tag off as evidence. Otherwise the men will not believe that you saw a dead cow; they will insist it's an old potbellied stove...

Pen- Def. 1.- A stick with an ink insert that won't scratch out any sort of legible writing, especially if there's a need to write down an important cow number. 
Def. 2.-An enclosure for cows, that they are opposed to entering, because there are scary shadows or the atmospheric pressure that day is not auspicious for penning.

To be continued...

Nesting

My daughter nests.

She's driven by some terrible maternal force deep inside to create little living spaces in any nook or cranny she finds vacant.

In our house, she creates places like "Fairy World" or "Horse Land" with old check boxes, found string, broken toys, and books for her little dolls to live in.  I've seen her make a waterfall that puddled on the floor from two old blue play dresses, where her horse toys would frolic and play.  She swipes things from around the house to use and it's generally very ingenious, so I have a hard time getting after her for using something like the ice cream scoop as a catapult for fairies.

This spring, we've found evidence of nests built around the yard before the snow covered them....little piles of what look like trash and junk to mere mortal eyes, but in actuality are treasures and castles to anyone 5 years old and younger observing the same thing. 

"Oh! There's "Mermaid World"!", she'll exclaim, falling on her knees next to a couple of empty water bottles and my garden trowel. And she'll proceed to explain every little nuance of the place and invite me to join her in that mystical place, long covered by the blanket of winter.

She always invites adults to kneel down and enter her worlds, even though we are short-sighted and practical.  As she describes the functions and reasons for the placement of each little piece of flotsam and jetsam, it's entirely possible (if one lets go of thier horrible urge to clean or file) to see through her eyes and slip into that place for a while.

Last night, she was a dinosaur and built a nest with eggs up in our tree row.  (It was tricky, trying to decide what sort of dinosaur to be, incidentally, because she adores steak, so a carnivore was what she wanted to be. However, carnivores are not very well behaved, as a rule, and she was trying to be a good, kind dinosaur.)  We had to go look at it and coo over how well made it was and what beautiful eggs she had.  There was great distress when sleeping in the nest overnight was ruled out as an option.

Her little brother is the anti-nester.

His job is to come in and demand his toys back; toys that have not been seen nor heard from since he was 1 1/2 years old. Or he crashes through the nests and worlds with all the determination and flair of a D6 Cat, evoking wails and pounding of fists upon his back.  He's contrary.  If she tells him that the cardboard leaned up against the brick is a slide for dinosaurs, he'll insist that no, it's a pirate house. (Or vise versa) Brothers are seldom asked to attend functions in "Dragon World", for obvious reasons.

We've gotten used to living with a magpie.

But when you come for a visit and see little piles of assorted nonsense in funny corners of our yard and house, now you know about the nests.  And I can assure you that within 15 minutes of arriving, you'll be invited with great excitement to come to see a castle or hideout or stable....

You'll need to put on your magic spectacles and slow down for a little bit....

Wondrous little worlds await you in those odd nests....

Fit to be tied

Fitted sheets give me FITS!

Is there anyone out there who can actually fold them neatly to where they behave just like the flat sheets? 
I've tried everything....all corners tucked together nicely, sides folded in to make more of a square, put it together and whatta you got? STILL a wad of 500 thread count Egyptian cotton!!

They poof.  They are contrarily fat on one side and thin on the other causing the pile o'sheets to lean and the well-behaved flat sheets to plummet to the closet floor. 

And getting them on a mattress is nothing short of aerobic.  Three corners usually go on without incident.  Before I attempt to tackle the fourth corner, I take a deep breath with my hands on my waist, and pray that the sheet will not see me coming, magically slipping over that last corner of the mattress.

It always tries to sproing.  And once it shows such insolence and disrespect, one of the other corners notices and tries to slip off the mattress, too.  I usually end up all red-faced, huffing and puffing and then pummel the pillows as I encase them, in the pretext of fluffing them.

So here's my solution.  (Patent lawyers and those dear souls married to them, take notice. We'll make nickels on this idea...)

Why can't we have flat sheets with drawstring corners?

When we fold them, they'll be flat.  When we lay them on the bed, they'll be flat.  We pull the string....voila! sheets that stay put AND that are adjustable!

