The Long, when it should have been very short.

Last evening the pager toned information about a possible structure fire in our district. Since Shelly was busy working in Cripple Creek for the emergency service there, I was left to cover our district. Since the Bean was home and was planning an eventful, slumber party like evening, I had planned to just call our ambulance out of service. Instead Bean got very excited and asked if we could go. I explained that we might be sitting the ambulance for a long time with nothing to do. She claimed that she understood. So instead of eating junk food while snuggled with critters on the couch and watching some movie that we know every line to, we rushed to the rig and headed out.
Turns out it wasn't a structure fire but a small wildland fire. After two hours of playing "911 Paramedic" (and killing every patient) on the computer, discovering that the port-a-potties at the Four Mile Church are locked, asking what every button in the ambulance is for, and begging to test my blood glucose level the kiddo had finally had it and pleaded to go home. Since the scene of the fire was only about two miles from the ranch and the awesome Four Mile Crew was pretty much done, I gave into the 5th grader's whining and we came home.

After letting dogs out, letting dogs in, picking out a movie, and arguing about teeth brushing we settled in. We opted for a movie that was playing on television. After one of the commercial breaks Bean said, "Mom, I don't understand that." I asked what she was talking about and she referred to the "What Happens in Vegas" ad that had just aired.She asked if Vegas was like Cripple Creek. I explained that both places allowed gambling but Las Vegas is much bigger than Cripple Creek. I tried to explain the slogan from the commercial but failed miserably. Instead of saying, "Oh okay I get it now." She said, "So, if everything stays in Vegas, if you win money you have to leave it there?" What? She went on, "Why would anyone even want to go? Dad goes to Vegas a lot, he won't leave money anywhere." Hmmmm, just where did I go wrong? I tried again, this time explaining decisions made after drinking copious amounts of alcohol and secret bonds of friendships made during spontaneous and sometimes questionable situations. She asked if I had ever been in any of those situations. I told her that I hadn't been to Vegas in a long time but that I had did have some of those "secret bonds." She wanted to know all the details.
So for example, what is discussed over a cherry dip cone and a half stick of gum is sacred. I still eat cherry dip cones outside the presence of a certain friend but it's just not the same. It made an appearance (with planning and effort) the day I married the boy, it was present during deep conversations and afternoons filled with laughter. It can mean lots of things but most importantly it means, "I'm here for you no matter what happens."
And a half stick of gum...well I still trying to figure that one out. Who really only chews a half a stick of gum?
Then I explained that sometimes certain situations can cement friendships. Like when you miss the left turn at Chicago and end up eating cheese curds in a Culvers Restaurant in Wisconsin and then turning around to take pictures of round barns, or going out of the way to buy a quart of cream from a raw dairy.
Then I used the raggedy old John Deere shirt as another example. I told her that I still have it because it reminds me of an evening that I spent with the Aunts and only they know how I ended up with it.
I tried to use several other examples. In the end I talked a lot but didn't really say anything that Bean found of value. She finally rolled her eyes and said, "Okay Mom, I get it. You could have just said whatever stupid thing you do in Vegas, your mom won't find out about." My daughter is not going to Vegas until I'm in a home with senility.

Sometimes I can really over explain things.

Busy Season?

I've had lots of people comment to me lately that things at the ole rancho must be busy as I haven't updated my blog lately. That's pretty much the truth. Things are always busy here though. I really should not use that as an excuse for slacking on the writing. The whole truth is much more boring. Shelly hasn't done anything silly, I need material. Shelly did pass on a little story about Evelyn (Shelly's mom) getting peed on by one of the dogs. That should be good enough for me to embellish. Alas I wasn't there and I can't seem to fill in the blanks.

Here is what has been happening:

I got bored one evening and ripped apart a pallet and made my niece the Alien a little picnic table.


Here it is in it's natural form, which means it is full of staple holes, nail holes, it has warped boards and lots of places to get splinters.

Here it is painted green, after a little sanding too. Still has those warped boards though. I was able to complete it with mostly recycled material. I had to buy wood screws but the wood came from one pallet and the paint was left over from some project of the past. Now I'm brainstorming on what to create from lousy, splintery pallet wood for the nephew.

