The Idaho Rancher's Wife

The Ranch From the Wife's Perspective

Dinner For a Rancher

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The other night I made dinner and, as our life goes about now, The Rancher had to head out just as I was putting it on the table.  I fed the kids and myself a tasty dinner of grilled steaks, fresh pineapple, salad, and green beans.  Everything I love and my kids too!  It went over with flying colors and any dinner that I don’t have to coax my kids to eat every bite is considered a win.

But with The Rancher it was a whole different situation. 

He came home sat down ready to eat.  I was pumped for the steak and the pineapple was a fun treat.  But he looked at me and we had this conversation:

Him: “So where is the rest of the food?”

Me: “The rest of it?  I think you got it all out.”

Him:  “But, like… where is the filling stuff?”

Me:  “The filling stuff?  What does that even mean?”

Him: “Like potatoes or something.  I’ll eat this, but I’m still gonna be hungry if I eat JUST this!”

I couldn’t help but just laugh and laugh!  Heaven forbid he had some fruit and veggies in his diet.  He thinks that he is going to shrivel up and die if he doesn’t have meat and potatoes for every meal.  Actually, I did hear him say once (and I’m sure it will be the only time in his life!) that he was a little tired of potatoes…   But that only lasted a few days.

But seriously, cooking for a rancher can be tough.  With such a physically demanding job, he needs some serious calories to help him make it through the day.  Over the years I have learned a few things about cooking for a rancher.

Things like how a salad will never cut it for him.  It may be yummy and it may be nutritious, but it will only last about an hour before he is back in the house looking for a snack to help him make it to the end of the day.  Only once has a salad been ok and that was on a hot summer night when the idea of a hot meal was just more than he could handle.  Lesson here is, a salad can only be a side, not the entree!

It may be because we raise beef, but I’ve learned that EVERY meal needs to have meat in it.  I didn’t even have to attempt a meatless meal to learn this lesson!  I think it came with the wedding proposal, something like, “Honey, will you marry me and not EVER make dinner without some meat in it?”  I can’t blame him though.  Protein is essential part of a healthy diet and it is even more essential for a physically demanding job like his.

Making sure the menu meets his criteria isn’t the only thing I had to learn when I started cooking for The Rancher.  His daily schedule is anything BUT predictable, which means that his dinner schedule is also anything but predictable.  So what I do is ask him what time he thinks he will be home, add at least 45 minutes to that, but make sure that the table is set if he manages to make it in early so it looks like I believed him.  Ok, not really…  I think we have had a few reheated meals or overcooked and mushy noodles or the kids and I eat without The Rancher.  Its what happens when dinner is on schedule and a calf needs pulled, a cow gets out or something breaks down.  Its what happens when you are married to a rancher!

Dinner for a rancher isn’t typical or predictable. Usually I don’t even know what is for dinner until it was time to get fixing and all to often I have to ask The Rancher what he wants for dinner (and his usual reply is “I dunno…”).  But dinner at our house is delicious, nutritious, never meatless, and full of love, because every dinner is a chance I have to take care of my rancher so he can do a little bit better at his job.

What is dinner look like at your house?

Momma-Cow Turned Momma Bear

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Before we moved to the family ranch, we worked our way through college at few different ranches.  Of course nothing compares to working your OWN ground or your OWN cows, but we still had some great times and some great memories on the operations we were a part of.  Once in a while a story comes to mind from those days and we have a little fun reliving those good times.  Every year when calving season comes along, there is one story that always comes up.  One of those remember-whens that you actually don’t want to remember.

Any rancher will tell you that a momma cow can instantly turn momma bear real fast.  A cow that seems perfectly harmless suddenly becomes anything but as soon as you lay hands on her baby.  And really, who can blame her?  I think that sometimes I turn into a momma bear when I have sweet little babies, and they aren’t even getting tagged!

But… Even if I do relate to them, sorta, that doesn’t mean they need to eat my husband for lunch!

Actually this story was before we were married.  Even before we were dating.  I was in the midst of my sophomore year of college and my only sanity was heading up to my brother’s near Salmon, Idaho.  He had my horse, cows, and a population of about 50 and it called to me after long hard days of school and work and SO many people.  Ironically, I didn’t have a car (probably a good thing or I would have spent all of the money I didn’t have driving up there all the time) and I had to convince friends and roommates that we should take a trip up to the ranch to have a little R&R.