And that's how I spend my time; thinking of things like that. 
(My other invention is self-vacuuming floors....mesh under the carpet and you hit a switch...vroooooom! The dirt gets sucked the OTHER way, into a vent system and out.  Of course, we'd have to be sure the cats were out of the room when we hit the switch....) 

Excuse my French...

I once told a friend of mine that if I ever come up missing, to look for me in Lubbock. 

Actually, that's wrong....just to throw the trail, I guess. During football season, that would be a good start, but it's not where I'd hide out.

I'm pretty sure I'd go to France.
Longtime readers of the Chronicles know that I secretly (well, not anymore) adore all things French.  The language is beautiful, the gardens are glorious, the food...ah, the food, and the antiques make me swoon. Not to mention the coffee. 

This last month, my Aunt Bert sent me a wonderful care package, full of all sorts of treasures that made me get tears in my eyes at her thoughtfulness.  She tucked seeds, old family mementos, pink Texas Tech work gloves, and an antique postcard from France that she'd found at a craft sale, among other things.  It shows a flower market in Paris...lovely....and I have it near my sink so I can dream while I do dishes. (Thanks, Aunt Bert; we're kindred spirits.)

Quite near the postcard is some wonderful soap and lotion from France that Nancy Miller brought across the pond in her bags, through customs and everything.  Nancy reads the Chronicles (for the information, not the wit, I'm sure) and thoughtfully made the extra effort to bring a little bit of France to my house on the prairie.  It's olive oil and lavender soap, and if I close my eyes after using it, I can pretend I'm in Provence. (Nan, I'm indebted. And it's going to be a LOT harder to get Montana beef steaks through customs on my way to England...)

In a fit of insanity, when I ordered this month's bookclub book, I also ordered Joanne Harris' cookbook, My French Kitchen.  It's got really good, useful recipes, pictures of odd, random French ephemera and I can't stop looking at it.  Tartes are on the menu this week.  I'm looking for my lace curtains.   I forgot that my dog is a Brittany spaniel and could pose for a French cookbook! (Handy, no?)

And that's what pretty much changed my mind about disappearing to Lubbock.  Oh, they've got great BBQ there and my favorite football team, but I fear my heart is in Avignon.

Anybody want to join me?

Handy Housekeeping Hints From the Hopeless Housewife!

*Warning! If you are easily shocked or my mother-in-law, you'll want to lay down as you read this, or pour yourself a stiff drink.  All others may proceed with caution and a notepad.

1. If you leave a bamboo kitchen spoon on the edge of a pan of frying meat for more than 5 minutes while answering the phone, it may begin to smoke.  Another 2 minutes and you'll probably have flames. 

2. Just because the washer CAN hold 12 pair of adult Wranglers, doesn't mean it SHOULD.

3. Those weird looking hairless Chinese dogs may be worth all the cash, in the long run, as a family pet.

4. If you mention anything about weird looking hairless Chinese dogs to a couple of preschoolers, you may end up with the do-it-yourself American version.

5. Don't assume a basket of laundry consists of clothes.  It may, in fact, be a basket of old school papers, cache of half-eaten crackers, or a portable Fairy-World under a deceptive layer of dirty clothes. 

6. At least one child in the house will keep a mental rolodex of every piece of art or weed they've ever gifted you with and the minute you throw away ONE of these precious tokens of their affection, they will want it to show Daddy.  And they won't take the excuse that you can't find it right now. (Which is TECHNICALLY true...)

7. Goldfish don't eat cheerios.

8. Taken from an ACTUAL, reputable cookbook: If you don't have one whole egg, you can substitute 2 egg whites, 2 egg yolks, or 1/3 cup egg substitute.  (Seriously.  If you don't have one, whole egg, do you really think you'll have 2 whites or 2 yolks laying around in your fridge?)

9. Baking soda and vinegar in your sink drain will do absolutely NOTHING for a clog, but it WILL keep the kids entertained for 10 minutes while you locate the Liquid Drano.

10. You can't make anything with 1/4 cup of Bisquick, so just go ahead and use it up, even if it extends your current recipe a little.  Because if you keep putting that box back in the cupboard, you'll never get more. (You can see the vicious circle brewing here, can't you?)

