Desert Boy and a Tractor

When we went down to the ranch shop the other day, we saw this huge MacDon M200 tractor, and Desert Boy got very excited. He hasn't done too much scampering onto tractors lately.

He figured a way to climb up, irrigating boots and all. It might not look too elegant, but it worked. It's true that when there's a will, there's a way, especially for a headstrong two-year old who knows no limits.

The only problem is that he can't quite open the door by himself.

Once the door is open, he knows just what to do--get in the seat, put a hand on the steering wheel, and turn the key. Yikes! I had to jump in and turn the key back the other direction.

He manages to look all angelic while he's doing this. He was quite disappointed when I told him we weren't actually going to drive the tractor.

Here's a view of the tractor from the front. Yikes, it sure is big! Some of the alfalfa is mature and ready for the first cutting, so Desert Boy may soon get a chance to ride in a moving tractor.

Grandpa and the Big Loader

Desert Boy loves big machinery. He likes the movement, the noise, the challenge of climbing up and down it. If he hears a diesel engine, he immediately perks up to see what is going on and what piece of equipment it is. One of his first words was "backhoe."

There's only one thing Desert Boy likes better than watching the big equipment:
Driving it. It's even better when Grandpa lets him help.

Schoolbus Storage

The ranch bought a couple school buses at auction last fall. This one is too old to use as a vehicle, but it makes a great storage space. The tires have been taken off, and a dirt ramp made up to the back door.

Inside, some of the seats have been removed, making room for an assortment of ranching supplies. Do you like the makeshift shelves on top of the seats? It's neat and organized, with plenty of light to find what you need. The schoolbus will have many decades of use in its new occupation.

Manure

With many of the calves out of the feed yard, it's time to clean it up. How do you clean a feed yard? I admit this is a subject I never even considered until I moved out here. It's a fairly simple process to clean. A loader is used to scoop up the manure into big piles. When the manure spreader truck is ready, the loader fills it, and then the truck takes the manure out to the fields for fertilizer.

Here's a pile in another corral. Although it might look like a lot, it's not very concentrated in nutrients, so it can take several corrals' worth to fertilize one pivot.

This is the manure spreader truck. It has extra tall sides so it can hold more.

Along the bottom is a conveyor-belt type of contraption that slowly moves the manure out of the truck and onto the field.
The manure spreader is not a new concept by any means. Hidden in the sagebrush is an old manure spreader. This one was pulled by a horse.

The concept was still the same, though, and on the right hand side of the wagon you can see the old chain used to slide the manure out of the wagon at a steady speed.

I always try to get some of the manure for my garden--the older stuff doesn't have quite the potent odor but still helps things grow.

Desert Destination: A Visit to the New Calf

As I mentioned a couple days ago, the first calf of the year was born last week. I just had to see it, so yesterday my husband, Desert Boy, Henry, and I loaded up in the truck and went out to take a visit. This calf was born premature by a couple weeks, but it looks like it's doing okay. Not great, but okay. The mother is a heifer, a first-time mother, so she doesn't really know what to do, and because she had her calf early, just as the other heifers were moved to the birthing field, she and the calf are on their own for a few days and seem a bit confused.

Here's the mom, a black baldy. The calf looks mostly black because the semen was from a black angus bull. The mama cow is watching us suspiciously, which is a good sign. Our plan was to take a quick peek at the calf and see how it's doing, and then get out of there. 

Except sometimes plans don't always go as you expect. In this case, we finally got a bunch of rain. That extra moisture, coupled with a ditch that's running to make sure the cow gets plenty of water, made the normally drivable road into a muddy mess. And we started spinning. So my husband put the truck into four wheel-drive. And we continued spinning. The mud flew on to the hood, onto the windows--it was now raining mud. And the tires kept digging deeper and deeper in the mud. 

Finally, I looked at my husband. "I don't think we're going anywhere."

He grinned. "I don't either."

Usually we're in a hurry to get somewhere, but this was a Sunday afternoon and we had had a relaxing day, so we stayed calm. We got out to take a look and saw that the tires were half-buried in mud. We didn't have a shovel, so we got a bunch of sticks and put them under the  tires. But we were in too deep. We needed to go for help.

Fortunately we had on our coats and boots, so we were prepared to go for a little walk. We headed off down the muddy road, along the edge of the field, towards the misty mountains. 

And we kept walking...

