I brought Kermit home today

Stardate 013108

A lot of folks are very proud to have a brand new shiny vehicle sitting in their driveway. Living in the country, working around the ranch, I just feel a need to have a couple of good pickem-up trucks in the driveway. Vehicles that will help me get the job done, and haul horses to the next trail ride or arena event. Most days Kittee drives "Subi" to Pendleton, I drive "Silver" and together we drive "Blue" w/horse trailer to our horsey events.
Today I brought home a shiny, like new vehicle to sit in our driveway. This rig shines even when it is cloudy and raining like today (see picture below). With a fully loaded dash panel, a Mercedes-Benz diesel engine, it is a smooth ride and runs like a top, a pleasure to drive.

I have been riding and driving a Big Yellow School Bus since Thanksgiving Week 2007. Last week I completed my Oregon Department of Education certification courses and now officially set behind the wheel of a Big Yellow School Bus. I went through a 3 week training session and testing to get my Oregon CDL with passenger bus and school bus endorsements last December.

Kittee and I talked about it and figure that being an ole horse rancher, what better part-time job is there through the winter than one that allows me to work Monday-Friday, as a Big Yellow School Bus driver. The job is good, working 3 to 6 hours a day, to be off duty/off the clock for mid-day equine feeding times, all holidays and summer horseback riding times with wife, family and friends.

The company I am working for is Mid-Columbia Bus Company, which is a school bus contracting company based in Pendleton. This bus company services school districts and private charters bus needs all across the Pacific Northwest. Something pretty cool about this company, indicative of its child caring friendly attitude, is that the buses located out of the Pendleton bus lot have endearing names of childhood star-characters like... Snoopy, ET, Rocky, Kermit, Shrek, etc. and that is how the drivers address our calls to base and each other over the company's radio network. To date I have driven buses such as mid-size 45 passenger Kermit (pictured above) to a larger 85 passenger transit style school bus called Lucy. Actually I did most of my training and CDL testing in Lucy.
Did you know that the Yellow School Bus is the safest form of transportation in America?

Believe me, if you have never sit behind the wheel of a school bus with 30-50-70+ young people right behind you... chattering away, it is quite a totally different experience to live through. It has been unlike any other job I have ever had, and I can't believe that back in my ole school days they let 16 to 18 year old high school drivers run those Big Yellow School Bus routes. It is nothing like cruising down the road on Sunday in your Oldsmobile.

I will digress here... I was talking with a Milton-Freewater City school bus driver, and he told me of a delivery he made once of the Oregon State Police SWAT team to a crime scene. He told me that while the team was suiting up (in the school bus) for the attack with all kind of guns all over the bus, the OSP Lieutenant was sitting in the driver's seat and looked in the rear view mirror and realized how large the bus was. The driver told him to imagine driving around with about 80 little heads sitting in those seats and that is what school bus driving is like. The officer said he couldn't imagine it, nor would he want to deal with that kind of responsibility. I found this a very interesting true story of a Big Yellow School Bus ride.

Anyway, the past few days I have been running a route as one of the regular drivers here in Milton-Freewater came down with the flu, and then her husband, was rushed to the hospital with chest pains the next day. Not a good situation, but takes me off the ranch as a substitute Big Yellow School Bus driver, here in my own neck-of-the-woods; Milton-Freewater, Oregon.
This week I have been driving the pre-kindergarten kids route. Now let me tell you, that a little group of 2 to 4 year old kids will help you smile each day. Gee, those guys are really small and so cute. Neat little people to watch, and put grins on my face throughout the day.

Life is simple, life is good.

a day in the life around the ranch --- Dale

January sunshine

Stardate 012808

Yesterday we were in the very throws of winter. The weather forecast was for us to get 3-7 inches of fresh snow, with more overnight. With this forecast Kittee and I decided it was a good time to once again watch the Coen brothers' - FARGO. Once again it was funny, sad, chilling, a dark thriller to watch on a cold snowy night.

This morning we awoke to mostly cloudy skies, with a little snow in the air. Kittee was not planning on heading for her PDT office very early today, with the snow cover we received yesterday and overnight. Last evening we had brought in a couple of extra logs to keep the fire ablazed overnight, and hopefully give us a blazing startup for this morning. Bedroom temperature this morning was 40º, coffee was made, so we had our first cup of go-joe juice while under the electric heated sheets. A refreshing way to start the day at the ranch.