Big Day for a Little School

A field trip for Cohagen Elementary, where Maggie attends kindergarten, consists of loading all the students in the school on the little bitty yellow bus, with two parents, a teacher and a preschooler and driving 70 miles to town.  We have 9 students, counting the kindergarteners, in the school.  Yes.  That's 9 students TOTAL.

(And we're proud to be one of the bigger country schools in the county!)

First stop was the library! They've completely re-done the children's section and it's in an atrium sort of area and has a humongous mural painted on one wall, which you see here. 

I think it looks like the Cat in the Hat is reading these three a story, but really they are just gazing at the intricacy of the mural. 

Maggie is reading her friend a story.  Truth be told, they were both reading out loud to each other at the same time and not listening one whit to the other.  But they were both pleased to be narrating and I guess that's the whole point.

Celestia (aka Mrs. C.) admiring their book choices. Shortly thereafter, they all heard a story or two and commenced to tour the library. (I missed the tour. Celestia sent Traci and I for coffee. I couldn't tell whether she was giving us a break, or the kids. Either way, it was appreciated!)

 

The library tarantula....Maggie wants one. I vote NO!

From the library, we went on to the Miles City Fire and Rescue Department.  Ooooo! So exciting!

I'm sorry to say we all pretty much failed the pop-quiz, right at the beginning, but we left the building 50 minutes later with WAY more of a clue.  (Turns out, we've been doing Stop-Drop-And-Roll all wrong! Cover the face, folks...)

Maps in the control room....

Answering questions by the light of the firetruck.  Everyone had the opportunity to climb in and look around. Thank goodness they didn't push any buttons or pull any levers!

In the ambulance, the fireman asked if anyone wanted to see their heart monitored on the de-fib machine. Anyone?

"I will!"

Maggie's the littlest one in school, but she was the most excited to experience every little thing.

(Upon reflection, later, I thought that perhaps she was the only one who didn't think the whole thing through and that some caution would be good in a child...)

Ouch! It hurts to pull the stickers off your "bellybutton"...that's where she said they were attached. 

We have the little tape of her heart beat and it's beautifully even; not the least bit nervous.

This is actually the firehat of one of Wayland's friends that he does Search and Rescue with.

It was heavier than she thought!

Down the pole!

She was first in line for that experience, too. 

And then we had pizza at the Airport Inn.

Three cheese pizzas, one taco pizza and one combination....only 3 pieces left over.

It was a great day!

(And no one threw up on the bus...whew.)

Big helps

The best part about growing up on a ranch is how much time kids actually get to spend with their family, at work.  And as the kids get older, they are essential in the operation of the ranch....but it all starts when they are very little.  They watch their parents and grandparents at work and see the rhythm of the seasons and the cycle of the farm. By the time they get big enough to really help, they already know what needs done.

My kids are VERY fortunate, because their dad and grandpa are so patient and willing to take them along. The pictures that follow are from last Monday. Maggie was heartbroken when she'd found out the first calf was born and she hadn't seen it, so when another cow calved, her daddy called me and we went to visit the new baby.

Going with Daddy to have a look....

There he is!

I love this picture, with the shadow of the mama.  She was a little worried about us coming to visit her baby.

Sweet baby! She's a good mama, and right after I took this picture, stepped between her calf and us and that was the end of the photo session.

Checking on a heifer that's in the process of calving.  She was trying to calve on that big manure and dirt pile!

They ended up getting her in and pulling the calf, because he had a front leg back.

Loading cake for the next day's feeding. Isn't that slick? My dad used to shovel cake onto a conveyer that dropped it in the feeder.  It was HARD work. When I was in my early 20's I lived at the ranch for a while and tried to help Dad by shovelling cake for him.  I couldn't ever get big enough shovel loads and so had to add a few to compensate.  It was good exercise, but if you had a bad back it would be excrutiating.

PopPops took us to the house for a little cookie break, after looking at the calf and checking the heifers. That's the good thing about grampas....they are ALWAYS ready to take a cookie break.

This picture has the combine in the background and I like the generations with the setting.  Our countryside is so incredibly dismal this time of year! Any sort of color is embraced; green farm equipment, red stocking caps.

Finally, I have a question for you.  Have any of you ever seen a bird like this? It was perched out on the swingset that afternoon and we have no idea what in the world it might be! Size-wise, it was about the size of my hand...bigger than a sparrow, although it has that sort of look.

