Just Another Day

I'm going to tell you a story about what it's like being a rancher.  It's a true story and all the events I'm about to describe happened in a single day.

It started like most fall days: feeding cattle.  I started with the bulls but I immediately got the big bale feeder jammed up with hay.  Some rice straw had wrapped around one of the rows of blades and plugged it up worse than a Woodstock Porta Potty.  Normally I would take care of the problem, but I also had a vet coming to check on Dylan's fair heifer, so my brother got to work on the feed truck.  It's a tricky job, removing hay from the blades, and takes a lot of slow movements and caution.  My brother isn't known for either, but he executed the job perfectly, until he didn't.  For the second time in my life he came up to me and asked, "Will you tell me if this needs stitches?"  The first time was a run in with a chainsaw and the answer then was a resounding yes.  This time, same answer.  Luckily, the vet was still there and so he cleaned up the wound, pulled out his handy-dandy stapler and several clicks later, my brother was wrapped up in hot pink vet wrap and good to go.

You'd think that with that kind of start to the day, the rest should go a lot more smoothly.  And it did; until it didn't.  We moved a herd of cattle across the road and a few calves got away from their mothers.  Stray calves are notorious idiots, cute as they are, and will always run in the opposite direction of the cows.  One ran into the neighbors, where it got chased out by their dogs, and then ran, and ran, and ran.  The last time we saw it was in the other neighbor's barn lot.  Perfect.  We drove in on 4-wheelers to scoop it up and, poof, it was gone.  After hiking hills, scanning fence lines, and driving ditches, we gave up.  That evening, after dark, I decided to go back and look and ta-da, there it was.  Brother came down and we made a plan, which immediately blew up in our faces.  The calf ran, brother pursued, and I chased on foot.  Luckily, my brother got a rope on the calf and I wrestled

Sometimes we do stupid stuff, 
sometimes the cattle do.

it in the back of my truck.  On my way to return the runaway, brother called, which I knew couldn't be with good news.  "I rolled the 4-wheeler," he said.  By the time I got back to him he had righted the bike and was heading home but by the next morning he couldn't cough or laugh without crying.  There's really no point in seeing a doctor for broken ribs, and the vet had long since gone home, so he had to tough it out for a few days.  

1 day, 2 wrecks.  I'd say that isn't, thankfully, a typical day-in-the-life, but it wasn't surprising either.  It's not a job for everyone, but, man, it sure is fun.

Molly Moo

Sometimes, especially on a ranch, you do things a certain way because, well, you've always done them that way.  But then the neighbors try a new approach and well, you can't exactly change and copy them, because that's plagiarism, right?  But, man, it really seems like a better idea and then another neighbor starts doing it, and heck, if everyone's doing it there just might be something to it.  And that's why we bought a nurse cow.

And nurse cow is just a dairy cow that is used to raise bummer, or orphan, calves.  They're often pretty cheap, usually gentle, can raise 3-4 calves, and, best of all, those 2 or 3 a day bottle feedings I've been doing all winter long for the past 14 years?  No more.  All it took was a 3 hour drive with a trailer to meet Dale.

Dale didn't sell me a nurse cow.  Through no fault of his own, he somehow became a nurse cow middle man.  He doesn't do it for money, and he certainly doesn't do it for fame.  Dale is just a good guy.  He's a friend of a friend of a friend and is the kind of guy who always has a toothpick in his mouth and calls guys, "boss."  I drove to Dale's place and he hopped in my truck and guided me to the dairy.  In 15 minutes I had 2 cows in the trailer and was heading home.

