Under the Needle: June

 Some unexpected time to sew yielded a new quilt top early this month using an older line called Animal Crackers.  I cut it out last month and with DH leaving before 4 so many mornings to help brand on the other ranches, I've found time to sew some.

I liked this design (Deep Dive by Moonkin Stitchery) so much that I pulled another Layer Cake and a Fat Quarter bundle (Love You S'more) and cut out a larger quilt. This will be one of the camping quilts I'm making that was on my list at the first of the year. I thought the little hsts pieced to look like flying geese, looked like little tents

And I pressed and cut up another Fat Quarter bundle for a Christmas quilt - another project on my list

I needed a few more squares so I pulled a few plaids from my stash and then found time to begin stitching blocks

I finished this Pink Gingham Quilt

And I also finished this All in Good Time Baby Quilt that I started back in 2018.

I picked up 2 more quilts from Jackie so there are more finishes on the way. 

I was hoping to get the binding stitched to the front so I'd have some hand binding to do, but my knee injury has escalated so no sewing for a while. I'll post an update when I have more information.

I really like having quilts in all stages of construction. I feel like it keeps me engaged and that even when sewing time is scarce, I'm always moving something forward toward a finish.

Another Weekly Update

The week filled up fast and then came to a swift halt.

Monday is sale day (I clerk in the sale ring at the local livestock auction on Mondays. I can't believe I've been there for 10 years) and that always fills up my Mondays. (the auctioneer sits on the left, my co-worker sits in the middle, and I sit on the right, This is an older photo, but pretty much sums up our day - sometimes the bulls come in and kick up dirt from the ring into our work space)

Tuesday DH and I pulled out a pipe fence and rolled up chain link 

around an old trailer house here at headquarters that we're fixing to dispose of - that was a JOB! 

Those posts were sunk 4 ft deep and cutting the pipe together was a great upper body workout. 

We also fielded phone calls, emails, and texts about the wild fires that broke out in the Ruidoso / Alto area. Many of you have reached out to check on us. Thank you for your concern and kindness. We're fine out here. We're not in the mountains and the fires are about 90 miles away. My in-laws are 10 miles from the area, but are safe and were not asked to evacuate. The fires are still actively burning and not contained although a recent rain on Wednesday helped slow the spread. Phone communications are down (including my in-laws' phones) and people that did not evacuate have no way to reach out. Thus far, they estimate that 1500 structures have been lost. Ruidoso is also home to a large race track so many horses had to be evacuated as well. The town center is still intact although some businesses in outlying areas have been lost. So this is still very much an ongoing situation, so prayers for the first responders and folks affected by this continue.

On Wednesday we drove to Lubbock (2 1/2 hours away) to have a truck serviced and to have some codes cleared that are being thrown since we installed a flatbed. We also needed  to exchange a post driver.

 We left the house at 4:30 (allowed for a  time change when crossing state lines) and were 15 miles from Lubbock when the dealership called and said their system was down. It happens, but it means another trip at some point. When we got home we found a huge limb had broken off in a rough wind the previous night so DH broke it down in order to make it easier to haul off

The farrier came out on Thursday so I baked cookies and cooked for him. 

DH shod his own horses until last year - he's 61 and I told him that there are probably not a lot of 61 year old farriers.😉 Plus, our farrier is also a good friend of ours. Then I made a trip to town to run some errands for DH. 

Well, run is probably the wrong word. I hobbled through said errands. I don't know what I did, but I pulled a tendon or damaged my knee earlier this week and I am currently not sound (to coin an equine term). Getting in and out of the pickup and stepping on the gas pedal is pretty rough and in all honesty, I probably did too much.

So yesterday was Friday and thankfully I had leftovers in the fridge. DH was sweet and made breakfast and then he fetched some old crutches from the bunkhouse for me. They were here when we moved here 20 years ago and they came in mighty handy when I had some knee surgery about 5 years ago. They are being called into action once again because even though I will try to rest it through the weekend, there is only so much sitting I can do.