Straight Up at Traci's

For those faithful readers who follow along with my reading group....Bookclub report!

Traci chose the book, Straight Up by Lisa Samson for the February read/March meal.  In the middle of the book, somewhere, one of the characters starts going to a little Southern restaurant and eating glorious food. There were other parts to the book, too, like alcoholism, misspent lives, redemption, re-connection, and all that stuff that we had to talk about, but the real focal point for some of us, was the food! (I know. You find that hard to believe, since we are all such deep, philosophical people and generally disdain anything that detracts from the dissection of the story....)

So here's our menu:
Southern fried chicken (recipe by Paula Deen....yes, it was glorious)
Mashed potatos and gravy from the little crunchy bits left in the bottom of the frying pan.
Green beans
Biscuits
Apple-sweet potato bake that's hard to describe...sort of like an apple pie without the crust.
Chardonnay, Pinot Noir or Moscato wine
Peach cobbler with ice cream
Kafe Utza coffee and cream
Pepsi (it was in the story, too)
No appetizers because that bookclub member was absent, but we managed to make it to the main meal without fainting....but barely. 

At one point around the table (after we had eaten all we possibly could) there were 4 conversations going, loudly, to where I could hardly hear the person I was trying to talk to....it was glorious! We're all so happy to see one another and we have a lot of life to catch up on: What are the baby's milestones? Are you done calving your heifers? Can I get this recipe? How's the new house coming? Where's Thelma tonight? Would you please pass that fried chicken back this way? And the cobbler?

The actual discussion of the story was lively and interesting, with points and insights that I had completely missed, having been so focused on the Southern cooking.  We almost always go away from bookclub thinking a little differently about some things and I usually end up revisiting the book, thinking "HOW did she get THAT parallel? I thought he was just the eccentric uncle, not the foil for her percieved helplessness. What's a foil?" (I know what a foil is.  But you get the idea.)

I'm not sure but what we'd still be sitting there around the table, candles burned down to big blue puddles, if Scott and crew hadn't shown back up.  No one was inclined to move.  No one COULD move. 

Next bookclub selection is Anne's and we are reading The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, by Susan
Orlean.

*I did take pictures, and will add them to the post this evening.  Today is Maggie's first field trip, and I'm chaperoning, so instead of posting pics this morning, I'll be showering.  Yeah, I thought it was a good idea, too.   

True Confession #369

Every attempt I have ever made to dye my own hair has ended in dismal failure.

There was the time a Cohagen Play called for a Norma Desmond type character, an aging actress who was fighting the good fight and losing.  I was 30 and decided to dye my hair auburn for the part.

The box said, "Temporary color! Washes out in 30 washes!"

They lied.

I washed my hair twice a day for 45 days and still had the most magenta hair you've ever seen. It was not a good color for me. Shoot, it wouldn't have been a good color for Dame Edna!

Still.....it could've been a fluke, right?

Wrong.

There was the time Traci and Beth and I were supposed to go to Billings for a girls weekend, but Beth begged out saying her babies were too young and Traci's husband Scott faked a heart attack (another blog post, another time) and she decided she'd better stay home, and I wasn't bright enough to see the great neon signs God put in front of me, so I went ahead for the Girl Weekend.

And it was wretched, because I don't shop. (That's what everyone in Eastern Montana goes to Billings for.)

So, sitting in the motel room alone, after having scrolled through all 219 channels of nothing on, it occurred to me that I had at my disposal, an endless supply of clean towels and a noon checkout the next day.

What to do, what to do?

I'll dye my hair!

(At this point, if you can imagine guardian angels banging their blessed heads against the motel wall, you'd have it right.  I thought it was just noisy neighbors.)

The kit said, "If your hair is THIS color (lightish brownish blonde) then the effects you will achieve will be THIS (lightish brownish blonde with slightly lighter highlights)!"

They lied.

6 bathtowels, 2 hand towels, 3 washcloths and 45 minutes later, my hair was (and I'm NOT kidding you) a rather purplish tone, with orange-ish highlights. It was not a good color for me.

I ended up calling my regular stylist and confessing the whole thing, begging for an appointment as soon as possible. No problem! She had an opening in....9 days.

