We tried to brand on a windy day.. and I don’t recommend it.  Ok, lets start over, I really shouldn’t see “we” tried to brand because when I looked out the window… and what did I see? popcorn popping I saw crazy wind and opted out of being on the branding crew.  We showed up in time for lunch and stayed just long enough to know I made the right choice to be the rancher’s wife (take care of The Rancher’s kids… and laundry) and not the rancher wife (eating dust with the rest of ’em).

 In fact, when I did venture out of the truck I spent most of the time watching from the horse trailer.

 It ended up being so dusty that they had to quit early.  The cowboys couldn’t catch anything, and when they did it was a hard knowing which brand to put on.  Even once they figured that out they had to be careful to make sure it was just the calf that got branded and not the crew!  On top of that the cows trashed the fence- its pretty hard to brand when the cattle don’t show up…

 There were some blue skies, so long as you weren’t trying to find them through the dust…

Check out The Rancher!  He was so covered in dirt!  All of the sudden he was tanner and had a thicker goatee… And are those flowers growing from the dirt in his ears?!  Maybe not, but we sure went through the Q-tips that night when The Rancher was cleaning up…  Actually, you wanna hear something terrible and funny at the same time?  Just when The Rancher got home, the power went out because of the CRAZY wind!  When he needed a shower most, he couldn’t.  But then our fabulous neighbors offered their shower to us.  You may be asking why they had power and we didn’t… Well, not only are they fabulous, but also brilliant because they have a generator hooked up to their house.  Lesson learned- we need a generator! 

April is SUCH a busy month for us and it mostly surrounds itself around branding.  I have learned not to schedule anything on the weekends because The Rancher already has them booked full.  Our cows calve out on the desert north of the Salt Lake which means that rather than branding on the ranch we brand on the range.  We load up the truck with food, toys for The Rancher’s Boy and coats and blankets enough for all of Mother Nature’s mood swings and then hit the road.  Most of the time I am in the thick of it helping however I can, but since The Rancher’s Girl is still so little (5 months!) I get to spend more time on the sidelines this year (that just means more pictures!).