DH is on the board of the Safari Club and they are having their annual picnic today, but I bowed out. It's being catered, but everyone brings desserts so I just made Caramel Fudge Brownies yesterday and sent them with him

He left with strict instructions: REST. I did pick up 2 quilts from Jackie last week so I may try to trim them and sew the binding to the front so that I'll have some hand binding to keep me out of trouble. 😉

A Peek into Last Week

 Lots of odds and ends taking place around here. Nothing exciting, just snippets of  our days. We're definitely ready for cooler weather. 106° is brutal for livestock, the rancher, and his old wife. The older we get, the less heat tolerant we become so that means I'm behind the mower by 6 a.m. 

We have a nice, big yard, and I water it religiously in order to keep it that way and to keep the big shade trees healthy, but I also keep up the bunkhouse yard and mow out by the barn and everything outside the yards around the firepit and behind the house out to the chicken coop. When it rains, I spend a good 10 hours a week pushing the mower and no, we don't have a riding mower. Alas, it hasn't been raining and we are in the midst of a drought. 

We had our first rain since last fall come through last Sunday though and it was a doozy. We only got a tenth here at headquarters, but the south-east part of the ranch got a gully washer with 2.3". It completely washed out the road, but filled dirt tanks that had been completely dry. Huge blessing! Hang on babies, green grass is on the way!

Just north-east of the house, in Red Tip, the storm blew over the well house and the windmill tower ended up in the storage tank

So another project gets added to the list. LOL. 

We burned the old dump last week and DH is working on digging a new dump as time allows

And I'm rounding up things to break in the new dump. Yay! This is 38 years worth of DH's bookkeeping. He walked in when I pulled this bin out to clean under the bed and said, "We can toss those". Happy, happy, joy, joy. I promise we are not hoarders and I don't know why we felt the need to keep these, but it's time to let them go.

I'm continuing my clean out the deep freeze and pantry mission too so Oompa Loompa Bread was baked at 4:00 one morning in order to use up a can of pumpkin and beat the heat

The kids are coming soon so more cranberry bread will be made to use up more of the cranberries in the deep freeze. And I did sneak into my sewing room to start a new project...it takes a while to press 42 fat quarters

But when DH trailers out at 3:30 in the morning to help another ranch brand, I'm making good use of my time. Plus it's the only time of the day I'm willing to hang around a hot iron during this heat.😉

Grandmother's Famous Cranberry Bread

 I've  been on a mission to clean out the deep freeze lately. I found a partial bag of frozen mixed vegetables so I made a Chicken Pot Pie last week. Then I unearthed some frozen mixed fruit so Summer Berry Pie was on the menu. Frozen cranberries were up next so I mixed up this Cranberry Bread. I've been making it for probably 10 years and I found the original recipe HERE . I omitted the raisins and just added more cranberries. 

We love cranberries and our favorite cake is this Cranberry Sour Cream Pound Cake that I only make for Jesus' birthday cake at Christmas each year, but this cranberry bread hits the spot when the cranberry cravings hit.

Grandmother's Famous Cranberry Bread

2 C flour

1 C sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 C butter, softened

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp orange zest

3/4 C orange juice

2 & 1/4 C chopped cranberries

*Preheat oven to 350°.  Spray loaf pan with baking spray. Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda together. Cut in butter until the mixture is crumbly. Add egg, orange peel, and orange juice. Stir to combine. Fold in chopped cranberries. Batter will be very thick. Spoon into loaf pan. Bake for 70 minutes or until toothpick, inserted in center, comes out clean. 

There are more cranberries to use so I'll be trying some new recipes. I've got a great recipe for a Strawberry-Cranberry Jam, but yesterday it was 107° and I talked myself out of  heating up the kitchen. When it's that cotton-pickin' hot, it doesn't take much talking. 

