Ranch PT

What is Ranch PT you ask?

Its all the Rage in rural areas. Its why ranchers in their 40s look like they are 30. Its why Rancher's chest size exceeeds their waist size.

This daily dozen is guaranteed to put muscle on your chest and give you the back of Atlas.

Begin by getting up at 5:30. Run the obstacle course of the Wife's cats in the dark while putting on your pants, boots, shirt, and coat. Grab the cell phone. Check the weather forecast. Then go outside. Drive away with your lights off so the Wife gets to stay asleep.

Second, begin with 25 feed sack presses. Lift a feed sack onto the truck. Repeat 25 times. Drive out to the calves. Take each feed sack and empty it into a trough, lifting it above your head.

Next, return to the barn and load 25 80-pound suare bales. First, climb up into the stack of hay and toss off 25 bales. Then, lift them onto the truck, stacking them ever higher. Drive out to the calves and dump them one by one on the ground, taking time to yank off the twine.

Fourth, connect the feed trailer to the tractor or truck. Check the tightness of the ball. Fill the feed trailer with 20 50 pound bags of feed. Lift each bag and carry it to the trailer then lift it above your head and into the trailer. Lift the bag again to empty it. Repeat 20 times.

Fifth, drive out to the cow herd. Enjoy the sun coming up and the 25 mph North winds. It is a balmy 25 degrees. Ignore the broken tractor window. After all, its only a 20 minute drive at 25 mph. When you arrive, you MUST get the gate unlocked and drive through the gate BEFORE the 250 cows get to you OR you have to play the gate-cow boogie. Frozen hands are not an excuse for fumbling the combination as the thundering herd gets closer and closer.

Sixth ( optional ) - did you check the connection on the feed trailer? Did you check it? In this excercise, the feed trailer jumps off the ball and plows deeply into the ground. The trailer weighs 1000 pounds and the feed another thousand. Climb out of the tractor and lift the trailer out of the dirt and onto the ball. No jacks are allowed. This is only 500 pound dead lift thanks to the long toungue. Brace your legs and get a good grip.

Seventh, fix the leaking water tank. First, strip off your jacket and shirt. You won't need them and besides, the freezing breeze is refreshing. Next, slosh through the mud and water up to your knees to the water tank which is running wide open. Reach into the 32 dgreee water up to your armpits with both hands and a set of pliers and by feel only fix the float valve. Be glad it only takes five minutes. When you are done, air dry.

Eigth, fix the fence. You notice the fence charger indicates a short. Due to the roughness of the terrain, you must walk the fence. Its only a 600 acre pasture - just a mile on a side. If you run it, you will stay warmer and you will get done faster. A mile after you start, you find the short. But when you get back to the charger, its still not happy. You run back out and three miles later, find the final short. Congratualtiosn, you have run 8 miles.

Nine, pen the bull. As you leave the pasture, you notice fresh poop on the road. You drive on and find your number one bull in a wheat pasture laying next to a hay bale. You are a little amused as just three days ago he was four miles the other direction. Drive home and return with the four wheeler. Drive into the pasture and herd him to the fenceline and a gate, taking care to not let him head for the creekbed which is the other way. Which he does. Let him lead you on a blind chase through cedar and brush until both of you fly through the air into a gully, where the four wheeler gets jammed tight. Now the grunting begins. Push, pull, shove and grunt to get the four wheeler unjammed and out of the gully. If this takes less than two hours, you are an expert. Drive around again looking for the bull. Head home when you don't. Break into curses when you get home and the bull is grazing in the front yard.

Tenth - unpen the bull. Before getting a drink and eating - your first of the day ( its now 2 pm ) You check the 2 year old bulls in the corral and notice one has his horn stuck under a gate. The other bulls are making fun of him and taking shots at his ass while he bellows and smashes the pen walls. Chase the other bulls away and then climb into the pen with Gomer. Take note that the gate area is a choke point and yo have just a few feet to manuever around Bozo. You push and pull on the gate and use a pry bar to try to force Dickwad loose whiel he bellows and strains to get loose. You try opening the gate, but Asswipe then pushes the gate all the way open then pulls it shut in wild oscillations. You wrestle the gate shut. Its time for the saw. You get the gas-powered cutoff saw, which won't start. At. All. So its hacksaw time. You get the hacksaw and start sawing though 3 inches of horn while the bull bellows and snorts.

Eleventh, change the tire. Head to the house. The cell phone rings. Its the Wife. She has TWO flats and she is ten miles away. Head for the truck. As you get in it, its at an odd angle. Sure enough, its a family affair. Change your flat first. Then, go change her flats.

Twelfth, bag carry cooldown. The Wife has done her montlhy shopping. Carry her groceries in.

