Ranch Photography - The Idaho Rancher's Wife

Final Range Branding: Deep Creek Cleanup

May 4, 2026 by Allison Eliason

The last range branding day of the stretch was a slower cleanup kind of day, with fewer calves left to gather and brand. After the wind the day before, the weather turned just about perfect, making for a pretty enjoyable day to be horseback.

I spent more time roping than taking pictures, so this set looks a little different than some of the others. Fewer action shots and more of the small details that make up a branding day—the hands, the gear, the dust, and the moments in between.

Not every day is fast-paced or packed full, but there’s something good about the quieter ones too.

Callahan Branding: Small Crew, Big Work

May 1, 2026 by Allison

Callahan branding is a smaller one, with just three ranches bringing cattle, but the work still stacks up quick. It was a windy day, and with a smaller crew we had to cover more ground and keep things moving.

By this point in the season, it was a lot of the same faces and the same work—but also the same steady effort to get it done right. With fewer hands, everyone stepped in where they were needed, including the kids.

I ended up working opposite The Rancher most of the day, which gave me the chance to catch a few photos of him—and even better, of our son. Something clicked for him that day, and it was fun to watch it all come together.

Cedar Hill Branding Take Two: Cleanup Day

April 23, 2026 by Allison

This branding day looked a little different than the rest. Having already branded this same group two before, it was a slow and steady cleanup day. We didn’t complain!

I think we spent more time chatting as we waited for lunch than actually branding. In the end, we put our mark on about sixteen calves, leaving just one that no one could quite claim. Even so, it felt good to get them finished up and ready to turn out in the next couple of weeks.

Not every branding day is fast-paced or full, but they all play their part, and, if you can believe it, there’s one more big still weekend.

Peterson Place: Our Desert, Our Branding Day

April 22, 2026 by Allison

Peterson Place branding day always feels a little different. It’s our desert ground, but this year it felt more like our place than ever before.

We went into the day expecting cold temperatures and high winds, but it turned out just about perfect. Good weather, good help, and a crew that made the work go as it should. It was a mix of old hands and new ones, with plenty of kids jumping in wherever they could—learning as they went and not afraid to get right in the middle of it.

Some of the best parts of the day were getting to rope alongside my kids, especially my ten-year-old who has really started to throw himself into the work. And somewhere along the way, after being part of this crew for more than a dozen years, it felt like I truly found my place in it.

Between the work, the laughs, and even the boys gathered around the fire cooking up their castrated snacks, it was one of those days that reminds you why these brandings matter.

BLM Branding Day: New Ground, Same Work

April 21, 2026 by Allison Eliason

Every Saturday of April is scheduled for our BLM association branding… for the rest of our lives. Haha! It takes that many goes to get all the calves on the ground, mothered up, and drug in to get the herd branded with the right outfit.

This year had a little different look to it, though. Because of the poorer range feed this year, we split the herd differently across the winter/spring ranges. It gives a little different look this year with new places to gather and circle up to get the job done.

The day brought a little rain, a little wind, and a lot of roping. The scenery may have been a little different, but the work is still the same.

Back at the Ranch: Lookout Livestock Branding Day

April 20, 2026 by Allison Eliason

Most branding days we’re up early and headed out for a long drive to wherever the cows are running on the desert range. But once a year, we get to stay a little closer to home—saddling up and heading straight out the gate for Lookout Livestock branding day.

This herd is relatively new to us. About seven years ago, a neighbor approached us about buying him out, and knowing opportunities like that don’t come around often, we jumped at the chance to expand right here close to home. We decided to keep things separate from our other herd, forming a new operation with its own name and brand.

Even though we’ve only been running these cows a few short years, it didn’t take long for things to fall into place, including the annual branding. We have great help, great food, which lends to a great time!

Pausing for Perspective

May 24, 2017 by Allison

I love my life. I really do. Its amazing how much joy and satisfaction I find in what we do. I get to watch my kids learn and grow and fail and succeed. They get to watch their dad work and see what it means to have responsibilities and carry them out. It is exhausting and amazing and inspiring… and exhausting.

I love our life but it is exhausting. Most of the time when life gets busy and exhausting, you pause, give yourself some space, do something new to recharge yourself, and then jump back in.

We don’t do that.

Not that we don’t believe it taking a break, but its kinda difficult. With cows, irrigating, haying, feeding, checking water, and all the other things on the never ending check list, we don’t have the time to just up and leave. Not to mention the fact that we live in the middle of nowhere and going anywhere requires plenty of travel time.

But that’s ok.

We may to be able to be world travelers or we might not have the opportunities to visit exotic places. Its all ok, because we have an entire world to explore in our back yard. We have horses and 4wheelers and mountains and trails. We really have everything we need.

What we do, everyday, is what we love. Yes, we get tired of the daily grind, but that is when we load up in the gator and go for a ride. And we take a moment to refocus on what our priorities are and then we get back to it.

I’m in desperate need for such a pause. I am feeling the weight of the work that needs to be done on our home, for our community, in the fields… There is always more work to be done than there is time and energy. Think I can talk The Rancher into taking me on a romantic motorcycle ride tonight?

For the Love of Branding

May 8, 2017 by Allison

I have literally thousands of pictures of branding this spring. THOUSANDS! 5 different days of branding and taking so many pictures of busy cowboys (I might have less if they stopped and posed, but I take what I can get…) has made for so many photos to go through and edit.

I’m certainly not running out of photos, but I feel like I am running out of rocking stories to tell you. Its not that cool things didn’t happen, but I’m just afraid that those details of the day might bore you. Especially since we do about the same thing every year- we gather the herd, sort out the cows, brand the calves, eat lunch and start over.

