Calves in a field of cornstalks. Looks a little barren, doesn’t it?

It’s surprising how well these calves do in a field of cornstalks. When the corn is harvested there is always some corn left in the field and that corn is like candy to these calves.

In addition to the typical corn and barley that is fed to cattle, they will also eat many different types of crop aftermath (also called crop stubble). Here in Idaho, cattle are often seen in potato fields after the harvest. In different regions of the country cattle graze in carrot fields, cabbage fields and cotton fields.

Usually the aftermath is plowed back into the ground, fortunately our neighbor leases his aftermath to us. Our calves enjoy the cornstalks and the field gets a little extra fertilizer!

We supplement these calves with a little bit of hay and silage each day, but their main energy source right now is the corn stalks.

Over the past week, another animal has moved into this field eager for his share of the corn.

Ducks.

Hundreds and hundreds of ducks.

My kids are fascinated with the ducks. As we drive down the road they are amazed at the number of ducks in the field and in the sky. Yesterday, we stopped to talk with a fellow who was pulled off the road right next to this field.

He was a duck hunter.

He was amazed at the number of calves in the field with all of those ducks!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends. We had a delicious prime rib dinner with pie and cobbler for dessert. Yum! We focused on those people and things in our life for which we are thankful. Bravely, I opted to serve dinner to the kids on our china and real glassware. Amazingly, not one item was broken!

Today, I am mentally gearing up for Christmas. Perusing a few on-line sales. Thinking about gifts for my husband and children. I haven’t solicited their Wish Lists yet, but I am sure those lists will revolve around technology. Handheld gaming devices, remote control vehicles, MP3 players, GPS units, etc.

Not only does technology have a huge impact on my family’s every day life, but it also streamlines the business side of the ranch. We use technology in so many different ways from tracking data in spreadsheets to using a handheld computer for our EID program.

Let’s kick off the holiday shopping season with a fabulous giveaway! Is there a piece of current technology that you can’t imagine living without? Leave a comment with your answer and you will be entered to win:

Are you ready for this?

Yes, an iPad!! I warned you that this was the Best Giveaway Ever.

Leave your comment before noon on Friday, December 2nd.

For the record, I can’t imagine being without my ever-present iPhone. I use it for everything: checking the weather, checking email, tracking grocery lists, entertaining the kids and even making the occasional phone call!

With the arrival of winter last weekend, we had to rearrange our schedule and start trailing the heifers to our winter range. In the fall, after we wean our calves, we start combining smaller groups of cows into larger bunches for the winter. In this bunch we have our replacement heifers and our first-calf heifers. Creating these large groups of cows makes it easier to move them and to care for them throughout the winter.

This group of heifers requires the most care. They will be calving for the first or second time in just a few months, so their nutritional requirements are higher than our other cows. We try to make sure they get a little more TLC, and that includes being the first group of cattle to move to the winter range!

It took all day to trail them from the six inches of snow they were standing in to their new home with only two inches of snow.

The kids are out for Thanksgiving break and are hoping to do some cowboying over the next few days. Boy, are they in luck! The old cows and our group of solid red cows are still waiting to move to the winter range.

I love school breaks, it gives us a chance to put the kids to work!

When we went to bed last night it was a typical chilly November evening, but when we awoke it looked like Christmas!

The first words my boys said this morning: “Did they cancel school?”

They were crushed to learn that they would have to go to school instead of building snowmen in the backyard. After a frantic hunt for snow boots, gloves and hats, the kids climbed in the pick-up and we set off for school.

Very slowly and in four-wheel drive.

On the way to school we were reminded of another typical winter event around here. Rocks bouncing down the canyon walls and landing in the middle of the road.

Although the snow was unexpected, it was business as usual on the ranch. Cowboys spent the day feeding and checking on calves.

My husband hauled a load of protein block out to the cows on the desert.

And I was Mom. My daughter was home with a fever and by noon my three year old had a fever of his own. I spent most of the day holding my little ones, reading them stories and bringing them applesauce.

There is still a lot of snow on the ground, but the sun came out and we enjoyed blue sky for a while this afternoon. I am hopeful the kids will be on the mend tomorrow so we can get outside and back to our usual chores.

(And maybe build a snowman or two!)

My family and I spent a few days this week at the Idaho Cattle Association’s Annual Convention. We look forward to this event each year. We spend time visiting with friends we don’t see often enough and attend meetings that provide relevant information about our industry.

This year we brought the kids with us. All of the kids. They took it all in, the trade show, all of the people and the beautiful setting (Sun Valley, ID). My husband and I (in yet another amazing display of parental wisdom) thought it would be fun to take the kids to the Baxter Black performance the first evening of convention.

The entertainment was scheduled to begin at 8pm, which happens to be the same time my youngest children are tucked into bed. They were surprisingly quiet and well-behaved, but only because I surrendered my phone to them to play. Fortunately the battery held it’s charge and lasted through the entire performance. Phew!

My older boys enjoyed Baxter’s brand of humor and laughed throughout the evening. They went up afterwards and asked Mr. Black to sign a couple of books for them. I decided to call the evening a win; the younger kids survived without getting us ejected from the auditorium and the older kids got new books and met an author. I had to re-think that decision a couple of days later when I overheard the older boys pretending to be veterinarians. They were assisting a cow with a bad case of “the runs”. (My husband assures me that small doses of boy humor is acceptable…I’m still reserving judgment on that one!)

The next day, the kids and I were fortunate to spend time visiting with Dane Rauschenberg, the featured luncheon speaker.

