Liz Wants a Blog Post

This morning we had some up close and personal veterinary work to do on five strong, flighty, more than a year old, heifers.


They are not sick, this was just routine stuff, but it had to be done. They are housed in the old sawdust shed, which was built to keep the sawdust from running away. It served that job quite well, but despite the addition of some sturdy gates, it won't bear having heifers tied to it,  or slammed against it, or handy-dandy gate moving or anything like that.


Thus these heifers had to be caught and held without the benefit of good equipment.


The boss tried. He has always been a strong, capable man, leaping tall buildings at a single bound and all. However, he has been injured a lot of times over the years, plus he broke his shoulder and dislocated it a couple years ago and it just doesn't do what he needs it to. And he is well over sixty.


Thus he couldn't just grab them by the nose and hang on like he would have done even a couple of years ago.


This work absolutely had to be done.


There was no one here but us wimmen and him. His lariat has a broken catch on it and is essentially worse than useless.


So Liz took an old calf halter, undid the nose band to form a makeshift loop, handed me her engagement ring and got in the pen.


After all the fruitless previous efforts by her dad, and there were many, in about fifteen minutes she roped all five heifers, held the rope with one hand while she did the work on them with the other, then turned them all loose. Then she took back her ring and put it back on.


She was covered with manure, bruised, battered, and has one finger that may not have been meant to bend that way originally, but the work is done and everybody is still standing up and taking nourishment.....she told me she expected a blog post out of it at the very least.


So here, it is...Upstate NY, where the men are men and the women are scary.

Kody Lostroh

Liz took this video at Mohegan Sun. I think she did a great job with it and Kody did a great job with the bull too.

Mohegan Sun PBR

PBR at Mohegan Sun

Dip Dog with Nick Landrenau

Liz got some great shots and video at the rodeo yesterday. Here are a couple.

Hard frost last night

The TV news report says that it is the official end of the growing season....maybe.....I haven't taken the canvas off the tomatoes yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if we still get a few more. They ripened late and very slowly but we have had all we could eat plus lots to freeze.




The fire in the outdoor woodstove is very welcome these days. This old house is cool in summer and absolutely frigid in winter. (All you folks who have made us blankets and lap robes...you know who you are...we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Our toesies thank you too.)




As soon as all the geraniums I am giving up on (I normally bring in every single geranium and struggle all winter to keep them lush and nice. This year...just a few...I grow them from seed anyhow so I end up with a ridiculous number of them) actually freeze I am going to refill the pots with a little fresh earth and plant lettuce in them. We have grown lettuce indoors for a couple of years now and you can't beat it if you have a bright window.




Liz is off here for this today. Her favorite cowboy, Cord McCoy, is there to sign autographs and ride and her other favorite, Kody Lostroh is too. As of yesterday they were first and second in the standings, which was pretty cool.




It is a long drive to a different state. As the official motherperson I will worry all day and night until she is home. (It is my job and I take my work seriously.) She wanted me to accompany her and I would have loved to go, but it was felt in certain corners that I should stay home and work. So I did. No morning off this week, but it was a pretty morning and I didn't really mind all that much being out. I hope she has a great time and brings home lots of good photos. I hope she meets that nice cowboy that she talks to on the Internet. I hope she calls home soon........

Weather woes

I guess a good part of the nation has 'em. We were "blessed" with around three inches of rain yesterday, most of it all at once. (We are thinking of applying to become a national park as the driveways resemble canyons.) Up by Vernon, on Sunday, we were traveling just behind a serious hail storm (Liz only went around 45 mph so we could stay behind it. People, of course, were passing her, and in a couple miles we would find them sitting beside the road waiting for it to go away). Corn fields were almost completely stripped of leaves by the hail and pastured heifers were running in circles, probably frightened by the bombardment. The boss just came in from talking to our milk truck driver and he said that he nearly slid through an intersection south of here because there was hail piled so high in the road.

