Making Butter .....

 Just like in the old days, nothing came to a stop because you were hurt or had a pain here or there.  There was no molly-coddling, even if you were a kid.  If you fell off your horse or got THROWN off your horse, you were simply thrown back ON ... and away you went.  Not surprising, since there were no doctors around to fix you up anyway.  The nearest hospital was about 90 minutes away and fuel for the truck was scarce.  

Come to think of it, it's not much different today!  You can't find a decent doctor and the fuel prices are through the roof.  Anyway .....

Regardless of my back causing me problems, the kids have to be fed.  I really couldn't leave this chicken in the fridge any longer, so I threw it on the barbecue

Cooper and I will share this for the next few days.  It came out quite nicely, even if I'm not so great at using the Weber Q.  I had to stick him four times with the thermometer to get a good reading.  Quite yummy if I do say so myself.  I think Cooper would have tried to eat the whole thing.

Jonathan fared just as well.  Much easier to bake, these sweet potato crushed peanut muffins are his favorite.  Well, second favorite.  He would much prefer I just throw an entire package of Ritz crackers in his cage.  Other than that, I spent all day long just sitting on the couch with an ice pack.  Talk about boring!!!

So I scrounged up a couple more pictures.  As I mentioned, there was no Safeway or Walmart near the old ranch.  You had to live off the land, making all your own food.  There was always a milk cow or two around, which meant milking it every day!  Frances, who I went to school with, will recognize this picture.  

The same cow and her calves were hauled to the "new" ranch where she got milked every morning.  That means "someone" had to pour the milk through a sieve and filter to clean out the dirt and hair.  Sounds tasty, yes?  It was then placed in a large pan and stuck in the ice box to cool and let the cream come to the top.  

Once it settled, you scraped the cream off the top into the wooden butter churn.  You turned the handle until you couldn't turn it any more and VOILA ... you had butter.  Lastly, you had to use your hands to scrape it out of the churn and slap it into glass pans, returning it to the ice box.  Everything was washed up and used again the next day.  You can guess how I know that.  By the way, there was no adding color or salt.  Our butter was pretty much white, not yellow.  Yes, that's me and the neighbor kid barefoot in the corral.

Branding was always a community affair.  No one had enough family members to do it alone, so the local ranchers would gather together day after day and go from ranch to ranch in order to get all the work done.  If you didn't brand, you might lose some of your herd to cattle rustlers.  Even today that's a pretty lucrative business for some people.  Even WITH branding, we lost 5-10 head every year from rustlers.  Yes, they are still around to this day, but instead of driving them off, they haul them off in trailers.

So my back is better today ... at least 90 minutes into the day.  Every time I try to lay on the floor for the "fix", it pinches again, so I guess I'm relegated to the couch for another day.  Oh the boredom!!  And of course I'm going crazy-er just looking at all the stuff that needs to be done.  I could go back to the Chiropractor today, but I'm not sure I'm up for even MORE pain.  If I do, I'm taking the Jacuzzi/wine suggestion!!!