Country Life – Page 8 – Angel Wheeler

A Rare Horse; A Rare Friend

My husband’s horse was born on May 5th. That’s how he received the name Cinco. A horse with a sweeter disposition could not be found. As soon as he saw you, he was lumbering your way to nudge and beg for attention. My husband sometimes got aggravated with him when trying to work. “He’s always right in my hip pocket, ” he occasionally complained.

As fitting as his name, Cinco only lived five years. He got sick with an upper respiratory infection. J-Dub took him to the vet, and they gave him some medicine. He began to pep up. Then two days later, I drove out to our place to find Cinco laying down. Now, I admit I don’t know much about horses, but one thing I know is they rarely lay down. He wasn’t just resting, he was slowly rolling from side to side. I walked closer to look at him, and his eyes had a look of illness to them. I felt very uneasy, but not wanting to be the over-cautious wife who freaks out at a rolling horse, I decided to watch him a while. He got up slowly, took about 5 steps, and then was back on the ground rolling. I decided something truly must be wrong. I called J-Dub immediately. He was far away in another county, so he called his friend Matt to drive out to check on him.

In the meantime, Cinco would rise very slowly onto his knees with his hind legs in the air, attempting to get up. Sometimes he would make it, and sometimes he would lay back down. When he did manage to struggle to his feet, he would walk for a short way, then lay down and begin rolling. My husband said it sounded like he was trying to colic. I didn’t know what that meant. Matt arrived and when he saw him, he ran to him, slapped his butt and pushed on him, forced him to get up. He put a halter on him and began walking him around. Matt explained that when a horse colics, they get a terrible stomach-ache, so they lay down and begin to roll to try to relieve the pain. That causes their intestines to twist, and they die. The best thing to do is make them walk.

As Matt walked Cinco all around the place, I paced inside the house. I felt helpless. Shortly after, the vet arrived. She listened to Cinco’s stomach, then inserted a tube down his throat, and began pumping his stomach. She removed the tube and drained all this liquid onto the ground, and then reinserted it again for another round. This continued for a very long time. The vet then decided to take him into the clinic and keep him overnight. Rabies was suspected, and possibly West Nile Virus.

The next morning Cinco wasn’t any better. They continued observing and treating him throughout that day and the night, but he died there in the vet’s clinic by morning.

Because the only way rabies can be detected is through a post-mortem exam, and the only way to test is to send an animal’s head into a laboratory, my husband had to drive to the vet’s to pick up his dead, headless horse and bury him. It was a sad day. I wish I could have helped him, but there wasn’t any help I could give except my words of sympathy.

The results for rabies came back negative. The cause of death was never known.

My husband has been without a horse since November until yesterday when his friend Shawn gave him a horse, and a dang nice one at that.

Here’s Shawn hamming it up as usual.

This new horse goes by the name Freak because of his rarity. He is a palamino roan.

Palamino is a yellow color, and roan refers to little white speckles.

Right now he is roaned from his middle to the back, but in the summer he roans all over.

He reminds me of a Californian surfer with his bleached blonde mane.

What a horse!

But more importantly, what a friend!

My husband and I are blessed beyond words to have a friend in Shawn who sees a need and fills it.

Thank you Shawn!

A Horse Story

Spring Break has begun for me today. I have 9 days off and 900 things on my ever-growing to-do list to accomplish. Number one being pack, move, and unpack.

My husband is super busy, and I can’t wait for him, so tonight I packed most of my kitchen, my china, my plates, my Tupperware, and my pots and pans, loaded them into my dad’s yellow truck, and unpacked them out at our new place. It was dark when I drove up. “Dark” in the country is a different kind of darkness. It’s like dark, dark. There’s no street lights, or neighbor’s porch lights, or flashing neon signs. I fumbled around with the padlock on the gate using the light from my headlights, constantly looking around for fear of some critter to rub up against my leg or something. Being in the country in the dark can be a little spooky.

I’ve always been a town girl, and the bottom line about country living is I’m going to have to toughen up. Plain and simple.

And perhaps invest in some night vision goggles.

