Shari’s Gone Country

Semper Fi!

Yes, I served in the USMC. Spent three years on active duty during the Vietnam Conflict.

I must say, joining the Marine Corps was the best thing I’ve ever done. Going through Officer Candidate School (for college students) in preparation for accepting my commission taught me much about life, and persistence.

As an Officer I learned critical thinking in ways I could never have learned them as an employee, or even as a manager.

Yes, 232 years later, we’re still “The Proud, The Few, The Marines”.

While on active duty as a USMC Officer (Woman Marine) I was one of 212 women wearing that uniform… pretty special company. It’s an experience I’ll cherish forever.

Thank you… and Happy Birthday… USMC!

I know… Who’s Algernon, and why should you care.

Algernon is our big ram. He’s been visiting a neighboring farm for the last month, hanging out with a couple dozen ewes. Well actually, he’s been working.

His job? Breed every last one of them at least once… more if necessary or if he feels like it.

We weren’t watching the roundup when Clyde and Bill put a rope on him and got him into the truck to go visiting… but the coming home was a lot more peaceful. At least Amber said she didn’t see any fresh wounds on Clyde.

Coming home… With Bill slowly navigating the gravel road and finally our dirt driveway, and Clyde and Amber riding in the back of the compact pickup truck along with Algernon, it was a picture of one happy ram returning victoriously.

Before unloading him, we put our brand-spanking new breeding harness on him. One of our mentors (the gal we got him from) always uses one of these devices so she can tell her ram has at least attempted to breed.

Algernon has been through this process, so getting it on is no problem. He’s such a gentle giant.

Time to let him get off the truck and into the pen with “his girls”.

Clyde played “cowboy” holding onto his lead rope. Cindy and I were the ones who would help him turn right into the pen.

With Algernon in a hurry… Clyde was doing his best to keep up long enough to get him securely into the pen before giving Al total freedom.

In a matter of seconds, Al was reunited with his girls. Let the party begin!

“Let’s see… this one smells pretty good. Oh, she tastes good, too. Come to daddy, sweetie.”

“Wham, bam… hey… come back here! I’m not done yet!”

And so it goes. Algernon is one busy boy. He’s busily checking each girl. He grunts and growls and licks ears. The girls are getting interested. They show him “their stuff” stopping to pee so he can become aroused.

Thirty minutes later, we’re sure he’s bred two of the girls and we head for dinner.

As of this morning. Score two for Al. And, he’s got a “maybe”. This evening will be another “go around”.

Come April, we should have some little very cute little black lambs running around.

It’s now Friday morning and I’m about to do something I’m not too sure about. What’s worse… I’m not the only one.

You see, Cindy is my chauffeur and she absolutely, positively hates driving in any kind of city traffic. Bev has to work, and there’s no way we’ll let her take time off and not get paid.

So, bright and early… as in blinding sun in our eyes, we begin the long drive from our little desert hideaway to St George, actually clear to the other end of it. Make that a distance of some 75 miles.

Until we get to the St George cut-off, the sun’s not too bad. Now, combine the rising sun (in the southeast sky) with a two-lane highway going through a mountain pass, and you’ve got a recipe for adventure. You can encounter deer, slow moving trucks, school buses stopped along side the road… even falling rocks.

Thankfully, all we encountered was a slow driver “Blondi in a Caddie” who was being overly cautious as she braved the pass.

Our directions were simple enough, just stay on the same road until after we cross over I-15 and pass the cow pasture. When we see llamas on the left, the driveway to the dental office is on the right.

After a quick stop at Starbucks… my first in nearly 10 months, we proceed to the dental office.

Now, this isn’t your normal well-stocked very modern office, where you know your bill will be three figures just for being there, let alone having anything done. No, this is a free clinic ($5.00 donation greatly appreciated). Since I don’t have any income, I qualify (not sure that’s a claim to fame, either).

It’s 10am and time to hop into the chair. No arm rests, the head rest doesn’t adjust… oh well, just open wide for a quick x-ray. Yes, the dental tech did have a lead-filled protective vest for my other vitals.

Problem confirmed, here comes the dentist. He’s a big ol’ boy… real cowboy looking. And, he starts jabbering from the time he enters the room.

