The Idaho Rancher's Wife

The Ranch From the Wife's Perspective

Thankful for the Moments

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Happy Thanksgiving!  Wasn’t it a terrific day yesterday?  A day full of eating and family and eating and sleeping and eating and fun!  Actually, I don’t think I got an-after-lunch-nap but that’s ok.

I like my Thanksgivings best when its steeped in tradition and intentional.  We can eat a turkey any day and we can over-indulge whenever we want, but to be really be Thanksgiving, this day has to be more than that.

My mom has a tradition every Thanksgiving.  Its simple.  Its easy. But it helps me keep Thanksgiving more than just a day about eating. 

Every year my mom pulls out her hand drawn thankful turkey and carefully puts it on the wall.  To begin with he looks a little sad, so bare because he doesn’t have any feathers yet.  But as the days surrounding Thanksgiving pass, he is filled with colorful feathers inscribed with the blessings that we are most grateful for.  Some of them say “family.”  Some of them say “God.”  Some of them say “my blankie.”  And some of them even say, “my hot wife!”  They aren’t elaborate or fancy, but they are true, heartfelt things we are grateful for.

For this first time ever, I struggled to know what to write.  Not because I wasn’t grateful, but because I was so grateful for so many things I just didn’t know what to pick.  We have been blessed with a beautiful home in a place that we get do what we love to do.  We are constantly surrounded by good friends and family.  We have so many opportunities to learn, to serve, and to grow.  And while our year was so full, it was so full of blessings!  I just didn’t know what to write.

As I sat there trying to decide what to put on my empty thankful feather I began to think back through this year and all the things we had done and I began to realize that what I treasure most are the moments.  Those special moments you breath in deep because you know just how fleeting they can be.  Those moments you pause to take it all in so you can remember the sounds and smells that wrap around you.  Those moments that seem to make a place deep within your soul.

Those moments came as I stood with my kids as the heavy snowflakes drifted down from a peaceful winter storm while we were building a snowman.  They came as we worked in the garden, planting, weeding and watering lending to our eventual harvest.  It was in the quiet that I had those special moments when I rocked my growing baby before bed.  More came as we worked together as a family to fill our yard with new grass.  Some of those moments were spent late at night as we talked and laughed with our brothers and sisters. 

There are so many things in this life that I wish we could have or that I could give to my family.  We fill our lives with things or with moments and if I had to choose what my kids filled their lives with, it would be these moments.  More than anything, I hope that they hang on to them.  That they cherish them.  Because all of the things that they have will slip away, but these moments are for them to keep forever. 

There was no better thing for me to be thankful and to put on my feather than “the moments.”  What are you thankful for in this season of gratitude?  There are no wrong answers because being grateful is so much more important than what we are grateful for.  If you haven’t, take a minute and look through your life and find those things that bless your life. 

Happy Thanksgiving, Friends!

From a very grateful Rancher’s Wife

 

Oh ya… We sold the calves!

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Seasons on the ranch go by so fast.  One minute we are calving and trying to keep babies warm and alive and then before you know it, we are selling them.  And then you sell them, and you forget to put it on your blog to say “HAPPY DAY!”.  It may not seem like a big day, but those few hours on that frosty November morning are what we work for all year long.

So I am taking the opportunity now to celebrate selling and shipping calves.  Hooray!  It was such a s muddy, messy day because it had been raining and raining.  The downside to the rain and subsequent mud- sloshing and sliding around it poop and goop up to your eyeballs!  The upside- probably a few extra wet and dirty pounds on the calves!

Shipping cows isn’t all that hard, but sort of time consuming.  When you have hundreds of calve to weigh, you can see how that will take some time.  Let me walk you how that day goes…

First, it starts before that day.  A week or so before, we sort the steers from the heifers and pull out any of the sick, lame, or small calves (hopefully not too many of these!).  Up to this point we just keep them together to feed them.  While we are sorting the heifers, we pull off the ones that we want to keep for replacements somewhere around 100 depending on the year.

