Home Cooking and How Did We Surive Growing Up

I feel like we are living in the early 1900s.  I recently found out that I have Mal-absorption issues.  I can't eat anything with fructose ( most all fruits, honey and sweeteners).  If you are fructose intolerant, you  can't have fructans which are found in wheat and rye  I am also gluten intolerant.  I also flunked the lactose test. It wasn't even that hard a test :(
It is almost easier to tell you what I can eat that what I cant. 
I am cooking a very healthy diet for us.  We eat fresh meat, (nothing processed), potatoes, vegetables and homemade freshly baked bread.  I can have table sugar in small amounts, so desserts are also homemade. 
When you look at our current diet, it is very similar to how we ate growing up.  We didn't have convenience food or soda.   We were a "meat and potato" family.  Mom always had a garden and I remember that the carrots were the best freshly picked,  some dirt still on them!! 
How did we survive growing up???  The things we did would have us in foster care today and our parents in jail.  How sad is that.  We never got hurt very bad and neither did any of our friends.   I always rode on the tractor with dad when I was little and it had NO CAB.  The fenders were an awesome place to sit and there was a handle there too.  There was no such thing as seat belts or car seats, gulp!  Would I ever put a child in a car today with out one, NO. 
We always stood up in the pickup seat next to dad.  I was driving a tractor when I was 4.  The Farm Labor Laws wouldn't even know where to start with that one.  Dad would put the tractor in low gear, and throttle it down to a fairly slow pace.  I would stand up so I could maneuver the big steering wheel and drive while he pitched hay off the wagon.  My job was to drive and not hit any cattle.  The clutch was the old hand lever engaged style on our John Deere 620.  This was after our team was gone.
 We lived too far from town to take swimming lessons and probably couldn't afford them if we were close enough.  That didn't stop us from building makeshift rafts and going out on the sloughs.  I shudder
to think how deep they were. I was terrified of water but went with my brother anyway.  Mom strictly forbade us from going rafting, but we figured what she didn't know didn't hurt her.  Evil Smirk.  What rotten kids we were.
My sister and I could find lots of entertainment too. Our favorite was teasing the rooster.  It didn't take long and he was mean to us!  He would wait for us to come out side and chase us down to attack us with his spurs an beak.    I think all three of us got in on riding calves behind the barn even tho that made dad angry.
My brother and I also had our go cart..... a 1947 pickup that we took the acetylene torch to and cut away everything but the chassis and engine.  It was just like an oversize go cart.  But, you had to lean out to see where you were driving, for some reason, and I remember running through fresh cow deposits and it flying into our faces.  That took the fun out of chasing the gophers down.
Some fun mischievous memories, but that was pretty much how I rolled.
Until next time,
Thanks for stoppin by 

Rainy Days and Memories

I had hoped to get some more pictures taken today.  I wanted to try and capture the serenity I feel in watching God's little creatures at play.  It is 45 and raining. Some of the calves are still playing but I don't want to be out more than I have to.  Call me a wimp!!  Humidity eats into my bones anymore.  I never did like a "wet" cold after living in a dryer climate.  I think I will bake some bread and stay warm.
I was visiting with an old friend the other day and remembered the Double Diamond Ranch in North Dakota.  That is the ranch that I wrote about earlier. 
I have always laughed about believing in 6 degrees of separation. However, if you live in South Dakota there are only 2 degrees of separation. 
When we left the DD, we went to Belle Fourche, SD and I was working in Spearfish, SD.  I met a lady there that had horses and needed some started (initial training).  My ex-husband at that time was taking in horses.  The lady, her family, and I became good friends.  She told me many of her life stories and she had quite the life.  She began telling me about coming back from Tuscon, AZ ( a great memory for another time) and she had a job in Anchorage, Alaska.  She didn't have a lot of money, but had an idea.  Her job was to be the Equestrian Trainer for the wives at the Military Base.  She and her 16 year old son (the friend I was visiting with) decided to buy horses and ride from Billings, Mt to her new job.  They were to arrive in time for the Diamond Jubilee in Anchorage. While she was telling me this story, she mentions that she purchased Tennessee Walking Horses from the Double Diamond Ranch in Rhame, ND owned by Calvin Miller.  I couldn't believe what she had just said!!  What a small world.  She was one tough lady, having grown up on a Thoroughbred ranch near Broadus, MT. She definitely knew good horses and how to handle one.   I have so many good memories about her and the people of the DD Ranch who I am also friends with yet today.
I better stop or I would write  many pages of memories.
For now, thanks for stoppin by.
    

