New Arrivals on the Ranch

 The weather is working out great this year for calving. The heifers usually begin calving the end of January and continue for a couple months. First the ones that were artificially inseminated give birth, then the ones that were inseminated the old-fashioned way with the clean-up bulls are next. Gestation is nine months, just like humans. After birth, things change quickly--in one year, calves can grow from about 45 pounds to 800 pounds.

 This mama is enjoying a little snack while her young'un rests near by. The calves are usually tagged within 12 hours of birth with the same number as their mom. That makes it easier in case the mama cow has problems figuring out how to be a mama. By definition, the heifers are first time moms, so sometimes they need a little help.

 I just love looking at calves. If you want to see some more, you can check out this post (which includes the mom eating the placenta.)

 Desert Girl also really liked seeing the babies.

 Many of the heifers are snacking on the grass left from last year. You can find out more about what the heifers eat here (and see more cute calf and Desert Boy photos).

 Not all sights out in the heifer field are quite as cute. Above, a heifer strains with her contractions. She will give birth within a few hours. Sometimes they stand and sometimes they lay down (like in the photo below). We have a cowboy out in the field every couple hours around the clock checking on the heifers for over six weeks. If he comes upon any heifers with trouble, he can help pull the calf. Fortunately, though, most calves are born without any problems. The bull sperm is chosen for a lower birth weight to make an easier first birth. And as you might have noticed, nearly all the calves are black. That's because the sperm chosen for this year was from a black angus bull. (To get a glimpse of the catalog, yep, that's right, a sperm catalog, click here.)

Many calves were happily nursing. As they gain strength, they start frolicking and playing. The moms eventually allow other cows to babysit and will leave the calves for short periods of time.

A couple days after birth, the calves and their mamas are moved out of the Circle Field (aka the birthing field) to a meadow where they can hang out in the nursery. That makes it easier to check the birthing field to see how the cows are doing.

I didn't shoot any video, but if seeing all these cows makes you long to hear some cows, you can see my YouTube video. For some reason, over half a million people have wanted to watch cows mooing. You can be one, too! :)

Muddy Boots

Can you tell what we've been getting into?

Desert Boy's Experiment

 The other evening, Desert Boy told me, "I have an idea for an experiment. Can we do it?"

Uh, oh, I thought. What are we getting ourselves into now? But I try to be supportive of his scientific endeavors, so I asked him for details.

"We put some baking soda and vinegar into a bottle and put a balloon on top of it and see how a gas makes it inflate. I saw it on Magic Schoolbus."

Well, that sounded like an okay experiment to me. So we gathered our ingredients and decided the sink would be a good place to do the experiment. I didn't know how much baking soda or vinegar, so I took a guess, and told him to put two teaspoons of baking soda into the bottle. Then we poured a 1/4 cup vinegar into a measuring cup. As Desert Boy poured the vinegar, I got ready with the balloon as quick as I could.

 Sure enough, the balloon started inflating! We all were entranced, wondering how big it would get.

The balloon got slightly bigger than you can see in the photo above and stayed that size for about 10 or 15 minutes. It was such a successful experiment, we had to do it again! Next time we may make it more scientific and have him record how much of the ingredients we put in and how big the balloon gets and try out some variations. In the meantime, I'm just happy that it wasn't a messy experiment, and Desert Boy is happy because the experiment worked. Hurray!

Sand Hollow Aquatic Center

 While we were in St. George last weekend, we had one nice day and one rainy day. We headed out to explore one of the fabulous trails in St. George on the nice day. This trail started at the Sand Hollow Aquatic Center, which is near Santa Clara. We were the only ones on the trail and enjoyed the great views. It's one of the shorter ones, about a mile long. When we got to the end, Desert Boy was amazed that I wasn't going to have him go any further and that all we had to do was turn around and go back!

 I liked the signs, and we talked a couple minutes about safety in the desert.

Then it was time to go to a destination the kids craved: an oasis in the desert.

 Being desert rats, we always are eager to find some water, especially when we can recreate in it. So we headed to the Sand Hollow Aquatic Center.  It has a very interesting construction that covers two separate pools, a lap pool that the swim teams can use (and that is slightly cooler) and a recreation pool with a variety of fun things (and that is slightly warmer). The light-colored roof and windows made it so they don't need lights during the day. Another feature I liked was the family locker room.

 When we walked into the pool area, our eyes immediately went to the water slide. You walk up two flights of stairs to get to the top, then have a relaxing ride down. The slide discharges you into four-feet deep water with quite a current, which made for a little extra swimming challenge for Desert Boy.

 I loved that Desert Girl could go down with me on the slide, as long as she wore a life jacket. In fact, they make all kids 3 and under wear a life jacket while in the pool area.

 Desert Girl also loved a slide that was a little more her size--the frog. She even got brave and went down face first, even though she ended up with a face full of water every time.

 Some water bubblers made for fun entertainment.


Desert Boy spent lots of time over at the lily pads. They had ropes attaching them to the bottom of the pool, but they moved quite a bit. A cargo net overhead helped provide a little extra stability as one tried to get across them without wiping out. (It was slightly reminiscent of the TV show Wipeout.)

 Desert Girl even gave it a try. (Isn't she getting big?!)

We spent a couple very enjoyable hours at the aquatic center. Desert Boy wanted to go back the next day, but we had other plans. Nevertheless, we will be back!

New Food: Quinoa

So like a zillion other people, I made a New Year's resolution to eat better. In my case, I want to cut back on processed foods and eat more real foods (and with Hostess going out of business, my resolution is already slightly easier).

Recently, I purchased some quinoa. I had read it was a yummy grain. Now "read" is a key word here, because if I had "heard" quinoa pronounced, I probably wouldn't keep mispronouncing it. You see, this is an ideal spelling bee word in the final challenge round, because it's pronounced "keen-wah." And for the life of me, I can not remember that pronunciation. So I keep mispronouncing it, but fortunately there aren't too many "keen-wah" snobs out in this neck of the woods. Ahem, I mean isolated desert valley.

Anyways, I found a recipe for quinoa and made it last night. And I have to say, I really like it. Before I get to the recipe, let me tell you a little more about quinoa. It comes from Peru, Bolivia, Columbia, and Ecuador, up in the high country. It doesn't need much precipitation and it can survive freezing temperatures. As I read this off the package, my husband and I were both thinking--wow, maybe we should grow this in our garden! But then we got to the part that the quinoa seeds have a hard coating of saponins that is difficult to remove. Okay, back to buying it.

It was domesticated 3,000 to 4,000 years ago (how did those people get the coating off?). It's high in lysine, calcium, phosphorous, and iron. The Incas considered the grain to be sacred and called it chisaya mama, or "mother of all grains." Then came the dang conquistadores, who scorned that Incan foodstuff and even forbade them to cultivate it and made them plant wheat. Eventually the quinoa came back into favor, and over recent years its popularity has spread. The price of quinoa crops has increased substantially. According to Wikipedia, in 2011 a ton of quinoa cost an average of over $3000, compared to a ton of wheat at $340.

I can understand why it's popular, it's delicious. The salad you see above came from a recipe at 100daysofrealfood. I look forward to eating more of it.

Have you tried quinoa? What recipes do you like?