After a bit of probing (kind of lancing the abscess) he says to the tech… No sense probing any more and creating more pain. Give me two full vials of Novacaine. He then explains to her (she’s really new) that when you’re working on the mandibula (guess that’s the lower jaw) you’re better off just to numb it to the max than do one now and one again later… Thanks Doc… I think.

She’s not getting the syringe loaded correctly and he’s afraid she’ll bend the needle so he reaches across my face and loads the damn thing right over me… Good thing I’m not squeamish.

Within 5 minutes, the whole right side of my face is totally numb, including my ear, and half-way down my neck. Doc returns again… this time he’s at least added a surgical mask. He’s still jabbering, though. I don’t even try to answer. After all, my mouth is wide open, there’s the little vacuum thingy, and his fingers all in my mouth.

One probe, a request for something called a “cow horn” that has been stored in a sterile plastic baggy, a quick twist, and suddenly, the tech is stuffing a big piece of gauze in my mouth and telling me to bite down.

“All done”, she says.

Total time in the chair, less than 20 minutes… no fuss, no muss, not even any pain.

So, what was Doc jabbering about? He wants to hunt some “legal” prairie dogs. Most are protected in Utah.

Even though I couldn’t open my mouth, Cindy joins in the chat and we kill another 15 minutes talking about where he’s from… Wyoming, has two other brothers who are also dentists. He even had a dental office in one of the towns I spent my toddler years in… Wheatland.

Two days later, most of the swelling (abscess) has gone away. The antibiotic is killing whatever infection is there. My system is surviving nicely, thanks to an understanding “family”.

Mom even made meatloaf yesterday, with mashed potatoes, gravy, and well-cooked cauliflower. She’s made jello for me, as well as shared some of her tea.

Unless plans have changed… I think I have to “grow up” to real food tonight. I heard hamburgers are on the menu, and I don’t want to get left out.

Ya’ know… it could have been worse.

Oh, you didn’t know there was more than one crash? Yes, “Shari’s Gone Country” has been missing in action for a few days. That is the result of a hardware failure at the datacenter.

At the same time, I’ve gone missing in action thanks to a tooth that “went sour” and abcessed… not a fun thing. You see, I look more than “chipmunky”… I look like a pocket gopher with a full pouch.

That’s really bad news, too… Cindy dispatches those critters with her handy .410 shotgun!

Now, let me tell you… when you live in the desert, have no income ’cause you don’t have a job, you’re at the mercy of “the system”. Thankfully, we have a clinic in Enterprise (17 miles away) that at least provides an evaluation. The Physician’s Assistant is very nice and knowledgeable… except about teeth and abscesses that occur.

I got lucky, if you could call it that.

The clinic knew of a free dental clinic in St. George (67 miles one way). The catch… I had to get there within the next 4 hours for an “intake evaluation”. That means they’d discover I have no income, I have a very swollen jaw, and say… yep, you’re qualified. See you at 10 on Friday… two days later.

The PA had also prescribed a “kick butt” antibiotic that they assured me was on the Wal-Mart $4.00 generic Rx list. She had wanted to shoot me, but didn’t have the med on hand, so would have to pick up a ’script while I was in St. George. Enterprise is too small to support it’s own pharmacy.

Wouldn’t you know it. The folks at the Wal-Mart in Bloomington were being their usual selves. We arrived there at 4:25 pm to pick up a ’script that had been called in at 1 pm. No, they didn’t know anything about it… oh wait… “have you been here before? We found it… and need more information from you.”

At that time, we again confirmed the kick-butt stuff was on their $4.00 list, and they agreed.

Forty minutes later (after standing in line three times) the cashier said “that will be $49.52 please”. Say what?????

Now it was after clinic hours, no one answered the phone… Good Grief, and I was supposed to take this stuff IMMEDIATELY… as in as soon as possible after we could hustle our butts from Enterprise to St. George.

So, ask the nice pharmacist… how much could I get for $4.00? I could see at least 14 maybe 20 tabs in the bottle. By my math, that would let me get started on this stuff while we got a different ’script. Even if there were only 10 in the bottle… at $49.52 that would be $5.00 per pill… but no, there were at least 14 or more.

His reply… each pill is $12.00!

I’ll do your eyes a favor and not repeat what I wanted to say besides “see ya!”