I'll TAKE it!

(I'm SURE she hung up the phone laughing. I would, if I was her. And it was funny!)

Good thing I live on a ranch, 25 miles from the nearest gathering of 20 or more people.

So.....

I haven't seen my stylist (yes! same one) since November.  And it's to the point of really ugly, where the seam of grey hair is concerned.  So ugly that I bought a box of dye that absolutely guarantees it will cover the grey in such a natural way that not even my mother would be able to tell.  I would just make an appointment, but as you may have noticed, we're in the throes of calving and that's just not going to work.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

I'm too chicken.

Last night, after I got home from Miles, I decided I was too tired.

This morning, I had to bake a pie.

This afternoon, while the kids were napping, I dealt with laundry and packed a care package.

This evening, we had family movie night.

Now that I'm done with the blog post, it will be too late to start a project of this magnitude.

I set the alarm clock for 5:00 a.m.

Stay tuned.....

*******************Die Job (sic)***********************

They lied.

My hair is now a dark, mahogany brown, instead of the gentle, blondish color that was advertised. 

Drats.

And a little tip for those of you who are contemplating a coloring-at-home: It's not Nice and it's not Easy.  If you have any klutzy tendencies, whatsoever, leave it to a professional! You have to mix potions.  You have to apply the potions in a scientific way and time the activation precisely.  You have to be able to put goop on your hair without gooping everything around you! (I cannot.) You have to keep your wadded up, gooped up hair from touching anything else for 20 minutes!  Which means you cannot attend to your offspring's every whim for nearly 3/4's of an hour!

But, on the sunny side, you can't notice the grey anymore!

Now....where DID I put that fedora?

Why I own an SUV....

This is my driveway, in March.

(See all the snow in the tree row, yet to melt?)

It will look like this for at LEAST another week.

Then it will firm up ever so slightly. Inevitably, a big, sloppy, gloppy 8 inch snow will plod in from the West and it will look like that for another 10-20 days.

I'll take the Trailblazer out of 4wheel drive in May, maybe....JUST for the driveway!

Stompie McStomps-a-lot....in his natural habitat.

(We had just been to see the first calf at PopPops. He wore this for the occasion. And I had to talk him into the shirt....)

I don't need to buy garden seeds this year.

That's not to say I won't be buying garden seeds this year. 

I just don't need to.

Everyone knows the gardener needs to buy at least 10 packets of fresh seeds to interject into the collection, every year. It's also common (but unspoken) knowledge that if you don't buy fresh seeds every year, the Garden Kobolds will curse your flowers and vegetables, and you will have a year of dismal gardening, fraught with fungus, pests and drought. It's true.  (Think of lucky t-shirts for college football games.  No one can scientifically prove why wearing that certain raggedy old shirt ensures success for your team, but there's some sort of magic there.)

My plan is to order some really cool vegetable seeds from The Cooks Garden....because they have beautiful botanical drawings on the packets, and that interjects class into my sack o'seeds from Ace Hardware. (You know. The 10-fer-a-Dollar seed packets.  The this-is-such-a-good-deal-I'd-be-wasteful-NOT-to-buy-them seed packets.)

I might order from Baker Creek simply because they have an old fashioned catalog with heirlooms and I want to support their business.  They are a young family that has great vision for gardeners everywhere and they write the BEST descriptions! They also have a festival in the spring with bluegrass bands and everything.  (Should we take a field-trip to buy seeds?)

Nichols Garden Nursery has a wonderful selection of herbs.  Jung is a fine, upstanding company with excellent seeds.  And I haven't even started to look for perennial plants....ah, Bluestone and High Country, your turn is next!

My lists exceed my budget and space.  Perhaps I should make another bed. Then get seeds to lie in it! (That's a solution! Right?)

I just got a letter from my Aunt Bert and she said she's sending seeds in a package to follow!  Hooray! (Texas seeds.  They've got to be bigger, don't you think?) I can't WAIT!

Maggie and Angus have picked out some seeds they want to plant.  I want to encourage their interest and foster a kindred addiction, so we'll get some of those. 

I like sending seeds in cards to my friends, occasionally teasing them and sending PopRocks.  The very serious gardeners don't know whether to be relieved or amused.   