Dane is an elite athlete who ran 52 marathons in 52 weeks and continues to accomplish amazing goals in his running career. Dane is a spokesperson (spokesrunner) for the beef industry. As a beef producer, I greatly enjoyed hearing the message he delivers to consumers around the country.

It was an excellent convention and although I didn’t attend as many meetings as I would have liked, it was worth it to give my children this experience. They witnessed beef producers from each segment of our industry come together to create policy, hear governmental updates and discuss the cattle business.

Well, I’d like to think they witnessed all of this, in reality they spent most of their time wandering through the trade show stockpiling free pens and discussing what they learned from Baxter Black. Heaven help me!

Late yesterday afternoon.

Kids are home from school.

Homework is being avoided attempted.

Younger kids are playing a wild game of chase through the kitchen and living room.

The phone keeps ringing.

The typical controlled chaos that is my life. Thirty minutes before our normal dinner hour I realize that, once again, I have failed to plan out dinner. Ack! Why do I do this? Throughout the day the thought flashed in my mind that at some point I would have to place dinner on the table for my family and I would simply remind myself that I had a package of steaks in the refrigerator. Beyond that I had no plans.

Before I hit full panic mode, I grabbed my go-to cookbook The Healthy Beef Cookbook. I thumbed through the pages looking for anything that could be made quickly and involved steak. Szechuan Beef Stir-Fry caught my eye because of this one line: Total preparation and cooking time: 15 minutes. Score!

I started the water boiling for rice, grabbed a bag of stir-fry vegetables and started slicing the steaks. Between hollering out spelling words for my older boys to practice and holding my daughter’s injured stuffed teddy bear, I had dinner ready and on the table in 15 minutes!

The recipe calls for shoulder center steaks (aka: Ranch Steaks). The steaks I had sitting in my refrigerator were sirloin tip steaks. Did I let that stop me? No way! Sirloin tip steaks are a great cut to use for stir-fry (tri-tip or strip steaks also work well) and this recipe was no exception. It was delicious!

Enjoy!

We try to do things together as a family, especially ranch activities. During the school year this can be challenging, but we still try to squeeze in a few things that involve all six of us.

One of our more common outings is checking cattle in the fields close to our house. Right now, we have some young cows in these fields. Most of these cows arrived at our ranch about ten days ago.

They came from Texas and were a little thin when they got here, but are filling out fast. We are excited about these young cows, they fit nicely into our main herd and seem to be adapting to life in Idaho quite well.

Yesterday’s outing involved two parents, four kids and three dogs. A typical crew for our family outings. This time, however, we (that would be the boys of the family) thought it would be fun if we took Ol’ Whitey for a spin.

Meet Ol’ Whitey:

I love these old pick-ups. They remind me of pick-ups my Dad had while I was growing up. No power steering, windows that must be manually wound up or down, the standard four-speed transmission, and A/C is regulated by how far you want to roll down your window.

My husband and I both shared stories with our children about riding in pick-ups similar to this one while we were growing up. We were both laughing and telling our kids how much fun it was to bounce across the field with our Dad.

It was then that my right leg fell asleep. Next, the back of my three year old’s head ricocheted off of my chin.

My kids were grinning from ear to ear as we bounced across the field. Me? I was thinking fondly of the four door pick-up parked back at our house. The one with real shocks, plenty of leg room and a seat for everyone. I was about to ask if anyone else was having similar thoughts when I caught another glimpse of my kids’ faces. They were having a great time. We were together as a family. They love this old pick-up.

I figure this grin is worth a few aches and pains on my part.

Catching horses for today’s ride was the first order of business this morning. With a halter and grain bucket in hand we set off for the horse pen.

Today was Tinker’s turn to be pressed into service, but everybody wanted a nibble of grain. Some days it takes us longer to get out of the horse pen with our horse in tow than it does to saddle our horse and get to work!

I love it when the younger horses come up and ask for a bite of grain. We always take a minute to scratch them on the nose and remind them that us cowboys aren’t too scary.

Here comes Romeo for his fair share. Romeo has been on the injured reserve list for a couple of weeks. He is quickly recovering from an abscess on his shoulder. He should be back to work soon.

Once we got Tinker back to the barn, my husband spent a few minutes brushing Tinker and then saddled him up. Being the stellar (and mature) horse that he is, stood there patiently through the whole process.

He had no idea that all of this work was for one little boy who desperately wanted to go cowboying with his Dad.

My littlest cowboy rode Tinker all the way from the horse barn, through the corral, to the horse trailer.

My son was thrilled!

I was thrilled that this brief ride qualified as cowboying for him today.

When it comes to my three-year old I will take any success I can get!

The last couple of weeks have been spent receiving calves at the ranch. Calves that we have weaned from our own cows and heifers, plus calves that we have purchased.

When the calves arrive, they spend a few days quarantined at the feedlot. We like to give them a couple of days to adjust to a different feeding program and to make sure there isn’t any sickness among them. During this time we start all of them on our vaccination program. After they have adjusted, we move them out to pasture.

We run the calves in several different bunches, some are out on re-growth under the pivots and some are on crop aftermath. These smaller herds are rotated frequently from one field to the next and they all receive mineral supplement to meet their dietary needs. Each morning they are fed hay and a little grain, then are left to graze for the rest of the day. During feeding and again in the late afternoon, the cowboys check that all of the calves are healthy and eating.

These calves are en route to our neighbor’s field to graze corn stubble. We moved them first thing this morning, hoping to avoid too much traffic on the road. We still managed to cause a minor traffic jam for the hunters and silage trucks; fortunately they were all patient while we pushed calves through the gate.

It was a great way to start the day.