So on shipping morning, we start with the steers. We bring the herd into the corral and move them back to the scales.  We weigh them 10 at a time to get an average weight.  Can you imagine if we had to weigh them one by one?  We would be there all day.  After we weigh all the steers we look at the herd average and see what that compares to what we contracted them at.  Obviously, we want to hit the weight we contracted at because too light means a smaller check.  Too big usually isn’t a problem. 

After the steers are done, we do the same with all the heifers.

Once everything is weighed, counted to the number we contracted at (we have more calves than what we contract…), and the broker is happy with what we have, we load them up.  It takes someone with a masters degree in math to figure out the loading.  Not really, but it does take some time to figure out how many calves at what weight can fit in each section depending on which truck they are loading.  Glad that’s not my job.  Once all five (or sometimes six!) trucks are loaded they head out.

And then we stand there and listen to the silence. 
And then heave a sigh of relief for having the calves gone.
And then shout HOORAY!
And then we check the mail…

Then we go back to work because the job is never done.  Every year we have the same day of shipping calves with the same guys, the same routine, and then same cinnamon rolls.  And its a great day.  The day we work all year for and the day that lets us keep working for the next year.

Happy (belated) Sale Day, friends!

Priorities

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Preg checking.  It isn’t glamorous, it isn’t picturesque but it certainly is exciting and entertaining.  Not the actual preg checking itself… that is somewhat boring and redundant.  We make the day entertaining and exciting any way we can, which most often includes some kind of razzing about somebody everybody.

On this fine fall day, we were working the cattle we run on the forest ground.  It is a considerably smaller herd of cows than the group we do out to Black Pine.  Don’t get me wrong, with three different ranches pooling cows together, there was still a lot to do, but we were able to slow things down a bit.

And slowing things down for a bit was kinda nice. I’m sure that the guy that got put on the fence a few times didn’t think it was a take-it-easy kind of preg checking day. Or the guy that was doing the preg checking…  There’s nothing nice or easy going IN the OUT end of a cow! 

Every rancher will tell that there is more work to be done than there are hours of the day.  Even if the cows are settled and the haying is done and the water looks good, there is fence that could use fixing and equipment could do with servicing.  There comes a point that you have to decide just how hard you want to push yourself.  You could work a neck break pace and get a lot of work done, but that leads straight to burnout and once you hit burnout you hate your job.  And where this is more than a job, its a lifestyle, we can’t afford to reach the burnout stage.

So what do you do to avoid burnout?  I don’t know that we have totally found the answer to this question.  Unfortunately there are those days and weeks that you have no choice but to push hard.  But even though we don’t have the complete solution, I will tell you that there is one thing we always keep in mind and that is our priorities.

There are a lot of things that are important to our family and our ranch.  Obviously, as far as the ranch goes, the cows have gotta be happy.  Its hard to swallow that hundreds of other girls get my cowboy’s attention over me, until you take into consideration that they are cows.  Then its all good.  Beyond the ranch, our priorities are God, family, and community because without God we are nothing, with out family none of it is worth it, and its all so much better with good friends and neighbors.

Our priorities have to be family priorities with a common goal because on the long days where my husband is nearly non existent and I am being both mom and dad, it can get overwhelming.  If I didn’t have the ranch’s success as one of my priorities I’m pretty positive in would be a real cranky wife being put second.  And knowing The Rancher’s priorities include taking care of his family helps me to know that he is doing everything he can to make it back home as fast as he can.

So on this day of preg checking, we certainly had getting the work done as our top priority.  But enjoying our time working together with our family and friends was a close second.  And because it was, it was a fun day even if it was spent at the back end of a cow.   
        