Grafting calves onto new mothers can be a chore.  Mama cows often don't want calves that aren't their own so we do all sorts of tricks to convince them that the orphan is really theirs.  We've skinned out dead calves and had the orphan wear the hide so the nurse cow still catches a whiff of her original calf.  It's a lot like the scene in Silence of the Lambs when Anthony Hopkins wears the cop'
s face as a disguise.  Sometimes I'll pour molasses or maple syrup on the calf's back so the mother licks it and since she's licking this new calf and it tastes like candy, she might as well keep it.  Whatever we do, it's usually difficult.  Mothers will kick strange calves that are trying to nurse and it usually takes a lot of attempts in a squeeze chute to get them together.  But a dairy cow?  I put our new Jersey in a pen with 2 calves, said, "Congratulations! You just had twins!" and walked away.  In 10 minutes the 2 calves were nursing their new mommy and she was licking their backs like she'd just birthed them.  I only wish the neighbors had bought a nurse cow years ago; it would have saved me a lot of time.

Fire Starter

This summer was hot.  Miserably hot.  We were in the middle of raging wildfires, insanely high temperatures, low water reserves, and a shortage of above-ground pools at Walmart.  It was a perfect storm for a field fire.  And yet, I still thought that cutting drier than normal grain hay on a drier than normal Hartstrand field would be a good idea.  Spoiler alert: it wasn't.

To be fair (use your Letterkenny voice when you read that), A) this was the earliest I could even get to that field, B) it had a decent rain hit it 2 days prior, and C) I started cutting in the morning so it wouldn't be too hot or dry.  And mostly, things went well.

Until they didn't.  I'd cut all morning and had just one more pass to make before I was finished, but as I turned the swather around to make my final pass, I saw smoke.  Oh shit.  From that moment on, I went full Keystone Cops.  I was near Grant's house, so I spun the swather back around and raced into his driveway.  I started grabbing anything I could get my hands on that would put out a fire.  As I ran back and forth with shovels, coolers full of water, and rakes, I didn't notice that I had passed, several times, a literal pile of fire extinguishers.  I raced back out to the field on a 4-wheeler I saw the fire had expanded to the size of, say, the RV I'd soon be living in if I burned down all the homes on Hartstrand.  I dumped the cooler on the flames and extinguished 1/10th of the flames.  A young passerby in flip-flops stopped to help and tried stomping out the flames.  Bad idea.  

That's when I grabbed the fire extinguisher.  Those things are appropriately named.  Honestly, I don't think I'd ever used one before, but I've seen movies and I knew it was a lot like using a grenade (which I also have never used before).  And it worked.  I got about 90% of the fire out and the rest I smothered with my giant, broken grain shovel.  I finally breathed.

My brothers showed up with a water truck and I doused the area.  Neighbors showed up.  CalFire showed up.  I found the rock that the swather blades nicked and likely sparked the fire, so I saved it for my baby book.  I've been cutting hay for a lot of years and this was my first fire.  My dad, who also cut hay for a lot of years, started only one, but it was a big one.  Boray planes were deployed.  This one sufficiently spooked me.  I'm cutting now in a swather/fire truck.  I have shovels, fire extinguishers, piss-pumps, fire shelters, a helmet, and flashing lights.  It might be overkill, but if it happens again, I'll be ready.

Of course, I didn't have time to take a picture.  But here's a cool one of the day the smoke rolled in.

Up and Back

Cats ride for free

 For the purists, summer begins on the solstice in June, for most, it begins on Memorial Day, but for Scott Valley alfalfa growers, it begins when hay season starts.  And, more specifically, it begins when the swathers fire up and start mowing down hay.  

There is usually a span on a couple days, usually in late May, when the farmers start getting restless.  They stare at the skies, then they check, and re-check, their weather apps, waiting for the perfect window of good weather.  When the coast looks clear, they hop in their trucks and start doing laps around the valley, checking to see who was brave, or dumb, enough to start cutting.

Fortunately for me, I couldn't do any of those things this year because I was so far behind, I was still under my machine, changing the oil and prepping it for summer.  I finally got the big red machine ready to go just in time, too, because just when I put on the the last fresh cutting blade, I could hear the distinct whine of a swather motor in the neighbor's field.  And so begins the daily ritual.