A beautiful March day and calving photos.

It has been another beautiful March day.  I can't believe it was 70 degrees and will be so for the next several days.  What a winter this has been.  I love to watch the new calves run wind sprints and have head butting contests. Sunshine does make everyone feel great!
I promised to upload some calving pictures, that our daughter snapped,several days ago.  I am going to try in this blog.  Here we go!! 
The top photo is getting the pulling chains half hitched around the calf's front knuckles.  Then we just apply steady pressure and work with the heifer.  After the calf is born, a piece of straw is quickly inserted into each nostril and wiggled around to make him/her sneeze out some of the "slime" and get breathing.  This heifer happened to have another calf in her when Jim reached back in to check.  The process was then repeated.  The new mother is then put into the pen with the calves to lick them so they dry off and then getup and nurse.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures or found them educational. Tomorrow I hope to get some pics of the calves playing.
PBR is on, so for now thanks for stoppin by.  

 

 

 

Another Great Day

I haven't gotten to post for a few days.  Calving has been keeping us busy along with other chores.  I have some pictures that I am going to get uploaded soon.  They are various photos from working cattle to the birth of calves. 
Last night was another long one.  Two heifers calved, one unassisted and the other needed help, so it was 3 A.M. when we got back to bed.  It is still muddy here so everything still goes in the barn to calve.   Mud sucks the life out of the poor little creatures.  I would hate to come out of a 101 degree water bed into a 28 degree world, land in slimy mud and have a 30 mph wind hit my wet body. They are survivors if they are dry, but mud is nasty.  
Two years ago, we calved out 125 heifers and it rained for 10 days in a row.  We lost 16 calves that spring. There is not much scarier than a mad, new, mother staring and bellowing at you while you're  standing in mud up to your knees.  You are just trying to get her calf on the sled and into the barn for it's turn in the hot box and keep it alive.  She only see's you as a threat to her baby and want's to go into kill mode.
 I haven't had my boots sucked off in deep, thick, cold, gumbo clay and felt so helpless since I was a little girl.  They stuck and tried to stay behind with every step, even if I walked with an "oar" to push off with.  I still remember how much my toes hurt from crunching up trying to hold my boots on.  Awesome weight loss program!!
So glad we haven't had to relive that again.  The heifers this year are also much tamer, except for about 40 head we purchased in December.
Today, we hauled the 80 steers home from the other place.  They were poured for lice,, implanted, and weighed.  The weather was beautiful and all went well.  We got everything home, worked, and returned in 4 hours. Victory! They had an average weight that was a bit more than we expected, so that was an added bonus.  Another perk from the awesome winter weather we had!
My dog, worked well again today. I love to train working stock dogs and have been letting him do more this winter. Max is a Catahoula Leopard and is a quick learner.  While working cattle he is usually by the chute and then helps me bring cattle to the tub.  When a calf leaves the chute, he really wants to follow it out of the working area and to the holding pen.  Sometimes he puts a too much pressure on, so he had been banned from doing that.  Today I caught him looking over his shoulder to see if I was watching as he was slowly following a steer out.  I was and he saw me watching him.  He knew he got caught.  Too smart for his own good.  Just like a kid.
Well, it's close to midnight, time to check the girls.
Until next time, thanks for stoppin by.