So, it’s back to Beryl with no meds. But there’s good news… Jackie the PA had prescribed a combo of Ibuprofen and Tylenol. I could run the dose up to 800 mg of Ibuprofen (had to figure if it was in the Tylenol product). Now, that stuff kicked the pain… and even helped reduce the swelling.

Let’s see… It’s now Wednesday night. This tooth went bad over the weekend, and the swelling started Monday night. So there was little sleep Monday, less sleep Tuesday… I mean even the dog slept on the couch since I was flopping around like a fish out of water.

I did get a good night’s sleep Wednesday night.

Thursday… it’s back to St George to a different pharmacy for the ’script. Only this time, I take the “Enterprise Senior Bus” as Bev is the driver. We leave our house shortly after 8 am.

Now, the road to St. George isn’t exactly a super highway, except for that nice smooth 4-lane section at “The Ledges”. The bus isn’t one of those smooth-riding coaches. It’s a rattle-trap with few amenities other than heat and air conditioning.

The good news… about 11am I finally take the first dose!

The rest of the day is spent ferrying folks from place to place. We go to Costco, Deseret Books, Wal-Mart, IFA and finally to lunch at “The Golden Corral”, an awesome buffet. Not having eating more than a couple of small containers of yogurt over the past 60 hours… I’m famished. Thankfully I can handle the meat loaf, mashed potatoes/gravy, mac and cheese, steamed zucchini, and even bread pudding.

That took the edge off!

And with that, one more store stop and then back to Enterprise to off load the groceries and supplies into the truck and on to Beryl. Boy did the hot pack feel good when I got home!

Now, normally I could care less about the baseball playoffs, unless the Seattle Mariners are playing. However, since I now share space with three Ohio natives… I’m slowly becoming a Cleveland Indians fan, as well as a Browns fan (only if Dallas or Seattle isn’t playing), an Ohio State fan (again, only if Oregon or Oregon State aren’t playing), and who knows what will happen during the basketball season. I’m no longer a Jailblazer, I mean Trailblazer fan.

At any rate, the past couple of weeks, our evenings have been spent watching the baseball playoffs. I mean, to the point that we’ve missed “Dancing with the Stars”, “Deal or No Deal”, “Extreme Makeover - Home Edition” and even, “The Bachelor”. Luckily, I’ve been able to catch re-broadcasts of “The Next Iron Chef”.

We did tune one TV to “Survivor” on Thursday night.

At any rate, now things can get more back to normal around here. It’s bad enough that the sun sets right in the middle of prime TV time, and I have to run out and put the chickie’s to bed. Soon though, the sun will set much earlier… even as early as the evening feeding time.

I remember last year, when I first arrived, we’d trudge through the snow at about 4pm, fighting a 20 mph hour wind and well below zero wind chill. Oh my, and that’s all right around the corner again.

Monday, we were up before sunrise (something we don’t normally do). While Cindy had to go to work at the neighbor’s farm, Bev, Mom and I were headed for a day of fun in Mesquite, NV.

Even though Bev was pretty sore from falling off Neche, she was still able to drive the Senior Citizen bus to St. George where we hooked up with the other seniors and boarded a comfy tour bus for the short ride to Mesquite.

Interestingly, as you go down I-15, it’s only about 10 miles to the border… of Arizona. Just after entering Arizona, you descend through the Virgin River Gorge… quite a marvel of shale cliffs and a narrow river bed. At times it seems the highway is nearly on top of the  river bed.

Within another 25 or so miles, we cross into Nevada and the gambling mecca of Mesquite. This town’s claim to fame is that it’s the closest place to gamble when you live in Southern Utah.

After getting checked in at the Gold Card Services, we were off to seek the riches.

Considering it wasn’t yet 10AM, this was nearly a shock to my system. I’d visited Spirit Mountain in Oregon, but generally didn’t get there until late afternoon… somehow sitting at a video poker machine bright and early on Monday morning didn’t stir my juices.

I guess I had “that aura” and the machines new it… my money wasn’t going far.

Bev and Mom were having better luck, and Barb (Bev’s cousin) was “the big winner”. I caught up with her as she was hastily rounding up little buckets. She had hit a “900 nickel” jackpot and the machine was spitting nickels at her. And that was her SECOND JACKPOT!

