Cowboy Nature - The Idaho Rancher's Wife

10 Lessons I Have Learned as a Rancher’s Wife

March 2, 2014 by Allison

There are a lot of things that I have learned while I have been a rancher’s wife. Some have been from my own experiences and some have been from fellow ranch wives. I guess the most important thing I have learned is to just live it and love it! Here are a few other tips I have figured out along the way…

1. You must always consult the cowboys when you are picking your due date (like you can really decide what day you are going to give birth, right?!). You should never have babies during calving, branding, spring turnout, haying, fall gather, weaning, or preg checking seasons.

2. Once you do find an acceptable time to have a baby (or you have come to some compromise to manage having a baby in the midst of the chaos) expect to hear 9 months’ worth of cow pregnancy related jokes. I wish I had a buck for every time I heard The Rancher tell me he was bringing the chains, just in case.

3. Cowboys work much better on full bellies. It is in your own best interest to learn how to feed the masses. It should include meat and potatoes. Always.

4. There are days that The Rancher has to leave the ranch for some project, but is absolutely sure that he will be back in time for lunch. I still send him with the lunchbox. Fate has it that when I DO send a lunch they will be home on time for lunch. But when I don’t, everything goes wrong and it turns out to be a long and hungry day.

5. During the busy season (which could be ANY day), your Friday night date might just be a tractor ride or a ride through the cows. And he does appreciate that you are there for more than getting the gate for him.

6. Never do something once that you don’t want to be asked to do again. That advice was given by my mother and mother-in-law- one that didn’t want to be the one to milk the cow (even though she grew up on a dairy) and one that didn’t want run the swather. Both brilliant women!

7. When you go out with the cowboys, be sure to load your horse in the trailer last. That means you will unload first, giving you enough time to be on and ready so that you don’t get left behind.

8. If ever you get yelled at while you are out helping, it is a sign of real love, not the lack of. He is yelling at you to save your life, so don’t take the time to make him say it in a nicer or way or to say please. Just do what he says.

9. The faithful ranch dog is more than just a dog, and therefore is entitled to privileges, including riding in your car, coming in your house (both happen no matter what condition he is in), and having a place to sit with the rest of the family on the already squished 4-wheeler. And just face the fact that he will be in at least one family picture (you just don’t have to put that up one on the wall).

10. Always keep one cowboy around the ranch because destiny will have it that when your best helper is 3, the cows, horses, bulls, or chickens will get out. It’s likely that with them all being gone they have taken all of the 4-wheelers too and all you have left to chase them in with is the riding lawn mower.

BONUS(because I love you!)
Remember that a rancher is on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ALL year. That includes nights, because that’s when you get a call from the state police that you have cows on the freeway. Or the boss calls for help because the calves are on their way into town at midnight. It also includes Sundays (the one day a week you try to slow down), because it seems that the range water always goes out just after church. It includes special days, like when you have just had a new baby. Sometimes the boss calls to haul spuds that day. And it certainly includes the days and nights of freezing temperatures when the rest of the world heads in. Just be sure to be ready with something hot for when they come back to the house!

There are so many more I could share, and I will someday. Life is never dull as a rancher’s wife. It’s our job to just take what comes our way and work with it. I love the lessons I learn from being The Rancher’s Wife!

I Hate When Death Wins

February 28, 2014 by Allison

This isn’t the post I had intended to share with you today, but I just had to write this (maybe you’ll get a double dose of The Rancher’s Wife today!).

I hate death. And I hate that even though as hard as we try, we lose sometimes. I think I take it personally because it means that I wasn’t enough. Today I had to face that reality again.

The temperatures are warming up enough (or I am sick of being inside) that I decided to go for a run this morning. It was just an ordinary run- I thought I was dying but still going. I was jamming to my iPod and picking up speed as I headed down the last hill. This is where it all changed.

I noticed there was a heifer in the already-calved-pen that was stuck on her back. If a cow gets on her back and her feet uphill she can’t get up alone (sometimes I think I feel like that…). If she is left like that long she could die. Needless to say, when I got up to her, I called The Rancher to come fix it (because he can fix anything!). His response was to do it myself… um… no. I can’t really do a job that takes the two of us. At this point I noticed that she was calving and so we had even more reason to hurry.

After The Rancher’s speedy arrival (that seemed to take hours) we pushed and pulled and grunted and finally got her un-upside down. Then we realized that she couldn’t stand. When cows have been trying to have a baby for a longer time than usual, the pressure can make it so that they can’t get up. This was actually ok because it meant that we could pull the calf right there.

The nose of the baby was sticking out and we could tell that he was struggling to breath. That calf needed help and every minute counted. Which meant we didn’t have time for the calf puller or chains or even gloves. We ended up using a bungee cord to wrap around the calves legs, the wench on our 4 wheeler to do the pulling and yours truly stuck her bare hands into the heifer to help during the tough spots. It wasn’t the most conventional way of pulling a calf, but it worked.

Once we got the calf out, we went to work getting him breathing. A lot of times just tickling the inside of their nose will make them sneeze and that’s enough to jump start them. But that didn’t work…

We tried rubbing his back and chest, trying to wake him up a little more. That didn’t help…

The Rancher got down to him and tried some mouth to nose breathing. With every breath he would give, the calf’s heart would beat a little faster… for a while. But eventually it wasn’t enough and his heart stopped. He died even though we were there to help him. He died while we were doing all we could. He died while my hand was resting on his little chest, willing his heart to beat again.

