The Ranch Part 2

Good people

Many years after my family and I left my Grandfather’s ranch, the place across the river (once owned by the 2 old brothers) went up for sale. I don’t know whether the old man’s daughter had won in the end, or if age had finally caught up with the brother. Whichever happened, it created the opportunity for my uncle to purchase their ranch.

My aunt and uncle were always 2 of my favorite people. They just seemed to strike a chord with me that said “family”. They had also just purchased the place across the river from where I formed some of my most lasting memories. It always seemed like “home”, and was now occupied by family.

It was nearly 50 years ago that my aunt and uncle moved to the ranch with their 2 mostly grown boys. Electricity, phone service and even television were available by then, but it was still a hard life. Work on the 1000-plus acre ranch caring for cattle, raising hay for the winter, and maintaining the ranch itself was never done, and took up 100% of all of the family’s time. Even when the boys later brought wives, and still later, their own children to the mix, work on the ranch was full time for all. The only things that took priority over the ranch were family and education.

It’s difficult to explain how much hard physical labor is involved in working a ranch. A ranch this size, located in snow country, with unpredictable rain, wild animals, bad roads and bouncing cattle prices, filled everyone’s day, and many of their nights with work and worry.

During the summer, a day could include everything from milking the cow, helping a calf come into the word, fixing fences, harvesting hay and/or grain, rounding up cattle, and branding calves,

In winter, the daylight didn’t last as long, but the workday was not one bit shorter. The snow was always knocking down a fence somewhere, and the cattle needed to be fed every day. It is tough work loading 20 or 30, 60-pound bails of hay on a truck in a driving snowstorm, then hauling them to the cattle and spreading them out for the cattle to eat. No matter how hard they tried, their milk cow never seemed to be able to get the hang of milking herself twice a day.

Any rancher would be able to add several more pages to the list of work to be done every day, but I think you get the idea. Ranching is not for the weak and timid.

Roundup was an important event each year. All the local ranchers got together to scour the hills and nearby valleys for cattle that had been turned out to graze in the forest for the summer. Often there were new calves born during the summer, and they needed to be matched with the correct mother, to determine to whom it belonged and be branded with he correct mark. The cattle from all the different ranches were mixed together when they were gathered, then sorted out by brand, once safely in a pen.

Selecting the right time of year for Roundup was a guessing game. As the weather began to cool in the fall, the cattle naturally began to drift down out of the mountains, but sometimes the snows began with little notice, trapping some of the cattle in the high country. If the ranchers didn’t go get them, they could starve. Roundup was hard, dangerous work. He country could be rough and unforgiving, and some of the cattle would go wild without human contact. They really didn’t want to be rounded up. Two events clearly show how wild the cattle were, and how tough the ranchers were.

My uncle had been rounding up cattle in an area thickly covered by brush and patches of woods. He got off his horse to answer the call of nature, and before he realized what was happening, a steer charged him from behind. The steer had apparently been following him, and as soon as he was off his horse, the steer came after him. My uncle was lucky; he dived behind a tree and escaped the enraged charge. The steer, turned and would have charged again, but uncle was able to regain his saddle. The steer ran into the underbrush, not to be seen again.

Wild cattle were not the only danger. Once, while chasing a steer through heavy woods on horseback, the horse jammed my uncle’s leg against a tree. The leg hurt like hell, and my uncle was forced to spend the rest of the day in the saddle, for fear that if he got off, he would not be able to get back on again. The family examined his swollen leg that night and fairly well determined that it was broken. There was no question of going to the doctor before roundup was complete. The following morning, they tied my uncle in his saddle, with a homemade splint on his leg. He rode for 2 days before he felt confident that the roundup could be completed without his help before he went to the doctor. I’ve always felt that real “tough” was not who you could whip, but what you could overcome in your day to day life.

The ranch is no longer a “working” ranch, and the valley and all its land has been sold off for summer cabins. The ranch house is still there, but it is a bed and breakfast, catering to “weddings and get-togethers”. You can find a picture of the house here: http://www.wildsidebb.com/index.html complete with recorded elk calls. If you look carefully, just to the right of the dance band, you can also see the place across the river where I lived a long time ago.