As soon as I pulled up to the house, out of the darkness appeared this silhouette of a horse walking towards me. It’s not unusual for a horse to greet us when we pull up, thinking we’ve got some groceries on us. I squinted trying to make out the color and the size of the horse, trying to recognize it. It was a strange, gray spotted horse that am not familiar with. I later found out, J-Dub and some others got horseback today to get a little cowboy work done, and one of his cowboy friends left his horse at our place with the other horses.

You want to know a little secret? An unknown fact about me?

I’m kinda, sorta scared of horses. I know, I know what you’re thinking. You’re married to a cowboy and you’re scared of horses????? Yes, I am. I have no reason to be afraid. I’ve never been hurt by one, but they’re big and powerful, and they aren’t the least bit afraid of me. They walk around with an air of authority and intimidate me.

I then noticed the other three horses came strutting over in a pack, throwing their gang signs. I began unloading some boxes from the back of the truck, ignoring the horses when suddenly I heard a pounding of horse hooves. Spinning around, trying to allow my eyes to develop night vision, I saw one of the three horses chasing the strange, gray horse around the pasture at a high rate of speed. I yelled and they stopped running, but as I was unloading the truck, on my trips in and out of the house, I kept my eye on the behavior of these horses. The three horses that have been out there and have gotten to know one another, wouldn’t let the new horse around them. They had decided to form a clique, and like a bunch of junior high girls were bullying this strange horse. Even when the new horse was off minding his own business, the 3 bully horses would saunter over to him and suddenly one of them would break away from the others and charge at the gray horse, causing him to take off running with the bully horse right on his heels. It was downright unnerving to me. I could only imagine them running through a fence or running into me carrying a large box. I wanted to do something but felt helpless and a little bit too scared to take on two charging horses. Where’s Mr. Ed and the Horse Whisperer when you need them?

This little cat and mouse chasing bit went on three more times, before they finally settled down somewhere beyond my vision.

I got my kitchen unpacked and headed back to the truck, greeted this time by the putrid smell of a skunk permeating the air. He’s probably nesting under my house.

Darkness, unpredictable horses, odorous skunks……..lawsy mercy, this is going to be quite the adventure, and boy had I better get tough or get night goggles.

A Nest

Spring is coming. It’s just around the corner. As soon as I utter that old cliche’, tomorrow we’ll all probably get snowed thirty feet under. But I am remaining hopeful about the coming spring. The tulips and daffodils are poking their green heads out of the earth and birds are building nests.

Unfortunately the owner of this particular dwelling will have to rebuild. I stole this bird’s nest from a tree out at “our place” for two reasons. 1) I found it fascinating and wanted to show somebody, and 2) I could reach it.

In my nearly 36 years, I’ve never studied a bird’s nest, and in my shallow storybook mind, I thought they were only made from twigs and sticks. But just look at this. (I only wish my photography skills would enable you to see this better, but I take pictures almost as good as I write my name in the snow, if you know what I mean.)

This bird has a heaping helpin’ hodgepodge of nesting materials. Including but not limited to: carpet strands, cotton from a nearby field, weed stems, grass, and sticks.

At a closer study, you’ll see:

Seeds from a cotton plant,

A long strand of something plastic,

A possible wad of toilet paper, but optimistically, a paper towel,

Perhaps pieces from a Clorox wipe,

A hair from a horse’s mane or tail,

and a dadgum lollipop stick!

Unbelievable!

To think the places this bird flew to gather her supplies is beyond my understanding.

My first reaction to this bird’s nest was amazement and fascination. Even still, when I gaze upon on, I’m in awe. I want to share it with everyone I know, so I took it to my classroom, naturally thinking that my student’s would feel the same way as I, holding it and examining it with a child-like wonder and disbelief. Instead, to my utter disappointment, most of them were grossed out. Several “eeewwww’s” went up from the crowd, others wouldn’t hold it, and the ones that did squirted their hands with hand sanitizer afterwards. It caused me to pause and reflect, “What is this world coming to?” that the first reaction of 8 year old’s is repulsiveness instead of curiosity.

While being married to a man who sticks his arm inside a cow’s booty,

who organizes a birthday party contest for cow-chip throwing,

who lances bovine abscesses to drain bucketfuls of puss,

I can’t fathom being grossed out by a bird’s nest.