Congratulations, its now 4 pm. You have completed the Ranch PT daily dozen and can now eat and drink.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Bill Roggio on the Fourth Rail has the AAR from the recent battle at Tal-Afar where a mixed US-Iraqi Division size offensive took down the largest terrorist encampment since Falljujah. Wretchard at the Belmont Club carries a similar AAR from Colonel Brown in Mosul. Both stories tell of an enemy increasingly relying on lower quality, younger recruits with little experience who are no more than cannon fodder.

Wretchard follows up with a post that leads to a discussion of US Casualties.

A picture is worth a thousand words. So I used data from the Strategy Page on US Casualties and produced this graph. I chose a polynomial 4th order trend line.

It would be nice to have data on civillian casualties, car bombs, insurgents captured, killed, etc as well to put on this graph. And I sure Centcom has all kinds of graphics that would put this to shame.

But I think it speaks for itself. Either resources are being held in abeyance for a big surge during the election, or the terrorists in Iraq have shot their wad.

Possible Biblical Floods for North Texas?

Rita-Blogging going on.

But what caught my eye was the Forth Worth National Weather Service discussion.

We are talking 20 inches plus!

"EXTENDED MODELS NOW IN FRIGHTENINGLY GOOD AGREEMENT WITH CUTTINGOFF LOW ALONG WEST COAST. THIS WOULD CONFINE WESTERLIES TONORTHERN STATES...EFFECTIVELY CUTTING OFF RITA ESCAPE ROUTE TO THENORTHEAST. IF THIS SCENARIO PLAYS OUT...REMNANTS OF RITA MAYLINGER IN NORTH TEXAS THROUGH TUESDAY. PWATS WOULD REMAINEXTRAORDINARY...AND TREMENDOUS STORM TOTALS COULD RESULT. TPCFORECAST HOWEVER FAVORS EJECTING RITA NORTH QUICKLY. TOO MUCHUNCERTAINTY NOW...BUT WILL KEEP POPS IN THROUGH TUESDAY NIGHT."

Ready or Not

Here comes Rita.

We are 14 inches behind in rainfall for the year. The ranch's rain log shows us very dry beginning in February and rainfall running 30 to 40% of normal since then.

A 75 year old rancher next to me told me, "I cannot remember it being this dry. I have ponds that are empty that have never been empty."

A biologist who I see at the local Gas Station told me that he has never seen such drought conditions in his plant studies. And he has been in the North Texas area for over 30 years.

Everyone has been on hay this summer. Cows all around me are thin, some with ribs showing, when they should be getting fat.

Hay harvests are running at 40% of normal. A bottom across from me gave 90 bales total this summer when it usually gives 300.

Here at the Ponderosa we have spent more money than usual on our winter pastures. We have carefully disced our fields, put out a mixture of ryegrass, rye, wheat and turnips along with a lot of 17-17-17-4 fertilizer - and this was after feeding hay for 45 days on these fields - the equivalent of 1 ton of manure per acre was applied.

Now we need rain.

And we just may get it.

The only problem is that we plan to work 300 mommas and their babies this weekend.

So what to do? Postpone it? Or go for it?

One the plus side is we get it done. A good worming translates into extra gain.

But the negatives are not getting it done before the storm hits. Then having some cows bunched in metal pens while there is lightening around. Not good.

So looks like we will postpone and just enjoy the rain this weekend. If we get a few inches, we should have knee high grass by Thanksgiving.

Chicken Fried Steak

Ranch Wife and I just got back from California. We stayed in the wonderful Westin Hotel in Los Angeles and used it as a base to explore La-La Land aka Lo-Cal.

We hiked on Mt San Antonio, went to the LA County Museum of Natural History(NHM), read some books, and put in some pool time.

The NHM was the most amusing time of the whole trip as we found out that we eat Chicken Fried Steak every day here in Texas.

First, the NHM had an interesting exhibit based upon Jared Diamond's book Collapse , which I have read. The exhibit was created with input from Dr Diamond. My compaint about the exhibit is that it did not go into detail nor did it provide local detailed applications of Dr. Diamond's key themes about resource lost and resource restoration. Sure, they covered the main themes in his book, but could have looked around for local examples. Fish sizes and fish catches just offshore could have been compared to samples from the local marine sanctuaries. I have dove all over the California Coast and have seen first hand the differences between the virgin seabead and the overfished regions. Another contrast could have been the forested slopes the the Angeles Crest before and after logging.

Another interesting thing about the exhibit were the two Chinese men discussing the exhibit in English. One was telling the other than Anglos came to North America for the "resources because they had ruined Europe and they were starving in Europe. "

Huh?

The Pilgrims came for religious freedom. The french came for the fur trade in order to further enrich the Crown. The Spanish came for gold. And when they came to the New World, they starved.