It was on one of these weekends that I met The Rancher.  He was doing his internship up there, partially in an effort to avoid the school work and people like I was.  Truth be told, I had no interest in him at first.  I had sworn off boys because they just caused frustration and heart ache.  Cows and horses, on the other hand, only caused frustration. I was determined to take advantage of the little time I had on the ranch and soak in as much fresh air and get as much poop on my boots as possible.  To that end, I got brave, and asked The Rancher if I could ride along with him to check cows on his late night watch.  Being the player he was at the time (haha…) he shyly agreed and I hopped in the truck.

For the most part, it was uneventful.  There was a calf or two born.  We tagged them, gave them shots, wrote it all down and moved on.  It was cold and bumpy but it was fun.  We went out checking for a few nights and it was all the same every night.  Until we found one of those momma-bear momma cows.

This brilliant momma, had decided to have her calf in the snow.  Something not all that conducive to life if you were just born and wet and cold.  We had been checking around the different fields and found this cow exactly where she shouldn’t have been.  Labor does strange things and apparently with her, it made her want to climb through a few fences and birth in the privacy found in the wheel-line stock pile.  Not knowing that she was calving or had just had a calf, we drove over to get her back in where she was supposed to be.

The Rancher hopped the barbed wire fence, figuring it would only take just a minute to get the cow back in her field.  That’s when he saw the baby and plans changed.  Getting the two of them back was totally on the back burner and keeping the calf alive was all that mattered.  The momma was loving on him, but he had yet to get up and out of the snow.  So being the nice guy that he was, The Rancher grabbed a leg and started dragging the calf out of the snow.

It only took a second for that cow to turn momma-bear.  For all she knew, someone was messing with her baby and she wasn’t going to have any of that. 

Now put yourself in my shoes, or rather my seat.  Here I was, sitting in the front seat of an old, beat up ranch truck, riding around with a kid I hardly knew.  He was across a barbed wire fence, through drifts of snow and there was a momma cow about ready to have him for a midnight snack. 

What was a girl to do? 

It was dark and the only light was from the poor headlights (calling the headlights as poor was a compliment!), and he was far enough away I really couldn’t see well enough to know what was happening, just that things were getting a little (or a lot!) intense over there.  But, was he ok and wouldn’t need any help?  Or was he only seconds away from broken bones and smashed insides?  Was there even anything in the truck that I could use to help him?  Should I risk life and limb for this kid?  I could see myself jumping out of the truck, slipping a time or two as I trudged through the snow, getting tangled up in the wire fence as I tried to cross it in the dark and finally make it to him only to find everything ok and totally unworth my efforts.  Or I would do something embarrassing like fall on my face in the snow or rip my pants on the barbed wire…

So I just sat there.

Heroic, I know.  But before I made a move, I wanted to know what that cow had in mind.  It didn’t take long for her to prove that she meant business.  She took off straight for The Rancher, covering the 10 yards between them in seconds.  At this point all I could do was pray.  Pray that he got out of there in time.  Pray that she changed her mind.  Pray that even if she did get him, it wouldn’t be too bad.  Pray that he wouldn’t need mouth to mouth…

It must of worked because just as she was about to him, a snow drift popped up in front of her and she dropped to her knees.  It was the few seconds The Rancher needed to get clear of the calf, sail over the fence, and finally take a breath!

And then, to be terribly honest, I don’t remember much that happened next.  I know we had other cows and fields to check and so I’m sure we just moved on with the night.  The Rancher might have been a little more weary and a little more spry in case any other mommas had a little bit of momma-bear in them.

Reliving that story every year always brings new things to light, like how The Rancher was actually grateful for the chance to look so brave and he was a little sad that I didn’t need to give him a little mouth to mouth…  I, on the other, hand, am just glad that he managed to survive that night so we could have our life together now.  Do any of you have a good momma-bear story?

Its All About a Bunch of Bull

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Bull sale season is coming to a close.  It ends just as fast as it comes.  I kind of have a love hate relationship with Bull Sale season.  I love it when I get a chance to go, but I hate it when I get left behind.  And unfortunately, with all of my other OTHER responsibilities, it happens more than I’d like.  But I usually try to send a child or two if that’s the case (hahaha… hehehe…).  My mother-in-law and I were having a great conversation the other night, talking about all the pros and woes of being a rancher’s wife during Bull Sale Season.  I’m sure that we aren’t the only ones that have noticed the ups and downs that come Bull Sale Season.  In fact, I’m sure that we have it easy compared the wives of the ranchers PUTTING ON the sale.

I’ve actually had the pleasure of both sides of the sale- the selling and the buying.  Growing up I loved the prep work of a sale.  Trimming everything, photographing them all, sprucing up the sale barn, staying home from school on sale day…  Yep, it was a kids dream.  But I’m sure as the wife to a rancher, my mom didn’t think it was quite so awesome.  When I imagine her at that time of the year, one word comes to mind- STRESSED!

