With the encouragement of my husband, I am going to bring back Cow Camp Chronicles. The reading should have a new twist now that Ruby is here with us. Thank you for following along as we share our adventures of a working cowboy family. June 5th Today is the day we are headed up to the cabin! Even though we had almost everything ready to go, it took us until noon or so to leave. Joe has a FULL load… 8 horses nose to tail, 5 days, all of our food, and then some. I have the baby and all of the baby things. On our way we stopped to feed Ruby and grab a drink at the brewery in Sheridan. After our initial pit stop, we had to stop again at the lake for another snack. Hoping to make it to the cabin before the milk monster would strike again. It must have rained recently because the road was pretty muddy going in. The Buffalo had walked across the road while it was wet making it pretty rough. Nothing the ole ranch car couldn’t handle. My heart always skips a beat when we top the final hill, with the cabin in view on the creek bottom past the game range sign. Once at the cabin, I got right to work bringing things in and cleaning up the dust. I noticed a horrible smell while cleaning and thought it was possibly sewer gas. Then to our dismay, we realized it was the water itself. Joe opened the lid to the well, which for reference is in our kitchen floor, and saw it had been likely contaminated. A dirty cabin and no water to clean it… I could cry. Joe went and got water from the creek to boil to clean Ruby’s bottles. We always make it work. I didn’t feel like going outside every time Ruby woke up in the night to start the generator. I warmed the bottles in boiling water on the stove which can run without it on propane. Then, I propped the baby up in the car seat while I used a hand pump under the glow of a DeWalt flashlight. By morning my back hurt from the hard kitchen chair and dad had snored through it all. June 6th As we finished unpacking, we decided to rip up the old linoleum in our room and tear out the closet. It made it so much cleaner and now the playpen fits in there too. Joe had to take out a bunch of teeny weeny nails that were used to put the flooring down. We don’t envy whoever had to put those things in. I decided to put Ruby in one of the dresses Grandma Ramona gave us before we go back into town. A few minutes later she was pretty fussy. I went to pick her up, staring at my hand wondering why it was wet. As I transferred the baby to the changing mat, a large amount of goo followed. No diaper on planet earth could have held the green explosion infront of me. 10 wipes, paper towels, and sanitizer got the job done. Clean and now sporting a cheetah shirt, we headed back to our house in Toston. We had to stop in Sheridan to feed Ruby, with Joe feeding me licorice while I fed her. Back in Toston, it was bath day in the sink. She never cried one time during the spa day or during me reading “If I Ran a Horseshow”. June 9th We worked on the water at the cabin again this morning. Shocking the well made the thingy at the bottom clog… pretty sure it’s called a foot. Anyway, because of that we had to pull the pipe out to fix that and also shorten it as the well must have caved in even more. In the afternoon we headed to Dillon to stop at Atomic’s “branding party” before going to Joe’s parents to trail cows to Snowline for the summer this weekend. When we got there I realized I forgot Ruby’s bassinet, but thankfully Grandma had a laundry basket just the right size. June 10th The crew saddled up around 4:30 this morning while I got the side by side set up for Ruby. We were up every hour last night so I slept in a bit until 5. Jessie, Jasper, Joe and Rachel were trailing cows horseback up to Snowline followed by Wayne driving the horse trailer. I caught up with them just outside of Lima. The fan on the side by side wasn’t working, so it kept overheating. Once we got everything across the railroad tracks and mothered, the Snowline crew came over to meet the baby. We swapped and hopped in the pickup back to the ranch. After saying our goodbyes, we searched high and low all over Dillon for some cheap slippers for Joe. All we found were $60 Crocs so we settled for a bag of Dots pretzels. June 11th Joe decided to tear apart the kitchen today. I was teasing him that we’re supposed to be nesting before the baby the born. Hammering the old cabinets apart was a bit too loud, so we put Ruby’s super cool ear muffs on. She napped as the demolition continued. Upper Canyon Outfitters was having an open house for their outreach program this afternoon. Joe helps with military trainings with their horses and was happy to see the crew. I think we have a very proud Dad, he loves to show Ruby off. June 13th
It was another rainy day cleaning the cabin. We finished rearranging the kitchen and are slowly getting things settled. Joe moved the washer into the spare room, but when we hooked it up we realized it now drains into the bath tub. We’ll have to amp up our redneck plumbing skills to fix it. I boiled creek water on the stove to warm it for Ruby’s bath since our water isn’t fixed yet. After the baby was squeaky clean, I took a “bath” too. I made do with what we had to get me by until we go to town Friday. I wiped myself down with hopefully still semi clean bath water. I guess if there was pee in there it’s better than contaminated well water. Wayne let us borrow two 50 gallon water drums that were originally used by his parents. The valves are pretty wore out, so Joe tipped one over in the back of the horse trailer to fill the water jugs we use to drink. Once we got all the water packed in for the night, I read Ruby “B is for Buckaroo” and we fell asleep next to stinky dad.
2 Comments
|
AuthorThis is a blog to share many stories, laughs, adventures and lessons learned by yours truly, Haley Potter. Archives
July 2023
|