A sweet little bird who used her resourcefulness and hard work to build a nest in which to start her family.

Suddenly as I think of what I’ve done, thieving the home of one of God’s creatures for educational purposes, I feel like a wretch.

I’m going to put it back. I know she won’t accept it, after being touched by so many (germ-sanitized) human hands, but I’m going to put it back anyway.

I’ll be able to sleep better at night.

A Cowboy’s Hat

This morning I stumbled out of bed and stumbled to the kitchen, poured myself a cup of ambition, yawned and stretched and tried to come alive.

Not really. It’s Saturday. I slept later than usual, I awoke refreshed and feeling great, and meandered to the bathroom.

Then I peeked out the window to see if my husband’s truck was outside which meant he hadn’t left for work yet. I didn’t see it, and I couldn’t hear any rustling around the house, so I assumed he wasn’t home.

Until I saw his hat on the kitchen table. Then I knew he was here somewhere.

His dirty, black hat, equipped with a toothpick, only goes where he goes.

It’s pretty crusty, wouldn’t you agree? Some people think he needs a new one. But why? This one is nearing the point of perfection.

He catches some grief from others about this dirty hat. Not long ago, a friend asked him when he was going to clean it. Never, that’s when. It takes a long time, years in fact, to get a hat to fit right and feel right, and cleaning it might mess with the dirt, sweat, and grime that has made it the hat it is today.

My mom has finally resigned the issue. She gave up the cause for a new hat. For years on his birthday or Christmas, she would give him gift cards to a western store in hopes that he would buy a new hat. He bought jeans and socks instead.

She hasn’t complained about this hat, but his last hat she hated. She even let him know she hated his hat.

This is his old hat. It’s pretty bad. To the untrained eye, it might look identical to his present hat, but look closely.

There are no toothpicks , the buckle is badly bent, and the dirt is thicker. Much, much, thicker.

On Christmas morning, we opened the door to find a present, wrapped and sitting on our porch. We assumed it was from my brother and his wife Janene, because that’s their style. Just leave it on the porch. But upon opening it, we discovered a brand new black felt hat. It was from J-Dub’s friend Ol’ Earl, who pitied him for his dirty, black hat.

Of course J-Dub has a going-to-town hat too. That’s what he calls his dress hat.

It’s stocked with toothpicks as well. He wears it with his going-to-town watch and his going-to-town belt.

This is my husband’s hat. It has character, it fits right, and it stays on his head. Except for the day I had to chase it across the prairie in -34 degree wind chill. But the only reason it blew off that day was because he had a scarf on his head.

Not an old lady scarf, but a cowboy scarf, otherwise known as a wild rag. I love this picture. He hates it. He looks like an old lady to me. A babushka, an old Russian grandmother. Generally he doesn’t leave the house looking like this, but the bitterness of the cold that day was unbearable. He needed to protect his ears, and the silkiness of the wild rag caused his hat to blow away. Which didn’t make the day any more enjoyable.

While others look at this hat and see a dirty, black hat in desperate need of the trash can, I see a hard-working husband. I see the sweat from his brow on a summer day, the mud from the pens where he’s sorting cattle, the dust and dirt caking his face. I see him rolling out hay in frigid temperatures, breaking ice on frozen water tanks, doctoring sick calves. I see him branding cattle, building fence, shipping yearlings. I see the his love for the occupation, the land, the lifestyle, and his love for me.

I admire this dirty, black hat.

But much more, I admire the man who wears it.

So Happy Together!

My cowboy husband J-Dub needed to move some cows on Saturday. They had grazed down a pasture pretty well and needed some greener grass. You know, over on the other side. It is typically a rather large job for one cowboy alone to move 90 cows from one pasture to another, so he moved most of them with the feed wagon, aka the cake wagon, aka the feed truck. Cows recognize the Chevy that feeds them and once trained they most of them will follow the feed truck from here to kingdom come. Or at least into the next pasture. He later planned to get horseback to go pick up the few stragglers, the loners, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

It is not uncommon for a mama cow to leave her baby calf to come feed. J-Dub noticed this one mama cow in particular who approached the gate, almost stepped over the threshold, almost crossed into the Promised Land of Greener Pastures, but then thought better of it and turned to go find her calf that she had abandoned for the buffet line. J-Dub made sure to leave the gate open so once they paired up, they could return to the rest of the herd.

