Posts Tagged With: ranch life

               Baseball season I guess has officially started. Kaine had a gave on Monday night, Toni and Kade did the horse chores and then Kade went and helped Anna with the cow chores. The men flushed out the circle to get it ready to turn on water. Kaine’s team lost, then Kaine and I hung around and watched Jaxsen’s practice to bring him home with us. It looked like at practice they were playing tag, not baseball. Toni teased BB and the new mare we got from Dan and Rusanne, Miss Gen. Neither were quite ready yet.  We got some much-needed rain, which came about the time Toni was putting wire out on the latest fencing project.

Tuesday Jaxsen had a game, Toni and Kade still did chores first. Toni put Rosey and Miss Gen in with Stetson, Miss Gen was in heat. I went out when I got home to catch BB, but she was anti. I moved the old buckskin mare back down with Double, so if I caught BB I could put her in with her sister, Mil. Jaxsen team lost, but he played a good game. Dad went and picked Kaine up from practice and went and got new tires for the gooseneck.

Wednesday dad and Steve left to Centerville with another bull. They had a great trip over but there was snow and traffic coming back. They had a great time talking to James while they were over there. Kaine had a baseball game on Wednesday, Marlo and dad both went and watched. I had a late work function, so I did not make it.

                Thursday I was still on a work tour. McKenna presented her final at Oklahoma State, I was able to watch a little of it on the bus while we went from one place to the next. McKenna is studying to be an Engineer, so I made the engineer sitting next to me watch too. I also slipped and fell in the only little square of mud there was on a sandy hill. Luckily I had a spare pair of pants since we were doing family pics after work. Kendel came down and took the pictures with my camera and I edited them. Kendel did a great job, the pictures turned out really well.  We let the three older kids pick their horses to ride, but we forced poor Kaine to ride Reba because we wanted her in the pics because we love her. We have quite a few nice mares, but Reba was there and on the favorites list so she made it into the picture. We had some of the horses in the pasture try to be in the pictures as well and some of the dogs. Sometimes photos are the ranch can be entertaining.

              Friday I took dad down to Musser Bros to pickup his new pickup. We got lunch for everyone at Hot Mess, which is a burger wagon in Kennewick, like a taco truck, it was really good and the burgers were huge. Then Scott Dowers, who bought three bulls, asked if he could get them over the weekend, so I checked with dad and him and Steve made a plan to take them Sunday. I hauled some stuff out to the camper, then met the kids down to do chores. Jaxsen’s game got canceled, so he got to help with fence.  Our fencing project isn’t progressing very fast. I think we all have fencing fatigue, as in we don’t want to build fence anymore.

                Saturday Ben, Leslie and I took the campers down to park at Spokane. Anna worked at the FFA plant sale, and the boys worked on their heifers and steers. We had an outside mare come to be bred to Dude, then Brita and Austin came out to look at horses. Since they have been out a bunch, Toni made them help her get Jitter in and move her back to the house. We got back and Toni and I got the rest of the horses in out of circle 5 and hauled them to the house. We put Zoey with Dude. We took the outside bay mare out to ultrasound on Sunday. Mark came and AIed Anna’s nile heifer and two more of the show heifers. Toni and I went and got some poles to put up and made ourselves a stack down at the fencing project.

           Sunday the kids continued to work on their show animals. Dad and Steve took the bulls on to Moses Lake. Mom called Toni, and Toni called me, and said we had a horse down, so we ran down there and Piper was colicing. We were not able to get her back up, she had a 21 day old colt, that Toni refers to Bubby, and we got him and Leroy in while we worked with Piper.  We couldn’t save her. We broke for lunch and a much needed break. Then Toni came down and we got mares in for Allie to ultrasound that afternoon.  We also had a mare to ship with Allie and one to send with John, so those mares also had to come in. We had mares everywhere. Tied up, in pens, had people holding them. Allie also had a mare that needed a foal, so Bubby got to go with Allie and see if that would work. Ultrasounding went ok, or as expected. We knew we would have some open this early. We also thought something was off with Rosie, and she needed some TLC once Allie took a look. We did have 2 mares bred to Stetson, so that is exciting that he is getting the job done. Allie had gotten Crystal bred to NZ Scotch time, aka Rip, so she brought her back.  We got everyone loaded and all headed home, then finished moving mares around and getting everything cleaned up until about 8 pm Sunday night.

This spring has been fraught with unexpected twists. Just when we think things are starting to smooth out and get back into a good groove, something happens that sets us back. We had a friend ask, how do we do it? How do you continue when you know you can’t save them all? You focus on the positive. We have a couple of mares in the heavy pen. The grass is green and really starting to come on. Almost all of the bulls are sold and shipped out, we just have 2 Hereford bulls left. Life is good.