Conquering the Hammock

It's Sunday, the perfect day to lay around and have a day of rest. We got a hammock this year, or rather I got a hammock for my husband for Father's Day. After he fell out of it, he's been a bit suspicious of it. How hard can it be to get into a hammock? Here I let one of Desert Boy's cousins, Tractor Buddy, give it a try.First attempt: Oops, it didn't go so well, Tractor Buddy is under the hammock.

Second attempt: Turn it sideways and approach cautiously.

Third attempt: Maybe putting his back on it first will work.

Fourth attempt: Jump on and hope for the best.

Fifth attempt: Crawl onto the hammock, trying to get the weight into the middle as soon as possible.

Yes, it worked! 

And now the other cousins and Desert Boy can get on too. Maybe my sweet husband will reconsider getting on the hammock now. After all, if the kids can do it, surely he can!

Driving Tractors Part II

My son, Desert Boy,  loves to drive tractors, which is quite obvious in Driving Tractors Part I.

He was in need of a driving fix yesterday, so we visited the lower yard and looked around for some tractors for him to drive. We found a few and it was a good morning.

We started out on a Massey Ferguson 275. The red color attracted him immediately. Plus it was the closest one to where we parked. It doesn't have much of a seat left to it, but that doesn't matter much to a one-year old.

This tractor at first glance looks the same, but it's actually a 1964 Massey Ferguson 150. Cousin Pony Express Rider (update tomorrow!) had to come over and give Desert Boy a couple pointers.

Right next to it was an Allis-Chambers 7550. Now we're getting big! Mom gets a workout climbing up all these tractors to let Desert Boy drive.
The little smile makes it all worth it. Note Desert Boy's crossed legs, one of his favorite habits. I wish I had gotten some of his "vroom, vroom" noises. He made a lot of them.

Now he's done smiling at mom and ready to start driving, beginning by shifting.

Okay, three red tractors down, and a  fall in the dirt. Where to next? 

He looks a little wide-eyed behind the wheel of this tractor.
It's a John Deere 4755, pulling some big long red thing. My husband, my technical advisor, isn't around to tell me what the doohickey thing is. Oh wait, he's back and says it's a rotary windrower. 

I said, "What does that mean?"

He said, "Makes windrows."

"Well, what are windrows?"

"Rows of cut hay that can dry and later be picked up."

(See, we have exciting conversations in our house.)

Oh good golly, Desert Boy is now up in a high cab and reaching for the keys. We'll be in big trouble when he actually can start one of these machines.

Especially if it's something as big as this John Deere 6910, which is a forage harvester. The yellow part on the front picks up the windrow and chops it into little bits and blows it into a truck.

Okay, we're almost done, but there's time to play in this huge bucket. Henry doesn't want to be left out (he didn't like Desert Boy driving alone). You can just imagine the size of the machine needed to lift a five cubic yard bucket and its load.

Here it is, the biggest loader on the ranch. Desert Boy can only hope to drive this one day.

Desert Boy and Henry Learn about Harvester Ants

While we were taking a walk the other day, I noticed the large number of harvester ant mounds among the bushes. Desert Boy and Henry went over to investigate.
Harvester ant mounds are easily distinguished, with a small hill of sand and gravel rising from the ground, sometimes as much as two feet high. Harvester ants belong to the genus Pogonomyrmex, and their predilection to make these mounds make them easy to identify. In our area we have more than 30 species of ants, but just two are Pogonomyrmex ants.
Desert Boy thought it was great to take a look, but because harvester ants have an extremely toxic poison, it's not good for him to get too close. Harvester ants are some of the most venomous animals in the world, with a venom 3 to 12 times as strong as a bee. Or in other words, one ant bite is equivalent to up to 12 bee stings. Ouch! Fortunately harvester ants have tiny mouths and don't bite often, as long as you stay out of their colony.
Henry takes a look at the harvester ant mound. The ants have dug deep into the earth so that they can take the seeds they find. In addition to seeds, they also eat small insects and other invertebrates. In turn they are eaten by horned lizards and some birds.
Here we can see ants coming and going out of the mound entrance. They turn over and aerate as much soil as earthworms.
The ants will stay inside the mound during the hottest part of the day. Then they go out to find seeds and insects and bring them back.
Here's a closeup of a harvester ant. It's a little blurry because the ants move fast! By the way, the head is the square end with the antennae sticking out.
One of the things that caught my eye as I walked past several harvester ant mounds was the entrance. It was always on the south or east side of the mound. One hypothesis about this entrance location is that it warms up faster in the morning than if it was located on the north or west side.
Harvester ants clear the vegetation directly around the mound. Although it might be tempting to try and kill the harvester ants, they are a natural part of the ecosystem, found throughout the western United States. In Texas and Arizona, the red imported fire ant is slowly taking over harvester ant territory, and these fire ants are much worse for humans than the fairly benign harvester ants.
One ant in this photo is carrying part of a plant that is bigger than himself. Ant watching turns out to be a fun sport: which ant is carrying the biggest thing? Which ants go in straight directions and which ones meander?
Desert Boy is enjoying his experience as an ant watcher. Ready to join him?