Jersey Cow is in full milk again. We sold Pasquale the calf to the Plumber Donnie. Actually we traded. If there is a barter to be made, I'm on it. Donnie the Plumber has been out to the ranch a couple of times lately. The first time he came out and tightened a screw so that the ice maker/water dispenser on the new fridge wouldn't leak. I managed to convince him that Shelly was feeling weak and that's why we had to have him out. I paid him in beef jerky. The next time he was called to replace the toilet guts at the renter's house and adjust the flow of a hydrant. He got a three month old, newly steered calf on that visit. In hindsight, I think I got the short end. I didn't mind trading the calf for the work. I had to castrate the guy with an elastrator band before they hauled him off. Apparently being squished with a panel and having someone fiddle with your testicles is not a pleasurable experience. The darn bovine decided that my white tshirt needed enhancing, and he pooed all over me as I removed my applicator pliers.

Pasquale at one day old.

I'm a little sad knowing that he will be dinner for Plumber Donnie's family however I know that up until then he will be treated with honor and respect. AND...Jersey is more than happy to head to the milking stand. Today she gave me just over three gallons of milk. I only milk once a day, around 1030 in the morning. Jersey is at the gate every morning mooing as if to say good morning and ask me how I'm doing. There is a connection between milker and milkee. Jersey is patient most days. If I upset her routine or so something that she just doesn't like she will let me know in some fashion. I have enlisted a friend to milk her one day per week. In exchange for milking her, he gets that days milk. My friend is overjoyed with the arrangement. Jersey is not as impressed. She tends to wait until he is almost done milking. Enough milking is completed to make her feel better, relieve the pressure of a full udder (I'm sure anyone that has breastfed can relate.) and then she lifts her tail and pees. So my friend has worked hard to fill his bucket with milk only to have to ruined by a splatter of urine from a sassy cow. I'm hoping that she will come to accept the arrangement. I swear she scolds me the day after. Tells me that I have some nerve to let someone else squeeze her teats.


I am so thankful for the milk and I'm sure to tell Jersey everyday. I think it's safe to say that I'm a milkaholic. I LOVE milk. I had a fellow counselor tell me once that I was addicted to the histamine dump that milk provided. Okay, whatever-->I know that I really like milk. Since I've been squeezing my own, either from my cow or one of my goats my addiction has increased. I have not had store bought milk for over a year. I hope to never have to again. I'll save my raw milk, homegrown, No Farms->No Food speech for another time. Just know I love milk. So today since I had just over three gallons I strained the extra into a Kerr jar and placed it in the coldest part of the fridge. After I returned from being bounced around in the tractor I found that my extra milk was good and cold. I squirted in some chocolate, screwed the lid on and gave it a shake! YUM!


Unfortunately we've been busy on the emergency service end too. We've had several interesting calls and one helicopter take off that almost made me wet myself. Recently a wildland fire had our awesome crew working 24 hours plus in a row. Four Mile Emergency Service is just an extraordinary group of people.

So in short those are a few of the festivities. We did manage to have a family day a couple of weekends ago. We took the kiddo to the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park.


It's just down the road. Just down the way is an old west town attraction, Buckskin Joe's. On the way to the bridge all three of us commented on Buckskin Joe's, saying that we should stop on the way out. On the way out, we commented saying that it wasn't too far from the house and we will make it a point to come see it sometime. I had been there as a kid, Shelly and Jolene had never been. At any rate we didn't visit the attraction that day. Later that evening, I was watching the news and discovered that Buckskin Joe's had been sold for something like 2.2 million and would be closing it's doors FOREVER the next day. Sometimes I just wonder about my sense of timing.
Other than the usual daily ranch stuff; we've had a couple of lambs, the turkeys are getting big and making noises, I've sent a few goats off to other homes and somehow accumulated a few too. At the end of each day I try and take a few moments and reflect on how wonderful my life is and am thankful to live on this beautiful mountain. Now I just need to find a few minutes to start working on Halloween costumes and creepy food!

You wouldn't believe it!

Shelly is a wonderful person, even if I get cranky with her, bicker with her on a daily basis. However, she does have a way of trying to credit someone else with her "animal" decisions.

