Cow Manure and Cow-pie Cookies

Although today is cool again, and snow is again (still) in our forecast, there are signs of spring everywhere. There's a tinge of green along the edge of the well-house, water is flowing along the ranch roads, and the probability of miring the tractor in mud is high. The cawing of crows and the honking of north-flying geese fills the air.

The brood mares and the bulls are getting their hooves trimmed as I write. Calving will begin on April 20 and foaling two weeks after that.

Earlier this week, the second-calf heifers needed a booster vaccination. And because a couple of heifers had displayed symptoms of a suspected affliction, stool samples had to be procured from a random twenty animals.

It was my job to label the "specimen" bags with the numbers from each heifer's ear tag. Easy enough.  It was The Cowboy's privilege to don the shoulder length plastic gloves and obtain the sample. Needless to say, we were both well spattered with the aromatic brew by the time we were done.

Cattle doing what they do best.

A 1000 pound beef animal will produce between 50-80 pounds of excrement a day. We have about 3000 cows and horses on the ranch. That's a lot of fertilizer! It's spread out on the pastures, adding nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon to the soil, along with weed seeds (bad) and undigested organic matter (good). Well-rotted manure is as good as gold to the farmer or rancher.

After showers had set us all to rights again, I remembered I needed to bake something to take to quilting the next morning. At that very moment -- isn't Facebook amazing? -- a friend posted a recipe. I whipped it up, because it was easy, quick, and yummy. It wasn't until later that I realized the irony.

Cow-pie Cookies.

The recipe has been around a long time and has a variety of other names. Preacher cookies, because you can throw them together when you see the dust of the preacher's car as he's coming up the lane for an unexpected visit. Moose Droppings, although they don't resemble any moose droppings I've ever seen. And No Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies. Boring. Whatever you choose to call them (and I like Cow-pie Cookies the best), here's the recipe.

1/2 c butter

2 c sugar

1/2 c milk

4 tbsp cocoa

1/2 c peanut butter

3 1/2 c quick cooking oats

2 tsp. vanilla

Add the first 4 ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a rolling boil, and boil for 1 minute. Stir in the next 3 ingredients and drop onto wax/foil paper. Let cool until set. Makes 2 to 2.5 dozen.

It was a delicious and sweet end to a day that started out with an unpleasant, but necessary task. I would love to add a philosophical and platitudinous comment about how to get on with life when manure happens, but I know it's never as simple as making a batch of cookies. Hang on to that last knot in the rope. This, too, shall pass.

If winter comes...

It's that time of year.

We've come to expect snickers and murmurs of sympathy from our southward neighbours as they plant tomatoes and cucumbers, while our gardens still slumber under three feet of hard-as-concrete winter precipitation. We endure the jokes about having barbecues in shoulder deep snowdrifts, and then discarding our parkas and Baffin boots to dive into holes chopped in the lake. We know about the head-shaking, the barely-held-back laughter.

Yes, it's spring.

It says so on the calendar, yet the Weather Network announces that today it is -18C with a windchill of -27. The Cowboy is out ploughing snow. Again. Still.

Nevertheless, it is spring.

I took this photo yesterday, at the community hall about three miles away. It was -9C. But for these children, the day holds nothing more than a last half-hearted gasp of winter's icy breath. They've tossed their coats, hats, gloves. It is spring, after all.

This photo was taken March 28, 2011. The gate to the road was five feet deep in snow.

One of my favourite photos of the thousands I have, taken May 22, 2010. Yes, May. The leaves were out, grass was green, new babies were everywhere, and fifteen inches of snow fell. We had family come to visit us, and about an hour before they arrived, the power failed. We spent three days playing cards by candlelight and slept with extra blankets on our beds. We cooked almost every meal on the grill. It was spring, after all, the time for cooking outdoors.

When Spring comes, she comes in a hurry, in the blink of an eye. Overnight, the snow melts, and a faint green blush appears in the timber and in the fields. The next day, it seems, we are mowing and planting and seeding and eating fresh lettuce from our gardens. Flowers bloom furiously and profusely.

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

For 85 glorious frost-free days, the greenness is intense and exquisite, very nearly as blinding as sun on snow. It is for those short days we live and dream and work and endure and bear up. And ironically, for many, the first flurries in the fall are welcomed, as they bring a time of putting up one's feet for a bit. Those lazy days don't last long. There's plenty to do.

We put up with the long, dark days, suffering from cabin fever that makes us cranky and sometimes a little squirrelly. Finally, when we can't take being holed up any more, right about now, we doff our winter gear and have a picnic. Go snowmobiling in shorts and flip-flops. Get out the barbecue and our bicycles. 

Why do we stay? people ask, if it's so miserable and long. The answer is simple: it is where God would have us for now. And maybe there's a little bit of insanity involved.

