Skip to main content

The Best Laid Plans... On the Ranch

Today I have decided to enlighten those readers that have perhaps never experienced moving cattle by semi-trailers and horse trailers, and for those that have, I think you can relate.

Note: This is my personal experience and may not hold true to all others, theirs may not involve as much swearing or underwear changes.

First the day starts off early, and there is a partially developed plan for how things are going to go.

Within a half an hour the plan has gone to sh#%.

At this point a plan B of sorts is thrown into place and within another hour that is gone as well.

So all involved begin flying by the seat of their pants and hoping for the best.

This usually results in the worst.

You yell at your spouse. Your spouse yells back.

You both begrudglingly carrying on working together because your survival depends on it.

Several hours later than planned, the cattle pairs are separated, Mommas in one semi-trailer, babies in another. The stragglers are placed in a horse trailer along with a four wheeler for fixing fence later.

You begin the convoy down the road.

You are driving the pickup with dual tires and a twenty-eight foot long horse trailer.

It's a two hour drive to the summer pasture, where the cattle are going to stay for the duration of the warm weather months.

Due to construction, you cross a single lane, cliff of death, less than one foot of clearance on either side of those dual tires, bridge, and you have arrived.

After a change of skivvies, you begin the work of unloading cattle.

Someone (Hub's) balances precariously above the cattle and gives them a spray of medicine to keep the bugs at bay, a form of OFF bug spray for cattle if you will.

This is where things begin to look up. The Mommas are happy to see their babies and the grass is green and beautiful and you can finally begin to breathe a sigh of relief.

Then comes the several hours of checking and fixing summer pasture fence for breaks in the wire.

Finally after the four wheeler runs out of gas and you have been sufficiently bitten to death by mosquitos, you haul yourself home, or in my case, back to my sisters, for a glass of wine and a hot pizza.

 

The day is done, and somehow everyone miraculously survived, marriage still intact.

Till tomorrow when you have to go back over that bridge....

Have a lovely day!

P.S. Last Fall we worked cattle in the same pasture.

 

Comments

  1. Ive been there before with my dad! There is a road to one of our summer pastures that I hate. I refused to drive it this summer. I stopped at the top of it and made my dad walk up to the pick up and drive it down.... what a chicken i was!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I seriously almost stopped in the middle and made one of the construction workers drive it across but it was so tight I wouldn't have been able to get the doors open!

      Delete
  2. seriously, you are the cutest thing ever. Bartimus better remember that!!!! :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Changes

I was cleaning today, which gave me time to think, and thinking always leads me here. The house is 'weekend messy', so decided to clean my floors, because The Nester says if your floors are clean the rest of the house feels clean too, even if it isn’t.  I have found that it is pretty good advice, so when everything else feels chaotic, I clean the floors. Of course for me, cleaning the floors also means picking up the toys, shoes, clothes, etc. so that I can even begin to vacuum, which naturally leads to a cleaner home as well.  While cleaning up I began to think about how this blog has evolved over the years, from a desire to write like The Nester about home, into what it is now.  I started writing this blog when I was dreaming of building a new home. Then plans changed, life took turns, and we ended up in a home so different than I expected and so perfect for our family. Somewhere along the way I realized that home wasn’t in the walls that went up or in the co

From My Christmas Wish List to Yours!

One of my favorite stores, West Elm, has now opened a special section called The Market. It specializes in kitchen, garden and personal care. Lets just say I am in love. If I had unlimited resources to spend in one store to do a total overhaul on my house, it would be West Elm, and now with the new Market, I am in lust too. So here are a few of my favorites. Check it out and maybe you'll get some great Christmas ideas for someone on your list. Or maybe my hubby will see this and get a great idea for me! Hint, hint! Enjoy! Incredibly large, amazing cutting board . I've seen these boards doubling as art hanging on the wall, then they take up no storage space! Cast iron Dutch oven . Great for one-pot meals. These glass jars come in varying sizes. I'm thinking they would work well for brown sugar with that rubber seal. I would definitely get plenty of use out of a cheese knife set during the holidays and all year round. Copper measuring spoons . Seriously? Fantastic

Happiness

I am a New Years girl. I love goals and check lists and I love the feeling of a fresh start, but resolutions have never been my thing. A few year ago I began picking a word for the year and I found that it works really well for me.  Setting a word for the year has helped me to focus on a quality that I want to grow in myself. Last years word was ‘ intentional ’. It was a full year and in a lot of ways a really hard year. Being intentional with my words, thoughts and actions helped me to really lean into the relationships in my life. The past year felt somber though. It was good and I grew more than I could have imagined, but it also felt serious and deep. I need some relief. This year after praying over it and considering what I would like more of in the coming year, I knew that my word for 2019 had to be 'happiness'. I want more laughter, more spontaneity, more fun in 2019 and none of those things come naturally to me. I thought about words like joy and contentment b