It Looks Like we are Working, But we Call it a Vacation

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We preg checked the buffalo again.  Not because we had to, which is usually why we go preg checking, but because we want to.  Are we weird because we want to do more preg checking?  I know we are… We are one of those families that enjoy working, so instead of taking a real vacation, we go to my brother’s place to do more work.
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Click “Read More” for the rest of the story!

Actually, we didn’t go for the work.  I went for the family.  I guess if preg checking crazy buffalo is what I have to do to hang out with my family, then I guess that’s worth it.  Because I think that my family is pretty awesome.

Let me walk you through that day a little bit…

Yep… there was buffalo.  They are ugly and majestic, all at the same time.  They are so powerful and terrifying and awe inspiring.  In all honesty, I think they are pretty cool but I am so glad that I’m not the one running the place.

 Here is my nephew, with pretty sweet hair.  He is so funny because although he lives in Washington, he was born in Alabama and he can’t seem to get that thin Alabama blood out of his system.  No matter how many northwestern winters he makes it through or how many layers he puts on, the boy can’t stay warm out there.  But the cold doesn’t matte when his dad gives him a job to do.  He toughs it out anyway!

And then there is The Rancher’s Sidekick, that is there for the fun and the snacks.  Good thing the company and work is fun.  Funny story about this boy and the licorice…  He saw a guy walk over to the fence, dug around in his coat pocket, and pulled out a piece.  The guy offered The Rancher’s Sidekick a licorice and he took that as an open invitation to crawl up the fence and have as many pieces of licorice as he wanted.  And you guessed it, over the day, my boy ate up the whole package!  

Working out in the middle of nowhere may be inconvenient at times, but the view is always worth it.

My other nephew… I can’t believe how fast this boy is growing. I’m not old enough to be an aunt of a teenager, or soon to be.  If he had to choose his job for the day, it would be watching the little ones instead of working the stinky buffalo.  He has such a big heart and can’t help but love my babies and I love him for it.

My cool oldest brother.  When I was teeny tiny, he would go out of his way to hang out with me.  He was the cool brother that would help me saddle up to go ride or swing by the house to give me a ride in the wheel barrow.  Then when I went to college he still would make the effort to hang out with me.   He would drive hours to pick me up so I could spend the weekend out on the ranch with him.  In fact, that’s how ended up meeting The Rancher.  He did an internship with my brother and I fell in love with him.  Yep, my brother’s pretty cool.

The Rancher doing the easy job for once.  And by that I simply mean that he was doing someone else’s cattle (buffalo) and had no stake in game.  Its almost relieving to not be the boss every once ina while.

My beautiful neices.  They’re cool.  They’re smart.  And they are TOTALLY off limits to any boys that want to take them out.  For at least 20 years or so. 

This is the set up.  They put panels around everywhere because buffalo are crazy.  Super crazy so we make sure that our backs are covered…

Apparently The Ranch Princess doesn’t know how to take a serious picture.  But that’s ok.  Every bit of this picture is her personality and I love it!

Nobody is immune to this cutey.  Everyone needs a minute to snuggle a sweet, chubby baby like The Cowboy Kid.

The Rancher took the opportunity to sharpen up his preg checking skills since he had someone to teach him along the way.  Buffalo are actually a little easier to check because their back end is narrower and not so deep.  But it all translates just fine to cow anatomy terms.

My brother open us the gate so I could catch a picture without the chute in the way.  And while, I was taking the picture and looking through the lens and NOT paying attention to what was happening around me, The Rancher came around and scared me.  Scared me so bad I screamed and jumped a mile high.  Sure the buffalo wasn’t coming after me, but somebody or something was!  I still haven’t got him back for that… Hmm… Any ideas?

The little ones…  They work the buffalo once a year to cull out the old, sick ones, get the preg checking done, vaccinate everything and then wean out the babies.

My sweet baby loves to be outside.  He came home from the hospital a little cranky, but taking him outside always calmed him.  Even in the cold now, he loves to be out and never fusses with what’s happening around him. 