On the plus side we stayed home from Altamont Fair this year for various reasons. Yesterday was truck in. We sat in the living room waiting for the downpour to let up and sent good thoughts to the poor souls who were trying to get animals hauled in to the fair and made comfortable. Altamont is a nice fair, but the fair grounds sits in a little hollow surrounded by mountains. Storms tend to get stuck in there and wreak havoc.

Anyhow, here are a couple of videos from the rodeo Liz took me to Sunday. One is Reese Cates, who eventually won the whole thing and the other is Kody Lostroh, who made some nice rides and is a really nice guy. (Liz has corresponded with him on line for a while and finally got up nerve enough to introduce herself...he was very pleasant.)




Kody Lostroh rides at Syracuse

Kody Lostroh

Reese Cates

Reese Cates

Reese Cates wins at Syracuse

And it was him we saw at Albany

Reese Cates?

*****UPDATE: I now have much better pics of Reese here and here


Liz says so and he does look like his picture on his fledgling website. I put his picture up because I have had a number of hits from searches for pictures of him....so, here you go, folks.
Here and here are more pics of Reese

Also one of my favorite blogs has gone private access. Not sure what to think about that, since I am not one of the folks permitted to read it. Guess I will have to take the link down, but I really hate to do it. It was one I visited almost every day and really liked a lot.

More PBR Albany

Travis Briscoe won it all. There were 31 successful rides for an all time highest record and so many 90 point rides in the short go that guys with 90 points (6 of 'em) were fighting for third and forth place.
Amazing!

One real bad, heart wrenching wreck....Vince Northrup..that's why I don't go to more rodeos. I was praying every one of those guys from the chute, to the ride, safely off and back. It is just so horrible when they get hurt.

Liz's and my favorite, Cord McCoy

Another favorite, Kody Lostroh

Becky's favorite, Luke Snyder

PBR in Albany

(Or, watching your kid on TV is really cool.)

Photo stolen from Liz, taken at Vernon Downs last summer

The Professional Bull Riders Association came to Albany last night and brought along some great bulls and even greater cowboys. Such famous names as Travis Briscoe, Guillerme Marchi, Paulo Crimber (who danced and Liz has video) and Adriano Moraes were right here in upstate New York and riding their best.
Liz had a ticket for a seat not far from the chutes. At nine-thirty it was televised on Versus and of course we watched.

She really got lucky too. It was one of the best rodeos I have ever seen. Lots of good rides, (although nobody hit ninety), no really awful wrecks. My heart jumped right up in my throat though when Reese Cates' bull nearly flipped over forward (his face was digging into the ground) and Reese had to put his hand right down in the dirt to save himself from falling under him. Close one!

Cord McCoy, who is Liz's favorite, (and a really nice boy-we met him at Turning Stone) had a great ride for fourth place. She got to talk to him for a minute at the end which was nice too. (He encouraged her to buy a baby bucking bull though, which plumb makes me ner-r-r-r-v-ous....she is just the kid to actually do it.) I love to see Cord do well, partly because he came out of a terrible injury to do what he loves with a zest that is contagious. You never see him without an ear to ear grin.

Anyhow, all through the show we scanned the stands for her. We knew she was right down front and right near the chutes. Sure enough Alan soon spotted her..... taking pictures for BuckinJunction. I kept trying to watch for her too, but the action in front of the chutes kept distracting me.

Tonight the second go round and short go will take place (well, really this afternoon). Liz has tickets for today too.

And....(dum dad dum dum)..........One of them is mine...(we earned this trip by milking cows for five weeks without so much as a milking off when the boss was hurt....there will be no whining from the cheap seats). So if you watch Versus at nine tonight you can look about five rows back right by the chutes for the excited cow girl with the camera and the old lady with her hands over her eyes. See you there.

Live bucking bull auction

Going on right now (midday Monday). This is quite a thing to watch if you are a PBR far.
McCoy sale