Life on the Ranch

Even though I didn’t realize it at the time, growing up on a ranch was the best experience of my life. My parents moved out there shortly after they were married to the dismay of my mother who had envisioned city or at least small town life for her family. It was a huge shock when my dad told her in confidence that if all went well they might get to move to the ranch. He was delighted and she was horrified! But move they did to live for over 50 years on the family ranch.

My dad moved out there to work for his dad who lived in town and was a pharmacist. He was paid a very meager salary all of those years as ranching is a hard way of life. My dad and mom were always supplementing their income with other jobs besides the ranch just to make a living. My dad worked at the local auction barn on Saturday’s during the big sale of the week, he built stock trailers, he artificially inseminated dairy cattle, and a couple of times raised dairy calves to sell to the local dairy farmers in our area. My mother worked for a local photographer coloring photos in the days before color photography.

We raised Black Angus cattle and Angora goats on the ranch. My dad depended on my brothers and me to help him with the livestock. We often got up before dawn to get up the horses and go somewhere on the ranch to work cattle and goats. There were several places on the ranch that were not accessible by vehicle so rounding up the livestock could be interesting and challenging at times.

What fun that was…I always was so excited every time we got up the horses and saddled them up to go work livestock. Sometimes we would just ride from the barn and corrals to the pastures to round them up but many times we would have to load the horses in the trailer and drive to where we would be working them. I could have done that for my entire life!

Of course besides that we were in 4-H and raised animals and I dragged my dad to every rodeo within driving distance during the summers just to ride in the Grand Entry. He would never let me race barrels…he always said that would just ruin a good horse. But he would load up my horse and take me to the rodeos.

Of all the things I miss …life on the family ranch is number one on the list.