The buffalo were stinky and crazy and my fingers were so cold I couldn’t feel them, but the food was great and the people are my favorite so all-in-all, I could call it a great day.  

Growing a Kid Crop, Growing a Calf Crop

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2016 will go down as a big year for The Rancher’s Sidekick. It’s amazing how fast kids can learn and grow and change.  This boy went from baby to a boy overnight.  I know, that’s not how it actually happens , but when you are the momma you just can’t let your oldest grow up.  But then one day you wake up and he is going to school and totally ok without you.  And then he comes home from school and he can read and write and likes girls and he just isn’t the same kid you sent out the door.  
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Click “Read More” for the rest of the story!

Obviously school wasn’t the only place he was growing up on me but at home and on the ranch too.  Can I just say how amazing it is to finally have a kid that can help out around the house?!  My kids have doing chores and helping since they were little (in our house everyone helps in the home and on the ranch as soon as they can walk… not really, but young… I believe in teaching my kids how to work).  But The Rancher’s Sidekick can actually really help now.  Like do a job on his own.  And not like the I’m-doing-my-chores-but-mom-really-does-all-the-work-because-I’m-too-little-to-do-a-good-job kind of on his own. 

Can you tell I’m pumped?

This may be as freeing as potty training!

Ok, I may be dramatizing things a bit, but it’s so nice to have him growing up and able to have a little responsibility and him handling it so well. Proud momma here.

And then there’s the growth he’s had on the ranch.  There’s a reason I call him the sidekick because he goes everywhere with his dad.  In fact, this last summer, he would wake up early to make sure that he wouldn’t get left behind.  There were very few day that he didn’t go about to work with The Rancher and stay out there all day.  And he wasn’t just a tag along but actually helped get the work done.  I couldn’t believe the stories he would come home telling about his adventures throughout the day.  In fact, I would sit there, eyebrows raised at The Rancher, when I would hear about how he had pushed the cows all alone out on the range.  It seems just like yesterday I would have to go with him if he wanted to ride and now all of the sudden he isn’t just riding by himself but pushing his own herd of cows!  Of course, The Rancher would smile and beam with pride at his growing boy and slowly my heart would slow down and I could see that our boy really was growing up and he is becoming someone I am so proud of. 

Now, it complete transparency, he is still a typical little boy that is currently in big trouble for not listening to his momma.  And he absolutely drive me crazy with all the boy noises, farting, burping, and how he torments his sister.  But, as we are all a work in progress, I can’t help but be so pleased with his progress. 

Ya know, on the ranch we are all about growth- we’ve gotta get out calf crop BIG.  We select genetics to grow big calves and to have cows that milk well to grow big calves. We have genetics to have calves that grow big out on the range and desert and genetics to have low birthweight calves that will gain fast.  We supplement our cattle with protein and mineral to help with nutrition to grow big calves…. Its all about growing big calves!  At home we are worried about growth too, but less about physical growth and more about what kind of people our kid crop is becoming.  We want to see them grow into hard working, responsible, caring, and committed people.  We want them to grow into people that

So far, I think we are doing pretty ok!

Range Weaning Out to Black Pine

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Not being a local girl to southern Idaho, its been pretty fun for me to hear and learn little bits of the history, especially the fun tidbits that relate directly to the family, the ranch, or the land we run on.  And since the family has been around for more than 100 years and we run on like 50,000 acres (ok… I don’t really know how much land it is, I just made that up… but its a LOT) of public ground, there is a lot of history there.  History ranging from the construction of the transcontinental railroad to the wagon ruts from the Oregon Trail to the local Indian tribes that lived in the valley.
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Click “Read More” for the rest of the story!

We summer our cows in the Black Pine and Juniper mountains and just above our ground at the van Colman is the old Black Pine gold mine.  When I first heard an out the mine, I pictured an 1849 old prospector panning for gold in the stream, finding his fortune a nugget at a time.  But of course that was wrong because there aren’t ANY streams crossing through Black Pine and I don’t think the mine was open in 1800s.  The mine was open more recently, like 1990s recently.  Crazy, huh?