Dogs do too

Someone asked me once what cutting hay is like.  You start with cutting a few rounds around the outside of a field, usually 4 but some farmers do 3, then you cut a straight line, either in the middle or along an edge, and start going up, then back.  Repeat that a million times and at some point in late September you've caught up on a year's worth of podcasts and you're done.  It's a job I started doing with my dad as a small kid.  First I'd just ride along with him, then he eventually let me take a few passes, and eventually I was on my own.  A hundred years later, I'm still at it.  Up and back, on repeat.

The Country Club

The view is ok.  I guess.

 I'm a member of a Country Club.  No, don't start humming the Travis Tritt hit from 1990.  This is a genuine, legit country club.  Think: manicured golf greens, goose filled ponds, a driving range, and a cold beer at the 19th hole.  Then think what would happen if the apocalypse happened and the golf course went feral.  It's a cattleman's dream.

A friend of ours purchased this abandoned golf course, one on which I used to play when I thought golf was a fun and worthwhile hobby, and let us put cattle on it to graze down the overgrown grasses.  We spent a few afternoons fixing fences, meeting the neighbors (who had a lot of questions), and adding gates and water troughs.  When the truck released the cattle -- a load of young heifers -- they were in awe.  Not of just the jaw-dropping views of Mt. Shasta, but of the knee high grass.

Release the hounds!

So now, checking the cows is the perfect excuse to grab an old rusty 9-iron, hit a few balls that have been dredged up from the pond, and sit back with a cold one and enjoy the solitude and the view.  Now that's my kind of country club.

Scott Valley Hello

We'll work on driving first, waving later

Whenever my wife and I are driving in a city I always get asked the same question: "Why are you waving at everyone?"  It's a fair question, and I can only say that old habits are hard to break.  Here in Scott Valley, you are pretty much required to wave.  At everyone you see.  I even feel a sense of guilt when I get caught zoning out and I forget The Wave.

And, yes, Scott Valley has its own wave.  It's the peace sign, oddly enough, and I've been noticing lately that more and more people are using it as their wave.  Of course, there are the head nodder wavers, and the flappy-hand wavers, and the one-finger wavers (usually the pointer finger, but sometimes the middle), and the rock-and-roll devil horns wavers, but also, there are an awful lot of peace-sign wavers.  So many that I've officially named it the Scott Valley Hello.

Too cool to wave

Why a peace sign, you might ask.  It all started with my brother, Greg.  His buddy, Roger, works for the county, so we pass him on the road a lot.  When you see the same person on the same stretch of road for several days in a row, you start to get creative with your waving.  Greg started giving Roger the peace sign and Roger thought it was hilarious.  So he started giving it back.  I thought it was funny, so I started using the peace wave at every car I passed.  From there, it took on a life of its own.

 And that is the origin of the Scott Valley Hello.

Corral Humility

This oxbow can support a lot of weight

 We've been spending, off and on, the last few weeks deconstructing, rearranging, and rebuilding one of our sets of corrals.  We set new cedar posts, put up new lumber, hammered nails, poured concrete, welded oxbows, and rehung gates.  Things were looking pretty spiffy, I must say.  We had a few small projects left to make it perfect, but also had a herd of cattle that needed vaccinating, so we ran them through.  We figured it would be a good test of our progress.

I will tell you this: I was feeling pretty proud of the work we did.  We ran the cows through and discovered a few tweaks we'll need to make.  Not the 5 star rating I hoped for, but not surprising either.  Next, we ran the calves through and found a couple more even smaller fixes we'd need to make.  All in all, things were looking pretty good.

Then we ran the bulls through.  There were only 3, but all it took was 1.  He crashed through 8 fences in 2 days -- 5 of which were in our new, beautiful corrals.  It was a lesson in humility, for sure.  And, when we go back to fine-tune our set up (and replace the boards and gates the bull smashed), we might just set the whole damn thing in metal.

Traffic

Day 1.  Moving right along.