I had thought to hush the snickers and quiet the condolences, but I think I've only confirmed the legends of our northern-ness. So keep chuckling and making jokes and doubting our sensibilities. We are almost there.

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” 
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind

My Life as a Piecemaker

Finally, a spare moment to sit down and write something!

I've been thinking about ranch wives or farm wives again, and in the last weeks, I've had plenty of opportunity to visit with some of my rural sisters at various cattlemen's social events. We've shared our frustrations and adventures and many of the myths that abound about us country ladies.

One of the first questions I'm often asked when someone finds out I live on a 30 000 acre ranch, is do I have a big garden. No, I don't, I say. A little garden, then? No, not even that, I answer.

With just two of us, there's really no need to plant 200 hills of potatoes or eight rows of beans. Yes, I'd love to have a pantry full of jewel-like jars of jam, fruit, relish, and tomatoes. I've known that feeling of satisfaction, of planting, watering, harvesting, then filling the shelves with the work of my hands and God's abundance, so that my family would have bellies filled with home-grown food in the snowy and blustery days to come.

Home Canning - Delicious Jewels. A joy to behold. 

As far as gardening goes, I do have a few containers of flowers that don't demand more than a little water, and they bloom their hearts out for me.

But beyond that, sorry, no gigantic vegetable garden. (And that being said, there ARE plenty of farm women who DO plant acres of peas and tomatoes. They have my wholehearted admiration.)

What do I do in my spare time and when I have a fragment of extra energy, when I'm not working in the barn or mowing or keeping The Cowboy happy? (And keeping him happy means baking a lot of cookies and pies, and just being happy myself.)

I read. I write. I quilt.

So, a little showing off...

A baby quilt for my sweet great-niece.

Table Runner - from fabric given to me by my sister, at least 10 years ago. I finally put something together.

My first queen size quilt, made with bits and pieces of purple and turquoise, nothing planned, but no two ponies alike.

This is called "flower pounding," or as dear Cousin Olav in Norway called it, "bonkeblomst."
I made each square with flowers and leaves from different families' gardens in Norway
and Sweden in 2002. I finally had time to put it together.
(Yet, still missing the words in the bottom square.)
This was one of my "souvenirs" from that trip. Better than ashtrays and spoons, I think.

Butterflies and Hearts quilt for Granddaughter T.

Rail Fence baby quilt for Granddaughter M.

Well, that's enough, I think. I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my quilts. And forgive me for not growing a huge garden.

Our lives are like quilts – bits and pieces, joy and sorrow,  

stitched with love.  

A Day in the Life - Part Two

(We left "The Kid" as she was finishing Field 4 and, R, another farm worker, has already gone on to the Main Stackyard to start setting out bales.)

Winter stackyard in Field 3. Each of the five stackyards contains about 5000 bales. Each bale weighs between 1200 and 1500 pounds.

By the time I get to the Main Stackyard with the unit, R has set out three bales for me. In all, he will need to get 21 bales ready for NQ, the next field we will do. (NQ = North Quarantine.) I load and head into NQ, which is adjacent to the Main Stackyard. NQ is not very big, so "Leroy" has plowed the frozen manure into piles, so it's not too terribly bumpy. We are usually done the field feeding by 11:30 am.

The cows in North Quarantine.

While the two of us have been out in the fields, one or more of the other hands (depending on what day it is) feed the feedlot. Since cowboying has slowed down on the ranch (for the winter), it's up to the cowboys to feed buckets of grain to certain pens. "Sanchez" (another co-worker) in driving the JD 7210, the smallest tractor on the ranch. His job is to feed East Quarantine, South Quarantine, Meadow One, the colts, Pen One, and the two horse pens. He takes bales from the Bottom Stackyard. 

East Quarantine - cull and open cows - meaning those that have no baby in them.
South Quarantine - the bulls.
Meadow One - replacement heifers.
Feedlot Three - colts
Pen One - sick calves, which are doctored by the cowboys, as needed.

One of the mares.

Every pen does not have to be fed every day, so it's somewhat of a memory juggling act. It only takes about 2.5 hours to feed the feedlot, even though it sound like a lot of animals to feed.

Sanchez does not have a hay buster. Instead, he has a knife, a very well used tool on the ranch. He can bring in only one bale at a time from the Bottom Stackyard. He has to get out of the tractor, cut the twine all the way down one side of the bale, pull off and wrap up the twine, and stuff it in his tractor. It's not good for the cows to eat twine. About the same as getting string in your salad. Not very tasty, I don't think.

After Sanchez is done feeding, he takes all the twines to the burn pit. He is always done before we get back to the yard.

After I'm done in NQ, I head to the shop. There, I burn all the twines off the "flails" of the bale buster with a bar iron. A bar iron is an electric bar, kind of like a straightened oven element.