Once in awhile, the ranch breaks my heart. Yesterday, Shelly had to load up the remaining Highland cows and transport them to their new home. Shelly assured me that the girls will be very happy and have a great new home with loving caretakers. The day before, I left Shelly with the terrible duty of putting one of my Saanen goats down as she had dislocated her hip and we couldn't get it back into place. So, in the short the past couple of days have been emotional. Shelly has emotion phobia. I think it is because I generally have emotion overload. Having emotion overload is not necessarily a bad thing as long as one stays in the same general area with those emotions. I tend to flip between being a crying, weeping, twit to a raging, screaming, ogre. I could understand how that would wear on a person but for goodness sakes she's been exposed to it for more than half a decade now. ADAPT! Okay, that's harsh.So I'm guessing that my recent sadness, started to weigh on Shelly's mind. I was doing okay. On the return trip yesterday, Shelly decided that the local animal shelter needed a visit. A couple of months ago we ventured in to see if they had any dogs that might fit into her parents life. They had recently lost Newton their dog of 13 years. While there I noticed a sweet hound in the back of one of the runs. I commented on him. Shelly said she had been wanting to get me a puppy but figured I'd be happier with a shelter dog. She was right, I am happier with shelter dogs but.....we already have seven dogs. I hope our daughter is incredibly smart as she is going to have to get some serious scholarship money to pay for college and I don't want to tell her that I spent her education money on dog food. At any rate Shelly arrived home with a new dog. I was milling about the ranch with the tribe of Nigerian goats when she pulled into the barn. The goats noticed she was home and took off to meet her. I soon received a text message to come to the barn as she needed help. Upon my arrival I found sweet Dillweed running about with Patch. Shelly started right in with her explanation. It really didn't matter what she said, one look at that sweet face of his and I was hooked. So here we are with dog number eight.
Look for us on that new television show, "Animal Hoarders." I am very blessed. I've always wanted a large family, it's just different than most.

Oh the times we had.

So...Today my Pop would have been 59 years old. As things happen, he left us in September of 2007. I really try not to remember dates such as birthdays, anniversaries, and such. I've been trying really hard to live in the moment. Leading up to this day I couldn't help but remember things. I couldn't help but remember my Pop.

For example this past Monday as I was driving into Florissant I saw a tow truck at the Sinclair station. Pop had a heart attack at this very gas station on St. Pat's day in 1998. He was loading a car onto his tow truck when he said he felt like he had been kicked in the chest by a jackass. Apparently he went inside and asked for help and then decided that he could probably finish loading the car onto the tow truck. This particular day it wasn't the tow truck or the gas station that sent me down that sorrow sweet road of recollection. It was the old Ford truck that was being towed away. Despite what my brother might tell you, Pop was once a FORD Man! I remember several Fords. One was purple in color, maybe plum would a better way to describe it. Before that there was a red one and another red one with a flat bed. The flat bed would shake and shimmy as it would increase in speed. I remember riding on the bed, standing up and looking at the ground pass underneath as I pressed my head in the space between the cab and the headache rack. Our Great Dane, Dana would stand on her hind legs with her front paws atop the roof and enjoy the view through town. He had a pea green, one ton that I drove to swim practices on summer mornings. There was the little blue Ranger from the salvage yard too. Ford trucks make memories flood. I would stand on the seat next to Pop, place my arm around his neck and request the eight track of "Nile Demoned" better know as Neil Diamond. We went fishing in Ford trucks, went to the Minute Market for chicken and Mountain Dew, we went to the A&W for root beer floats. I have a Ford truck too. In fact today, as my kiddo was sitting in the seat beside me and the truck was lugging the trailer full of lambs to the sale I thought of Pop. I think he would have been okay with bouncing down the road in a truck on his birthday.

I think he would be okay with a few other things too, like milk cows. I sat at dinner many evenings and listened to the stories that so many parents tell kids. In fact I find myself telling my kid the same kind of stories. The ones that start with, "When I was your age..." Pop told stories of rushing to cold barns to milk bossy cows before breakfast and school. He told of a grandfather's discipline when things weren't done as they should have been. He told racing on a horse named Jude while riding backwards in the saddle. He made teachable moments of errors made in his youth in attempts to steer the path of his children. He beamed with pride when speaking of his family, and always had a boyish look about him when he spoke of his mother.

