Once Upon a Time

July 10, 2022

Howdy folks,

Well, there's honestly not much to report on this week. It's been hot and dry, with just one brief bout of rain that might have only managed to wet the ground for about thirty minutes or so. Everything is nice and green out here and the horses are totally MIA. We have now switched to feeding them just once a day, in the evening, and are still barely seeing them and half of the time there is still hay in the feeders when I get out there. I've been working at the new house on the ranch all week and twice they meandered by, never stopping their incessant chewing of grass, and just as quickly kept moving along on their way, like they had some kind of map to help them figure out which grasses they've clipped already and where they needed to go next! Still, it is shockingly green out here, much more green than it got last summer. That being said, there was about six weeks or so last summer where we had lots of grass and the horses were spending most of their time out of sight on the back 40. But, this is a whole 'nother kind of green, I must say. Tomorrow I'm going to finish installing two more gates for the horses so that we can keep them off of some of the grass in different sections and rotate them back and forth throughout the week. Currently, our thinking is to keep them on the smaller section of pasture along the road that is much less grassy from Monday morning through Friday evening and then I'll open the gates to the big grassy area when I'm done for the week on Friday nights. The boss wants to try this rotation for a few weeks and see if that allows the grass to grow sufficiently to not just regenerate, but actually to grow some, so we'll see how things work and what we'll need to adjust going forward. On another slightly unrelated front, but still involving horses, I learned how the Comanches broke wild horses this weekend in the book that I've been reading about the Comanche empire. This empire stretched from northern Mexico to what is now southeastern Colorado and southern Kansas and from the plains of eastern New Mexico to eastern Texas where the big plains finally peter out and trees start growing again. They were at their most powerful in the 1700s and 1800s, but like most tribes they ended up subjugated and on reservations, although in their case it was probably just as much from the near extinction of the buffalo in the 1870s as it was from the constant fighting with the US military. They raided at will in those days, all the way to Taos, Pecos, Chihuahua, San Antonio & Austin. Nothing was beyond their reach and where we live today, right where the plains and Rockies collide, would have been a very dangerous area to live in only a short 150 years ago. But, back to horse-breaking, the Comanche would lasso a wild horse around the neck, strangle until it laid down almost to the point of dying, then right at the last moment they would loosen the lariat and start nuzzling and sweet-talking the dazed animal and inside of fifteen minutes or so they could have a totally wild horse broken in this manner. According to what I have been reading, the Comanche were such expert horsemen that pretty much any child in the tribe by the time they were ten could break a wild horse in this manner!

So, back to nowadays on the ranch! The garden is really starting to push its green growth out of the ground. We didn't have very much rain this week, but a lot in the few weeks before that, so everything is in great shape. Still, another timely shot of rain this week would go a long way to keeping the green monsoon season going and everything from drying back out again. We took a break this weekend and actually ran into town to go clothes shopping. Now, all I can say is that I haven't bought any new pants in almost five years and I was down to just three pair that didn't have any holes in them. Erin's been doing her best with the rest, trying to keep them all sewn up and patched together, but I finally spent some of my moldy money and got two new pairs of pants. I'm actually more or less the same size that I was in high school, so, much to my wife's annoyance, I still wear a lot of clothes that I have from that period in my life. I, never wanting to waste anything, revel in the fact that I don't ever have to go clothes shopping. Erin, on the other hand, wonders sometimes who the homeless vagrant is that she married that puts entire outfits together of torn and tattered threads. So, after much ado and much money going in a million other directions, I'm back to having a hole-free pair of pants to wear to work every day! The only thing that I have to do is make sure that I don't wear my nice, new stuff anywhere that I'll get them all torn up...no promises!

Now, here's another batch of pictures for everyone's enjoyment. First up, two artistic manipulations that I did to some of the photos that I've taken: first, the baby tarantula from last week re-imagined; then, a view from the ranch looking down the river valley. Next, four shots of our mid-morning dog run this morning while it was still about 80 and not up into the 90s yet: first, all three running around the new house(after which Rui always heads back home); then, the girls hitting the corner by the old driveway's horse gate; and, finally, on the way back to the houses with the girls desperately trying to make a dash from the drive to swim in the pond. Then, two shots of the gravel pile where we unloaded the tractor trailer load of hay a couple of weeks ago: first, you can still see the ruts at the turnaround; and, then, looking back towards the ranch buildings from the same spot...I was aiming with the tractor for the two nearly-touching buildings in the middle of the picture that are the barns, that's where all the hay had to go. Next, the horse gate on the old driveway...never used, but just a key turn away when necessary. Then, the ubiquitous wild flowers that we see all summer long out here. Next up, four different shots from the walk this morning showing just how green everything is out here: first, the mesa as seen with a meadowy foreground from close to the ranch road; then, a view from the old driveway's horse gate, complete with standing stone; next, a shot looking more to the north showing how green the big field is; and, finally, the mesa as seen from the new house with an old stone doorway from Mexico that we reassembled for the boss. Finally, I got a surprise from my sister this week when she was digging through all of her old horse stuff and she sent me these two old photos: first, apparently I've always had a hankering for tinkering with vehicles; and, then, a shot of me and my sister and her horse Sonny...notice the cowboy hat, the six shooter and the rifle(cap guns, both), I never left home without them for my first ten years or so!

Take care.