All in Good Time Quilt

This is my oldest UFO. I think I started it about 6 years ago. I found the floral print in a Texas shop in San Angelo and knew I was going to use this pattern. It's free here Spring Splash. I don't generally gravitate towards quilts with only 2 or 3 fabrics (although I do like ginghams quilts), but I thought this was a fun way to show off a fabric you really love.

 I've made a few versions of this pattern - it makes up quickly, but once it was a top, it seemed to always be pushed to the back. I never could settle on a backing I liked either. I would add it to my list of quilts to make each year and each year it would roll over, but I finally just used a pink from my stash. It's an awful lot of pink, but it's a sweet finish and hopefully it will be well loved.

My favorite part might be that black and white dot for the binding!

Jackie and Sandy always choose the perfect patterns for quilts - I never even make suggestions - I just tell them to pick something they will have fun quilting

I couldn't come up with a name either, but since it took years from the first stitch to the last, I thought All in Good Time fit it's circumstances.

It's 40x40 and I don't need it right now, but I like keeping a couple of baby quilts on hand for gifting and it feels good to finally add this one to the 'finished' list.

Gingham Quilt Finish

 I saw this pink floral fabric in a little quilt shop in Amarillo a few years ago and simply couldn't leave without some.

                                

 A sweet friend was having her sewing machine serviced and I had tagged along. We always get into trouble when we're together. I knew immediately that I wanted to make a gingham quilt with it and I knew I had some coordinating fabric in my stash that would be a good fit...

I love the classic, simplicity of a gingham quilt - it's a fun way to showcase a special print and it doesn't get much faster to put together when you need a gift in a hurry

Sandy quilted a pretty little floral pattern across it that shows nicely on the soft pink Minky I used on the back. I've used it quite a few times and I'm surprised at how often this shade coordinates with what I'm working on

I needed binding for two different quilts and this Grunge worked for both

                                   

and  you might want to sit down, but I actually machine bound this. 😲 I know! And it turned out pretty darn good, but honestly, I'm still not a fan, but it's good to know that I CAN do it. 

It finishes at 46"x56". The Bird of Paradise out in the chicken yard continues to amaze me each year. Not a drop of rain since October and this tropical wonder puts on a show year after year in this parched desert country.

I don't even think this quilt was on my list of projects I made in January, but it's a finish now and ready for little girl snuggles. 

Ramblings from a Ranch Wife

 After almost 38 years of being a ranch wife to a rancher, I thought I'd share a few things that have worked for me. Should some future ranch wife stumble upon my ramblings at the end of the dirt road, hopefully she'll find something useful. Of course, these days everything is shared via social media, but back when I started, I was on my own and I would have appreciated hearing about others' experiences. 

This is not advice, just a bit of an overview of my experience I thought I'd share after some recent questions and conversations.

I apologize in advance for being long-winded today. 😉

First - this is just my journey. Yours will be different. I just hope you'll celebrate the little and big joys along the way. Some days you will have to dig deep to find them, but they are always there. Even on the hard days. And there will be hard days. But there will also be magical days. Days when you gaze across the horizon and marvel at the fact that you are blessed to live this lifestyle. Hang on to those.

Embrace the dirt. Or at least make peace with it. It will be your ever-present companion. Old ranch houses leak. This is my kitchen windowsill when the wind blows and it tends to blow a lot out here.

If you're doing this for the money, you best reconsider. It's a lifestyle. Not a job. Work ethic, and lots of it, is beneficial, but I can't think of a better way to raise a family. There's no time clock and the hours are long. 7 days a week with no overtime. But then again, that's just been my experience. I'm married to a man that got a triple dose of work ethic.

I wasn't raised on a ranch, but I felt like a fish out of water until I married my college sweetheart and we began our lives together at the end of a 12 mile dirt road, 30 miles from the smallest town, managing a ranch. 

