Archives for 2015
2016 Cowboy Calendar
Life has ben crazy but I still couldn’t NOT make a few calendars! After having a few years of calendar making under my belt it really didn’t take too much to put these together and I just love how they turned out.
And now after my yeas of wisdom, I have found a new printer where I have been able to SIGNIFICANTLY drop the prices! Now you can get a 2016 Cowboy Calendar for on $8.49. If you are interested, email, comment on this post or message me on Facebook and I will get your order in!
A Family Cattledrive
Oh boy was this a crazy summer! With all the ropings, family events, community activities, and building a house we were running in every direction. To help things out, the cows decided they didn’t need much moving for the summer. For real… Between the field rotation we were on and the rains it seemed we hardly had to move the cows. The unfortunate thing about that was that I didn’t have many opportunities to ride with the guys or take any photos.
10 Lessons Learned as a Rancher’s Wife… Part 2
- There gonna be dirt. And manure. And mud. And dust and grit and weeds and anything else dirty you can think of. Ok so that isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine all that until you start to think of all the places this dirtiness goes. If it’s on your boots it’s on your floor. If it’s on your pants it’s on the couch. If it’s on your hands it’s on every blasted light switch, door handle, counter, key, or button you touch! So this is my advice: DON’T EVER CLEAN!! It’s all going to be messy all the time, so don’t worry about putting any effort to it… Ok that’s not how I roll. I do clean. The barn dirt and germs can stay in the barn but you have to pace yourself. Or hire a maid. I’d really love a maid…
- Learn your 1st aid and always keep band aids on hand. It’s one if those Murphy proof things. If your prepared it’s not gonna happen, right?! Actually no… Cowboys think that they are either invincible and nothing will happen to them or they are can handle any type of wound or pain. And that leads to another lesson- know how to MAKE them stop and get real help. My rancher is pro at washing it in the ditch and calling it good. It’s only after I make him go to the doctor that he realizes that a pretty intense infection has set in and I was right.
- You can hope for a set dinner time but don’t be heart broken when he’s late. In fact, that is more of the rule than the exception. Some machinery will brake down or a pipe will break or he might just forget what time dinner is on. That gives you two options- you either start eating without him or slap a smile on your face and wait. Its as simple as that.
- Ranching and cowboying can be tough work but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. They really are just little boys playing with bigger toys. Having to saddle the horse to go rope a bull or load up the motorbike to bring in a few strays might be their job but that doesn’t mean they don’t get any thrills out of it. You might think then, that since they play all day on horses and tractors and bikes that when they can really go play, they will head out to do something else. But likely not… With any free time they will head to some team roping or start working a new colt or take the bike up in the mountains. Some days its hard to know what is work and what is play! We just roll with it and jump in no matter what he’s doing.
- There will be so many hats. So many!! And I’m not talking figuratively. Sure, there is that too- he is the vet, the mechanic, the feeder, the farmer, the business man, the irrigator, and the milker. But right now I mean to tell you that ranchers have so many hats. They buy a new swather and they give him a new hat. He gets a load of feed in an he given another couple of hats. The vet comes around and has a handful of hats to give away. But he still needs a good cowboy hat to the keep the sun off of him so every few months its time for a new one of those. And not to mention that that he needs felt hats and wool hats in the winter. And heaven forbid it when a new hat comes in, we throw an old one out. You’ll get some sort of response like, “But it has a lot of good life in it!” or “I just got it to fit me just right!”. It may be greasy, grimy, poopy, and sporting a nice sweat ring but it MUST stay. Just call him a hat collector and move on… (and sneak a few out to the garbage during spring cleaning!)
- Just because you don’t get a paycheck from the ranch doesn’t mean you don’t get called into work. In fact, you are on call… 24/7… no weekends, holidays, or even birthdays off. You have to have a really good excuse like in the hospital having a baby or on the couch with a broken leg to get off the hook. You never know quite what to expect when it is time to drop everything and go help. It could be something quick like stand on the road to turn the cows or come help moves the trucks to the next field ready to farm. But it could be in the middle of the night because you have to help with the calving. Or it could be an all day thing and you are sent on a parts run. I guess that’s what you sign up for when you marry a rancher, but you could always try to guilt him into a nice foot rub at the end of your long day!
- Have you ever seen a cowboy in a tux? I mean, aside from a wedding, where the groom was threatened within an inch of his life that if he didn’t where his tux on the MOST important day of his life his bride would throw out his favorite rope, slash the tires on his truck and smash his best cowboy hat. His formal attire looks a lot like his work attire except that its clean. He will still have his boots, belt and buckle, jeans and a good western shirt topped off by his favorite hat. If its super fancy he might throw on a tie, but you can guarantee that it won’t last the night. I’ve been told that I can get all fancied up and it will work for the two of us. Naturally, If I’m dressed up appropriately for whatever event we are at, he is too simply by association. Honestly, I stopped caring… So long as he is clean and doesn’t stink, jeans and boots suit me just fine!
- You will find that no matter the experience you are trying to help him relate to, he will find a way to compare it to ranching. You want him to understand that you are trying to eat nutritiously and he starts talking about feed supplements and offers you a salt block. You are trying to help him understand that he has to move the furniture when he vacuums and he realizes its much like how he has to move the wheel lines to cut all the hay. The best is when it comes to having babies, nursing babies, and raising babies. He is the expert in this field since every year he helps hundreds of mothers and babies. I guess that means that he is trying to get it if he is making the effort to make the comparisons.