Side note: While my husband was telling me this story, I just couldn’t understand it. It has been ingrained into my brain as a cowboy’s wife to ALWAYS CLOSE THE GATE! I just couldn’t understand why in the Sam Hill he would leave a gate open and allow all those cows that he just moved to return to the pasture he wanted them out of. But then he oh-so-very-patiently explained to me in his most gentle, most soft-spoken, sweetest voice that they had grazed the old pasture down and the grass was better in the new pasture. And of course any cowboy’s wife worth her weight in Wranglers would know that cows will stay in the pasture with the better grass. Hence, I hang my head in shame.

All the moving of cows here and yon happened on Saturday. On Monday, he noticed the same mama cow wandering aimlessly, with a tight bag (a sign that her baby had not nursed recently) through the grazed pasture looking for something she’d lost. And it wasn’t her ear tag she was looking for. She and her baby, unequipped with GPS, still had not found one another. It had been 2 days. A baby will typically return to the last place it nursed, and it’s mother will find it there. But this baby must’ve gotten a wild hair and ventured farther than the street lamp. J-Dub drove around the pasture, looking for the baby without any success. Needing to get on to other duties, he had no choice but to leave.

Today when he checked on the cows, the situation was the same. A mama with no baby. A baby with no mama. After 3 nights without the protection of its mother from the Big Bad Coyotes that roam freely, without the warmth and nourishment of its mother’s milk, the likelihood of the calf surviving was bleak.

But alas, I will not tell a tale without a happy ending. Not today anyway.

J-Dub decided he would get horseback and go to the far end of the pasture. He began bawling like a little baby calf. This was an act of trickery so the mother cow would think it was her baby bawling instead and follow. It worked. She followed J-Dub over to the far end of the pasture where lo and behold, a small miracle occurred and the baby calf was found alive. They were reunited and it felt so good.

The calf’s little belly is full, the mama’s bag is no longer engorged, the gate is closed and all is well.

Dig This

A proverb from me: A sunny day makes the heart happy.

The temperatures climbed today and gave everyone around here a bad case of spring fever. And then to make matters worse, a Gurney’s Seed Catalog arrived in my mailbox.

Oh the joys of gardening! I would love to reap the rich rewards of a well planned garden. But alas, the word “plan” is not really in my vocabulary.

I’ve never been a planner. I wasn’t taught to be, and it’s a good thing because it just doesn’t suit me. I would rather meet each day as it comes. Head-on. I don’t lay out my clothes the night before, nor do I pack my lunch. I’d rather be in a frenzy every morning. Obviously.

I rarely think about what’s for supper until my stomach growls and then I realize I have no meat thawed. Good thing I love cereal. If only my husband would learn to love it half as much.

The occasions I have planned, have usually gone okay, but I’ll tell you what. When those plans get a kink in them, I don’t bend easily, which is why it’s best for me to not plan at all.

With one exception. The one area of my life that I am forced to plan is my job. And let me tell you, it was a lesson learned the hard way. Teaching a classroom full of kids typically means if you don’t have every single second of their day filled, they’ll find something to fill them with. Which usually isn’t good. So I am diligent about planning my school day. I have to be, I learned early that it saves me from heartache, high blood pressure, and murder. Nevertheless, it was a hard habit for me to attain.

And then there’s the garden. You can’t really have a garden if you don’t plan for it. One year I attempted to grow pumpkins without planning. Or watering. And that just doesn’t really turn out well. I don’t advise it.

This year I’ve decided to be a planner in the garden. I’m playing offense instead of defense. I’m being proactive rather than reactive. I will have pumpkins in October not December. My summer will be filled with the earth’s bounty.

I am experimenting with a gardening technique I read about called a No Dig Garden. Basically it is gardening on top of the ground, layering your soil with organic materials that compost and feed your soil and you don’t have to dig. It doesn’t matter what kind of condition your soil is in either.