Have you ever considered how many nickels that is? That’s over 22 ROLLS of nickels!

We gathered little buckets and big buckets, until finally she had filled four big buckets of nickels. Time to find a cashier and get some folding money. What a sight… both of us lugging these heavy little buckets from the far end of the casino, to the middle, where we found the cashier.

Total winnings… over 80 bucks. Now, I think she put about 30 bucks into the machine, but that’s still a nice little profit.

In the meantime, Mom had hit a little jackpot and cashed in, so she was playing on the casino’s money, too.

Oh… about that time, I finally looked at the coupon book we were given. Lo and behold… there was one for a free beer… Yeah, it was still early and I’d only recently found my first cup of coffee… but the possibility of a really cold, good beer set me on the hunt.

Oh barkeep! What’s that… you have Sam Adams on tap? I’d like one of those on this here coupon. Splat, phusuuoop! Geez… the keg is empty.

Ok, make a Coors Original, please.

Ah, the sweet taste of a good beer… one with all the alcohol still there. Yep, this one is a 5% by content as opposed to that watered down stuff you get in Utah… maximum 3.2% on ALL BEER.

Pretty soon now, we head for lunch… again a casino freebie. The buffet looks a lot better than it tastes. Nothing really wrong with the taste, it’s just that nothing is spectacular. I have a breaded pork chop that’s a bit dry. Bev has stuff green peppers and fried chicken. They’re ok, but nothing spectacular. Barb goes for the rainbow trout and announces it’s overcooked. Mom finds the liver and onions and is quite happy.

Deserts hit the spot… homestyle bread pudding with vanilla sauce, and frozen chocolate and vanilla yogurt with chocolate syrup.

We still have two or more hours to gamble. I’ve been hanging on to a few bucks, just in case I smell better to the machines. As luck would have it, Mom let’s me have here beer coupon… she doesn’t drink. Another Coors please.

I spend the afternoon wandering around, sipping my beer, and finding other seniors. Slowly we begin gathering at the front door for the return ride to St. George and home.

Shortly after 7:30 pm (over 12 hours since we first left home) we arrive home again. All in all, Mom’s ahead a little. Bev’s ahead a little… and I’m the big loser.

We all agree on one thing… don’t need to go to Mesquite again for another year.

Finally, we got the trench completely backfilled, with the additional frost-free hydrant at the sheep pen. No more dragging hoses around (I’m talking about the really long ones), and then having to manually drain them in the sub-freezing weather.

The horses are a little undone. We’ve moved most of their water containers to a central location, adjacent to the frost-free at their corral. Dakota will continue to have her water barrel, as she still gets confined from time to time. You see, Dusty still thinks he’s “alpha”… Neche, the mare has yet to show him who’s boss.

We got two cords of aspen a couple weeks ago, and Cindy has been taking out any frustrations on the pile. She splits, and sometimes, I go out and stack. We’re stacking between the trees this year instead of hauling it around to the backyard. That will keep our dogs from using the wood pile as a personal toy box, hauling chunks everywhere.

Algernon, our ram has gone visiting.

Neighbor Clyde (the guy who helped us with leveling the stable area) has sheep, and his ram is a little young. Also, some of his ewes are cousins to Algernon, having been bred from his father.

At any rate, Bill ( a neighbor with a pickup) and Clyde came over Thursday night and got him. It was really funny, ’cause I knew they would be over, but thought they’d at least come to the door and let us get pictures of the great caper.

I went out after dinner, about an hour before sundown and noticed Algernon wasn’t in his pen. Well, that required a trip over to Clyde’s, where we found him in the height of glory. He was “grinnin’ and pickin’ “, having bred about half the ewe’s within the last hour.

I mentioned to Clyde that I thought he’d at least come to the door. His response…

“We thought we’d just go into the pen, put a rope on him, and put him in the truck, then come get you. Things didn’t turn out quite that way. Once I got a hold of him, he was more than a handful. It was all Bill and I could do to get him into the truck… so we just kept going.

After we got here, the dogs wanted to help, and he wasn’t ready for that… what a rodeo it was, just getting him from the truck into the pen”.

Later, I heard from one of his fellow church members that his arm is pretty skinned up… the result of Al dragging him around the pen. Even Bill asked Bev how much Algernon weighed. Bev’s answer: over 300 pounds.