Cooking for those first crews was a challenge. I didn't really know how to cook and certainly not for a dozen cowboys. My apologies to those early crews, but they keep coming back and honestly, I love it. Cowboys are consummate story tellers and listening to the wild tales and laughter between the jingle of spurs as they shuffle their feet and the clink of ice in tea glasses warms my heart.

My mom was a great cook, but I was a tomboy and never had any interest in the kitchen. I don't know what I survived on in college because I was a broke college kid and never had money to eat out. Lots of sandwiches, Ramen, macaroni  and cheese, and spaghetti I guess. Thankfully, my MIL was a great cook and she was willing to share her recipes. Back then she also gifted me a subscription to a magazine called Taste of Home that was a gem. Many of our favorites were found between those pages. Friends and family are always a good source too. 

Gosh, we were just a couple of kids

Probably one of my most helpful tips is about prepping food ahead of time. This comes in handy for anyone raising a family. I often cook probably 6# of ground beef or chicken at once. I'll generally season it and cook it with diced onion, let it cool, portion it out, and toss it in the freezer. It's a huge time saver! Quick and easy to grab for any recipe that calls for cooked ground beef or chicken. Lots of ranch wives say their husbands won't eat chicken, but mine isn't particular about that. The only thing he ever asked me to please never make when we married was tuna or salmon casserole. 😂 Your wish is granted.

A few years back I made a word document and listed every single main dish I've ever made that we liked. It came to over 100 and I printed it out and taped it to the inside of a kitchen cabinet door. I refer to it often when I can't think of anything to fix and update it when I discover new favorites. I will admit that there have been days when I've looked at it though and thought, "Nothing sounds good." LOL. 

Lists. Do folks even still make lists or is that old school? I'm a consummate list maker. We've always lived at least 30 miles from town and I was always trying to save money so trips to town were only on a 'need-to-go' basis. Back in Texas, it was almost 2 1/2 hours to a decent sized town. My mom once sent me a book with the title, "Don't Make Me Go To Town". I say that all the time and by the time I DO go to town, I have a list a mile long.

 

I cook from scratch a lot. Lot's of cookies and desserts for the crew. Lots of homemade biscuits and rolls. At one time I used shredded cheese and have even used the bacon bits, but now I grate my own cheese and just cook a lot of bacon to chop. But I DO have my shortcuts so find the ones that work for you and sprinkle them in. 

It's more important to take the time to marvel at the ladybugs your little ones have discovered in the patch of wildflowers out by the barn, sit with them and watch the baby calves frolic on a crisp spring morning, or play in the creek with them when that long awaited rain finally arrives and that precious water flows down the canyon, than it is to grate cheese.

 I have bought the frozen Pillsbury biscuits for breakfast. I do like the homemade recipe better, but sometimes a gal just can't make one more biscuit at 3 a.m. after cooking 3 meals a day for a crew for 8 days straight with 2 upset toddlers clinging to her legs, because they wanna 'holp' daddy.

Embrace your Crock-Pot and Insta-Pot. When you and the kids are away from the house all day working with your husband, you'll all be grateful for that hot meal when you shuffle in at the end of the day. When you live out, you can't just stop at a restaurant and Door Dash doesn't deliver, so planning  meals is recommended. 

When I first started cooking for a crew, I bought 15 blue enamel plates from Walmart and I used those until Covid. No sheltering in place when calves need to be branded or weaned and cows and bulls need to be processed so I was still feeding men, but I started using paper plates. After all those years, it just didn't feel right, but I don't have a dishwasher and there are enough dishes to wash as is. Honestly though, it still felt like I was cheating, but that's silly because the guys don't care, but for years, paper plates were an added expense I tried to avoid. It's just the frugal side of me and I will still use those enamel plates when I have a smaller crew to feed.

For glasses, I use the tall Ball wide mouth canning jars. 

but in 2020 I used the red Solo cups and if you have to haul dinner to them at the pens, I just use those or hand out bottled water. Always water. And yes, I have washed and reused the Solo cups. 😉 I always add a little bleach to my dish water.