It’s kind of like seven layer dip: the beans, the sour cream, the salsa, the guacamole, the lettuce, next the tomatoes, the cheese, and if you must eat those nasty little black olives, go ahead.

I did a little studying up on the No Dig Garden Technique, filed it away in a filing cabinet in my brain under G for gardens, and went about my business.

Well on Sunday I was piddling around out at The Place while Jason worked inside our little trailer house and I decided I’d just go ahead and get started on my garden. No time like the present right? So I chose my garden spot, then I began the layering process.

This is the recommended layers:

Start with newspaper or cardboard
Then a little alfalfa
Add a little nice manure (chicken, horse, cow, whatever you’ve got on hand) or Commercial Fertilizer
Straw
More fertilizer
Compost

Next you water it well, and you can begin planting seedlings for an instant garden.

This sounds wonderful right? So I began laying down leftover cardboard from a gajillion boxes of laminate flooring we purchased. The next layer is manure, so I got a bucket and a shovel and walked out to the pasture to find some. I soon found out, a bucket of crap doesn’t go very far on a garden plot. After about 3 buckets full of grunt (my grannie’s word for dookie), I was about 1/5 of the way completed, and I happened upon my husband, who eyeballs my project and calmly quips, “You’ll never finish that before sundown.”

I gaze off into the west at the hot ball of gas nearing the horizon. Sundown? Oh yeah. That’s when it gets dark. I can’t build a garden in the dark can I? Hmmm, just another example of my inability to plan. Nice thinking, beginning a lengthy project at 5:00 in the evening.

Since my daylight was short, I then decided to use two buckets instead of one and walk faster. Back to the pasture, shoveling my poo, carrying two buckets to the garden, dumping them on the cardboard, doing the fast walk back to the pasture, shoveling my poo, carrying two buckets to the garden, dumping them on the cardboard, doing the fast walk back to the pasture, shoveling my poo, carrying two buckets to the garden, dumping them on the cardboard.

Never. Ending.

Needless to say, I was never happier to see the sun go down. I found some bricks to lay on the cardboard so the wind wouldn’t carry them away, and then I high tailed it to the bed.

I don’t know when I “plan” to return to my No Dig Garden. Or if I “plan” to at all.

A roto-tiller is sounding pretty good right now.

Footprints in the Snow

A couple days ago, my husband shoveled us out of the snow. It was just in the nick of time too. I believe with my all of my being that he was on the verge of having a full on attack of deliriousness as a side effect of the cabin fever he’d developed after being cooped in the house.

It’s like we were living in The Shining. We were trapped, confined, imprisoned for….for……months.

It was at least days.

Okay, okay, it was only about 6 hours. But that’s not what it felt like.

Unlike the movie, The Shining, with a little determination, and a lot of J-Dub’s muscle behind a snow shovel, we could get out and weren’t being chased through a maze by a madman with a hatchet. And I must admit I never witnessed twins murdered in our hallway, or blood pouring from the walls, or a small boy wiggling his finger growling REDRUM, REDRUM.

Alright, so I guess it wasn’t anything like The Shining. Our biggest problem was J-Dub was bored.

He said he was going out to the place. “The place” refers to our new little piece of land with a lovely trailer house {snicker, snicker} we bought that has given us fits and convulsions since closing day way back in October. I decided I should let the stink blow off me, and go see all the crazies driving around town in the snow, so I pulled on twenty extra layers and hopped in the passenger seat.

The snow was deep when we pulled up to the gate, so we decided it’d be easier to park in the county road than to drive through the deep snow.

J-Dub led the way. My boots were heavy and the snow was bottomless. Lifting my knees up to my chest to take my next labored step was difficult. I hollered out from behind him, “You’re going too fast!.” He turned his head and hollered back, “You’re going too slow!”

Knowing he wasn’t going to slow down and wait for me, I got the brilliant idea to walk in his footsteps, and save myself a lot of hard work.

I’m sure you’ve seen footprints in the snow before, I’m sure you’ve even walked in snow deeper than this, but if I told the truth that it was only a few inches deep instead of having you believe it was 3 1/2 feet, and that it was a very short walk to the front door, it doesn’t make me sound as tough, eh?

