Fall brings changes larger than just the cottonwoods beginning to turn.  Late Sept is a time for our family to pause and catch their breath before each heading off in their own direction.  We always gather here on the 27th in memory of a family member who is gone...  and then we all seem to go our own way for a while... each needing to be with their own thoughts and memories. 

  This year particularly...has been a Sept of change and a series of coincidences that have brought me back to this ranch full time.     It seems this beautiful porch...  which looks out nightly on a mountian with amazing sunsets... is where I will stay for a while.

     By the end of summer we are all keeping to our favorite parts of the ranch.  The barns for the horse minded, swimming hole and teepee for the young cousins or adventurous visitors.  The old homestead bunk house, which is now a guest house, is where I hang when I am here.  It has a  gardening porch, where I go in the early mornings to read, start root cuttings, save seeds and think through life priorities.   The ranch is a hub for all our busy lives...Some visit for a few weeks in the summer,  some come to recharge batteries on the weekends.  What was once viewed, a hundred plus years ago, as good foothill pastureland for cattle is a get-a-way that anchors a 20th century family. 

    The ranch runs to a modern beat now...  It used to be that we owned all the cattle... now we lease large tracks of grass to cattle corporations who manage the year round cows along with their seasonal feeder calves.    My generation never worked the ranch full time and I suspect like many large ranches,  it is far easier to enjoy this remarkable place without the day to day responsibility.

   Time does fly by....Spring is a busy time and early summer even more so.  The filly is now working a number of days a week in her regular job...working cows.  Shes a ranch horse, helps move stock, is handy to ride into the herds on when we need to doctor...and she's pretty smart.  

   We are into the dog days of summer...its hot...but that is nice after the long winter.  We have family here for part of the summer and the days blend one into another.   We swim late in the day in the creek by the house.  We dug out the bend one year when I was young.  It was deep until I was about 15 when we had a flood year....it is more shallow now but that is good with younger kids about.  There is a big tree we mow under for a picnic table and, of course, the mandatory rope swing into the water. 

     We have had a bit of a melt and everyone is feeling good.  They are also feeling really really muddy!  Got asked for an update on the filly so here it is.  She has grown, is happy to of had the last two months off and is hoping we continue to have snow here so she can get the next two off also.  I'll restart her when it warms up ... we have had an unusually cold winter.   You will find those of us who ranch in the cold always remark on it, at the post office, when we run into neighbors and it seems in this blog also.

   Christmas has come and gone....along with the extended family.  It was a good year for all.   We have had a bit of snow which gets me thinking ahead to next season.   Ranching is a routine and years of hard work have taught me to enjoy this time of year when things are a little slow.   I have a journal I jot down plans and improvements in.  I am a gardner of sorts so I also spend time thinking of what I might plant.  I follow the english theme since we have a pretty hard frost and winter here...old perennials that come back year after year.  There are a few peonies that my grandmother planted still in the back of the flower beds....each spring I think of her as they come up. 

   It has turned cold for good.  I rode the filly one last time this morning and turned her out for the winter.  We have a group of horses that ride out the winter outside.  There is a nice shelter and a feeding station where we store hay.  The filly was decent that last few days in our ongoing dialogue about her turning into a working horse.  I am looking forward to starting her again in the spring.  ...someone asked for a jack update...  housetraining remains a discussion.

My mother tells this story...

"My grandfather was one of a kind.  A trite saying but in his case true.  He was born before the turn of the century in a home without electricity and lived to see us land on the moon and finish the end of the Vietnam war.  He often said everything he learned about human nature he learned in WWI and in how we delt with life through out the following wars, WWII, Korea and Vietnam.

   He was born on a ranch, a second son and rode whatever horse or mule was available to school...weather depending.   They didn't have a car till after WWI and still did most of the ranching the old fashion way through the depression.  He was a medic in WWI and a doctor afterwards.   He would tell us that being a doctor in those days, other than a few innoculations, was mostly about letting things run their course and helping people be comfortable with the idea.  Not everyone lived and whooping cough would routinely cut down the children in the area.  It is ironic that he died at one of the top hospitals in the country receiving advanced Cancer therapy.   He thought it was all interesting, but pointed out he was going to die in any case which was the way of things as it should be.

  I remember riding with him to visit neighbors, he always had a black bag.  He would stich people or animals and would make house calls at any hour...doctors did that then.  He did all our vet work and I have no memory of a vet ever being at our ranch until after he died.  He kept an office in town that he didn't spend much time at....he said that people only started to line up at doctor offices after antibiodics and by then he had a younger partner who handled the office. 

  He lived in town after medical school but ranching called so he bought one of the neighboring ranches that was on hard times just after the depression."   I'll write more on this at another time...

  The thought of ranch life is most often a calming and contemplative one.  Lately however I have been working on breaking a new filly and I have added frustrating to my daily diary.  The filly has a mind of her own and while I am a devotee of "natural horsemanship" and joiningup we have had our moments when I have thought back to something my mother said her grandfather once said.  ..."When breaking a horse bring your rope and a two by four.  The rope to catch him and the two by four to get his attention"...  Now I am not that type of cowboy.  But I'll let you know how the slow process goes!