Ridgetop - our place and how we muddle along

[Ridgetop]

Yes our family loves us. I wish they would love us from farther away. No! Cancel that - remember the country western song about the father who missed all his kids' important times because he was on the road. The refrain was "Wish I could have been there for that". Then when he wanted them to come to his birthday (or anniversary?) party they sent love and said "wish we could have been there for that". Having our family enjoy being with us is a good thing. Some people's kids and grand kids live far away and never see them. So sad.

You can tell that we are not babysitting anyone at the moment and the puppy is in the barn.

Spoke too soon!
DSIL2 got a call to work this Saturday and DD2 just called to ask about us watching Annabel. DH said he will be home so I can let him watch her and just be in the house to feed her and t her down for naps. The Never Ending Wall can wait anther day or so.

Going down to start removing stuff from the milk shed. Got n hour before i have to shower and dress. Dear friend "Mom" called t say that she is bored and feeling a bit stronger and would like to try to play bridge!

 

[Bruce]

No coffee?

What do you expect, they should launch it from So. Cal with a huge catapult??

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

A trebuchet would probably send it farther than a catapult. But it probably would be cold by the time it landed...

 

[Baymule]

What do you expect, they should launch it from So. Cal with a huge catapult??

A trebuchet would probably send it farther than a catapult. But it probably would be cold by the time it landed...

Both would probably spill the coffee anyway.

 

[Ridgetop]

Could UPS a thermos!

Early this morning DS1 took down the overhead storage rack in the milk shed. I will pack it up for DS3. Then DGS2 dragged the lengths of perforated drainpipe out of the milk shed to the kennel run where the rest of the drain pipe is currently living. Luckily we don't use the dog kennel during the summer because it does not have any shade.

It was pleasant and cool (for August in soCal) for the past week but today the heat soared again. Was planning to do some Connex clean out today but too hot. Tomorrow will move the 6-8 large boxes of saddles and tack to the driveway Rubbermaid storage so they will be close to the house for me to sort out what I will be keeping. The rest will go to DDIL1. The old quarter horse rawhide tree saddles will go to her for her boys eventually. They are old but useful still, and will do for the boys to beat to death. I need to find my mule pad, and Josie's leather bridle, along with a few other items of tack I plan to keep. I am keeping my lightweight nylon saddle, breast collar and crupper. DS1 is giving DDIL1 his leather English hunt saddle and English bridle. I will keep 1 set of shipping boots, a winter blanket and a summer blanket, and a few other items. Probably won't need them, but you never know. Also going to look over the corral panels and decide how many horse panels we need to keep for TX. I also will give a couple of the 50-75 gallon (larger?) horse troughs to DS3/DDIL2. Can't decide which would be better to keep - the huge Rubbermaid ones or the galvanized ones. We have about 10 and they are too tall for the sheep. All the shorter ones will be kept to move to TX. But DS1 wanted to put shelves in the top of the barn to store the smaller tubs, feeders, etc. I told him we should just move the 2 folding saws into one of the Rubbermaid sheds which would clear our stairway to access the barn loft. The we could store the tubs there and get them up off the floor of the barn giving us more room to move the scale around.

I am also bringing in several large boxes of the children's school pix and special keepsakes. I will sort them into a box for each child along with school and camp photos. No need for me to continue to keep them and store them. I can't dispose of them because the children might think their childhood mementos are not important to their dear mama. This way they can toss them out themselves.
Perhaps I can wrap them up in ribbon for Christmas?! One Christmas gift taken care of!

The children have also said they would be thrilled to have my chafing dishes, punchbowls, and various other items for parties. I used to go all out when entertaining - I even have 30 glass punch cups! From now on I will use paper products if I do any more big parties. Except at Christmas and Easter. I need to ask the children who wants my 30 place settings of good china that we use for big dinners. Better than paper plates because they don't collapse and go in the dishwasher so easy to wash. Looking forward to getting rid of some of these items and moving a couple of the heavy duty shelving units into the milk shed to store boxes of stuff vertically.

More sorting and organization!!!

The closing date on the ranch has been extended to September 17 because the surveyor did not get out to do his job yet. Got the insurance with Germania, contacted the cattle tenant, loan is secured, everything is ready to close - just waiting on the surveyor. Can't close until the surveyor finishes. For one thing the contract has to be adjusted according to whether the property is actually more or less than 45.5 acres. And the title insurance can't be written until they know exactly how many acres there are.

Vaccinated the new lambs yesterday, docked the new ewe lambs, and weighed the older lambs. One ram lamb that was born June 19 weighed 77.8 lbs! He is a single. The last single his mother had was also a fast growing lamb and weighed 110 lbs. by 4 months! Singles are not my favorite, but she certainly produces fast growers. I need to go back in my weight records and look at the growth rate of her twins. Need to weigh the new lambs tomorrow to check growth rate, particularly Crystal. She is greedily drinking 10 ounces 3-4 times a day and growing BIG! I mix 1 part raw frozen goat milk to 4 parts formula. Probably don't need the raw goat milk, but I think it is healthy for her gut. Just a personal choice.

The cattle tenant told me that there is a dairy goat farm close to the ranch so hopefully I will be able to get raw goat milk to keep in the freezer for any bummer lambs. Don't like bummer lambs, but if I had to have one, I am glad that this one is a ewe. And a nice ewe too!

DS1 moved all the sheep out of the breeding pen today. Tomorrow I will look up the ear tag numbers of the older yearlings I want to breed. I have several May yearlings that need to go in with this ram. Most of them are Lewis daughters. The next groups of lambs to be bred will be Axtell and Moyboy daughters and I will put them to Lewis.

