Across The Range

Happy snowy Saturday everyone! :D It is pretty outside right now with an overcast sky and snowflakes gently falling. Perfect weather to curl up in a blanket, sip hot chocolate and read a good book. Looks like we are in for more winter weather over the next few days. We've had some windy days the past week or two and the jungle gym blew over again.

Last week we weighed Dad's calves at Graham's. We sorted them into small, medium and large groups so they'll be even groups when Dad sells them. Cattle prices are going down, feed is going up, etc. so we aren't sure when/what we should be selling and what kind of plan we should have. Erin and I weighed our calves at home here. The scale isn't working right now (it bounces around from -100 LB to + 100 LB when nothing is even on the scale) so we had to load the calves on the horse trailer and weigh them over the gravel scale. I'm really happy with the gain I've been getting on my calves as I've always had lower gain that expected. With the low price though I don't really want to sell right now but I don't want to keep for a lot longer either. The joys of owning cattle. :P :D

We finally got our meat back about a month ago from the butcher shop. Erin took the calf in the beginning of Oct. and it was supposed to hang for 21 days. It was the beginning of Dec before the regular cuts of beef were ready and then a couple more weeks before the jerky and patties were ready. They are short on employees and felt bad about how long the whole process took so gave us three extra bags of patties and didn't charge us for processing the jerky. So, that was nice.

Erin and I went to a newer fabric store in town. The lady that owns it used to work at Walmart and she was always nice so I don't mind supporting her...well, as long as the prices are way higher than the other fabric stores. :D She has discontinued patterns for $2 and, if you buy a piece of fabric, $1 which is a very good price here. Granted you can only get discontinued patterns but they aren't that old because I recognize them from some of the pattern books that must have been recently replaced.

I got a color copy done of the Paula Vaughan cross-stitch I started years *coughs* ago. Last night I colored the parts I've done which should help me to pick up where I'm more quickly. When you have larger areas of cream, tan, and grey it can be trickier to tell exactly where you are at on the pattern...at least that is the excuse I'm using. :P :D This is the longest a project has ever taken me and I want to start doing a little bit at least each week. It will be my first and last Paula Vaugh.

Last night I started working on a design for my quilt. After many years of use my log cabin quilt is falling apart...literally! I've had the fabric for a while and knew I wanted to use the Bear's Paw pattern for part of the design but also wanted to incorporate some other patterns. I came across one of Mom's quilt books the other day and found a couple other patterns which will work quite nicely. :) I'll be using Bear's Paw, Lone Star and Tree(Flying Geese pattern) and might see if I can find another pattern or two that might fit in with the theme. I love the log/rustic look (my dream place is a log cabin nestled back in the mountains :)) and was so excited when I found these fabrics because they are exactly what I was looking for and fit my tastes just perfect. :D

Over the past four days about a foot of snow fell. It was so pretty! That is an usual amount for this area, especially coming just over a few days. I took lots of pictures and will post them hopefully sooner than later. :)

Yesterday morning was -35 C and this morning (24 hours later) it was -1 C. I think that is the biggest weather change I've ever seen in that short amount of time. The wind howled last which actually was a good thing. Dad was concerned about drifting in the corrals. Last time we had a wind after it snowed(we didn't have near this amount) the snow drifted over one of the gates to where the calves could walk over top, the alley drifted in, etc. So, anyways, it blew the snow hard enough so that it didn't drift-it just blew away! It also helped a bit that Dad built some "wind fences" with bales. Anyways, it warmed a bit more (6 C) and now the remaining snow is wet so we shouldn't have to worry about any drifting. We are in for some more wind but at least it is warm. :)

Wind gusts up to 90/100 kph today and then it is supposed to be down to - 20C in a few days. Gotta love this weather. :P :D