After the twines are all removed from the flails, R takes the twines to the burn pit. I open the shop door, and when R returns, he backs his tractor unit in first. Sanchez's tractor is already in. Then I put my unit away. The hay buster unit is last into the shop, and first out in the morning. The hay buster is greased every day, and the tractor loaders, every Monday. Equipment breakdowns can be costly.

We are done by noon. Just in time for lunch!

In the winter, the main job is to feed, and once that's done, we're finished. Three thousand animals fed and happy. Sometimes, the "Roughrider Fan" (hay trucker) comes in with a load of bales (38 bales to a load) and "The Cowboy" will phone whoever's around to grab a tractor and unload the bales in the desired stackyard.  Everyone carries a phone, as you never know where anyone is. That is how we communicate. 

We also use hand signals a lot of the time when in the tractors. It's fast and easy.

Oh, and when I talk about the tractors we use, it's ALL John Deere!

GO GREEN! 

A Day in the Life

One of the farm crew here on the ranch came up with a brilliant idea. Why not acquaint my readers with an average day working on the ranch. So, I'd like to introduce "The Kid," as the other workers call her. Yes, The Kid is a "her." A lovely young lady with a hankering for being in the outdoors and working close to the earth. Yet, lest you think a girl working on a ranch is maybe not so feminine, I've seen The Kid with her hair done up and wearing a splash of bling. She's a spunky, hard-working, and beautiful girl.

Here, in her own words, and with her own photos, is a typical day. 

At dark o'thirty, the crew meets in the shop. We have coffee and talk about what's to be done. Pre-check the tractors. The buster-driver decides when it's time to head out. (Hay-buster--an apparatus used to de-twine the 1500 pound bales of hay and then "bust" them up into finer-sized feed.) Get to the stack yard by the barn, place one bale on the grapple, back up in pitch-dark to the second bale, lift it into the buster, and pick up a third bale on the buster forks. Head out. Factor in any wind the night before, blowing the road in and driving through big snow drifts.   

Field 5 blown in. The Cowboy had to
clear the way before the tractors could
get through to feed the cows.

Depending on the wind is which way we drive, so the dust from the hay doesn't clog up the radiator. We've been feeding  between 19-21 bales to the cows in Field 5. It takes a little over an hour for that field, if I don't have to stop to unclog the hay buster. If I do, I turn off the PTO (power take off), idle down, put the tractor in park, put on my gloves, and go 'round the back of the buster, get underneath the shield, and haul the clogged hay out with my hands. Wet bales are foul smelling and sticky. Disgusting. On windy days, it's blown right into my face, down my shirt and jeans, and makes the rest of the day itchy and uncomfortable.

Resume busting.


R, one of my co-workers, drives the feed wagon, which can be hitched and unhitched to his tractor. Therefore, he can load and unload (with the unhitched tractor) the desired amount of bales the buster driver has asked for. He sets them out a certain way: one bale, then two bales, about 50 feet away. That gives the buster driver room to maneuver when reloading. I pick up the single bale first, then the two, and away I go again.

Oh, and don't forget to close the gate after leaving any field or pen!
The only wildlife I've seen lately are a pack of 'yotes and numerous ravens.

By the time I'm done Field 5, the sky has begun to turn pink, yellow, and orange. Lately, the sunrises have been pretty good!

When R has unloaded the correct amount of bales for Field 5, he heads to Stackyard 3 (there are five stackyards) and loads up for the next field. The haywagon can hold 14 bales. Heading into Field 4 now, the sun is starting to shine through the tall trees. I always enjoy Field 4. On the downside, Field 4 is very open and has very deep snow. Sometimes, I get R to plough lanes through the snow so the buster won't get stuck, as it's very low to the ground. And sometimes I get good and stuck!

Tractor and Hay Buster. Had to get pulled out. 

If it's a cold or blizzarding morning, the cows are reluctant to come out of the trees until I've completed about the fourth row with the buster. If it's warm, they are already coming to greet me, and I have to lift the bucket so I don't clobber any as I go through.

After a few days of feeding in the same spot in the field, the field gets very bumpy from frozen cow manure. Slowly, I make the feeding ground bigger, to find not-so-rough ground. Deep snow is hard to go through, let alone backing up to a bale in 2 - 3 feet of settled snow. The Cowboy or Leroy (the farm foreman) plough roads into the fields, and in some places, the ploughed-up snow is taller than the tractor wheels. (Picture below, Road 2. The ploughed snow is taller than the truck.)

By 10 am, I am done Field 4, and R has headed off to set up the hay for the next fields.

(Come back for "The Kid's" Part Two of "A Day in the Life.")