Desert Boy Rides a Horse

It's summertime, which means it's time to move the cows around different meadows and pastures as the feed allows. Aunt Tana helps move the cattle, and we saw her yesterday on her beautiful horse Jewel. She offered to take Desert Boy  for a ride.
Here's Aunt Tana with her dogs, Heidi and Tippy. They don't get along well with Henry. I think they sense that he's just a play dog and they know that they are work dogs, able to do important things like getting cattle to go where they want.
Aunt Tana starts by giving Desert Boy a lesson. She's an excellent rider, unlike me. In my dreams I'm an excellent rider, but in reality I get fairly nervous if we go faster than a walk.
Desert Boy quickly catches on and sows no fear being on top of the big horse by himself.
Desert Boy sees the cattle coming. Aunt Tana had ridden ahead to open the gate so they could come through. The horse has miraculously sprouted two more legs in this photo.
Desert Boy gets ready for the action.
He reaches for the other rein. He doesn't have much time to act, there's a storm coming in.
He's got the reins now and is ready to go. Maybe next time we'll put some shoes on him.
And there they are, a bunch of cattle in the background. They're moving in the right direction and all is well with the world.
Mission accomplished, Desert Boy scans the horizon, looking for his next task.

Learning to Drive

Learning  to drive is always a rite of passage. For me, it was a terrifying experience when I was 15 years old and in driver's ed class. The instructor figured everyone had already driven, so he put me on the street and said go, not bothering to find out that I had never even sat behind the wheel of a parked car. After nearly sideswiping a whole line of cars and making him so nervous that his face was wet with perspiration, he decided maybe we needed to learn in an empty parking lot. I couldn't have agreed more. 

When it came time to take my driving ed test with him, he flunked me before I even took the test. But I could perform in a high stress situation and passed with flying colors (well, he only had to use the instructor brake once). So he had to unflunk me and then I got to terrify my parents as I put in my hours before I could get a license to drive on my own.

Out in the desert, learning to drive is a little easier. There aren't the inconveniences of parked cars. And there are plenty of roads. And living on a ranch, young'uns are encouraged to drive at an early age so they can help move the tractor to the other side of the field. My husband learned to drive when he was five. That does seem like a very early age, but he had his older brother to help him. His older brother was six. 

Last week the California cousins came for a visit, and my sister-in-law decided that it was time for her oldest daughter to learn how to drive. She got behind the wheel of her cousin's work truck and before long was driving it, only slightly scaring her mother. It was a stick shift, which really impressed me, because that took me forever to learn how to drive. 

Desert Boy didn't want to be left out of the fun. Here he is practicing with his Pony Express Rider cousin (update on the ride coming soon). His cousin is laughing because Desert Boy already knows he needs to shift. While he's "driving" he makes vroom, vroom noises.

And now that we get a wider view, you can see he is ready to live it up, taking his cute California cousins for a ride. I'm already sweating the real driving!

What do you remember from your first driving experience?

Please Practice Safe Eating

We're recovering from a stomach bug. Desert Boy managed to escape it, perhaps because he uses safe eating practices. 

Desert Boy Loses His Hat

See the cute hat Desert Boy is wearing? It's a denim cap with an embroidered horse and bear. His babysitter got it for him when she went on a trip. He had worn it only about a week when we decided to take a hike. I loaded him up in the backpack and we went out on the ranch for a walk.
It wasn't long into our hike that I saw some dark objects come into view. Hmm, must be some curious cows. But surely they won't come too close.
They kept coming closer and closer and even tried to surround us. I kept talking to them in a loud voice. Desert Boy helped. He likes to talk and shout a lot, and that's especially loud when he's in a backpack right next to your ear. I looked back at Desert Boy and found that he was not wearing his hat. In all the excitement of watching the cows come racing towards us and then alongside of us, I didn't notice him pitching it from his fair head. We started retracing our steps.
That's when I noticed that these aren't just cows, there are some bulls mixed in, like this big Red Angus. He seemed really big. And I noticed I was wearing red. I figured I was going to see if he really did ignore red like bulls are supposed to. (For more on this and what kind of cows these are, click here.)
Fortunately the bull kept on walking, and then we got a visit from this friendly horse. Desert Boy seemed to enjoy all these animal adventures. But we didn't find his hat. I went back twice and still never found it. And now I feel really bad that we lost his special hat.