Category Archives: Stories

The Homegrown Surprise 

Stories, Training Horses

The sweetest surprise for a colt starter is to find a colt who is smart, willing to learn and doesn’t buck! This week that surprise was a homegrown Azteca filly named, apparently inappropriately, Habanera. (Named for a very “hot “chili pepper) we might ought to have named her Sugar Bear! Her daddy was our Lusitano,Trovador, and her mama a quarter horse mare named Jodi, who traced her lineage to such famous cutting cutting horses as Son’O’Sugar, and PocoTIvio , with some Driftwood and Hancock thrown in. Jodi’s daddy was called “Bud” and he was the nicest, calmest stallion I’ve ever ridden or known. He lived with Charles and Kelly Prude, in Fort Davis, Texas. When Habanera was born she was plain brown with no more white markings than seven and a half hairs of white on her forehead, which was wide, flat and handsome. She grew up out on the range, but always came to be petted and scratched when we went to that pasture. Now a fine stout bay mare we’re starting her under saddle, I suppose she’s been ridden a dozen times. Much of the time I have to devote to “outside” horses, so she’s had intermittent education at best. I was loping circles with her the other day when I noticed Sallie trying to move a group of cows. The cowhounds( catahooligans) had them bunched, and with only one horse she couldn’t get them to budge. So, I rode this green filly out of the pen to help, her first time outside the round pen. I guess It’s just a cowboy thing, I just shrugged my shoulders and said “well Habanera, let’s go help!”

This should have been a formula for “disastrophe”.The filly walked out of the pen, through the arena, and out to the field with bawling cows, and baying hounds as if she were going to Sunday school! The filly showed no hesitation as she pitched right in to help move the cows, sometime loping and stopping to turn a cow. It was as if I were mounted on a twelve-year-old ranch horse. Sometimes when you breed you get sevens and elevens, sometimes you throw snake-eyes, so when you get a good one you celebrate! This time a good daddy, a generous grandpa and a fine mama produced a princess! She sure ain’t leaving here!

Converting Farmland to Range

Philosophy, Stories

“The first sunny day after a rain may be the first day of the next drought ”  – Jack Dunn of Circle Dot Ranch, Agua Dulce, Texas

I see now why Warren Hilliard decided to convert the place we now call home into a ranch in 1936. In those days much of our country was farmland, predominantly upland cotton, with some corn and milo maize thrown in the rotation. Hilliard was at that time the county judge, but also a cotton farmer, or overseer landowner. In the spring of ‘36 another citizen asked him “Warren, what are you putting out?” Curious to know if he planned to put out cotton or corn. Hilliard replied “I am putting out cropland into grazing land!”

This week we saw the first flood of 2017. Last year we counted nine floods. Much of this ranch is alluvial bottom land bordered by two creeks. So, when the county gets over four inches of rain on saturated soil, the creeks are inclined to “come out,” and half our land is underwater. If we had it laid open by plowing for crops, much of our soil would be on its way to the gulf of Mexico each spring.

Cattle seem to have a sixth sense about flooding, and in forty years we’ve never lost a single head from floods. Right now they’re up on top of the hill munching round bales.

The good news is that the rains make the grass grow, as well as weeds and brush and wildflowers. This means that our grazing and browsing Corriente cattle will get fat and make a lot of babies. Dad always said “basically as ranchers, we’re grass farmers.” This year already promises a bumper crop. 

Winter’s Solstice

Stories

This past Wednesday night we just decided spontaneously to have a “Leap the fire” Party. You say “what the heck is that?” So, I guess I need to delve into the history of our family. All the branches of our family, whether scotch-Irish, German, Spanish, Native American or in my case Martian, I guess, have traditions relating to the changes of the season produced by the behavior of mother Earth’s relationship to the sun and Moon (and possibly other Celestial bodies). When our kids were growing up we begin celebrating the equinox and solstice with bonfire parties, like the old Gaelic, Teutonic, Native American, etc. We did fix traditional foods and even sometimes dressed up (kilts, etc.). We had traditional libations (wassail, eggnog, coors, black Jack) and sometimes some of us played musical instruments, guitars, fiddles, even bagpipes (musical instrument?) Anyway, and on occasion we did get to singing and even a little dancing and acting silly. Someone even referred to the summer solstice as “the festival of the Bandicoot, when the constellation of Chingas the Duck rises in the west!” OK, that’s enough Dave, sit down and be quiet!

So, on December 21, 2016, we gathered the family, piled up oak limbs and cedar boughs in the front yard,let our grandkids light the fire. And stood around as the sun went down. We ate soup and sourdough biscuits and “Creasy greens”, and sang Christmas songs, ( at least the verses we could remember) and howled with the coyotes who tuned up down the pasture. Goodbye to Fall, hello to Winter. At least the good news is that from this date on, the days get longer. Maybe I’ll be able to stay up past seven o’clock!

Beats Anything I Ever Saw!!

Stories

At the heart of the cowboy’s creative process is the fact that he is frequently unencumbered by rational thought! Often a wreck of biblical proportions is preceded by a comment like “I wonder what would happen if… ” Or, maybe more famous still, “y’all hold my beer and watch this.” I once sewed up a local cowboy’s scalp in the ER late in the evening (or early in the morning.) I asked how he had acquired this laceration. He told me it caught in the ceiling fan. Him not being a real tall man I commented that that sounded strange. His “pard” responded, “Oh, Doc he was jumping off the bar when he came in contact with the ceiling fan.”

I once decided that I needed to find out if a mule I’d been given (a bad prognostic sign) could be ridden. Without a great deal of preamble I just saddled him and got on. All went well as we walked around the breaking pen. Then I sort of poked him in the ribs to ask for a lope. He busted in half, like a cork popping out of a champagne bottle. I found myself on the ground, still in the saddle, stirrups and all, as he went bucking and farting around the pen.Then there’s the cowboy who put a chain around a bogged cow’s neck and attached it to a pickup bumper to pull her out and couldn’t figure out how she got paralyzed. “Beats anything I ever saw!” He says.

I guess the classic was one dark winter evening when in sloppy rain soaked field I “needed” to catch a heifer to A.I. her, and was going to rope her on foot and dally to the truck’s trailer hitch. My wife was driving. She saw me neck rope the heifer, who took off before I got my dallies. I wouldn’t let go. She said that what she saw in the truck headlights was me making forty foot long splashing strides to keep up. Beats anything she ever saw!