A Cowboy's Christmas Prayer

The cowboys I know are simple folk, and for the most part, God-fearing. Also for the most part, you won't find them ranting on about how if you just do your cinches just right and wear your hat a certain way, the Good Lord will smile down on you and bless your britches off.

No, sir. Their faith is earthy. Only a few simple things are asked of us. Take care of kinfolk, even the nasty ones. Be kind to critters and tend to them in the best way possible. Treasure children. Be humble. Be respectful. 

Be grateful for every mouthful of grub, even if it's just coffee and beans. Food is food, and whatever it is, it's all from the hand of the Good Lord.

They are praying people. But they don't waste their breath on frivolous prayers that might take God away from more important matters. They pray before rodeos, for no injuries and honesty. They pray before eating. And when you go to Cowboy Church, it's just fine to wear your work-worn boots and dusty jeans. Be yourself. It's the way the Good Lord meant it to be. 

There is a classic cowboy prayer I'd like to share. Each year, we get at least one Christmas card bearing these timeless words. It best tells the heart of a true cowboy.

A COWBOY'S CHRISTMAS PRAYER
By S. Omar Barker (1894-1985)

I ain't much good at prayin', and You may not know me, Lord-
I ain't much seen in churches where they preach Thy Holy Word,
But you may have observed me out here on the lonely plains,
A-lookin' after cattle, feelin' thankful when it rains,
Admirin' Thy great handiwork, the miracle of grass,
Aware of Thy kind spirit in the way it comes to pass
That hired men on horseback and the livestock we tend
Can look up at the stars at night and know we've got a friend.

So here's ol' Christmas comin' on, remindin' us again
Of Him whose coming brought good will into the hearts of men.
A cowboy ain't no preacher, Lord, but if You'll hear my prayer,
I'll ask as good as we have got for all men everywhere.
Don't let no hearts be bitter, Lord.
Don't let no child be cold.
Make easy beds for them that's sick and them that's weak and old.
Let kindness bless the trail we ride, no matter what we're after,
And sorter keep us on Your side, in tears as well as laughter.

I've seen ol' cows a-starvin, and it ain't no happy sight:
Please don't leave no one hungry, Lord, on thy good Christmas night-
No man, no child, no woman, and no critter on four feet-
I'll aim to do my best to help You find 'em chuck to eat.

I'm just a sinful cowpoke, Lord-ain't got no business prayin'-
But still I hope You'll ketch a word or two of what I'm sayin':
We speak of Merry Christmas, Lord-I reckon you'll agree
There ain't no Merry Christmas for nobody that ain't free.
So one thing more I'll ask You, Lord: Just help us what you can
To save some seeds of freedom for the future sons of man. 

May your neighbours respect you,
Trouble neglect you,
The angels protect you and
Heaven accept you. - Unknown

Merry Christmas -- from the Ranch 

The Ranch in Winter

Welcome to the Ranch!

Merriest of Greetings to all my readers. Again, it's been a long spell since my last post. It's been busy, as usual.

Earlier this fall, we brought in the three thousand cows. It was time to be preg-checked, vaccinated, dewormed, and put on winter feed. The calves were shipped out.

Bringing in the cows.

For every day but one, the temperatures while gathering cattle plunged between -20 to -30 C. Blizzard conditions that frostbit the cowboys' faces and gave them icicles on their moustaches. Then it was cold working in the unheated barn processing the cows. Anything we do in the summertime is a hundred times more difficult in the winter. It takes a good fifteen minutes to get dressed to go outside, and by then you're all sweated up. Machinery is ornery. So are cattle. And people.

“Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.” 
― Sinclair Lewis

Lunchtimes gave us a brief opportunity to warm up with cocoa and a sandwich and a Tim Hortons donut, but then it was back to work. I discovered "Hot Hands" hand warmers, but I think I need a onesie made entirely of them!

Preg-checking is often done by ultrasound these days, although if a cow is proving difficult to evaluate, it's back to the old fashioned way: "Arming It." Donning a plastic "evening glove," the vet does a manual check. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. Yesterday, as we processed pregnant cow after pregnant cow, the vet expressed a wish for an "open" -- a non-pregnant bovine -- because her hand was getting cold!

Thankfully, it's all done now. All the animals are in close now and on feed.

We have snow, snow, and more snow. It's still cold.

Snow Removal - Ranch Style

Despite the frigid weather and deep snow, we are warm in spirit and heart. Our families are healthy, though not near enough to enjoy near often enough, and we have much to be thankful for, including Facebook and phone plans that offer free long distance to loved ones.

The view from the back door.

With most of the fall work done now that I have a part in, I should be adding a flurry of posts within the next few weeks. Until then, keep warm and joyful.

Winter is the time for comfort, for warm food and warmth,

for a touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire:

it is the time for home. ~ Edith Sitwell