A dead skunk in the road

I'd rather clean up skunk roadkill in East Texas on a Dog Day in August than pick up a Newsweek ever again.

The recent screwup at Newsweek has stirred up the blogosphere like nothing since Rathergate. Last night I read the Newsweek article and the commentary on the web and thought I was Ok.

But this morning I saw a Newsweek and felt like I'd just run over a skunk.

One has to ask several questions.

First, if they, meaning the MSM, blew something as big as this, then what else have they told us which is not true in part or in whole?

Is this lack of clarity due to incompetence or is it due to maliciousness?

The Powerline excerpt of todays White House press conference is telling.

"Press:With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?"

WTF? Is that a question or is that a reporter lecturing a White House Official?

1. One of the top TWO US Weekly news magazined LIED. They printed a story which had no basis in fact and was used by Anti-US forces to inflame public opinion against the USA.

2. People have died as a direct consequence of this story.

3. The press is openly hostile to a White House official who is stating a Fact - that the retraction is a good first step.

4. Any polite individual and most Americans would agree with the White House that Newsweek needs to make amends.

5. The Newsweek story and the resulting press reaction as shown during the press conference shows just how out of touch the press is with both the Real World, US public opinion, and common standards of decency.

6. The ongoing MSM pattern of deception and agitation raises a disturbing trend that verges on sociopathy.

In her book The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout depicts the various degrees of evil inherent in a sociopath. She also gives us some rules to spot these often dangerous personalities.

The first and strongest rule she has is that if you catch a person in three lies, then you MUST break your ties with them, because lies are the primary hallmark of a sociopath. This is the Modern's restatement of the old saying, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

How many lies has the MSM pushed in the last 12 months?

Ask yourself if this was a Medical Doctor or a Lawyer or an Engineer? Would this person still have a job? Or would they be in jail?

There is only one conclusion one can reach - that there are persons in the MSM that are sociopathic and who mean us, meaning most Americans, real harm, either by stupidity or outright maliciousness.

UPDATE: The New Criterion has a quote from Dennis Praeger.

UPDATE2: Orson Scot Card, author of the brilliant Ender's Game jumps on the bandwagon as well. He gives us an essayist's eyeball view of the press crowd in all their hickish faults.

Who's Your Daddy

We shifted the herd yesterday. A few cows were left behind and did not want to play follow the leader.

These dissidents all had newborn calves. One old biddy did not have a calf and made a beeline to the other side of the field. She ran down into a gully and did not come out.

That's weird. So I walked a mile and went and looked. Her calf was stuck in some old fence in the gully.

I always carry pliers. So I jumped down into the gully and whipped them out and got to work. But little girl was wrapped up real good.

But mom kept intervening. She would charge down into the gully then I would counter-charge her and she would run away. I would cut three wires and then she would come back. Meanwhile the calf is bucking and bawling and kicking me while I am dogging it and digging for wire in its fur and peeking over the gully looking for mom.

After 20 wires, I had three left before the struggling calf could run. I looked up and did not like what I saw.

Mom came back with reinforcements. All four moms plowed into the gully, snorting snot and hurling buff cuss words at me.

I decided to stay put and finish the job. I steadied myself and cut the last wires and yanked the calf free and shoved it towards the mommie storm troopers.

I jumped up on the bank and ran out into the pasture. I ran for 20 yards and stopped to look back.

The calf was right behind me with the angry beasts right behind! The calf was running for its life and I could almost hear it calling , "Daadddddyyy!!"

I headed back for the gully and the cover the trees offered. The calf followed me, grunting and moaning all the way. The moms were right behind, but they had spread out and were circling around.

I jumped into the gully at full speed, landing flat on my back. Pain jerked through my leg causing me to stop breathing. The calf came right over the bank and landed ten yards from me.

In my mind I could see the cows leaping into the gully around me and beating me up so bad I would not get out nor would I be found..

I stood up and jumped up the bank towards the trees, clawing up the dirt face, my ankle useless.

I looked back and saw the calf trying to come up the bank as the moms swarmed over where I had just been, trying to get to the calf.

The bank defeated the calf, but I kept going, hopping on one leg, until I got to a fence. I tried to leap it but my leg would not work. I flopped on the ground and lowcrawled through the poison ivy under the bottom wire.

I stood up on the other side and saw the moms and calf run away. My leg gave away and I fell to the ground with pain so bad I could not breathe.

My ankle swelled up. I swapped into running shoes. And spent the rest of the day on the tractor planting. And spent the night with ice on my ankle.

This morning I woke to rain and smiled.

And in the shower I almost passed out from the pain when I bumped my foot.

I saw the moms this evening with their calves. They were happy and the calves were doing well.

And my ankle did not hurt as much.