#473

We were out tagging calves, feeding corn to cows the other night when Tally captured this video.



#473 has become braver over last few weeks, and she finally decided to eat out of the bucket and let me scratch her head.  There's one in every crowd!

Spring in Montana

Mother Nature isn't letting up.  April Snow Showers will bring May flowers, right?  Snow in May? Sure, why not!

 Now, why were are truly grateful for the moisture she is giving us, couldn't Mother Nature at least warm up by 20* and send us this much needed moisture in the form of warm spring rains?

Here is a few snapshots I have taken in the last couple of weeks.  Sadly, this is the most snow we have had all winter.

Wet, cold horses begging for some hay

Mama taking care of her brand new baby

Hubby filling hay feeders for the heifers calves

Snow covered hay bales kind of makes for a pretty picture

Black and white

TC enjoying the snow and helping do chores

nom nom nom 

slushy, watery muddy mess

Tearing into the bales before they got put into the feeder  

Heyyyy Bossss!

Ok, let's try posting this video once more so it can actually be viewed.  Sorry!

TC is (so she sometimes informs me) mine and papa's cowboss.  She's learning at young age, though honestly most of her time is spent catching an nap while we are out feeding cows.
This morning I had to stop and capture this little video of her.  She cracks me up.    Enjoy!

Tis the Season

Tis the season to be buying bulls!  Last week we attended our first sale of the season.  We went, we looked, we liked and we bought!  My checkbook is a lot lighter as we came home with 2 bulls for ourselves and 1 bull for the corporation.

I love bulls sales.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe it's as simple as bull sale means a trip to town.  Maybe it's because I can remember going with my dad as a young kid and later on in life going with him as a serious looker/buyer.  Could be it's just all the excitement, the cleaned up and cattle and getting to see and visit with people.  Whatever the reason, I just simply enjoy a bull sale.

Last week on twitter, I tweeted asking what EPD's are most influential to you and your operation when choosing new breeding bulls.  It was a quite a conversation and there is no right or wrong answer as each cattle operation is different.  The one big this we talked about is how some people forget to actually take phenotype into consideration.  I feel that is and should be a big part of our selection process.

 On that same particular twitter conversation it was discussed how many cattlemen and women actually understand and comprehend what each EPD stands for and means.  Do they understand their importance or how one may correlate with another?  If I was smart enough I would post a link to the conversation, but that is way over my head!

So how do you use EPD's?  How much influence do they have in your selection process?  What are the top 3 EPD's you look at while browsing a sale catalogue?  Do you take the time to actually look at the bull?

Confessions

Confessions, I have a ton of blogging ideas, but life and kids and fall work is getting in the way of me getting them posted.  sorry.
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Another confession, I was a guest blogger over at Housewives of Rural America.   This blog was started not long ago, and I have been enjoying the weekly guest bloggers.  Hurry over and check it out.

I'll leave you with a picture for Not So Wordless Wednesday!  The guys were busy moving combines about yesterday, so that we could start combining corn this morning.

Family Friday Night

Family Friday nights around here in the summer are not your typical family outings.

Nope, on any Friday night (and really any night of the week) we load up the kids and dog and head out to go check cows, check crops, go do some irrigating or a hundred other things that need to be done.  We take this time to be together as a family, but do get our work done and teach our kids.

T and TC just love going to check cows and helping putting out mineral.  I could say its because they are with mom or dad, or because we are spending time as a family but I would be lieing.   They enjoy putting out mineral so much because 'mixing' and 'stirring' the mineral is just the most fun!  It really is, just ask the two little blondes in the picture!

Putting out mineral is just one of the many things we do together as a family.  We irrigate, we seed, we hay, we move cows, we work cows, we harvest, we play, we fight, we hug and we love.  Its just what we do.

The kids, though they are young, have already learned you can't go check cows, put out mineral without checking on the water!  And maybe so mom can snap some pictures.  

 I just love old windmills.   Our Family Friday nights may not be typical, but they are who and what we are and do!  Pretty sure I wouldn't change a thing!

30 Days of Thanksgiving

Cow Camp Crazy's 30 Days of Thanksgiving

Day 1:  So thankful that I am living my dream job; ranching, farming, being a mama, and being a part of Agriculture.  It's not always easy, but it's the perfect fit for me.

Day 2:  It may sound silly, but I am thankful for cell phones and texting, and the ability to send pictures from my cell phone.  My family and close friends are scattered across Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.  Cell phones allow us to keep in touch so easily.  It's easy to send pictures of my girls to my sisters, and their grandparents.  It makes the miles just fade away, and my kids keep in touch.  And it makes me feel like we, as a family, aren't missing out on little things in the others' life as we can keep in touch.

Day 3:  I am thankful for toilet paper.

Day 4:  I am thankful for the communities that I grew up in.  They hold a special spot in my heart and then helped make me who I am today.

Day 5:  I am thankful for my network of friends.  Each one of them adds something to my life.  Many miles may separate most of us, but the miles don't take away the memories!

Day 6:  I am thankful for my children.  They are my little miracle babies.  I think when the doctors told me the impossible, God just laughed and said "watch this!"!