Walking in someone else’s footprints in the snow makes me all nostalgic and I think of the time when there was a “for real” blizzard and I walked with my dad to a little convenience store several, and I do mean several, blocks away ill-dressed in a measly pair of tennis shoes. We needed food. I was about 10, he was about 40, and I realize now how terribly I must have slowed him down. And if my memory serves me correctly, I begged to go, and he insisted I shouldn’t, until of course he gave in like dad’s sometimes do when their obnoxious daughters won’t stop whining. He probably at that point was thinking, “Fine, go with me, learn your lesson, you little ninny headed brat.”

And I did learn my lesson. It was cold, and I was miserable, and very glad to get home to my momma. That day I remember walking in his footsteps, which was not easy to manage since his stride was so much longer than mine. But all the same, I was thankful they were there.

The picture of these footprints in the snow also remind me of my Savior Jesus, and that beautiful poem Footprints in the Sand.

“LORD, you said that once I decided to follow
you, you’d walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that during the most
troublesome times in my life,
there is only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why when
I needed you most you would leave me.”

The LORD replied:
“My son, my precious child,
I love you and I would never leave you.
During your times of trial and suffering,
when you see only one set of footprints,

it was then that I carried you.”

Be blessed.

11 Facts About Goats

Two phrases I never want uttered in my home again are:

We’re out of eggs.

That’s the last of the milk.

I am remedying the egg situation soon, very soon. And I am strongly considering a goat for the milk cure.

Now before you curl up your nose at the mention of goat milk, I must go on the defense.

But first I must start with a confession. I’ve never tasted goat’s milk. I have however tasted goat cheese and promptly barfed afterward. I blogged about that. I think I had the Goat Flu. You can read about it here. But who’s to say it was the goat cheese that made me retch? It could’ve been a virus or something.

This is my mediocre attempts to convince myself that I need a goat.

Yes, I know you are probably thinking goats have a notorious reputation of being tin can eaters, car hood jumpers, and head butters. I’m here to redeem the reputation of the goat.

Much like placenta eating, we the people of the United States of America are likely missing out on something profound and wonderful.

Last night, I propped myself up on pillows in my bed and read a book about the dairy goats.

Facts I’ve learned, that I must pass on to you, my darling readers:

The goat is related to the deer.
Yes, goats might eat everything, but build a pen. Don’t blame the goat!
Does are not smelly, but those bucks are the stinkiest, foulest, nastiest creatures (learned from experience)
Bucks are smelly due to scent glands, but also because they piss all over the front of their legs, beards, and faces.
Does are not smelly, rather they are dainty, fastidious, intelligent, friendly, and fun (sounds like a great personal ad)
In the world today, more people use goat milk than cow milk
There is no difference in the taste of raw, whole cow milk and raw, whole goat milk.
Many doctors prescribe goat milk for cases of dyspepsia, peptic ulcer, liver dysfunction, jaundice.
Goat milk can be used for infants during weaning, infants with eczema, and pregnant women who are puking their guts up.
Goat milk is easier to digest than cow’s milk due to smaller fat globules.
In goat genetics, white is dominant and black is recessive.

Goat’s milk should not taste funny. If it does, it is due to unsanitary milking parlors, unclean utensils, feed or weeds that the goat has recently eaten, the smelly buck being in the vicinity, or other reasons. So now, I need to find some goat people. I’d like a tall glass of goat milk to sample.

If you’re still thinking raw goat milk is grody, you won’t believe how gross raw denim is.

This boy wore the same jeans for 15 months without washing them.

A Canadian student tested the limits of personal hygiene by wearing the same unwashed jeans for over 15 months.

While this may not be ideal for most people, it surprisingly was discovered to cause no health risks for healthy people.

Josh Le, a student at the University of Alberta, was so excited when he bought a pair of Nudie Jeans in September 2009 that he wore them every day. He even went so far as to sleep in them for a month, according to the National Post.