About 7:00 we came out for another cup of coffee, and sit by the blazing a.m. fire. The snow had stopped and we went to the office window to check on the horses. OH, for joy!! They were happy; everyone was jogging around in the paddock, some jumping and bucking with joy... the snow has stopped. Today we had about 15-20 minutes of morning horsey entertainment. It is a lot of fun to watch the herd as the weather changes. Usually if it is for the better... sun to shine, or in the summer if it is cooling the herd really start kicking up their heels and having fun.

While I prepared breakfast, Kittee suited up and went out and feed the herd. Kittee was quite concerned and was thinking that Petunia was not eating, I told her that I didn't think so. Petunia was always right there on the goats rations as soon as Hans realized that he could not eat all the hay that we give the goat herd for their meal.

The snow has stopped for now. The measurement on top of the truck reads 6" of accumulation. The current weather forecast is for more winter weather coming our way all week. There is suppose to be another winter storm coming in tonight and a storm through here every 24-36 hours for the balance of the week. Now, where are those tickets to Hawaii that we had laying around here? We may just have to be satisfied watching again and again the Kauai slide show sent to us by Bro. Jack, for the remainder of this week. ;>)


Later this afternoon when I was out feeding the herds, I went ahead and took a few shots of Petunia to email Kittee and let her know that there is a reason that Petunia is just as big around as the rest of the goats.

After feeding everyone I continued to clear trails in the snow for easy access to the barn, the woodpile, Kittee's car, and the bird feeding area of the driveway. All is well now and the sun is shining this afternoon.

Our bluff has reappeared today with all its brilliant splendor and in a new blanket of white. It is nice to have this particular piece of landscaping placed in our backyard by the Great Spirit, for all to enjoy.

Wish you could be here, evvverybody's happy, and the children are dancing. (see the attached video)



a wintry day in the life at McKuster Ranch -- Dale

Our Bluff has disappeared

Stardate 012708

NOAA says it is going to snow today... 3 to 7 inches above 1000' elevation, with more tonight.
The ponies love it, the horses are pissed, the goats and I just wish it would go away.

Not to fear, as horses that have a natural winter coat can survive well at temperatures below -10 degrees F. if wind protection is available, Shetland ponies handle cold even better. Our goats are of Swiss and French Alpine pedigree so I am sure they are not hurting with our temperatures today being slightly above freezing, with pouring snow.
The weather people got it right this week. All week it has been winter, low temperatures in the lower teens, highs in the mid-upper 20's. Today the forecast is for more snow with accumulations at the ranch's 1300' elevation of 4 to 6 inches of the stuff.
This morning after cranking up the overnight fire the cats did their morning catsnack and went back to bed. Kittee went out to feed the herd their breakfast.

Kittee and I figured it was going to be a snowy day, so again we had our weekend morning coffee by the fire. Soon after coffeeing away the morning chill Kittee brought in the red beans and rice she cooked yesterday and proceeded to serve this up for her breakfast. While drinking coffee waiting for a bed of coals to form, I continued to read a wonderful book I started last night Considering the Horse by Mark Rashid. Kittee had read this book over the past couple of days and highly recommended it to me. After the fire had a good bed of coals, I forked up a couple of hot spicy sausages, roasted them over the coals, sliced them up into my bowl to be covered by red beans and rice. This is good stuff for a cold snowy morning people-chow.After breakfast the snow was beginning to fall at a 4-6" a day rate, so I bundled up and headed out to the woodpile for our daily ration of apple firewood. It wasn't snowing too bad as I went out and cleaned off the sidewalks, front and back porches, but by the time I pulled up a wheelbarrow full of wood everything I had cleaned off was again covered with snow.

Came in and did a bit more reading in my book, checked on emails and noticed the horses were milling around in front of the barn really looking pissed about the entire situation they were standing in. It was snowing harder...

Shortly after noon I went out and put out a heavy mid-day ration of alfalfa to help everyone's attitude. As well as my Goldie was getting quite wet and needed the blanket I had been repairing this past week.

I noticed that for the amount of time it took me to feed everyone and blanket Goldie, the tracks I had made going to the barn were almost filled with snow by the time I was heading back for the house. Shortly after returning to the house I looked out the office window to check on everyone and see that it is now snowing so hard at a 8-12" a day rate, that the backyard bluff has disappeared from view.

Yep, it's still January and hard to imagine that last weekend I was tilling our garden; thinking of picking fresh veggies in the near future.
a day in the life at McKuster Ranch -- Dale

NOAA says...

Stardate 012008

The weather forecast for today... is snow, 2-4 inches of the stuff.

Yep, it is still January. Spent yesterday, working up a good sweat, tilling the garden and dreaming of pulled fresh corn, tomatoes, peas, onions, and carrots, etc... today it is turning into January again.