 If you're hankering to go and check out bucks in their velvet or collect empty beer cans, you could do worse than driving Eastside Road.  It starts in Ft Jones, changes its name to East Callahan somewhere in the middle, and ends up in the city of Callahan.  It's usually the road less travelled.  With exceptions.  Funeral processions, slow tractors, and cattle drives all force the normally slow Eastside drivers to an even slower crawl.

Day 2.  All balled up.

We've driven one of our cattle herds down this road twice in the last week.  The first day was on a Sunday and it was cold and raining and we had a crew of 10 horseback cowboys and cowboygirls.  The cows probably thought they were heading for greener pastures and made it the 5 miles in record time.  The only slowpokes in the bunch were the bulls who were on the last days of their breeding season.  You can guess why they moved slowly.  The next day the herd was vaccinated and dewormed and then on Tuesday we saddled back up with 6 riders and took them another 6 miles to pasture.  By now the cows were skeptical and sore and moved at a turtle's pace.  Even my out-of-shape horse was sulky.  The cows tried to eat every blade of ditch grass along the way and became a mass of several hundred balled up bovines.  There was no driving through them without serious risk of a new cow poo paint job on your rig.  When we finally made it to the pasture the line of cars piled up behind the drive rivaled rush hour on the 405 in LA.

Most people around here accept cattle drives as a minor inconvenience.  I saw a lot of folks driving through with their smart phones out, videoing the progress.  And (at least on this drive) everyone waved, smiled, and gave us an encouraging word.  Life in Scott Valley generally moves at a slow pace, but, especially in the spring, things start to speed up.  We just add a few cows now and then to remind everyone to take a breath, slow down, and smell the manure.

Hot Heifers

Bad Beezys

 We preg checked our heifers this week.  If you've never seen cattle get pregnancy checked, you're in for a real surprise.  It's not pretty.  Usually Greg, sometimes me, and in this case, a veterinarian, puts on a long glove and sticks one hand, then forearm, then elbow, then bicep, in rectally.  From there, you can feel the cervix and uterus and lots of mushy parts and sometimes even a live calf, all through the wall of the rectum.  It's messy (lots of projectile pooping), but it's the quickest, easiest, and most effective way to tell if a cow is bred.

Friday Feed Line

Heifers are a special bunch.  As young females, they're not always great at navigating a chute or our corrals.  We had a new vet here and we wanted to impress him with our bitching corral set up.  What impressed him most was the leaping ability of our young cows.  Pregnant and open cows go in separate pens and we quickly ran out of places to put our open heifers because they had crashed thorough so many fences and broke so many boards.  When they did finally get their turn in the chute, they'd lie down, back up, and were just plain uncooperative to the guy who was only trying to stick his arm up their ass.

After the 3rd jailbreak we started apologizing to the vet and swore up and down they'd never acted like this before.  It felt like taking a toddler to a nice restaurant and watching in horror as she throws her mashed potatoes at the neighboring table.  After the 5th fence crash we starting thinking about career changes.  Luckily, it ended there.  We liked the new vet as he was both helpful and didn't seem to mind a little chaos.  We had a pretty good outcome with the pregging, and found out that Dylan's fair heifer is very pregnant.  We survived to stay in ranching another day.  It couldn't have gone any better.

MTV Spring Break: Hanna Brothers

Wheel lines.  Ug.

 The closest I ever came to having an MTV-style spring break was a few years ago we took our kids to Disney World and then stayed a few days in Daytona Beach.  Daytona Beach?  I grew up in the 80s and I watched a lot of MTV.  I knew what coastal Florida looked like in mid-spring, and it definitely was not a place to take kids.  Hoards of drunken college students blowing off steam?  This was the best (or worst) idea ever.  I couldn't wait.  Then we got there.  Apparently, Daytona Beach hasn't been a cool spring break hangout since about the time I quit watching MTV.  The closest thing we saw to mayhem were the cheerleaders there for a national competition as they practiced their routines on the beach.

My helper.