- This next little lesson was a hard one to take… A rancher isn’t always that sympathetic. There is no room for weakness in cowboying. It doesn’t matter the reason you need a little pat on the back… If you want to be out with the guys you had better suck it up and tough it out. After enough days of trying to get a “thanks, honey” for the late nights checking cows, early mornings haying, painfully cold days calving, or sweltering afternoons of hot fencing I’ve just decided its not gonna happen. I guess when your job demands that you show up no matter the conditions, you just expect it out of everyone else. And wives are no exception… Darn it…
- When its movie night, just go for the western. You will never go wrong with a little gun play, a few pretty ponies and the handsome cowboy saving the day. When in doubt go with John Wayne or Tom Selleck. Or if you have the time you could even go with Lonesome Dove (although I have to admit, I have only done that once… and I think that’s plenty). Fortunately, there is a plethera of great old westerns that will make your cowboy proud to ride and a little more manly at the end of the night.
Ag in Your County Promotions!
Ag promoting has become a big part of my family- my dad, brothers, me… We all love the life and want to share what we have! My brother works on his Farm Bureau board in Salmon had a fun opportunity to do a little ag promoting at his fair.
Their board had seen posters with farming/ranching photos with a some facts relating to agriculture as a whole. My brother’s wanted to put up something similar at their fair, but more specifically they wanted to spread a few facts about their county. They thought about using the generic posters for the sake of ease and that they were already available, but my brother said he knew a photographer that might be able to help out…
Then he called me.
And I said yes! I love this stuff! I love spreading the word, creating posters, using my photos… ALL OF IT! The one hitch was that it was the week before my fair and I was already pulling my hair out getting everything ready. (Ya know, they ask the young naive ones to be on the fair board before they know how crazy it REALLY is.) But I didn’t want to miss out on this fun chance so I packed up my stuff and found a corner at the fair to pull together these posters!
My brother did the hard work of picking the photos and the wording. I got the fun part of throwing it all together however I wanted. In my opinion, they turned out great! And it sounded like a lot of people at the fair loved them too. I should actually say men instead of people, because they were the only ones to see them. Unless some lady decided she needed to use the men’s bathroom…
Trucking Cows for a Day
I’ve never been one to love the life of a trucker, not to mention be married to one. The long days if driving and being away from home just don’t appeal to me. I love a good vacation, but a slow noisy semi truck is no vacation.
First of TP&B
Summer time means play time! At least some of the time. A side job we have to raise and provide heifers for sorting and roping events. We have several throughout the summer- some with fairs, others with the Team Penning and Branding Association. The best part about taking them out there is that we get to join in the fun.
There are always a handful of regulars that go to these things. You have your older generations that are still trying to live the dream and the hobby cowboys that don’t do it full time but jump in where they can on the weekends. At the end of the day, the cowboys that eat, sleep, and dream EVERYTHING cowboy come out for the roping. I love watching those cowboys and horses that know what they are doing. They move effortlessly. They don’t make a lot of noise and don’t draw a lot of attention. They move together with their horses, already knowing what to do.
It was a party for the Eliason family in Blackfoot for the first TP&B. Everyone came down to do a little cowboying and enjoy the company. This is the kind of fun our family has on a day off!
2U Branding… Doing it Carter Style
I love branding season! I love to help, I love to take pictures, I love the company, I love the food… I love it all! When we ran out of branding days for our ranch and the association, I invited myself down the road to our friend’s branding.
The Carters have a small herd that they run mostly because they love the life. They have other work but at the end of the day they always come back to ranching. Its important to them to raise their 4 boys learning how to work and connecting with the heritage that runs deep in this valley.
Its been great to become better friends with this family. The Rancher went to high with Cowboy Cody Carter and has some great (maybe not entirely always appropriate) memories with him. They have moved on from high school rodeo to real ranch cowboys, making a living to provide with their families.
…. That all sounds kinda mushy… Maybe it is when you think about it, but really its awesome and fun. And that is exactly the kind of day we had out with the Carter crew to their branding. They had cowboys that could rope and… some that weren’t so great. They had cowboys that didn’t hardly say a word and others that didn’t ever stop (seriously, the guy never closed his mouth- the proof is in the pictures!). There were a few injuries throughout the day but all in all, a successful day branding!
More Branding….
I lied… I told you a while ago that it was the last of the association branding…
Oooops!
Found some more! They are from the LONG weekend we had at Locomotive, so no wonder I lost them. I mean, there is so much to keep track of and I’m such a blonde that its totally possible that I would make a mistake and forget to post pictures.
So here you go!
A New House
The upstairs completely gutted. At this point we took out the windows, the final studs and then began taking the outside walls down.
No windows or doors…
We borrowed a track hoe from some great neighbors to do the work. And I have to say that being able to operate this is a serious talent!
The walls are going down!
A last look from the inside.
The roof fell in…
And no more house!
Footings- the first new construction!
Pouring the foundation walls…
The floor system in (and beautiful green EVERYWHERE!)
The best little helpers… They have loved every bit of this!
More walls
Beautiful progress!
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