This morning as I was waking up, Kittee asked if it was time for coffee. I said yep, in about 20 minutes it should be ready. It appeared to be quite bright outside, but not too sunny.

I jumped out of bed put the coffee on, and looking out the windows, I see it was lightly white. Still in my housecoat and slippers I went out to the barn to feed the horses, split some kindling while coffee was brewing and found that the National Weather Service was right. Snow by morning.

Today Kittee has plans of going to her office in Pendleton, to work on a case going to trial on Tuesday. I have this feeling that she should be treated very kindly today, starting with coffee in bed. By the time I got back from the barn, to the bedroom with coffee in hand she was up and heading for the fireplace. The fire was blazing well when she got there, so she settled into her rocker for the warmth of the fire and coffee. I started working on breakfast of hot biscuits, my special spicy winter sausage gravy, with fried eggs- over easy (Kittee's favorite). Mmmm... good stuff on a cold winter's morning. Kittee made a quick trip through the snow to grab the Sunday morning paper. These breakfast usually hold us through lunch and all the way to dinner.



Whelp, so much for another nice spring-like day outside and going for our usually Sunday horseback ride, and/or getting any outside work done.
Looks like the perfect day to keep the home fire burning until Kittee gets back from PDT, and I think I shall work on at website for my upriver buddy Dale Cosper. We have plans to get together this Tuesday a.m. to see what he thinks about the work I have done and hopefully get his horse ranch website uploaded to the Internet asap.

So this is how the day looks as it progresses, I feed the horses mid-day, work on this blog and Dale's website, while keeping the home fire burning. Gee, it is a bit cool back here in the office away from the fire, but a good day to kick back and stay home.
I feel sorry that Kittee has to go to the city today. More and more to stay out of the city is an accomplishment, even though last weekend we did go to the big town of Seattle, doubleU-A for a Region 5 (AHA) Arabian Horse convention. Now that we enjoyed, and learned a lot. A particularly good seminar was one that addressed foaling.
Guess you might say we have really turned into horsey, country type folks sitting here with a dozen horses in northeast Oregon, for the past few years; it feels good.

Glad I got that outside garden work done yesterday, everything has turned white out there now.
High temperatures for tomorrow and the rest of the week is calling to be in the mid to upper 20's. This will be the coldest week of our winter season. Burrrrr
Yep, it is still January.

a day in the life at the ranch -- Dale

A perfect day for gardening

Stardate 011808
Yesterday we had the farrier here. Our rule... we don't ride our horses the day of and the day after farrier work is done. Their toes can be tender after trimming, and as the saying goes, "No foot, No Horse" we love our horses.

Today started out partly cloudy, mostly sunny, with temperatures in the 40's, heading for the 50's. Since we are not riding horses today, it appears be a great day for getting some work done around the ranch.

With a couple cups of coffee under our belts, Kittee went out to morning feed the herd as I prepared our ranch breakfast of cheesy grits, eggs, and hot biscuits.

After breakfast we bring down a ton of hay from the loft for this next week's feedings. The sun was shining bright, and the breeze was blowing gently across our 1 acre garden area this morning, as we finished working with the hay. I have been watching the garden soil for the past few days of beautiful spring-like sunshine, thinking if it dried out just a little more I could get in there and till the rows in early prep for spring planting.
(I shall digress here a bit... as last year we did not have a garden, just a weed bed. --Last year the end of February, I was getting ready to start working the garden, when I got a call from Kittee saying that she needed my help in her Pendleton office. Her secretary had just giving notice and was leaving town... today!-- So, until the 1st of June I spent my days sitting in PDT)

Anyway, I have been biting at the bit to start gardening as we have been having beautiful sunshiny days, mid-day temperatures in the 50's for about a week now. Days are getting longer, as it not getting dark until after 5:30 pm. Today's weather forecast was for cooling temperatures, turning cloudy, with rain in the afternoon, snow by morning. Hummm Early afternoon, the clouds begin to move across the sky and the breeze started getting cooler. I came in, looked at the Internet - NWS weather radar in PDT and it shows the wet weather heading our way from the northwest.

It was time to make my move... to see if the soil was dry enough to till. Yep, it was :-)
It has been over a year since I last tilled our garden area, I found a fair amount of trash along with some new green sprouts of Walla Walla Sweet Onions coming up, and a few perennial herbs that had survived last summer heat and dry.
The soil looked good; loose, rich and black after today's tilling. This will be our 5th season of gardening this plot of ground and during that time we have mulched and composted the rows very well. This year it should come into a prime natural garden. We have used no petrochemicals on our garden or crops since we have been here. We will not have a garlic crop this year, but hope to get back to garlic with a next September's planting.