Even though I am on the buying side of the bull sale now, I still love it.  There is such an energy at a cattle auction!  The combination of the noisy crowd, the feisty bulls, the auctioneer’s ramble, and the anticipation of when to put in your bid gives the air a little extra zing.  You can’t help but love it, right?!

While the debate of whether Bull Sale Season is an actual thing is still being decided, I have unofficially dubbed March, plus or minus a few weeks, as such.  If you were to come look at our bull-sale-calendar, you might mistake it for a bingo card for as many days as have been scribbled on.  In fact you might even think we were going for Black Out!  And while there may be so many to go to, you can be sure that every one will be different and every one will be good.

The obvious upside to having so many days out to a bull sale is that I get a free pass on fixing lunch for those days.  While we can always expect the sale to be great, we KNOW the meal will be even greater!  In fact, it may be so good and we come home so full, that I might not even have to make dinner (actually that’s never happened, but every time I’m hopeful!).  Is it bad to admit that I have even asked for a recipe or two after watching my family down their lunch?  I figure its a great compliment!

Once you get to the sale and have a chance to look around, you realize that ranchers can actually dress up and they are a pretty darn good looking crowd.  You spend so much time seeing them in shirts torn up from the barbed wire or pants covered in what looks like tractor oil and grease (and maybe even something else you can’t even recognize!), or boots smeared in mud and manure and stinking even worse than they look, that you forget how good looking a rancher can be.  And I think they will take any chance to get out of their grubby clothes too!  Maybe that’s why we hit up so many sales….  Hmmm….

I’ve decided that there is an art to bidding.  You don’t want to jump in too soon, because that just might take the price right out of your budget.  But you don’t want to get in the action too late because then you might be out altogether before you even got in.  Unless you can manage the sneak attack and steal the show with a last second bid.  Then there is the whole other ballgame of bidding online.  That one really makes me nervous… What if the connection goes out all of the sudden or what if it takes a second longer to register the bid or what if …. something else could go wrong, I’m sure! 
Whatever way you bid, you gotta have a game plan!

Usually we go to a sale with a budget in mind and a number of how many bulls we need to buy.  I always figure that once we spend the money or we get all the bulls we need, we will head home.  But the truth of the matter is, a bull sale is a rancher’s social hour.  Believe it or not, ranchers to like to gab!  They all hurry up to buy their bulls and then hustle over to the cookie table to chat away the rest of the sale.

At the heart of every bull sale is their bull magazine. You can ALWAYS know it is Bull Sale Season by the stack of magazines on the desk.  I wonder if the mail man gets tired of filling the mail box up with them?  We’ve seen a few ranches that REALLY want you to come, so they send 2 or 3 magazines to be sure you get a good look at what they’ve got.  It makes things easier for The Rancher when there are more, though.  He can leave one on the kitchen table to read while he eats, one on the night stand to have his final look before he goes to sleep, and one in the bathroom where he does his best thinking.  For some ranches, they send out the whole sale lineup.  They figure then you can come to the sale knowing exactly what you want to go home with.  For other ranches it is more like a ranch-and-family-year book.  They try pulling at your heart strings a bit with those sweet smiling grandbabies.  Then there are the ranches that just send their own type of save-the-date card and figure its gonna save them a lot of work if you just grab the magazine as you walk through the bulls. 

But without those magazines, a rancher would be lost keeping everyone and everything straight.  Besides the fancy names and photos, they are full of the info any rancher needs to get a good buy.  Its those EPDs.  If anyone ever thought that rancher wasn’t an educated guy, he should try his hand at EPDs…  I’m slowing starting to gather what scores are good birth weights, weaning weights, milking and futures.  I have no idea how they figured them, but I believe them.

Well,  Bull Sale Season… its been real, its been fun, and no we are done.  Its just a little more than a month away until the real fun starts and we see just how good of a buy we made!  Until next year… (Maybe the season will be official then and we can have an opening day celebration!)

PS-  I think the life of a bull is rough… Seriously, who else has a job of pleasure that only has to work a few months of the year and then is literally put out to pasture for the rest of the year?!  And to have pasture like we did last spring…  Yum…

Learning Problem Solving One Stuck 4Wheeler at a Time

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The Rancher’s Sidekick loves to drive the 4 wheeler.  All the time.  Typical boy, right?  I tell him we need to go check heifers, he starts the 4wheeler.  I tell him we need to help dad move cows, he volunteers to drive. We say lets of load up in the feed truck and he asks to drive the 100 feet from the house to the shed where it is parked.

