Shameless Promotion!

I know you all have been looking for nice calendars. 2009 is right around the corner!

My very first calendars are ready to order!
Cowgirl Min's 2009 Calendar features redrock landscapes, beautiful photography and Southwest desert scenery.


Cowgirl Min's Pretty Desert Plants Calendar for 2009 showcases a collection of beautiful and artful nature photography, featuring flowering desert plants, including cacti, yucca and others.

Visit my Lulu Storefront to order your favorite, as well as check out some of my other photos available for purchase. The calendars are coil-bound, and are shipped out promptly.

Order yours today!

We Have The Power!

Okay, I just couldn't resist. Sorry. If you're anywhere near my age, you remember exactly how He-Man used to say this, back in the 80's.

Anyway, our favorite electrician (who happens to share the name of an 80's pop singer! How fun! Exact same spelling, even!) came down to the ranch on Saturday. And found the problem with the electric line in about 10 minutes. Can you imagine. We've been without power in half of our house for Almost Eight (8) WEEKS. That is almost two months, people, of living with an extension cord trailing down the hall to a lamp in the bathroom, then moving the lamp-with-extension-cord into H-Bomb's room for story time, and unplugging lamp from same extension cord in order to attach it to the microwave oven. (and hoping no one has to go to the bathroom in the two minutes it takes to nuke a burrito or what-have-you). No lights whatsoever in the bathroom, living room or playroom. Almost TWO MONTHS.

>>>Here is an aside. Why did we only have the one extension cord? Well, I did try to buy one for the microwave, but I got it home and it wasn't a three-prong cord, so it wouldn't work. We didn't want to overload the circuits we still had with a bunch of extension cords. We needed the long cord to reach from the kitchen to the bathroom, so we just made do--we just dragged it back over to the microwave when we needed it, fairly infrequently. When you live down here for an extended period of time, you just learn to make do with things for a while, until they can get fixed. It seems like it is always something. Some people don't understand this.<<<

So the electrician, whom I suggested we call, oh about two months ago, located the problem in ten minutes: evidently one of the electrical wires running from the generator had gotten nicked, who knows when or how. But likely Wifey's obsessive over-watering this summer (there is still standing water, less than a foot underground, and we live in the freaking desert. Obsessive, I say firmly. Too much!) exacerbated the problem, said the electrician. Likely sped up the corrosion process. The wire completely corroded until it no longer made the connection, which is why we lost half our power. Here is part of the offending wire:


The electrician had the problem completely fixed in less than two hours. It would have saved so much if we had been allowed to call him in the first place. Now there are holes everywhere along the electrical line, dug by CG's brothers, that Number One must fill. Luckily we lost only one lamp when someone tripped over the extension cord, and no one cut their little foot on light bulb fragments.

So anyway. We have power now, everywhere we need it. Just in time for Thanksgiving. Wahoo!

And incidentally, the electrician commented that the contractor (small town!) had given him the plans for our addition, but he didn't realize it was for our addition. So electrician said he would get on the bid for the electrical portion, since the job is for us! Power and Progress too!

Shipping Day

Number One and the rest have been gathering cattle for weeks, bringing them all down from the mountain, getting ready for shipping day. This year, my mom and dad were here for shipping day, for the first time ever. My mom took H-Bomb and Sawed Off to school, while my dad and I stayed to help with shipping.

This year, since my mom was helping with the boys, I got to go watch the early morning roundup. I'm sure Number One would have let me ride and help round up the cattle, but honestly it was before dawn and I was exhausted. So I just ran around taking pictures.


They loaded up the truck with hay in an effort to lure the cows into the corrals. Sometimes it works. My dad drove the hay truck through the fields, and there were four or five cowboys pushing the cows toward the hay truck. My dad drove the truck right into the corrals, cows bellowing and following behind him. With this many cattle, it takes more than one pass with the hay truck, and some fast riding to round up the stragglers who by now are trying to escape.


Essentially, one shipping day is the same as the last. You have the buyer, the broker, the ranch hands, moving and sorting all the cattle. You have the semi truck drivers. You have the folks working the scale and keeping records of weights and numbers. You have the dust and the dirt and the fussy cattle.

The cattle are sorted into separate corrals, heifers (girls) and steers (boys) and then the buyer and the broker go through them all and decide which ones they want. My job, again this year, was to keep the cattle from busting back through the gates, and to help my dad fill the alley and the waiting corrals with cattle. It moves pretty quickly when the cows cooperate. The cattle the buyer wants are sent to the scales to be weighed, then to a corral to await loading into the trucks.


The cattle the buyer doesn't want are sent to a separate corral and ultimately released back into the fields.

After the trucks are loaded, three semi truck loads today, the cows that are left need to be let out into the fields and then they all need to be fed.

And at the end of the day, whenever that may be, you have lunch. Whether it be 2:00pm or 8:00pm, it is still called Shipping Day Lunch. This year, I prepared a huge pot of my Rustic Chili, a humongous salad, and the now-traditional Chocolate Sheet Cake. Because I volunteered to be in charge of lunch, I got to leave the corrals about an hour early so I missed the loading of the trucks and the feeding. I had made the chili and the cake the day and night before, and tossed the salad while the chili was reheating. Everyone loved it, it was the perfect end to a hard day's work.

I was chased by a bull or two, and/or some cows in the past week, but I will post those stories another day because I honestly can't remember if any of it happened on shipping day or not...