How cool that only 20 years ago guys were saying that they were gold miners! That sounds more like somebody’s alternate life not a reality in this life… super cool- not that I wouldn’t want to do it, but super cool for someone else to do.  The idea of going underground in a dark creepy mineshaft just does not appeal to me! Maybe that’s still picturing the old prospector kind of mining and not the modern machinery mining…

Back in the day, when The Rancher was just a little buckaroo, they used to take school trips out to the mine and check out the operation in progress. Being the kid he was, he was totally in awe with the equipment- loaders so big the entire school could fit in the bucket! (remember, we have a small school out here so its only like 30 kids instead of 300…).  As they would tour around they would get to see them blasting the hillside.  It was actually more of hearing it than seeing it as it was pretty far away, but still super cool for any little boys that enjoys demolition!  And then to top it all off, they could see the final product of it all- gold bars.    

Unfortunately, the mine is shut down now, not so much from a lack of gold but more to the financial troubles the company had…  So all that’s left there now is a few old shafts and remnants of the old mining carts and tracks, just memories of the old operation. I always wonder how much more gold is down there, especially with new technology and innovations.  Maybe if I wasn’t a busy rancher’s wife I could be a gold miner.  With the way cattle prices have gone recently, maybe a little diversification wouldn’t be a bad idea!

Confessions About Truckers…

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I have a terrible confession to make…. Growing up I had a very narrow minded, very terrible perception of truck drivers. There… I said it. And the sad thing is that it was an opinion I formed in the first grade that took me YEARS to change.

I very vividly remember my little 6 year old self sitting around a table with a few of the boys of my class hearing them say that all they wanted to do when they grew up was to drive semi.  Now, if you please, imagine a very cute somewhat bossy, sassy, darling and very opinionated little girl that was sure that the only dreams worth living were her dreams… that’s me.  In my mind, the only guys that drove semis were fat, stinky single fathers that drank and smoked and were on the road so much that their own mothers had to take care of their kids.  It was like they couldn’t get a job at home and the only thing they could do was drive.  I took them for failures and therefore anyone that drove semi or wanted to, were failures at life too.  Pretty terrible right?  At the time I didn’t think so and so you can guess that when I heard these boys I was absolutely baffled why someone would want to choose a life as a failure, destined to be stinky, lonely, and fat from sitting on their rear all day.  

Great opinion, huh?  Remember I was 6!

Fast forward 14 years and all the sudden there I was marrying a man that loved semis just like those boys, and although he didn’t want to be a truck driver all his life, he did love the opportunity to haul cows in the semi.  Eek! I kinda couldn’t believe it and I really didn’t ever want to admit that my husband did such a thing.  But after riding with him those first few years, my opinion drastically changed.

Having an up close view of just what it is like in driver’s seat helped me realize that first, driving semi isn’t easy and isn’t for the faint of heart.  That moment when you have to pull your rig across the highway, stopping all lanes of traffic to get turned around to get backed into that tight spot to load up just about makes me pee my pants… And I’m just the passenger! And speaking of backing up, can you imagine backing up a 50 foot trailer a quarter mile when you struggle to back up your car 10 feet?!  I seriously thought truck driving didn’t require a brain but then my mind as BLOWN watching The Rancher drive. 

Being the wife of an occasional trucker help to debunk the all-truckers-are-fat-stinky-losers myth pretty fast.  I mean, with a wife as awesome as me, how can you NOT be rocking life?! Haha… But seriously, The Rancher’s character of being an honest, hardworking, giving, God-fearing family man easily proves that truckers are great men too.