I don't need to buy any garden seeds this year.

But I will.

I Would Listen ANYWHERE!

This morning, I woke up to the sound of Maggie laboriously working her way through Green Eggs and Ham.  She's determined to read a book, by herself.  She's NOT going to read another little The Cat Sat book; she wants a real, big, interesting worthwhile book to read, by golly, and Green Eggs and Ham fit the bill. 

She had to do some serious digging around to find it; we haven't read the good Dr. in quite a while, except for the Sneetches. 

What struck me most was that she was using inflection, even on the "That Sam-I-Am" boring pages.  (Everyone knows Green Eggs and Ham doesn't really get smoking until they get to the fox and the box.)

Angus was trying to be helpful and suggest words like "pirate" and "cocoa bob-boo".  That made no sense whatsoever and she was scolding him, saying "NO, Angus! I'm reading this book.  You go sit over there, please." (He did NOT like all the attention she was giving the precious book, so he would not, could not...)

I sat down with my coffee and tried not to interfere, which is painful for someone who used to teach.  And she was NOT going to get help unless she backed her story so far in a corner that it came to a complete stop.  Eventually she hit that point and we worked through "would" and "could" and "anywhere".  It's also impossible to sound out "them" if you don't know about consonant digraphs.

It's going to be a busy day, I can tell.  Maggie has a fair lined up that she wants to invite all her friends to...with the balcony seating and everything on the deck.  We have to play school.  We MUST play with playdough (Angus' absolute favorite thing to do in all the world). And you know we will re-visit Green Eggs and Ham, and that persistant Sam-I-Am. (You can see how there will be no time for a napperello, at all. Daylight's a burnin!) 

I do SO like it, Sam-I-Am!

Announcing the birth...

...of the first calf of 2010....#858!

Isn't she pretty?!

This is 858's first calf. She didn't like me even taking pictures from afar; I didn't stay long, because I wanted her to calm down.  (Wayland was taking pictures at the same time. Ranch paparazzi...)

She had breakfast and still has some foam on her chin. No fear....Mama will get that cleaned off in a jiffy.

Foxtail and Kochia hit the road...

It started as a crazy herbicide commercial and a couple crop tours where we were the only two girls present.

Anne is married to the county extension agent, so she's pretty much required to go on local crop tours.  I'm married to a Pluhar, so I'm qualified to go on local crop tours. (Which means I know nothing, but I am married to cutting edge ranchers, for whatever that's worth.) We found ourselves bouncing along in the Big Dry transit bus, over bumpy gravel roads, listening to farmers debate the merits and drawbacks of growing triticale wheat and the chemical fallow vs. traditional fallow options. We'd stand in the field, slapping mosquitos, looking enthusiastically at the forages and wondering why it was that when men plan crop tours there's no food.  Two beer coolers, no food.  What gives? Don't they understand that without food, it's just a dusty ride around the fields? Add some crackers and cheese, coupla sticks of beef jerky...voila!....a tour!

Foxtail (Anne) and Kochia (me) needed a reason to go on a tour, crop or otherwise.  It's been almost two years!

Fortuitously, an author contacted me about a month ago and said she was coming to Montana to promote her new book.  Sue was going to be in Red Lodge on February 25th to premiere the book about the Bearcreek Mine disaster and a mutual friend (who loves pie and dinosaurs and rockets) told her I might be an interesting person to meet while she was in Montana. I'm not sure those were the exact words used, but that was the gist of it. 

The "interesting" part may have been exaggerated a bit, but I like authors and promptly invited myself to Red Lodge.

Sue politely said she hoped I could come. ( I wonder if she'd looked on the map and decided there was no possible way.) I had been wintering badly, with few outings and decided I'd make it if I had to hire a dogsled and walk the last 20 miles.

And I needed a sidekick.

Foxtail had had a rough winter, too. 

I called her and over screaming babies (hers) and fighting kids (mine) we arranged the tour.

Fast forward to February 25th....

Foxtail and Kochia in a muddy Trailblazer with "MaggIe maGGiE MagGiE" printed on the side in tiny fingermarks head to Red Lodge, with two full bags of nothing to wear and stars in their eyes! Headed to the big city and beyond....