In college I never went anywhere for spring break.  My friends all headed south to Lake Havasu but I was always broke by Easter so I came home to the work on the ranch for a week and make enough money to get me to summer.  Things haven't changed much since then and we usually don't go too far during break.  This year was no exception.  I fed a lot of cows and started up wheel lines because of this unusually dry spring.  The kids tagged along in the feed truck with me.  The excitement was that we started working to fix up a set of corrals, and that's really depressing that that was the highlight.  Almost.  

The real highlight is our version of Friday Night Lights.  Every Friday the Drill Team meets up at the Pleasure Park to practice.  The parents drink buckskins and grill and it's become a spring tradition.  I'll probably expand on this later (mostly on the choice to name a rodeo arena "Pleasure Park"), but it was a perfect way to wrap up spring break.  MTV would never air a Spring Break: Hanna Bros. edition, but I don't think I'd want it any other way. 

Real Ranch Roping

This calf pooped out his butt

 Ranch roping, for most cowboys, means either 1) a competition that involves big, graceful loops, lots of patience, and well trained horses, or 2) literally, any roping done, off a horse, on a ranch.  But not us.  Here at Hanna Bros, ranch roping has an entirely different meaning.  Here it's the ugly child from a stock car race and pro-rodeo union.  

When we have a sick cow, or calf, the best thing to do is get it separated from the herd by walking it slowly to a set of corrals or a trailer.  Most of the time that just won't work and we have to doctor the animal out in the pasture.  It's a 2-person job: the driver and the roper.  The roper digs out the least-worst rope he or she can find from behind the seat of the truck and has to pin himself up against the headboard while the driver goes like hell to catch up to the calf.  When the calf is caught, you have to dally to the steel post welded to the headboard.  In the last Mad Max movie, remember the guy in the mask who was strapped to the front of the truck as they chased the good guys down?  That's how it feels roping off a flatbed.  It requires the balance of a surfer and the precision of a PRCA tie-down roper. 

When all else fails, just put them in a chute

Our calves start hitting the ground in mid-October.  Our thought is that by the time the weather gets really nasty, the calves are old enough to tough out poor conditions.  Generally, it works pretty well.  We'll still get a handful of calves that will get one of two things: scours or pneumonia.  Both can kill a calf if they aren't treated, so we keep a close eye on anything that looks poorly.  With scours, calves get the shits so bad that they dehydrate quickly.  They are generally pretty weak and it's not uncommon to just walk up to one and treat it.  Pneumonia calves are a different story.  They'll stretch their neck out and wheeze and gasp for air, but you take one step out of the truck and they run off.  If you don't treat it early, pneumonia can turn chronic.

Grant and I have been trying to catch a wheezy heifer all week.  She's crafty.  The big problem with pneumonia is that you don't want them to exert too much energy or their condition can get worse.  It's a catch-22 -- usually you have to run them down to give them antibiotics to make them better.  We've tried twice lately and we can't even get within 30 feet of her.  She bobs and weaves and runs in circles that the truck can't follow.  I've thrown the lariat out as far as I could and had the loop land squarely on top of her shoulders, but wasn't long enough to loop over her nose.  A few ranchers have resorted to using an air gun that injects medicine.  It's like the tranquilizer gun you see big game vets use.  I may have to borrow it, or get a longer rope.

Semi-Handy Man

Backhoe operator, carpenter

 My Father-in-Law is an engineer.  I joke that the problem with engineers is that they know a little bit about how everything works, which means they also know how to fix pretty much anything.  It's a wonder they can get anything done; they must fight the urge to fix every problem they see.  Ranchers are like blue-collar engineers (And I know, some of my ranching friends are actual engineers. I'm not talking about you).  We have to be able to do -- and fix -- a million little things to keep a ranch running smoothly.  I have to be a veterinarian, cowboy, mechanic, carpenter, trucker, butcher, logger, hydrologist, electrician, farrier, nutritionist, and plumber.  We're generally just not as precise as engineers. 