Pop, in short was incredible. I'm happy that I've inherited some of his finer traits. Pop passed on special genes like; the prankster gene, the everyone has a nickname gene, the never take a serious picture gene. He made everyday an adventure.

No Rest for the Wicked! Sheesh!

Life is a grand thing and I live in a grand place. Lately this grand place has been filled with lots and lots of grand chores....SO--->I've been slacking from the blog writing. We've had visits from skunks who really enjoy the chicken's eggs and occasionally a chicken. We've rushed to the pastures in pursuit of a mountain lion to find that it's a coyote. We've spent a short period of time each day cleaning up the mess the bear makes each night as it ventures through the ranch in search of a snack. We've been zipping down county roads in the ambulance only to find we didn't have lights in the dark. We've been busy. Lucky we aren't too busy to fish in the rain, and share a few giggles. Life really is grand.

The Morning After...

The aftermath of last night's events.

Ah...Life on the mountain, ever eventful even if the only event is watching Taco watching Peep Kitty while she whines and cries from agony of being in heat. Lately however, my attention has been turned a bit from the annoying household critters to a much larger critter. We have a 3 yard dumpster that sits toward the front part of the ranch. It's right in front of the renter's house. For about a week now every morning when the Shelly leaves to chore at Phoenix she has been taking a large empty garbage bag with her. Why? Well it's bear season here. Try as we might we can not keep the bear out of the garbage. We've put electric fence on it, tried locking metal lids with a metal rod, even tried waiting for him to show up so we could "pop a cap in his a$$" but so far nothing has worked. So it's just easier to clean up the mess made and continue on with the day. After all, I am invading the ursa's space by living here. I still get annoyed though. Today Jolene and I had the chore of cleaning up the bear's mess. It really wasn't too bad, all confined to one general area. Lucky for me the trash had come before I got it cleaned up, so with any luck I'll be cleaning up the same stuff tomorrow that I cleaned up today. The best day to engage in litter pick up is on Sunday morning. Usually Sunday's spread contains about 25 bags of dog poo from Phoenix that the beast had to tear through to get household trash! YUM, hot, sticky, smelly, bag after bag of dog poo! I'll make breakfast if anyone would like to come help on Sunday morning!

A Big O Pile of Poo!

A Nice Relaxing Sunday.....AHHHHH

I live for Sundays, the day of rest. I put off all kinds of "inside stuff" for Sundays like soap making, baking, artsy stuff. I like to sleep sort of late, as long as the dogs will allow. I like to make a semi-large breakfast and pick at it for awhile and then feed bits of it to the kids. Bertha in particular loves pancakes with syrup soaked in. After breakfast I hang out on the couch with several critters beaming around the TV. Around noon I finally head out to check on the animals. Checking the ranch is usually followed by a nap and more channel surfing until it's time to milk. Today didn't really go according to plan.

To start the morning off I got a cold, wet, Dane nose pushing me at 4am-ish. Hamlet had a tummy problem and HAD to go out. The dogs don't attempt to wake up Shelly anymore, she just groans and rolls over. After letting Ham out and back in, Taco wouldn't shut up, STOOPID CHIHUAHUA! Taco ended up on the bed burrowing under the covers. I finally got back to sleep around 7. At 7:02am the phone rang. I can't even remember what the phone call was about. Jeez! Shelly decided that the phone ringing meant it was time to get up. As she was exiting the now cat infested bed, the pager went off and so did her brain. The pager tends to shut off some of Shel's pathways and tweak some others. She frantically started throwing clothes on, as I was tuning to a food channel on TV. Shelly jetted out the house and I was left with spazzy dogs and a couple of bickering cats. I decided that I should just give up and get out of bed. I dug Shadow Cat out of his hiding place and sat on the porch and had a cup of tea. It was muggy and sticky, so unlike our normal dry weather. After the tea, I thought everything was gonna be okay, I was so wrong.