We needed to go across the field and towards the white specks on the right side of the photo, past Henry, who was having a grand old time. Our house is near the trees in the middle of the photo. What, you can't see the trees? They're a long way off. 

Desert Boy walked for a while, and then he wanted to be carried. When it was my turn, I put him up on my shoulders and he used my ears like reins. I told him he really wasn't supposed to pull on my ears.

The field we walked through was good walking. It had been planted with barley last spring. After it was harvested, it was planted with alfalfa. The short stalks are from the barley, and the mat-looking stuff is the baby alfalfa.

The Canada geese really like the field and their scat was everywhere. They sure can clean up any leftovers. Soon we crossed the field and came upon a treasure--an old junkyard. The main equipment yard is huge, but not everything is in it. This particular junkyard housed lots of older vehicles. I took quite a few pictures, but in this post will just show the station wagons to complement the post earlier this week.
This is a Chevrolet Nomad. Don't you just love the trim on the side? Because it's a four-door station wagon, we can surmise it was made between 1958 and 1961, and this was the top-of-the-line station wagon for Chevrolet. The original Nomad came out in 1955 as a two-door station wagon and was produced for three years. I am still scratching my head about two-door station wagons.

This station wagon with the cool fin taillights is a Studebaker. It was kind of hard to get a good look at it because of all the brush growing up around it, but it's probably from the 1950s and might be a Commander model. 

We spent quite a bit of time looking around the old junkyard. I must say, if you have to get stuck, it's quite an enjoyable experience if you have good weather, comfortable clothes and shoes, an interesting junkyard to meander through, and a camera to document the whole trip.

By the time we got the backhoe and took it back to the truck, it was getting pretty dark. But it only took a minute to pull the truck out, and then we were on our way.

The little calf was up and exploring her surroundings. Probably tomorrow she and her mom will be moved with the other heifers and hopefully they'll get more accustomed to being together and figure out what they're supposed to do. 

John Deere 45W Forklift

Desert Boy is always happy to join me on forays to the equipment yard because it means he can practice his driving skills. On this day, he took quite a liking to this old John Deere tractor with the 45W forklift attachment. The tractor appears to still be in pretty good shape despite a light coating of rust.

I imagine the tractor was used to move hay to help feed the cows. 

On the back axle it says Deere on one side. I imagine it says John on the other, but it's covered in grease and I didn't have a rag with me. That metal sure looks solid, doesn't it?

One of the reasons Desert Boy likes to drive the old tractors is they just have so many fun parts. Gear shifters, levers, indicators, knobs, a big steering wheel, and even something to rest his short legs on. It just doesn't get much better.

I tried to look this tractor up on the internet to get more information about it, but didn't have much luck. So I'll have to keep digging to uncover the past of this tractor and what it did. For some reason I always leave the equipment yard with unanswered questions.

More Fun in the Equipment Yard

The North American International Auto Show begins in a couple days in Detroit, so in honor of that, we'll take another trip to the junkyard (oops--equipment yard) to celebrate. Okay, I just heard about the show on the radio today and I went to the equipment yard a couple days ago, but I feel like I need some excuse to show you more junk (or equipment). I find the equipment yard really fascinating. After all it has over a hundred years of hubris resting in it. Someday, maybe some archeologist will find great value in it. Or if the recession gets bad enough, maybe the ranch will start selling parts and scrap metal. I guess I better just enjoy it while I can.

Here's a 1948 Ford F-1. It's the first Ford F series pickup truck. Ford has sold more F-series trucks than any automaker has sold any other model of car or pickup in the history of the automobile. This one was blue at one point, but the paint has sort of faded. Take a good look at the grill, because that was one of the first things to change. Something else to note is that it only has windshield wipers on the driver's side--one mounted on the bottom and one on the top.

This truck looks fairly similar, but you've probably noticed the grille looks a lot different. This is a Ford F-2. Most of the rest of the truck looks pretty similar, with a running board, raised hood, and big fenders (supposedly the fenders are bigger on a F-2 than an F-1, but I couldn't tell). 

This is another Ford pickup--would you like to wager a guess what model? I guessed F-2, and if you did, you can be wrong with me. Despite the funny front, it's an F-1. I really like the bumper--not only does it have the thick metal horizontal piece, it looks like someone added a couple vertical sections. This truck is going to move whatever is in its way. It's also impressive how vibrant that yellow paint has stayed--much better than the paint on my husband's F-150, which is flaking away in big chunks and wouldn't make Henry Ford proud at all.