This place is 128,000 acres (200 sections) so I often haul the crew out in the mornings and drop them off in one or two different places and it takes an hour and a half or two before I get back to the house. So prepping as much as possible before hand is handy. I wash all the breakfast dishes as soon as I get back and start the bread. 

I almost always make the dessert the day before and on occasion, if I can swing it, I'll sneak out to the pens if they're working close by and take pictures. 

I used to make homemade donuts and take them down to the crew on the last day of branding. 8 men would make 40 donuts disappear awfully quick.

I'm not always in the kitchen. I  help DH quite a bit. Often, we haven't had any help for 6-8 months at a time and he's been grateful for a second pair of hands. I'm not very handy horseback, but when we were first married, before the kids, I'd help him horseback. I should have stuck with that because that's the fun part. 😉 But I've put in my fair share of hours behind the wheel of the feed truck and I've probably worn out a few shovels helping fix leaks and plumbing in new storage tanks and water troughs. Fencing is always an issue as well and I'm fixing to get a  Master Class in that! There's never a shortage of  that kind of work.

I do take a lot of pictures and DH has never said, but I know he's not too fond of that. Many of my pictures are taken on the sly, while I'm helping. I don't participate in social media, but I'm so glad I've kind of documented our lifestyle from behind the lens through the years here. 

We homeschooled our children. It was a huge blessing as well as a challenge, but we always lived out and the life skills and learning opportunities they gained along the way made it the right choice for us. They were involved in 4-H and were part of a homeschool group a couple of times a month an hour away and they became lifetime learners and gained strong thinking skills. It also allowed us so much flexibility when it came to incorporating 'school' lessons with 'life' skills. They built great work ethic along the way 

Ranch life isn't 'sleeping in' territory either. When we worked. They worked. 

Working together on a daily basis has been one of the biggest blessings. Take your kid to work day is a way of life and it's extra special when 3 generations saddle up together each day

And it's not all work. There was always time to throw a line into the dirt tank and catch dinner

And now that the chiddlers are grown, we still love fishing

Everyone has to find what works for them and that's not even specialized for just ranch wives. The essentials for me are:

Faith, prayer, family, love, commitment, work ethic, honesty, respect, kindness, patience, grace, and laughter (a sense of humor goes a long way). I often say that DH keeps me around for comic relief, but honestly, that man makes me laugh unexpectedly almost every day. People have no idea how funny he is, 

but maybe I'm the only one that gets to see that side of him and that's great. Not everything needs to be shared.

 Communication is another one. Spending your days working alongside your husband is a blessing, but it can also be a challenge. Patience and grace will be essential and you'll both need it. 😉 I remember spending day after day after day fixing and pulling windmills. I didn't even know what a check or leathers or what a block and tackle were when we began, but I knew an awful lot by the time we had pulled our last well. And hand signals are an important communication tool when working on windmills. When you drop that sucker rod into the pipe before it's connected and have to pull all the pipe, it's a long drive back to the house. 😉

I remember DH helping neighbors or guiding hunters and I would drive around the ranch starting pump jacks on the windmills before driving into work in town (I worked for the Agricultural Stabilization & Conservation Service until we had our first child and I've been blessed to stay home while we raised them). I  think our marriage is stronger after working on those cotton-pickin' windmills, but I'm awfully glad we don't have to do that anymore.

I've gotten awfully long-winded today, but here's a link to The 10 Commandments of a Ranch Wife post I shared a few years back that fits in with today's rambling if you're interested.

I get a little emotional when I think about the life we've built together. The good Lord's been with us every step of the way. Yes, there have been challenges, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I've learned a lot and I'm still learning. I'm not so set in my ways that I'm not open to new and different ways of doing things. Life is an adventure and I'm always up for that with this guy!