Trapper

I was thinking about all this on Sunday as I lay face down in the mud with my head in a hole as I repaired an 1 1/4" pvc pipe that fed 3 water troughs.  I'd hit it with a pair of post hole diggers while I was being extra careful and digging this particular hole by hand because I thought there might be a pipe down there, somewhere.  I was right.  It was the last thing I wanted to do on a Sunday and I wasn't pleased.  Just that afternoon, I'd already been a heavy equipment operator, carpenter, and surveyor. Now I was a reluctant plumber.  And, as my wife and kids pointed out, I could add sailor to the list, because I sure was swearing like one. 

Can You Still Hear the Bulls Screaming?

Baby jerks

The bulls were screaming last night.  If you've never heard bulls bellowing, it sounds a lot like a bagpipe and a chainsaw had a very colicy baby, and then forgot to change its diaper.  They woke Regina up at 1:30 AM, which means Regina woke me up at 1:31 AM.

"Do you hear that?" she asked.

I told her that I do now.

"I think they're in with the heifers," she said as she went outside.

Old jerk

When your wife goes outside in the middle of the night to see if the bulls are out, it's a good idea to join her.  And she was right; an Angus bull jumped the fence and was in with our 2 young Belted Galloway heifers.  Not the cross breeding we want, so we had to chase it out.  And man, was he pumped up.  Two bulls on the other side of the fence cheered him on as I ran laps, chasing him around the pen.  The bulls across the street thought they were missing out, so they joined in on the loud noises contest.  Everyone was hollering, including me.  I won't tell you what I yelled, but it was certainly colorful.

After 3 laps around the pen, the jerk finally found the gate and joined his compadres.  Regina and I spent another half-hour fixing fence by dying flashlight while the bulls kept up their choir.  It sounded like we were in the middle of the elk rut in Yellowstone.

We finally got back to bed, and know what?  They shut up, mercifully.  I suspect they moo-ed themselves hoarse.  But I was so amped up from running (probably less than 100 yards) that I lay awake for another hour, and kept thinking, "The bulls, the bulls, the bulls ..."

   

Manic Spring

Springtime on the ranch is bananas.  It's a little like getting in the passenger seat of a car with an overly-confident 16 year old.  Lots of go fast, stop quickly.  When the sun comes out, as it usually does in February and March, every tractor fires up, every calf needs to get a vaccination, and every project we've put off for the last 3 months needs to get done, NOW.  It's 100 mph until, undoubtedly, it rains, or snows.  Everything comes to an abrupt stop.  The tractors get parked, the corrals get too muddy, and everyone sits at home at stares at their Weather Underground app until ... magically, the sun shines (usually the next day), and we repeat.  It's exhausting.

These 2 photos were taken just seconds apart

Every season has its rhythm.  Summer is when you put your head down and work long, steady hours.  Fall is, well, almost as crazy as the spring (working cattle and haying collide), but it's also hunting season, which makes it exciting.  In the winter we take a breath, and then, blam, here comes spring.  Spring is everyone's scary drunk uncle who has a neck tattoo and crashes your kids 3rd birthday party 
and brings a puppy and hooker so no one knows if they're mad or ecstatic.  And here we are, it's not even technically spring, but it sure feels like it.  So, spring, welcome.  Come on in.

Nothing Hurts

Ranch MD

 My big toe hurt, and I was sure it was gout.  Everyone's most trusted doctor, Web MD, confirmed it, and I prepared myself for a new, healthier lifestyle.  Running shoes were purchased.  Then, like a Phoenix rising, a crescent of black emerged from the base of my toenail and I realized that I had somehow smashed my toe, probably by a large animal, and forgotten about it.  

It made me laugh because I should have known better.  Bumps and bruises are just a normal part of ranch life.  For far, in 2021, I've had my right thumb caught in a halter on a calf I was halter-breaking and sprained it; sliced the base of my left thumb while castrating calves; fell, headfirst, off a feed truck that was about 13 feet off the ground, and landed, fortunately, on the back of a cow who wasn't pleased, and face planted in the dirt.  My pupils didn't match for 2 days, but I sure slept like a baby.  And that doesn't count the bruises, nicks, sore muscles, tweaked back, or black toe.