This truck is also kind of cool despite all the rust. It has a neat windshield that curves around the sides and has the roof protecting it, nice curves, and---

---the coolest speedometer panel I've seen so far. Most are plain old circles or rectangles, but this is a triangle. I guess it doesn't take much to impress me. But trust me, it's cool looking, and I think I'm going to have to go back and look at it again. I've never been into vehicles, but looking at some of the details on these gets me excited. Maybe Desert Boy's interest in anything that moves is rubbing off on me. Oh, by the way, this is a Chevrolet Apache 32 Fleetside.

Sometimes cars don't look like much at first glance, like this Ford Galaxie 500. But take a closer look at the taillights. They really are out of this world.

I liked the lighting power of this car--not two headlights, but eight. No need for a big bumper if you can see what you're going to hit.

Ooh, these taillights are sexy. These are on a 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air. This model was produced from 1953-1975, but the 1950s versions were definitely the coolest. Old age (and lack of imagination by the automaker) made this a more utilitarian car in the latter years.

The lines on this car just make me want to go cruising. I'm ready to put on my cotton check dress and with my carefully coiffed hair pulled back with a hair band and go out with my beau.

It's not all vehicles in the equipment yard. Here are some strange metal things that caught my eye due to their symmetry. I've come to learn that they are called bowls, and are the bottom part of a well pump. The water entered the metal grate, and the motor at the top of the well pulled the water up. I don't know how this knowledge will enrich my life, but perhaps someday it will. And maybe yours too.

Weighing Calves

It's that time of year to weigh the calves and see if they've put on enough weight. Our ranch raises calves until they're about 850 pounds, and then they're sold to a buyer who will finish them, or raise them until they're between 1,200 and 1,300 pounds. Because we live in such an isolated area, it's not economically feasible to finish and ship cows from here. 

First the cowboys gathered up the calves and herded them into holding pens. Then about 50 at a time were send to the scale.

Here's our oldest cowboy, Lee, working on the frigid morning. Not even cold weather keeps him away from rolling out of bed at 89 years and getting his horse ready to work calves.

And here's my sweet-faced nephew Ryan holding the gate open. He probably wouldn't like me calling him sweet-faced, seeing as how he's a college man now. You can see it's cold by all the layers he's wearing, including his thick green hoodie, work jacket, and warm wool cap with ear flaps. Those ear flaps are really nice, they keep your ears nice and cozy.

The calves run past my hiding spot and towards the scale.

The cowboys make sure none run in a different direction. The scale is huge, it weighs semis with trailers full of hay. Once all the calves are on the scale, they close the gate.

Then my brother-in-law Dave goes into the scale house to weigh the load of calves.

It's an old Howe scale, 1930s vintage, and it still works great today. The state Scales and Measures comes out and inspects it every year.

Then it's time for the calves to get off the scale and go to the next holding pen. My brother-in-law Tom tells the calves where to go. (And they actually listen!)

Once a few calves lead the way, the rest are ready to follow.

He's carefully counting as they go by, as are other cowboys. It's important to know how many calves are in each load so the total weight can be divided by the number of calves, and the average weight per calf calculated. On this particular day, the average weight was about 800 pounds.

Here's Kate, ready for the weighing to conclude so she can help move the calves back to the area they came from.

This horse was particularly friendly and let Desert Boy pet her quite a bit.

After the last load of calves has been weighed, Lee and Ryan come out, along with border collie Heidi, and they are all ready to move calves. My husband told me in advance where the next good camera angle would be, so Desert Boy and I started walking in that direction.

Only Desert Boy found a distraction and took off at a run towards this John Deere tractor.

I don't help him climb up--I figure if he wants to get in the tractor bad enough, he'll figure out a way. And he did.

Getting up on the driver's seat was a little tough, but he was determined.

What are you looking at, Mom? Of course I can drive this big tractor even though my feet don't reach the pedals and I'm really bad at steering.
Our little detour didn't let me get in a great spot for photos, but I did manage this one with Lee herding the calves on the other side of the equipment yard fence.

And a few minutes later, all the cowboys were heading back to the trucks, mission accomplished. They know the calves need to eat for a few more weeks before they'll be leaving us. At this stage, they're gaining about four to five pounds a day. I mean the calves, not the cowboys, although hopefully they all had big holiday dinners!