Meyer Ranch Branding 2012

This past weekend we headed out to the Meyer Ranch in Richardton, ND to help out with their branding. Eric had been to one before, and Chad (our friend and visitor) and I were first timers.

Each calf needed 5 (I think) vaccinations, a brand, and the male's needed castrated. There were 280 calves so a lot of people came to help out.

Each calf needed to be held down by two people, one on the back and one on the front. They were wrestled to the ground and then put in another pen when done. I was the "gate opener" and "cow shooer" for much of the branding, but I did help with about 4 "wrestling matches." Here's proof.

Despite the smile and relaxed appearance in the picture, I am holding onto that calf leg with all the strength I possess. This was the first participation effort. I soon realized it's a lot easier to hold on without the gloves. I had to scream for someone to get the picture in between holding on for dear life with slippery gloves and fear of getting kicked in the face.

Overall, it was a blast and something I never planned or thought I would do, but am glad I did. Here's a few more photos.

Dog Celebrity

Do your recognize this regal creature?

If you are a hunter in North Dakota, you may. He is on the cover of this year's PLOTS guide.

We had our friends Nick, Megan, and Buck out to Dickinson for opening pheasant weekend and it was a lot of fun. The guys limited out in a half hour the first day out near Scranton.

Two days of hunting tired Eric and Chops out. They did this while I worked on the next quilt I am trying to get done.

Hunting

Now that we know Chops can safely hunt and is doing a great job he needs all the practice he can get according to Eric. This is why we went three times last weekend. I may set a once a day limit if this continues. On trip three we got some live partridge to work on fetching live birds since Chops had no idea how to retrieve his pheasant. He did pretty good finding the birds in the field and retrieved them with a soft bite. Luckily no live birds were harmed in this process. That was not the original plan with the training but two flew away, one we couldn't find in the field and I talked Eric into letting the last one go. Since we don't have a working stove or oven we didn't need a partridge in the freezer no matter how good of eating they are. So there you have it, hunting progress and no animal cruelty. A successful Sunday afternoon.

Hungry?

 noun: dried cod soaked in a lye solution before boiling to give it a gelatinous consistency

Hey, it's free dinner for kids under 6!

Hoarfrost

Here is a new variety of frost I don't remember seeing until moving to ND. Apparently the water vapor in the air cools so fast that it forms directly into spiky ice crytals that stick to everything. Last week everything in the town was covered in this stuff and I was sad to see it go. It looked like someone had sprayed rice onto everything and I almost got into an accident while driving to work because I was checking out a group of little trees completely white and spiky. Apparently Hoarfrost was the big story that day because in our town it made the front page of the newspaper. Not that I wasn't aware of the fact before now, but when the front page story is about frost in January, there must not be a lot going on. Another fun happening around here is that my nine week old puppy has already begun humping things. I have caught him humping his pheasant stuffed animal twice. Is this normal? Nine weeks....sure there will be tons of fun around the corner.