Branding Time...

It is Spring, and calves are being born all over the place. All the calves need to be branded, and it's easier to do it when they're young (and relatively small). Yesterday, it was a three person operation. I'm not sure how many calves were branded, but there were quite a few. Number One, riding my horse Calamity, roped the calves, then RanchHand and CowGirl branded them, earmarked them, castrated them (if they were steers, of course), gave them a shot of vitamins and a shot of "7-Way," then sent them on their way. (Number One is going to bring me the "7-Way" so I can better explain it later)


Number One is an excellent roper, but he likes working the calves on the ground too. These days, he's the only person on the ranch who knows how to rope, so that's what he ends up doing all day long.



After Number One ropes the calf and drags it over, RH and CG tie up the other legs and do their work. The earmarking is actually cutting the ears in a particular pattern that is assigned to our ranch. In addition to the branding, it makes it harder for cattle rustlers to steal them. I'm not kidding. Sometimes brands can be doctored to look different, but it's harder to do that when the cow's ears have been cut. And there have been cattle rustlers in these parts, more recent than you might think.


The branding irons are kept hot in this firepit thingie (it's too dry and windy to have an open fire in this particular corral out in the desert).


Yesterday was pretty windy. And dusty. But Number One kept at it. If you look closely, you can see that perfect loop in his rope, despite the wind. He is a good, fast roper. RH and CG couldn't stand around if they wanted to!

H-Bomb and Sawed Off were there also, sitting calmly on a cooler the whole time. Then of course after their snacks, they played in the dirt and avoided protective mother cows. Our dogs Coffee, Jack and Donut were there as well, cleaning up the spoils from the castrations. Hey, at least WE didn't eat them.

I took some other pictures with my 35mm camera; I will post them after I get them developed this weekend. Now I have to thoroughly clean both of my cameras!

A Conversation With Sawed Off

“Sawed Off, do you need a ba-pah? (diaper)”

“No.”

“Do you have poop?”

“No.”

“Do you have pee?”

“No.”

“Are you telling the truth?”

Sawed Off holds my gaze and smiles. “Frog,” he replies, showing me his toy frog. This kid is smooooth.

Water, Tentatively

So, our water was switched over again yesterday. That means, the three houses down here are currently receiving water from CG's secondary well, approximately 1/10 mile up the road, near her house.

The cold water seems to be better. After an initial faucet running/clearing out, it didn't smell like glue or fuel or anything, and had just a few grains of sand in it. That's a big improvement from what we've been experiencing.

The hot water still has a smell, a residue of plumbing glue, an eau d' fuel. After talking with Uncle Fred, we think we are going to have to drain the hot water heater with a hose and see if that helps. If it doesn't, we may need a new hot water heater. However, we're not jumping to, ahem, conclusions, until we drain the heater.

I took a shower at CG's again today. I was sooo looking forward to showering at our house this morning. But no. We still made coffee with bottled water. We'll just wait and see.

Things are looking up, however slightly. Unfortunately this doesn't bode well for the environment, as it appears our well water may indeed be contaminated. Again, we'll wait and see. And of course keep you all posted.

Light in a Waterless World

What's that saying? "Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink?" Something like that.

In an attempt to provide us with potable water, CG hired plumbers to run a line down from her secondary well to our houses. It is all finished, and we switched over the water last night. Imagine our dismay when the water not only smelled like plumbing glue (nasty chemicals) but also had sand in it. Number One and RH decided to try to flush out the system using garden hoses. (And I wonder if the plumber didn't get mad at me when I asked him to not drive so fast down here and drop a glob of glue inside the pipes before they buried it)

This morning, when we awoke, we had no water whatsoever. There is something wrong with something (wiring? I forget) with CG's well, that will have to be fixed. So in the meantime, we are back to mystery-petroleum product-smelling water. I do think it might be getting better.

And we've heard that an environmental consulting firm may show down here in the near future. I just hope they focus on the root of the problem, i.e. start with the well, before jumping to conclusions. I believe I've said this before.

So, with all this in mind, I'm attempting to find some positives. Since we're back on the old well, I can continue to catch up on laundry (it doesn't smell after it comes out of the dryer, so that's good). Whee.

Incidentally, we've been dying to have people over for dinner, but have been avoiding it because we have no water. In case you're wondering. We may just go ahead and invite people down anyway, as there seems to be no end in sight to our nasty water dilemma.