This is from a cow kick to the lip

A few years ago I came off a horse in a bad spot and broke a few ribs and a vertebrae.  I was laid up on the couch for a few weeks and my kids would see me winching in pain whenever I moved.  They'd ask me what hurt I'd tell them, "Nothing hurts."  It was supposed to be a bigger message about grit and perseverance, about hurt vs injury, and probably about self-care.  I think they saw it as a lesson in dad being dumb.  But, hey, it's just part of the job.  I try to be safe.  I try to be careful, but cows kick, chutes pinch, swather blades spin, and feed trucks are pretty damn high off the ground.

Little Fuzzy Scrotums

 I've never been good at meeting new people, and I'm even worse at starting conversations with them.  I usually say something about the weather, then instantly regret saying anything at all.  But there's one topic I can bring up, in the right company, that I'm always eager to hear people's opinions on.  And that topic?  Castration.

It's calf working season here on Hanna Bros and a few of the other local ranches.  Every ranch has their own style of not only castrating bull calves, but of livestock handling and vaccinating.  When I help out on another ranch, I always try to go with the mindset that I'm going to learn something.  Sometimes I learn how NOT to do things, sometimes I learn new combinations of swear words, and sometimes I learn a better way.  

If you ask most cattlemen why they castrate the way they do, their answer would probably be, "Because that's the way my dad taught me."  And there are, surprisingly, a lot of ways to skin a cat, or, more specifically, cut a scrotum.  Some slice open the sack, some cut off the top, and some use rubber bands.  Some are slow, some are fastidious about cleanliness.  Some go at it like they're killing snakes.  Each way has its merits.  I never realized the variety of methods until I helped some friends works calves a few years ago.  Their castration process was just a little slower than most open-heart surgeries.  They asked if I'd like to cut one and when I castrated in the way I'd been taught they were equally horrified and impressed at the speed it took.  I knew no other way.

Every rancher I know is just trying to do right by their animals.  It's why I like to ask about it.  We are a "Cut off the top of the scrotum" family.  We flip the the fuzzy little scrotum away and hope the dogs don't eat them.  They're worse than hairballs on cats if they eat enough of those.  My niece used to collect them and make little Russian hats for her Barbies.  We pull out one testicle at at time and cut off the little tubes that come out with the nuts. (I should have paid more attention in sex ed.  I'm sure I could Google that, but the ads that would pop us as a result of that internet search?  No way.)  Lastly, we spray on a little antiseptic spray and turn the calf loose.  They're sore for a couple days, and then, with their minds changed from ass to grass, they're back to normal.

So if you ever find yourself in the awkward position of meeting someone new, and that person happens to be a rancher, go ahead, ask.

Bringing Blogging Back

It's 2021 and the kids are telling me that, like Champion sweats, blogging is cool again.  I'm not going to let that train pass me by again, so here we go.  Dispatches From the Ranch, round 2.

I started this blog a bunch of years ago, to log the cuteness and insanity of raising children on a ranch.  I got inspired to document the daily collision of ranching and children one day when I slow-motion watched Dylan, strapped in her car seat, roll off the dusty bench seat of a feed truck.  From that crash, a blog was born.  I kept on posting until I felt like that time my horse and I bonked heads and I came home so loopy I told Regina the same story 3 times in a row.  Plus, reading about other people's kids.  Oof.  So I shut it down.

Blame it on Covid, but I have the itch to fire this baby back up again.  And, since it is called "Dispatches From the Ranch," I'm going to tell you about ranch-life.  A lot of folks have pretty vague notions of what it is "we" (see: ranchers) do.  So I'll tell you.  Mostly.

My goals are to be brief, to be a little funny, and to post weekly.  If I hit 2/3, I'll be stoked.  Here we go.

Me.  Ranchin'.