To be totally honest, its our own fault.  Mostly The Rancher’s, but I am the supporting wife so I will take my share of the blame.  For quite a while, we had been letting the boy drive out in the field while we were moving pipe or “help” us drive around the ranch.  But it didn’t take too long for him to start asking to drive on his own.

Is anyone surprised?

Nope.

This kid has known how to start the 4wheeler since he was 3 so I guess it was inevitable, right?  I thought we had done pretty good to distract him from wanting to go hot-rodding on his own, but once he realized he could actually reach the handle bars and turn the thing, he decided it was time to be a man and drive solo.

So we let him.

There were two important rules.  First, he had to stay in low gear and second, he could just drive around the ranch yard where we could keep an eye on him.  That was good enough for him! Being a big 4wheeler driver was all he could have dreamed it to be.

That was last summer.  Fast forward to now with a few more months of experience and new adventures in driving through the snow and mud and puddles and he decided to go at it again.

It has been a beautiful few weeks lately and what boy could resist cruising around.  One afternoon, he decided to buzz around the ranch while we finished tagging and doing chores.  No big deal. Until all the sudden the bruummm-brruummm of the 4wheeler was silent.  I looked around and there was the 4wheeler, driverless and stuck in the snow.  Seconds later, The Rancher’s Sidekick came waltzing back to his chariot carrying a shovel.  After finishing the barn chores we walked out to him to see just what was going on.

When we reached him, he started a very detailed and animated story of how he was sure he could have made it through the snow and that it was all ok until, bam! it wasn’t (I’m not sure what the bam! was other than just his dramatics with the story!).  So he decided to go and get a shovel to dig himself out with.

Proud momma moment RIGHT HERE!  I was so pumped that instead of just leaving the 4wheeler for someone to find or even coming to find us to tell us it was stuck, he knew it was his responsibility to get it out.  So he figured out a solution and went to it.  I almost thought I could hear the heavenly choir as I had the parenting-for-the-win moment but not quite.  We left him to dig himself out as we headed back up the heifer hill to do a last check before heading in.

Our last check wasn’t a very fast check (heifer caught on her back as she finished pushing her baby out which was promptly mothered by some other cow… The struggle is real, friends…).  By the time we made it back to The Rancher’s Sidekick the 4wheeler was still stuck but there was a lot more story to tell.

After shoveling for quite a while, he was looking for a better way to get rid of the snow.  To his credit, he really did bury the thing so it was going to take a lot of work to dig it out.  So his Plan B was to use the hose to “wash away the snow” (I’m assuming he meant melt it but whatever…).  But the hydrant by the shop was frozen so that didn’t work.  Plan C was to start a fire to melt away the now.

Did you just get nervous?  When he mentioned fire, my eyebrows shot straight up and my eyes doubled in size.  But I calmly asked how he planned to do that.  “Oh, I just started that heater thing (the diesel heater) in the shop and tried to start that square bale string (baling twine rather than the net wrap we use on the round bales) on fire.  But it didn’t ever really burn, it just melted.  But it gets HOT!  I burned my finger!  I wanted to use the torch but I didn’t know how to do that…”

Wow… At this point it was my only thought.  I was super impressed at his problem solving and critical thinking.  School for the win!  But I was also terrified at his independence and his own confidence in his abilities.  Don’t get me wrong, I was still super proud of how he was figuring it all out, but maybe he was doing just a little too good for a six year old.  Like, maybe he needs a little less shop time with his dad.  Hallelujah that he couldn’t figure out the torch for a fire!

Ultimately he had decided to go back to the shovel because that was the only way he had been making any progress before.  Lucky for him, his dad had a better idea to get him out- the tractor.  That little boy grinned ear to ear as The Rancher chained the 4wheeler to the tractor and gave him instructions on driving it out.

I still laugh every time I think about this story.  I hope its recorded in heaven for me to watch on repeat when I get there because it is a winner!  That story right there, is a clear illustration of my son.  He loves the ranch and wants to do everything his dad does.  Maybe there are some things he still needs to learn to do and not to do, but he isn’t going to let anything slow him down.  If there is a problem, he is determined to find a solution.  It might take several plans and a little burn on the finger, but he will get to it!

And I couldn’t be anymore proud of that.

That is what the ranch life is really about.  Yes we raise cattle, but more importantly we raise kids and the ranch is a tool to teach them all of the lessons they need to make it through this life.

About Me

Hello! I'm Allison, The Rancher's Wife! There's nothing I love more than being out on the ranch with my husband and kids. Join me for a look at what goes on here at the ranch and the life being a rancher's wife!

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