Do you hate me? I seriously had a terrible perception and really discredited a lot of good men (and women!) with my shallow stereotype.  But now every time Smokey and The Bandit comes on, I have a sense of pride for my trucking husband. So now I am here to tell you truckers are people too! And good people!  Sure there are a few that give them all a bad name, but that’s in every job and industry we see.  They are good, smart, skilled people that just have their own dreams. 

PS On a similar note, The Rancher says to give a little love and share the road with those truckers.  Just remember, they are bigger than you!

Not Lost, But Certainly Not Sure Where we Are

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Hey, friends.  Do you feel abandoned…. again?  Summer just gets so darn busy (I think I’ve told you that the last 3 years!) that some things just have to go and since I can’t stand to go without clean underwear or cleaning my house it is, unfortunately, my blog that gets neglected.  But lucky for you I still take lots of pictures and remember the good stories so I can still keep you caught up.
 
Like this one day that we were almost lost.
 
I say almost because I don’t want to ever admit I was lost, but if there ever was a day, it was this one.
 
Let me set the stage.  It was a beautiful and lovely fall day when the guys were gathering the cattle from Cow Hollow (the summer range pasture) to take into Black Pine to wean the following week.  It takes about three days to get everything gathered and moved to the corrals (not to mention the week that it takes for the lost stragglers to make it down!) where they can work them and we were on the last day.  The herd goes right past another set of corrals that conveniently works great to stop and sort off any extra pairs that don’t belong or castrate any bulls or that sort of thing. 
 
Normally the cowboys are on their own for an exciting sack lunch, but on this lucky day, one good ranch wife suggested we meet up at the corrals with the cowboys to grill some burgers.   We jumped on that idea, because the cowboys were tired of eating sandwiches, we were tired of making sandwiches and we were really tired of seeing some of those sandwiches come back home.  Ya know, we ranch wives end up in a terrible conundrum- we have to make sure that we make send enough food and enough sandwiches to keep the cowboys full and happy.  But at the same time, too many sandwiches are a bad thing.  They come home all warm and soggy and no one wants a leftover sticky, soggy sandwich so they end up in the garbage.  So you can see why we jumped on the burger idea.   
 
We, The Montana Girl, The Cattlewoman, and I, loaded up in the truck with 4 babies, a load of buns, patties, and sheet cake and headed out to find the boys.  I had never been to the corrals we were headed to but The Rancher had given me some sketchy directions where we headed.  I knew the general area we were looking for hope that the landmarks I did know were enough to help us get.  Luckily, Rancher Sr. gave his sweet heart even better directions than I had, so I just opted to leave the navigating to her. 
 
Our instructions were pretty simple- after the road goes straight, take the only road headed to the right shortly before the road goes under the freeway.  Pretty simple, right?  We thought so.  We got to the straight part of the road and started looking for a road that headed off to the right.  And we found one, but it looked more like a goat trail, so we figured it didn’t count.  We kept going and saw ourselves another road and this was a real road.  It had to be a real road because it actually had a road sign.  And we were sure we should take it because the sign said “Cow Hollow” and that’s where the cows were coming from.  So we took it.
 
We knew that once we got on the road, all we had to do was drive a half mile and then take the fork to the right and we would see the corrals.  Well, we didn’t see the corrals…. buuuut we could see some cows so we kept going.  We got to the cows and they weren’t ours and our cowboys were NOWHERE to be found.  So what’s a girl to do in such a situation?
 
Just keep driving, of course.  I have to tell you at this point we just kept laughing (laughing seemed a better option than crying) because we knew that something was up.  Either we didn’t follow what seemed to be simple directions or our directions were bad.  And to make our situation seem worse, we were out of cell phone service so we couldn’t even call anyone to let us know where to go or what to do!  Typical, right?
 
So we kept driving.  And driving.  We figured they had to be this way because they were bringing cows from Cow Hollow…  and the road we were on was Cow Hollow so logically we were headed in the right direction, right? So we kept driving.  Through one gate… and then another.  The farther up the road we got, the more we laughed and slowly conceded that we didn’t really know where we were going.  But despite our dire circumstances there was a bright spot in it all- we had the cake and chocolate cake makes anything better! 
 