Day 7:  I am thankful for father.  I hope I can remember everything dad has taught and told me over the years, but am afraid I won't.  I love his old wives tales, his stories that are lessons, and his ability to throw you into a situation you would have been scared to jump into, and them him saying 'See it wasn't that bad!'.  I thank him for sharing his love of ranching, horses and that if you love what you do, work isn't work.  I thank him for teaching me that you take care of them first and your livestock will take care of you.  I am thankful he made me work and taught me how to work.  And I am thankful that he is able to share some of these things with my daughters.  My babies first word was 'papa'.

Day 8:  I am thankful for my husband.  Granted he frustrates me, ticks me off and I sometimes don't understand they way he does things BUT he's a hard work, and a great father, and he puts up with me!

Day 9:  I am thankful  muck boots and Carhartt.  Yes, that my sound trivial, but its not.  I have spent the last several days shoveling snow, chopping ice and feeding livestock in a snow storm.  Those of you that share my life, you get me.  For those that don't, I'm telling you Muck boots and Carhartt are wonderful.  Great improvement from when I was a kid and had to put grocery sacks around my feet before putting them in my snow boots.

Day 10:  I am thankful for my nieces and nephew, and for cousins.  They just make my life fuller, funner and crazy.  Plus I love hearing stories from their mothers, as then I realize I am not the only one with crazy kids!

Day 11:  I am thankful for a good dog.  A good dog is next to a good horse, its just right for the soul.  A good dog lets you rant and rave and throw temper tantrums and then snuggles in and makes things better.  A good dog is there to help get that last ol' rip up the alley or through the gate.  A good dog makes you smile, and smiling is great.

Day 12: I am thankful for my horses.  They make my world right.  Nothing helps me get my head on straight like a horse.  When riding that good one thats close to your heart, and you get the cow stopped or pulling calves or hes firing on all engines and cutting like a champ, that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  And I love how my daughters are falling in love with horses and how they seem to have the same effect on them.

Day 13:  I am thankful for my freezer full of meat and my pantry full of food.

Day 14:  I am thankful that as we come upon the holiday season my mother is around to spend it with her family, her grand kids and anyone else she chooses too.  She has outlived the doctors predictions and keeps rocking on!

Day 15:  I am thankful for neighbors and friends that are always willing to lend a hand.  Being neighborly makes hard work and long days go by fast and with a little commraderie and social contact.  It also is allowing us to sneak away to my folks' place over Thanksgiving.  Thank goodness for good neighbors.

Day 16:  I am thankful I am a very awesome grandma and truly awesome, if not stubborn, grandpa still in my life.  They both rock.

Day 17:  I am thankful that when I married D, I gained an awesome family.  We have so much fun and we've got each others back.

Day 18:  I am thankful for this blog.  Not many people see it or read it, but I like that I have a place to jot something down, share something, or not.  It's all up to me. It's mine.

Day 19:  I am thankful that D and I have gotten the opportunity to farm and ranch.  I can't imagine either one of us being as truly happy doing anything else.

I Like Cows

I like cows.  

They are beautiful.

They are survivors.

They are stubborn.

They are good for one's soul.

I just really like cows.

Defoliating Beets

We have only been growing sugar beets for 3 years.  I have learned alot in those 3 years, and have plenty more to learn.  One question that is asked quite frequently is 'What is defoliating beets?'.  Well, I happen to get some close up pictures of the defoliater last week as the guys were opening up a new field.  

Basically, the defoliator has a bunch of paddles inside and whips the tops of the beets off.  This is the first step.  After the beets have been defoliated, the diggers come and and scoop those suckers up and load them into the trucks. 

Sugerbeet Snap Shots

Yes, I know we are done with sugarbeet harvest, but I actually got some pictures taken this year and I want to share them with you.  So bear with me!

Digging beets and loading trucks

We got some rain during harvest so we had to use a pull tractor on some fields

Pull tractor at work

Digger waiting on a truck

This sugarbeet harvest is hard on everyone!

Waiting to get loaded back up.  

Picking Sugar Beets with Daddy

Crashed!

Finally! After a year of fighting, cussing, pulling my hair out and having day dreams of running my computer over with my John Deere loader tractor my computer has crashed.

So new computer has arrived and is being worked on to get me ready. Hopefully my computer gal will have it all set up and me online in the next few days. I can't wait.

After church we spent the remainder of the day helping out in the beet field. Slowly we are getting those sugarbeets dug!

Sugarbeet Harvest 2012

This is just the beginning. The beginning of a long Sugarbeet harvest. Digging beets is like no other harvest I have been around. A Sugarbeet grower is at the mercy of the weather and the Sugarbeet factory. If it gets to warm, they shut us down. If its too wet, they shut us down and so on and so forth.

The beet dump opened at 7:00 am this morning. We had defoiliated and dug enough beets to fill our trucks sober were ready to dump right away this morning.

We had a good day. No major breakdowns. Things were going quite smoothly. Until we got the phone call that 'they' were shutting beet harvest down until sometime next week. You see, it's way to warm out. It's beautiful out. Which is not good when digging beets. It has to do with them letting their sugar down and how well they don't store when dug above certain temps. So now we sit and wait.

I took a few photos of the beet dump this morning as we drove by. They aren't the best as we were a ways a way and I took them with my phone.