So what's a girl to do? Post from my phone at work all day!

[Bantambird]

Hello there friends and fellow poultry lovers! Bantambird here, doing something new, for me at least. I have been a lurker on these forums for a number of years, then i finally made an account. Then i still mostly lurked the halls of these forums. Let me start by saying i have been reading posts from many people, about many topics. Sometimes i even contribute now that i have my snazzy android phone!

So let me tell you about me and my family. I have been bantambird on tge internet for 20 years, since online videogaming was really getting started. That's right folks, my other hobby is video games. Along with cooking and gardening and poultry keeping. You can even find one of my avatars still up in world of warcraft, although between 3 kids i don't have the time for games anymore. So now gamer avatar bantambird is retited, now it is just bird forum bantambird. So many times as a gamer, the first question would be, " are you really a girl?" Followed shortly by "What is a bantambird?" Needless to say, on this forum neither question ever comes up.
I work full time pushing carts and organising the warehouse in a local hospital in Montana where i work. It is boring and mindless, but i like the people that I work with. Mostly

. In this state, the women are strong. Most of the native rural women here are weather beaten and hard working. I have ranching in my blood, and my parents own a small spread in central Montana near the badlands in one of the least populated counties of the lower 48, with only 435 people living in the entire county. We still gather for branding in the spring and roast rocky mountain oysters and each family hosts a different weekend until everyone gets done branding. Their spread is 5 square miles deede and 5 square miles BLM. It is all checkerboarded, as the ranch has been in the family over 100 years and is one of the few homesteads held by the same family over the years. The ranch house itself is acually a Frankenstein conglomeration of 3 homestead shacks smooshed together and sided over with white abestos siding and a dirt cellar that hosts snakes, spiders, and the occasional skunk. We keep the door to the basement CLOSED thank you very much! In that part of the country, this is a small ranch, because the land is semi arid. That is to say, high plains, shortgrass prairie. The soil is extremely alkaline, and there are salt flats left from the inland ocean. It gets over 100 in the summer, and drops below -30 in the winters. You have to be hard to live there. My dad has been out there religiously restoring the old place, pacing 40 miles of fence, and building a new home, the first new home on the place for over 50 years. Cows and grass are the yields of the land there. It does sit on the edge of the Golden Triangle, a moniker given to the best wheat growing region in Montana, possibly some of the best wheat in the world comes from the Golden Triangle. My parents still maintain their family brands, my moms is a horse right shoulder brand, my dad has a cattle brand on the side.Some day I might take over the ranch, if my husband can handle it.
I met my husbabd online. Being an avid gamer in my youth, i was constantly online. I met him in World of Warcraft. He is from California. The culture shock for him when he got here was very funny for me, as he is part hispanic. Boy did he get woke up to Western women! He now stays home with the kids and is a stay at home dad, due to debilitating neuropathic pain in the face and head. It is hard for him to handle this! For me, I was raised that everyone works. Gender isnt a factor to work getting done, as long as you have the strenth to do it, you do it. My great grandmother kicked out her good for nothing husband and ran that ranch alone for 30 years, with only 2 ranch hands and my dad and his little brothers. I found his gender bias invalid and based on stereotypes, and he now understands. Sometimes it is hard on his mother however, who would like her son taken care of better! I, however, am not a very good housekeeper!

I have learned to cook pretty well though!
I have about 80 chickens currently, half are chicks. I also have a dog that hangs out with them, and 11 turkeys, with more turkeys and chicks on the way! I finally put an ad in craigslist to pare down some extras that dont fit into my breeding program.
I guess i had better get back to work before i get into trouble!!

 

[Bantambird]

Today, I want to remember some stories told about my great grandmother's ranch hand Glenda. She was the roughest, rowdiest, cussing spitting unladylike woman you ever met. There are so many stories about her! One of her favorite things after putting in a hard day was to go into town, drink, then pick fights with the men. One particular instance, she was sitting on a barstool in the tavern, and a cowboy comes up, mistakes her for a man, and says to her, that's my seat. Get off my stool! She stands up, flashes a grin, lifts her shirt, says to him she says, you are about to get hit by a woman! And she lays the guy out right there in the bar! She was never one for talking. She didn't take to me much because I am a bit of a chatterbox. She was always a petite woman too, from behind she was often mistaken for a man since she dressed like one and was slim to boot. She still runs cattle and bison, even though she is now approaching 80 years old! Old cowgirls never die I guess. They just fade away. Thanks for keeping life interesting, Glenda!

 

[Bantambird]

The first time I got chickens I was 8 years old. That summer I had my tonsils out and we had just moved into a new neighborhood. We needed to live near town for my parents to work, so we lived just outside of town where my mom could keep horses. There was never a place we lived in where my mother couldn't have horses, because my mom cannot survive without them! She loves horses as much as I love my chickens! So, being an inquisitive child, I wanted to meet the neighbors, and across the street were a sweet older couple, and the man took me to see his chickens. He called them wild Missouri fighting chickens. I am not sure now what those would be, but I do know they had a Columbian color pattern and were large fowl, clean legged. He gave us a batch of birds later when I admired his chickens, and my dad built them a coop out of an old milking stall in the barn. Not long after they settled in, some neighborhood dogs killed all but one hen. My dad tightened up the fence after that, and soon old Cluck-Cluck the First went broody. It was spring, so my mother went to the feed store when they had just got in some new chicks, and slipped them under her. She raised a mixed batch of chicks, there was Blackie, Brownie, Uglee( a turken) and Cluck-Cluck the Second( an Easter egger) and Moonlight, a white Rock rooster. I loved all of those birds so much! Cluck-Cluck II lived to be 8 years old and died quietly in her sleep one night. She was my prize and my best buddy. And she taught me never to hold a chicken above my head. Ewwwwww. There were times I had hard days at school and I would tell her all my problems, and I would just pet her and she would sit in my lap and let out that long question"baaaaak? Baaaaak?" Between her and my cat Suzie, they were my dearest animal friends.