I had just removed myself from a nice, long, hot shower and Shelly came busting in the cabin yelling, looking for me. Apparently the Boss Lady was down at the barn and we needed to hurry up and get down there so we could utilize a dog to separate mama sheep from baby lambs as it is that time again. Time to wean! UGH! Upon arrival at the barn, I found my handsome, stinky, buck, Prince Charming sticking his stinky beard through the fence at the girls. Between grunts he would flip his head down and stick his sprinkler headed penis out of it's pocket and pee on his face! He would then bare his teeth and smile big at the girls again. Prince Charming weighs about 40lbs or so and his back comes just below my kneecap. I had put a collar on him yesterday as somehow he had escaped then too. Since he was preoccupied with the harem on the other side of the fence, I was able to stoop over and grab his collar without giving chase. Charming didn't think that was cool. He attempted to free himself by having a little twitchfest on the end of my arm. Lucky for me my shoulder doesn't stay in the socket very often and my arm just twisted around like a Stretch Armstrong's.

Stretch Armstrong--better smelling than Prince Charming.

Since I didn't have time to drag the speckled caprine back to his pen, I was forced to pick him up! I had to pick up all of him, to include his peed on face and beard with his sprinkler head penis sticking out. STINKY and GROSS, that's all I have to say about that.

After I had the buck taken care of, I head back into the barn to check on the goat kids that were separated from their mamas yesterday. I turn around and guess who is standing behind me? The damn stinky buck. He had slipped out under the gate was headed back to the harem of Nigerians. I had to pick him up again, put him back, and find a post to plug the space at the bottom of the gate. As I'm squishing his musky gut back in the gate, Jersey Cow thinks it's time for her to come out. Keep in mind, eighteen inch goat and bigger than eighteen inch cow! After I squished Charming in, I stood up and bumped my head on Jersey's bell. Rung my bell, FO SHO. At this point Shelly and Boss Lady were working their way to the arena with the flock of Dorpers. They seemed to get he flock in without any problems at all. That was about the only thing that went according to plan today.


While pushing sheep through gates and trying to make little ones go one way and big ones go another way, I smashed my finger in a gate and now I have a purple nail. I vowed not to have purple body parts ever again when I graduated from high school. After finally getting the lambs separated, Shelly got thumped in the chin a couple times by a ram lamb as we were trying to catch him to put a pretty green rubber band around his testicles. (Incidentally, green castrator bands pass right through the digestive system of Dachshund/Jack Russel dogs that run around the ranch and eat tails and shriveled up testicles of Dorper Lambs.) After putting the mama ewes back out to pasture and saving the Border Collie Bear, from the grumpy Donkey Ellie, Shelly and I went back to the house to get lunch. We left the lambs in the shady part of the catch pens with water and hay. For some reason we thought that putting the lams in a covered area, with food and water would be the appropriate thing to do. Since the catch pens are in direct site of the pasture where we put the ewes, it proved to be an appropriate but LOUD place. The babies spent the next hour screaming at the mamas and the mamas screamed right back.
After lunch we headed back down to bring the lambs to a pen at the barn. Since the lambs are not bucket broke, when you open a gate and shake the orange bucket, they cock their heads to the side and look at you. After several attempts of pushing, pulling, shaking, and shooshing the wooly things were finally tucked away. Still screaming but out of site of the ewes. A couple of the bottle fed babies somehow escaped and where now eyeballing the milk goats. As I put Sofia Goat on the milking stand, the two lambs latched on to her teats. Oh well, no milk to strain this evening in the end it was a blessing of a few minutes I really needed. After we finished barn chores, I let the harem of Nigerians loose and led them back to their condo behind the cabin. They had been at the barn for a bit, weed eating and tree trimming. Now the grass in their yard needed mowing so back they went. While I was hanging out with them, getting kisses and listening to BB whisper in my ear I suddenly got a big ole whiff of a skunk.