Nudie Jeans are raw jeans that are specifically designed to shape itself to the contours of the individual’s body. Raw denim isn’t chemically treated or washed prior during manufacturing. It is sold to the consumer stiff like cardboard. The idea is that wearing the jeans without washing them will result in the indigo color wearing away at pressure points in the fabric, showing the individual’s body contours. When the jeans are eventually washed, the individual’s shape will be revealed in the pattern that develops, according to The Star .

After wearing his raw denim for 15 months and one week, Le went to a professor of textile science at the University of Alberta, Rachel McQueen. She assisted him with an informal experiment. They took bacterial swabs from different areas of the jeans, including the front, back and crotch area.

“I expected to find some bacteria associated with the lower intestine such as E. coli, but was surprised to find there weren’t any, just lots of normal skin bacteria,” McQueen told the University student newspaper site . McQueen carries out research in the development of odour and its relationship to bacteria in textiles.

She had been expecting to find harmful bacteria, such as E. coli, in the crotch area, but there were only non-harmful, skin bacteria colonies. She did warn, however, that it was just one unpublished study on a single pair of jeans, and it may not be true for all cases.

Raw denim is growing in popularity, with other teenagers wearing the jeans for six-month stretches to get an individual look.

(news source http://www.emirates247.com/offbeat/student-wears-unwashed-jeans-for-15-straight-months-2011-01-26-1.347162)

Maybe we’re all just a bunch of germaphobes.

Breaking Ice

I have a new BFF today.

He’s my good pal.

My buddy.

My friend.

He’s a little furry.

And maybe a little smelly.

But I don’t mind at all. Especially today, when he doesn’t see his shadow.

I’m ready for an early spring.

Here’s some pictures of our world.

Yesterday it was 5° at 5:30 p.m. with 30 mph winds. After you do all that meteorological mumbo jumbo that comes out to equal -15 below zero wind chill.

Notice all the wind breaks out here on the high plains.

The wind slices you like a knife.

Coming down the road, you can see that the cows are thirsty. Instead of getting down into the breaks out of the brutal wind, they are huddled around the drinking tub.

But this is a first.

My husband J-Dub has seen many cows, and many drinking tubs, but has never seen a cow standing on top of a drinking tank before. Frozen solid.

It’s a wonder she didn’t fall through. She weighs approximately 750 pounds.

When I stood on it to cross over into the other pasture to chase a rolling black Stetson, it began to crack under my weight.

Which means I out-weigh a cow.

Probably by 100 pounds.

Not a happy thought.

It’s a real wonder I didn’t fall through. I carefully held onto the post and tiptoed on the edge.

J-Dub had to break the ice for them to get a drink. If you wonder how he does that, it’s probably how you imagine.

With his brute strength!

And an ax.

This is hard work, I don’t care who you are.

Add the bitter temperature, this isn’t even close to being fun.

It’s tough being a cow.

And tougher being a cowboy.

Today my sweet husband had to break ice on 18 different drinking tubs across the panhandle of Texas.

Did you enjoy your hamburger today?

Be sure and thank a cowboy.

Wicked wind

The weather today is no joke.
I went with J-dub to go feed a little. We came upon a herd of yearlings huddled around a water tank attempting to drink from the frozen tank.

J-dub grabbed an ax and began chopping ice. I got out to snap a couple of pics and before I knew it, my legs about fell off due to frostbite.

The wind whistled and roared across the great plains and cut us to the bone. Then it decided to get smart and whipped J-dubs hat right off his head and landed it on the other side of the fence.

Being the helpful hand that I am, I attempted to open the gate, but to no avail. So as my hard working, hatless husband swung his ax and shards and chunks of ice flew and splattered, I, with much trepidation walked across the frozen drinking tub into the other pasture to retrieve his hat.

Just as I was upon it, that wench of a wind decided to have some fun with me, and snatched the hat and ran farther away.

I’m sure it was quite a sight. A black cowboy hat tumbling across the pasture with a dumb ninny chasing it.

It would’ve been funny if it hadn’t been so dangerous. Even bundled up and running as fast as I could in snow boots, it didn’t take me long to realize how fearful and dangerous a winter storm with a 14 degrees below zero wind chill can be.

But now we’re home, safe and sound, with hat on head, or at least on a hook, fixin to chow down on some beans and cornbread, and counting our blessings.

Stay blessed and warm.