Saturday brought more lousy weather, so once again, we laid low, doing only what we had to do. That meant getting chores done, and cleaning the horse pen. I needed the manure for the expanded compost pile.

Sunday… time to work the horses.

I got Dakota into the round pen and had a very good session. She remembered “back” with the rope wiggle, and even did a pretty good job of yielding her hindquarters, remembering to step over with her lead foot.

I lunged her for a while, without a lead line, asking her to change directions and turn inward to me. I can sure tell she’s a “right-brained” horse. Asking her to turn left and getting the proper result is challenging, so we’ll be doing extra repetitions on that side.

Neche was next. She was saddled, and Bev took her to the round pen. After some short lunging, Bev thought it would be time to ride her. After all, she’s well-broken. Things were going well enough that Cindy took Mom with her to Clyde’s place.

The idea was that Clyde was going to help Cindy with more of Dusty’s breaking. Well, Clyde wasn’t home, but his new calves had arrived. That kept Cindy and Mom there a little longer than expected.

Just before they left, Cindy had suggested that Bev ride Neche out of the round pen and onto our acreage. So far, so good.

Now, I’m not real sure if Bev has ridden much in the last 20 years, or how much she had ridden while growing up. I do know that no matter what she wanted to do (neck reigning), Neche wasn’t real responsive. Maybe is was the hackamore bridle that Bev wasn’t used to using.

At any rate… Neche wanted to go back to the round pen… so that’s where they went. Bev was tiring of walking in circles, and besides, her butt was starting to hurt. Maybe she should get off…

I wasn’t thinking, or I’d have offered to hold the reigns while she dismounted. Like me, Bev’s got short legs, and neither of us have enough “stretch” to get either from the ground to the stirrup, or visa versa.

Next thought… maybe Bev could ease Neche over to the rail, and just dismount onto the rail… yeah right.

At any rate, Bev had somehow taken her foot out of the right stirrup, and couldn’t get it back into the stirrup. Wearing tennis shoes wasn’t helping. Besides that, the stirrups on her saddle are real narrow.

All this time, they’re still walking around the edge of the round pen. That is, until Bev’s foot banged the round pen rail…

Neche is a bit spooky about the darndest things… The banging rail was all she needed. Let’s go to the left. Let’s go straight really fast for a couple of steps… gotta get away from that noise. Wait… what’s that on my back? Oh, it’s sliding off… going, gone.

And Bev was in a pile face-first, in the soft round pen sand. At least there was no manure.

I quickly checked to make sure she was conscious and then went to get Neche. I didn’t think she’d want Neche to walk on her at that point.

Fortunately, Bev’s only bruised… deeply, but no broken bones, and she’ll live to ride another day.

As for Neche… Well, when Cindy returned, she hopped on her and rode for quite a while. I’d love to have ridden, too, but Neche wanted no part of me, or the hay bale I was standing on to mount her. Talk about hurt feelings… it’s as if she looked at me and said, “No way, heavyweight! Bev was enough for one day.”

For all you intrepid readers of Shari’s Gone Country… welcome!

I’m still putting the finishing touches here, such as hooking up the photo gallery, and creating truly workable tags, but I’ve moved all the old posts from Blogger. I’m sorry about not moving the comments, but was unable to totally control all the variables.

If I find a way to move the comments and maintain all the integrity (IP addresses, dates, usernames, etc) I will do so in the future, as I’m not readily deleting that blog, simply redirecting it here.

Watch for posts regarding our activities this past week… it’s been another wild ride!

Yeah, I know… it’s been nearly a week since I last posted.

Here’s why… another one of those simple, “dig a trench, lay a water line, cover it up” and you’re done projects.

First, to bring you up to date… we didn’t get any snow over the weekend, but it was pretty cold on Saturday. We pretty much “hid out” inside that day. I guess you could say we kind of took most of the day off, with both football and baseball games on the TV.

Sunday was more of the “get ready for winter” stuff, and that included work on the compost pile. Bev and I spent about three hours cleaning the horse pen and stalls so we’d have hot, fresh manure to add to the compost pile. When the wind came up, we declared ourselves done for the day.