There comes a point when see that you are going to lose. And its at this point you put everything you have into it, denying the horror that is becoming reality. You hope that your will and determination will cause something miraculous to happen so that you don’t have to face the truth. The truth that calf has died.

This is one of those days that we don’t love on the ranch. We are reminded that we have limits and that there are some things we just can’t fix. And I hate that. I really hate when death wins.

Praying for Moisture

February 3, 2014 by Allison

Drought. What a yucky word, right? Images of the dust-bowl-days quickly come to mind when I hear that word. Its dusty, dirty, and dry (any other D words to go with all of that?). Maybe we should expect dryness when we live in the desert, but the lack of rain that we have had lately has just been mind blowing.

When we moved to the family ranch (nearly 2 years ago) we were coming from the Snake River valley which was lush and green. We moved to a place so barren and dry that not even the wild flowers were growing… it didn’t go over so well with this girl (thankfully I found some this last summer). But more than missing the green and wild flowers, we struggled for the good feed for our cattle.

For nearly two years now we have earnestly been praying for the rain (or snow) and lately we haven’t been alone in those prayers. When I heard how nearly the entire west was praying for the drought to end I was surprised. But then I heard that groups like Farm Bureau and BEEF Magazine were asking for prayers I was humbled. Even the big guns are turning to the even bigger guns.

Its been a great experience to be a part of this HUGE ranching/farming community moving together to our knees so that we can have the means to continue to live this life we love. Will you join with us?

The Crew Part 2

January 3, 2014 by Allison

(He, he… the title rhymes!)

Do you want to know what was so cool about our family cattle drive last week? Well, yes the winter temperatures did make it a “cool” outing. What else made it especially cool was that we had all of The Rancher’s brothers.

There are five- that’s a lot of cowboys for one momma to handle. Thankfully she is still alive and sane.

We are always privileged to work with Cowboy Pete and Cowboy E while they still live on the ranch, and once again they graced us with their cowboy presence.

With it being Christmas brother #2 and his sweet wife were around to move cows with us. Wouldn’t it be fun to call them Bonnie and Clyde? Except that they are good kids so the name doesn’t fit. So instead lets call them The Cowpoke and The Montana Girl. Right now they are absent Eliason cowboys because they are becoming educated cow-folk.

And completing the cowboy brotherhood was brother #3. Last week we welcomed home The Buckaroo from his church mission to Kansas. In true cowboy fashion he was moving cows the day after he got home!

So already this is fun to move cows with all the brothers but something else cool was that there were four generations of cowboys out there from The Ranch Boss to The Rancher’s Sidekick. Its not too often that four generations get to work together!

The Rancher, a DIY-er

November 19, 2013 by Allison

I love DIY projects, LOVE them. The Rancher does too, maybe not the ones I enlist him to do, but he des non the less. He likes the manly ones that come with bigger or more dangerous tools. I mean what is a welder if not a really hyped up glue gun, right? 🙂

But seriously, isn’t that really a integral part of being a rancher. These cowboy need to be able switch between whatever jobs the day calls for- truck driver, irrigator, welder, tractor operator, horse trainer, nurse maid… You get the idea, they gotta do it all. They are DIY-ers.

This is the feed truck with arms to lift the bails. Do you see how my creative husband has fanagled it to lift the troughs? I find funny, but boy it is works darn good.

Here is real picture of The “DYI” Rancher. Pretty cool. Finding your own way to get the job done, or being a DIY-er, is part of being a rancher.

Tools of the Trade

November 1, 2013 by Allison

Part of being a cowboy, especially a cowboy in the middle of nowhere, means having a wide array of tools. Some of them are intended to be used on the ranch, some are not for the ranch but they actually are quite useful and some are homemade- ghetto-rigged from twine and a branch (because some times that is all they have).

Of course a favorite of any rancher is the hot shot. Efficiency is important when running through hundreds of cows and a little zap in quite motivating. Therefore, EVERYONE has one.

When we preg check cows a useful, but out of place tool is bleach. Like go-to-a-salon type bleach. They mix it up and paint a splotch according to their expected calving date. Bleaching their hair is a good way to mark them because it will last until February/March when they start dropping babies.

Tools are an important part of our work… but it’s funny to see what is the favorite or what homemade tool come up with.

Cowboy Kings

October 6, 2013 by Allison

Following The Rancher around has had some fun perks that I had never considered. Probably the most rewarding one has been the opportunity to get to know some of these other cowboys. The nature of the cowboy is to be hard working, rough and tough but looking at these men a little closer I have been able to see another side.

There is the tender side that I see- when they are helping a sick calf, a quick but gentle pat and word to their tired horses, and then when they take a minute to hug and talk to my babies.

These men are very humble, something I have learned with taking their pictures. They always say things like, “I’ll break your camera” or “Find someone better looking to take a picture of.” This is just one way they are humble. They aren’t looking for any fame or glory when they do something, even if it is cool. They just ride because they love it.

They also have a silly side, and not always alcohol induced. They will sing as they ride down the road. They tease back and forth constantly. One of my favorites is to hear their hilarious stories of days in the past.

There is so much to these men, living and working out here in this rough country. These men rule this land like kings, The Cowboy Kings. Riding because it is their fortune, working because its their legacy, and loving it all because it is their destiny.