I've been missing eggs and chickens lately. We thought maybe it was fox or a coyote. So the chickens have been confined to their coop yard on most days. Yesterday I went out to find a fairly large hole dug under the coop fence and a mess of feathers leading back to the old bunkhouse. UGH! Now they aren't even safe in the coop. I had filled the hole yesterday. Since we were smelling the skunky odor and I know skunks like eggs we decided to see what was up at the chicken house. Armed with the .22, Shelly and I found two more holes, a couple of piles of feathers and NO EGGS! No skunk either. As we are snooping around the old barn and the bunkhouses Shelly notices Mookey and Clover skipping along the road by the pond. Mookey and Clover are our two mini donkeys. They have been across the road at the In Law's house keeping Buster the old donkey company. Apparently the accommodations at the In Law's were not five star in mini donkey world so they decided to come home.

Of course eating as much as they could along the way. The two of them are FAT! Their fat rolls have fat rolls. Shelly took off her belt and handed it to me with instructions to put it around Clover's neck and lead her back across the street. She assured me that Mookey would follow. Boy, was she ever wrong. I got the belt around her flabby neck and started to turn her back and she took off. Shelly reminded me to hang on, which I of course assumed was the whole idea behind putting on the belt anyway. I tried to hang on, I really did. At some point I know that fat donkey was running so fast that my feet were in the air behind me and I looked like a bad Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon. I could feel my good shoulder getting Stretch Armstrong-ish like the other had earlier and decided to cut my losses and I let go. Shelly hit her knees and groaned, complaining that I had lost her belt. In fact I did not lose her belt, it was on the fat neck of the fat donkey that she told me to lead back to whence she came. As I looked up from my face planted position on the ground I saw both donkeys making dust heading to the cabin. Shelly kept questioning me about what we were going to do with them. These are two itty bitty donkeys! Shelly kind of freaks out for a minute and I convince her she had better do something with them or they will just run all the way through the ranch to the county road. That of course will never happen because there is so much food along the way that they will have to stop and sample most of it. Shel takes off toward the house and I tell her that I have to fill holes in the coop again but I will be up soon. I spend a few moments sitting atop the gravel pile trying to figure out just where my Sunday went wrong. I fill the holes, and walk SLOWLY, ever so slowly back to the cabin. As I trudge up the drive, Shelly in her panic voice explains that Clover almost killed Jemma (goat). Huh? Evidently there was some chasing and some braying and some other behaviors. It seemed that Jemma was tucked away safely with the others and the two donkeys were now in the little dogs pen. I thought the donkeys would be making their way back to the In Law's house soon but there was glitch somewhere. I didn't care anymore. I just wanted to find a soft spot for a good curl into the fetal position. Although I probably wouldn't enjoy it much as the ewes were still screaming for the lambs.

I went inside instead to make some pasta, it is after all Sunday. What good is Sunday without pasta? While I'm cooking up some Rotini for some pasta salad with some artichoke hearts, Shelly calls me downstairs and asks if I could help her with the ducks. She needs someone to hold on to them while she cleans out their pen. Sure, I could do that, how hard are ducklings? Ducklings are hard. We have two right now about three weeks apart. So that makes one sort of small and the other small. Speedy the larger of the two, squirms and squacks and by doing so alerts every cat in the house. The smaller one which is so far unnamed starts squirming too. I look down to find a sea of felines with that wish of dropped duck stamped on their furry foreheads. I decided to take them into the bathroom to escape the chop licking cats. On the way both of them must have gotten freaked out and I ended up with two hands filled with duckling poo. In case one would wonder, duckling poo is much better than the musky scent of a buck in lust. I put the critters in the tub, give them a skim of water and take some pictures.

I thought for a minute that I could just curl up on the rug in that fetal position I was thinking about earlier. Alas, Pepsi Cat decides to interrupt my thoughts and scratches at the door. Shelly tells me she's done cleaning and I return the ducklings. I did come upstairs to find that Barack Obama had left a message on my answering machine. Imagine that? The president took time out of his Sunday to leave me a message and I accidentally erased it without hearing the whole thing. What kind of an American am I?

Between bowls of pasta, Taco decided that he needed to properly introduce himself to Pepsi Cat. Pepsi Cat thought that he would make a lasting impression and slapped Taco a couple of dozen times in just under a second. Pepsi left a pretty nail in the Chihuahua's head, right between his ears. Pepsi Cat is the best cat ever!

What a relaxing Sunday, I can hardly wait for Monday.