I won't give you a moment-to-moment, blow-by-blow account.  Here are the highlights:

• We went to the mall....in Winnett.  Clean bathrooms, great Montana gifts!
• We went to the mall....in Billings. So-so bathrooms, decent coffee, more stores than we cared to visit.
• We ate at Dos Machos for lunch. Clean bathrooms, Pepsi products instead of Coke (drats)
• We stayed at the Alpine in Red Lodge. CLEAN rooms for $65 (that's with tax)!!!! Four thumbs up!!
• We migrated around the Carbon County Museum, warming chairs for old people. (Got there early and kept moving to give people our seats, which worked out brilliantly because we ended up sitting beside....
• ....the author's family, accidentally, and flirted with her dad who invited us to breakfast the next morning because her folks had to leave early for a flight. 
• We ALSO heard great stories about Sue from her father, including how she used to eat peas as a child. 
• We ended up leaving the reception early to get Subway sandwiches because we were invited to go....
• ....to the Lone Pine Bar for drinks with our new friends. The Lone Pine Bar, incidentally, does not exist. There IS a Snag Bar, but that wasn't the place either.  Finally, we found the Front Bar, after driving up and down Main Street giggling. 
• We had a drink with Sue, John (another writer who originated in Massachusetts, oddly enough), and a very nice lady who came to Montana  because she wanted to grow up to be a migrant fruit worker and couldn't find work in Colorado seeings as how she was a young white female and now (30 years later) co-owns a restaurant in Red Lodge with her boyfriend who is also a writer and her landlord AND invited to drinks but she came instead because he was busy or something. It's very complicated. 
• We slept 5 uninterrupted hours in the most comfortable beds we've ever encountered.
• After a highly amusing breakfast with the Kushners and Resnicks, in which we learned about New England town layouts and cheetah predation control in Africa, we joined Sue for....
• ....a trip to Bear Creek to see the actual mine from a distance and the remnants of the little towns. We were there almost exactly on the date the mine disaster occurred 60-some years earlier, and the weather was eerily similar.
• After dropping Sue off at the Pollard, we shopped Main Street, then...
• ...ate a phenomenal lunch at a restaurant I wish I could remember the name of, before....
• ....driving to Billings for a Tour de COSTCO.
• Coffee and fuel for the car, then on the road to home.

This is the book!!!

Before reading it, I was hoping it wasn't too horrible, being a book written about Montana by a Massachusetts author. I am thrilled to report it's a WONDERFUL book, thoroughly researched and written in a voice that makes one feel like they were there every minute.  I don't know if this is a tribute to her writing or a concession to my weirdness, but when I read about the mine, I got all dizzy from trying to hold my breath.  She writes that vividly!

If you can get your hands on a copy, I urge you to do so, then set aside a couple evenings to fall into the story. You won't be able to put it down.  Then you'll want to go to Carbon County to see everything.

Here's Sue.  She's MUCH prettier in person.

Check out http://www.goodbyewifesanddaughters.com/ for all her information, including her Montana stops this week.  (You won't, however, find any anecdotes about her fussy eating habits or how she met her husband. Those are only available from her dad who is more than happy to share, should you meet him at a book event or in the airport in L.A. Ask about little Susie Kushner and you'll have a good half hour of stories.)

Looking out toward Bearcreek, at where we suspect the old road ran. (All the photos from here on out are from Anne Miller, who remembered to charge her camera battery, bless her heart!

Looking at the "hysterical" markers, by the Smith Mine.

The machine shop (yes, Sue...we found a picture that actually identified it!) that is so significant in the book.  You'll have to read the story to find out why....

All that is left of the Smith Mine, now.  I always thought this was the mine entrance, but it was just where all the coal was processed; the actual entrance was around the hill a ways. The little building at the bottom of the picture was the mine office.

OH, how I wish the property wasn't posted quite so prominently and that there wasn't mention of prosecution of trespassers to the fullest extent of the law....

Anne and I both love to lurk around old buildings, but we respect private property. It pains us, but we respect it.....

Saying goodbye at the Pollard....*sigh*

Sue was so kind to spend the morning with us and share her family, too. 

The Eastern Montana branch of the Susan Kushner Resnick Fanclub hopes to make a visit to the East Coast with our foam fingers and cameras, soon!