It really is an exciting day that the crew looks forward to every year. I’d say its their drug of choice that they are going through some seriously withdrawals of roping and riding after a long winter. They take off across the range, adrenaline flowing, and they can’t get enough of it. They rope all day long until they are so sore they can’t keep going. Then they wake up and do it again.

The photos are going to keep coming and hopefully the stories come too! But sometimes, the photos speak for themselves. As they say, “A photo is worth a thousand words!”

Going Nuts Over Branding

April 28, 2017 by Allison

With all of my years of ranching and branding there is something that I have never done. Ok, there are plenty of ranchy-branding things that I haven’t done… But there is one that I took pride in not doing until just a few weeks ago. I don’t know if I should be proud for what I did, but I did it.

Here is what I did- I ate a nut. Not like a nut nut, but like a calf nut. A lemon peppered, battered, deep fried calf testicle.

Gross, I know.

Like I said, I don’t know if I’m proud of myself for doing it, but I did.

My brother-in-law, Cowboy Pete, had some buddies that thought it would be a great idea to fry up some nuts and have a party about it. So all day long, we were collecting nuts as we were branding. He even had his mom bring a tupperware with water that he had in the cooler with the vaccines to keep the nuts clean and cool. He went to some pretty extensive lengths to make sure that everything would be just right for their dinner that night.

So Cowboy Pete gets home, pulls out the nuts and made up his own little recipe for some gourmet fried nuts. All day he kept telling me that he was going to bring them over for me to try and I just laughed him off, so sure that he wasn’t going to do it and even if he did cook some, he wouldn’t bring them over.

But he did.

He comes over with his buddies and his plate of fried testicles and wafted them in front of my face as if its tantalizing aroma would be something I couldn’t resist. He grinned from ear to ear as he was trying to convince me just how good it was and that I HAD to try them.

I waffled back and forth on what I should do. Because really, one bite wouldn’t kill me. And if it was nasty, I could just spit it out. But I didn’t want to give in to him and justify his claim that his deep fried calf testes were good.

Just then, my husband reached over grabbed one and took a bite. I was super surprised because no one had been goading him to eat one and he JUST DID IT! And he liked it! Or at least I think he did. He at least didn’t spit it out, although he didn’t have another bite so maybe he didn’t like it so much.

After that, I knew I had to do it. If I didn’t, I would be the weak one. The one that wasn’t brave enough to even eat a little nut. So I took a bite.

I still shudder to think about what I did. I stooped to eating genitalia… Gross. Except, it was good. Or at least not bad. They seasoned them enough that it just tasted like a lemon pepper beef nugget (like chicken nugget, but beef… get it?).

Now I have done it all. And I will likely never do it again. Cowboy Pete did say that no self respecting ranch blogger couldn’t call themselves legit without trying a nut at least once. I tried it once, now I’m legit and have great credibility with my people, right?

Let me know if you want Cowboy Pete’s Deep Fried Calf Nut recipe ;).

Growing Some Thick Skin

April 26, 2017 by Allison

One of my favorite rancher wives once told me that she chooses NOT to work beside her husband a lot of times because she doesn’t have thick enough skin. Its not that her husband is grouchy and it isn’t ever her husband that is the problem, but to keep things happy in all corners, she just stays out of it.

From her words of wisdom and my own experiences over the last few years, I have learned two things. First, if I can’t handle what the cowboys say, I’d better stay out of the work. And second, I if I’m determined to work with them, I better grow some thick skin to be able to handle it all.

You know me… although the best way to go would be to go with the first little lesson I learned, I’m taking the harder way and following the second.

There are a few reasons a person might need some thicker skin when working with the cowboys, especially if its your husband. At home, he calls you honey and sweetheart and any other pet name I might not want to know. But those lovy names are totally forgotten once the two of you are out the door to work. All of the sudden, he sounds a little cold or distant and pretty soon, you begin to wonder if you did something wrong. Really, what has happened is that he has his rancher hat on and that is all that is on his mind. Don’t worry, he will warm back up to you when the work is done!

Now, unfortunately, ranch work can be noisy. Really, REALLY noisy. Loud tractors or pumps, noisy, bellaring cows and so much more. Hearing anybody talking to you over any of this noise is nearly impossible. So the easiest solution to this problem is just to talk louder than the noise. Most commonly known as YELLING. Yep, I just admitted it, my husband yells at me. At least that is what I used to think. That quick, “CLOSE THE GATE!” without any tender love or affection can cut a wife right to the heart if she doesn’t have some thick skin to protect her. But once ya learn that he is yelling TO you, not AT you, its not so bad. In reality, anything he might be yelling to you is probably to help you do your job better or to keep you safe. Just read it as his way of saying “I love you.”

Eventually, any ranch wife that decides to help the guys get the work done, is going to make a mistake. Its hard to admit, but we wives aren’t perfect. We try hard to be perfect because there are some pretty intense expectations of the level of work that needs to be done and inevitably we might miss the mark. And without any warning or intention, some words might slip out of somebody’s mouth and somebody’s feelings are hurt. I’ve been there thinking, “I am here helping you get YOUR work done and I am doing MY BEST and you are mad at me?!”

But in all honesty, I had made a mistake.

And I hate to admit it.

But in admitting my mistake, it actually made things better.

I’m sure that there are a lot of other wives out there that have their own stories and lessons they have learned about how to make it working with their husbands on the ranch. But ultimately, if you’re going to work with the guys, you gotta handle whatever they might say. Some of it they mean, some of it they don’t. But some thick skin can go a long way to keep things happy at home.

Because really, it can’t get more true than the t-shirt that says, “Sorry for what I said when we were working cattle!”