The 3 older rams have all lost their ear tags!!! Luckily I can tell them apart. We will have to retag them. Several of the ewes have lost at least one of their tags as well. Retagging them will also have to take place. Then I will have to cross identify them with the new numbers to their registration papers. Just need to know which ewes produce which lambs for registration purposes. The registration papers will keep their original numbers. If I wanted to re-record the new numbers I would have to pay a fee for each one. Too much money when I can just do it this way.

DH will go get another load of hay on Monday so hoping to have half of the Connex emptied out over the weekend. I will move all the renovation items (new medicine cabinets, light fixtures, etc.) to the milk shed. I found a new chandelier made of antlers along with 2 wall mounted matching side lights in the Connex. I will sell them in Palm Springs in the consignment store in October.

DH is yelling at me to come to get off the computer and come to bed. Gotta go!

 

[Baymule]

You will still be able to enjoy your punch bowl, China and other items—at their house. Let your kids put on the party and holiday dinners! Show up as the honored guest.

Horse tack! Is there ever too much?

Have you thought about tattooing the ears of your sheep? You could use the clamp on rabbit tattoos that you probably already have. I only have scrapie tags, but noticed the numbers are fading. Great. Plus they get coated In lanolin and dirt. They are the free ones from the USDA.

An antler chandelier would look awesome in the ranch house. Hang it over the dining table. I’ve always admired those and I could admire yours! LOL

 

[Shellymay]

The three rams and ewes lost ear tags, we order ours from Premier One, if we lose one we can reorder them from Premier One, but it will come with a Letter R in front of the original number, the Letter R stands for Replacement tag. If these are rams that where not born on your place, you can go back to breeder and ask them to order for you and you offer to pay them the cost of tags and shipping, I say this because I am not sure if you can order a replacement tag for a sheep that was not born on your place, might be worth checking into...This is worth doing verse the head aches of cross referencing numbers to registration papers over many years.

 

[Ridgetop]

I buy all my rams. I replace ewes from my own flock breeding. As long as I can tell them apart, I don't have a problem, with the rams. I can retag them with the color tag I use when tagging their progeny. I use different colors so I can immediately see which homebred ewe is out of which ram. I have their paperwork so know what their registered numbers and ranch numbers are for registration of their lambs.

As to tatooing, I can use the tattoo kit I have for the goats - larger numbers. We might start doing that on the lambs. The adult sheep will be harder. Tattoo numbers also can fade out but at least yoi will have a permanent number in the ear. We used to do the LaManchas in the tail web so that is another option for tattooing as long as we don't dock too short.

Yesterday DS1 pulled the ewes out of the breeding pen. Smalley ram is very angry and has tried to escape twice from his pen since he is now alone. We kept them in today since we have a delivery coming for the Connexes and they would be in the way on the field. I have to go through my registration papers and find all the unbred ewes that are old enough to go in with the ram. Then I will spray mark them in the big pen today. When we feed tonight we can separate them. I want to move the squeeze off the end of the chute so we can run them through the separator gates. Much easier than trying to get certain ones through the gate and into the pen!

Might keep the antler chandelier for Texas, although I don;t know how it will accessorize my lovely Asian items and DH's Louis XVI gold cabinet. My grandmother gave it to him in her will because he loved it. However, my style has always been eclectic so it might work . . . .
Or it could become a great Christmas gift for someone . . . .

Both the Connexes are now 25% and 30% empty. DS1 removed all the giant moving boxes in which I had packed all the saddles from our family's years of horsekeeping. All the kids rode, and all had saddles, and we had extra saddles we bought new over the years (as well as the old saddles that came with a couple of our older horses and were too usable to dispose of). There is enough tack to equip a store, or at least a stall at the flea market! I don't need it all, and my grandsons will eventually be riding so they can have it. He put all the boxes over on the drivewy by the Rubbermaid sheds and I will have to start sorting through them. I will definitely keep some of the tack

 

[Ridgetop]

Oops! Posted again by accident!

. . . also some horse blankets, halters, etc.

Also found the box of wood pieces already cut that we brought from MJ's barn to make sprouting boxes. And the box of new sprouting lids. You just add quart canning jars and BINGO! Sprouting kits. If I want to sprout stuff, I will do cold frames with old windows. I will be replacing the TX house windows with dual pane windows (I think) when we move back there and will have those windows to use for cold frames. DDIL2 wants these. She and DS3 are really into gardening now. The boxes are all cut out and ready to assemble so DS1 and DGSs 3 & 4 can put them together. Maybe a 4-H project?

Then I found a box of papers from the kids' childhood and brought them in to sort. I will also sort out a lot of the photos I have for the children to have. And photo albums. Hopefully I will be too busy running a sheep ranch, being a 4-H leader, doing volunteer work and playing bridge in Texas to look at photo albums nostalgically.
I can do that when I come to visit my children, and drink adult beverages from the punchbowls and eat food they cook from the chafing dishes and the entertainment china! Eventually if I am in the home, DS1 has promised that it will be the "good one" with the good drugs - if I make it worth his while!

It is so hot, I am considering cleaning out my cupboards and packing up items for the children. When we were out in the Connexes I saw a lot of boxes marked "Books". I need to go through those and see if they are children's books. In which case I have 8 grandchildren that will be reading them! Otherwise, the libraries will take them, as will the senior center libraries, and Salvation Army. There are another 20 boxes of books in the tool shed loft to be gone through as well. Some of those titles I have purchased on my Kindle so those can be donated too. I don't mind reading old friends over again.

Off to sort papers and photos.

 

[farmerjan]

I am a book collector.... reading and rereading......I cry when I see books get thrown in the trash.... I often think about how someone took time to write all that..... and then get it published....