Oh, I can't wait until I can get a glass of water out of the tap, wash the pots and pans without heating "good" water out of jugs to do so, and take a shower any time I like in my own house! I wonder if Culligan would come down here...oh, and it would be just awesome if my computer would stop crashing. Is all that too much to ask?

On a positive note, I took some pictures with my cell phone yesterday, to show you how well my beautiful plants are doing in the town house. My geranium LOVES the sun room, it has been in beautiful bloom all winter long. The succulents I got in Santa Barbara are loving it there too:

Perhaps We SHOULD Home School

Learning about Tallahassee, Florida during "Foreign Friends" week isn't the only thing. The rest of the story came out during dinner, when H-Bomb proclaimed "they have crocodiles in Tallahassee, Florida!"

"Um, no, they're alligators."

"Well, Tallahassee, Florida is at the ocean."

"Uh, I don't think so. Let me mapquest it. Nope, it's 20 miles from the ocean."

If this is an example of what the kids are learning in preschool, I don't have much faith in Kindergarten and beyond. Time will tell.

I wonder if I should take my passport the next time we visit Florida, just in case it's true?

ABEG Just Blew Us Off.

Number One and I have been trying to find out the results of our water test by any means necessary. In other words, we have asked anyone we could think of who might have seen them.

RH and Wifey didn't see them. CG said she sent her only copy to ABEG. CG's bookkeeper didn't keep a copy, but thought the water was only tested for e. coli and other bacteria. Well, that's not what we are smelling in the water, obviously. If that's the case, we definitely need more testing. We emailed ABEG and asked that they email us the results. First, ABEG said they hadn't received them.

Today, water results in hand, ABEG emailed us this response:

"I sent it back to CG so that she can show it you and discuss it with you. We are in the process of hiring an environmental consultant firm to handle the matter, so please coordinate any issues, concerns, or actions with CG who will coordinate with me.

I don't know what to say about this. It's great about the environmental consultant firm, as long as they start at the very beginning: The Well Pump. The Plumbing. Instead of jumping to the Environmental Disaster Conclusion.

But people around these parts don't seem to be very good at "coordinating." You know how it goes, A tells B and B tells C and before you know it, it's all twisted around and not at all what A originally said. And we don't like being kept out of the loop. Especially when it's our family, our boys, indeed our future, that could be most impacted.

Don't blow us off, ABEG. It doesn't suit you.

Life in a Small Town

I just think this is funny. I realize that resources from the outside world are limited in the small town in which we live. Here's what happened:

H-Bomb is going to preschool. It's a preschool run by a very nice lady, out of her home. He attends twice per week, for two hours per day. This week, the theme was "Foreign Friends."

On Tuesday, I went to pick up H-Bomb, and the teacher was mixing up some Hawaiian hot chocolate. Exotic, perhaps, but foreign? It had bananas in it. It was delicious, but I'm quite sure that one of these United States is not foreign.

Today, H-Bomb was the leader, which meant he got to bring snack. He requested muffins with pine nuts, so I rounded up a recipe on the Internet. Orange Marmie Muffins with Cardamom Pine Nut Streusel. These are excellent muffins, and cardamom just happens to be from India. (although our jar is actually Guatemalan...primarily from India, then)

After school, I asked him what else he had learned about. He had taken toys for Show and Tell from France, a Lucky Luke figurine that was a gift from our friend Jean-Claude; and from Mexico, a colorfully painted wooden fish we acquired on our trip to Zihuatanejo, Mexico. (P.S. Ukko, H-Bomb is wondering when we can go back to Mexico to the ocean. Just so you're aware.) For crafts, they had made little Mexican lanterns out of construction paper, and had glued sparkly streamers to sticks. I asked H-Bomb what country the streamers were from.

"Tallahassee, Florida," he replied.

"Oh really?" I said, "Tallahassee, Florida is in the United States."

"But the United States is a country," H-Bomb said.

"Yes, but it's not foreign. It's our country!"

He went on to tell me that they had also had crackers with "spicy white stuff" that he tried and loved. I asked him what country that was from, and he responded, "It's not from a country. It's from Tallahassee, Florida too."

Hmmm. Exotic. I'll have to ask the teacher about this Tallahassee, Florida business next week.