We were steadfastly watching our phones and Tada- finally we got service!  The Rancher picked up and just laughed when I explained our exciting predicament.  We were way, WAY off!  So we found the least scary place to turn around at (because there aren’t too many places for a U-turn out in the hills) and headed back to the road.  It turns out that it was really simple to get there, we just hadn’t gone far enough down the road to take the right right! All we needed was for someone to have said, turn JUST BEFORE the highway, or AT the turn.  Nevertheless, we made it.  
 
Now if there is a lesson in all this, its this: a man should know to give detailed directions to his wife.  Sure the directions we were given were accurate and simple, but without the details we had to fill in the blanks ourselves and that didn’t turn out good!  But we know that DETAILS just aren’t a part of a man’s brain so the reality is that detailed directions will never happen.  Which means the real lesson in all this is that every ranch wife needs to know EVERY inch of land, EVERY road, EVERY corral…  EVERY blasted sage brush so that when they say “meet me here,” you actually know where to go and don’t take an hour long scenic route.
 
Despite the craziness and somewhat stressfulness, it was a lot of fun.  Not any fun I want to repeat anytime soon, but we certainly made some memories.
 

 

Weaning… and Pregnant

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Looking back at weaning a few (four!) months ago, I don’t recall it being overly eventful.  I mean, there wasn’t any disasters or mix ups.  Nobody was injured and all calves were accounted for.  That all being said, it could be that time has softened any of those bad memories and they have slipped away.  We can just say that it was a good, uneventful weaning.  Well, relatively speaking…

Ok let’s just get it out there that so long as the cowboys are having a good day, nobody else’s suffering really matters.  So while I don’t recall any issues with the weaning itself, I do specifically recall it being a little rough on this pregnant rancher’s wife, but again, that doesn’t really matter… 

The first weekend of weaning I wasn’t even planning on really helping out.  They figured there were plenty of guys so I planned on just playing photographer.  That morning as they got ready to roll out they realized there wasn’t enough cowboys and The Rancher came in asking for me to ride.  I had just barely rolled out of bed when he asked me how I was feeling and lucky enough for him it seemed like it would be a day that I wouldn’t be kneeling in front of the toilet (hooray!).  So I went.  And it was fun.  And it was so painful!

Have you ever rode a horse with a cantaloupe bouncing around your insides?  It didn’t matter how fast we went, something was being smashed or jostled or bumped.  And let’s not forget how a bouncing tummy can turn sick in what seems like an instant.  It was like being sea sick from the inside out!  

I survived that day, but I decided I was done riding for a while.  So when we had our next weekend of weaning I stayed on the sidelines, which finally gave me a chance to take some photos.  It seemed like forever since the last time my camera had been out on the range.  It felt good to use my trigger finger again!  Now before you worry about me just sitting around NOT being helpful, remember that this girl can’t sit still long.  As soon as they had enough calves sorted, the kids and I jumped in the truck and hauled calves home.  See?!  Very, very helpful…

With two weekends of weaning under our belt, we had just one more major day to spend out on the range.  That one last day was maybe the longest of them all! The Rancher asked me to help ride because once again they were low on numbers.  By that point my morning sickness was less of an issue, but my growing belly was still something to be dealt with.  Being the good wife that I am, I helped, of course.  I sorta hoped that my sacrifice to come and help would earn me a little doting and sympathy but I should have known better…  There is no room for weakness in the cowboy world, even for the pregnant ranch wife…  

So now here we are, four months down the road from weaning and I am finally getting things posted.  I live be the saying, “Better late than never!”  And maybe that’s not so bad of a thing if it means that I remember it being relatively uneventful (because my suffering doesn’t matter, so long as the work gets done!).
 

 

Ag in Your County Promotions!

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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…

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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