Monday, I hand cut cucumbers, onions, tomatillos, green tomatos and sweet red peppers so we could can “sweet relish”. Got enough for nearly 8 quarts. Yes, we can our relish by the quart since we use it so much. We managed to get the first 4 quarts done before running out of spices… and even though we’d already run to the corner store… 17 miles one way, we were content to make do with alternate spices for the next 4 quarts.

Tuesday, we spent the day getting ready for our neighbor, Ray to bring his big backhoe over for the “trench project”. The first issue we always have here, is where do all these old irrigation lines go, and what happens if we cut one? Do we have a geyser?

Bev and I cleaned the big hole we’d excavated last spring. This is the one next to the chicken coop, where the first frost-free hydrant will go. In the process, we found a one-inch galvanized line (about 36 inches deep) heading somewhat north from below the nipple for the frost free. Where the hell does it go? What does it feed? We know it’s a “charged line”.

We tried several times to locate the line, even having Ray do a couple of “pot holes”, but were unable to locate it. Oh well… we’ll just have to keep an eye on any wet spots, or if we here the well pump running at odd times.

By dark Tuesday, we’d managed to dig about 25 feet of the trench. I has to be 36 inches deep to be below the frost line here. It was particularly difficult as the chicken run limited access with the backhoe… no room for the stabilizers.

Add to that we just knew there were two lines about 6 or 8 inches below the surface that we had be locate, cut and cap. Again, no idea if they were hot, or charged… or even where they came from or went. Cindy and I had both encountered them when we were trenching in the chicken run… just 8 inches from where this really deep trench was going.

We probed, we tickled the dirt with the backhoe to no avail… Those lines weren’t to be found

Yesterday, we really settled in to all the hard work. This trench is 60 feet long, 36 inches deep, and better than a foot wide… dug in very sandy soil. The real “hard pan” is at about 30 inches, so that meant the backhoe really had to chew hard, and since Ray couldn’t get a direct (inline) shot at the trench, it often meant he was chewing from the broadside.

That meant the trench walls would semi-collapse with each “chew” to go deeper… Enter the “three-man”… well one man, one fat woman, and one young boy… shovel crew. I gotta’ tell you… I really didn’t know I could do all that! I shoveled in that trench for about 5 hours, until finally we had it deep enough, and could move to the next step.

By then, Bev had come home from work… just in time to miss the shovel detail. That’s ok… her job was to help Ray with the plumbing… cut all the PVC, and configure all the valves and angles.

We needed hay to insulate the lines. The worst hay was in the horse barn, so off we go with the backhoe. Now, I had two choices… walk to the horse barn in the 30 mph wind with all the dust swirling from the backhoe, or jump up on it, and ride on the fender. This old lady actually got on the backhoe and rode… both directions! No small feat when you consider all the “lead in my butt”.

Ok, hay in the trench, water line laid, time to backfill. Once again, we’ve got the same issue… The backhoe can only get “so close” and is unable to really compact the fill. I’ll be raking, and watering for weeks.

Here it is, the first Friday in October, and we have a 50% chance of snow tonight. Needless to say, we’ve been putting things away, cleaning up the garden area, and adding both manure and mulch to protect the soil.

Yesterday brought high winds and a dust storm. I was out in it, feeding and watering the animals. You could chew the air, it was so gritty. We’ve had a little wind damage, which we’ll repair this evening shortly before dark. The wind is forecasted to lay down a bit, and that will make it easier to put plywood panels back in place on the stable.

Tomorrow, we have to head down to the Beryl Community Center and sign up for our “care and share” boxes tomorrow. Because we’re considered “low income”, we get a couple of monthly food “drops”. Between them and the meals from the Enterprise Senior Center, we’re able to keep the food bill to a reasonable level.

Cindy will be out of work in about three weeks, so we really have to wrap up all the projects (at least the ones that cost money). That includes get the farm truck here, purchase one more frost-free hydrant and get both the chicken and sheep hydrants installed, and get the tin for at least the stable, if not the chicken coop.

After that, we’ll be limited to simply paying the existing bills and barely keeping our heads above water over the winter. At least Bev will be working all winter and she has gained some extra hours as well as a raise.

Time to return to work on “The Four Country Gals“, the book/blog I’m writing about how we all got together, and then got to where we are.