Today I was able to till about 2200 row feet of garden. Gee, that feels good, looks good, but by nightfall the 3 hours of tilling had my hands sore and aching.
Not to fear, Kittee had a nice fire going, I grabbed a couple of aspirin, a Black Butte Porter brew, and a shot of Canadian BV. Mmmm, now that relieves the aches and pain.

We sit back and enjoyed the home fire burning and PHC.org on the stereo. After PHC we had a hot bowl of soup, a hot shower, and a Saturday night video. That's life at the ranch... feels good.

With the garden tilled I am now looking forward to spreading the horses' barn manure, moving the asparagus, and grapes plants, and putting in Rusty's stallion keep as soon as the weather breaks. Yep, it is still January and tomorrow's weather forecast is for snow. YUCK! I am ready for April sun showers now.

a day in the life at McKuster Ranch - Dale

Declared a Disaster Area

Stardate 010408

McKuster Rental Properties, LLC

The winds came in from the southeast last Friday morning, right down the Walla Walla River hitting McKuster Ranch, and moving on through Milton-Freewater, College Place, and Walla Walla, WA. By mid-day most of our world was without power, water, was somewhat blown apart by winds, and there was overall darkness throughout the night. Darkness after sunset is not a bad thing, when living in the country. No glaring night lights, wonderful outdoor stillness and quite, indoors living by a warm crackling fire in NE Oregon.

One of the stories posted that day in the Walla Walla U-B newspaper read "The wind started at about 8 a.m. at about 30 mph, initiating a high wind warning, and reached 78 mph at the airport at about 10 a.m." said weather service spokesman Robert Cramp. About 10 a.m. is when the power went out and no one knows what the wind speeds were after that.

Most of the pictures out of Walla Walla looked like a garbage truck had blown over on the way to the dump, and trash was everywhere. There was also fallen tree/limb damage there. In Milton-Freewater we really got hit hard, roofing laying everywhere and we were without power most of Friday and Saturday.


Here at the ranch, Friday we watched some of the barn sheet metal roofing blow off, and most of our fencing electric hot tape was blown apart, probably lost a couple dozen shingles from the ranch house roof, blew the astro-turf carpet from the front and back steps, but not a lot of real structural damage to house or barn. The horses were not happy with that much wind on them. Our temperatures were in the low 40's this day, so this weather wasn't painful, mostly annoying.














Saturday morning we were having our morning eggnog lattes, planning our day's work when our dear friend Miriam called and told us that we were officially in a "disaster area". She had heard on the news broadcast in western WA that Milton-Freewater (she knows where that is) and Umatilla County were nearly blown away the day before.

Unable to fire up our stove for breakfast, we fed the horses, headed to town for our breakfast, and check on our rental units. In town we did have a tree fall on one of our rental units, that resulted in roof damage (the above pic).

Before, during and yes after breakfast, Kittee and I went to our local farm supply PGG store and bought fencing repair "stuff". After returning home we spent the rest of the day working on electric fence repairs until dark. Fortunately our Honda gas generator kept power to the refrigerators, freezer, microwave oven, and well pump. After darkness, sitting by the fire we were quite snug, cooking our camp sausages for dinner... when the power came back on. Well this meant that not only were we living in a disaster area, but now we would be able to watch a James Bond 007 VHS video in the comforts of home. This is not a bad thing for a January '08 night. Feel kinda bad about those folks in town that have had their homes and vehicles smashed.























Sunday we had our usual horseback riding plans called off as we ended up spending the entire day pulling down damaged hot tape fencing, and reinstalling 4000' of TurboEquiBraid electric rope for the top strand of most our horse pasture fencing. Hopefully this stuff will not succumb to the winds as we have found the hot tape doing over the past few years.

Now it is time to call the insurance companies, pull out the chainsaw and finish cleaning up the mess the winds blew apart last weekend.

All is well at McKuster Ranch, Happy New Year --- Dale

New Year's Day '08

Stardate 010108

The days are getting longer now and it feels great, even though today it has felt quite cold outside - mostly sunny, high temperature in lower 30's, some wind chilling breeze.
Kittee has been home for the holiday since last Thursday afternoon; a nice long weekend together. During this time we have been winter horseback riding Friday through Monday. A nice reprieve from the winter weather of snow, winds and rain of the past few weeks.


Friday, Kittee worked with/ rode Nugget and Derby in our riverside arena, as I worked on broken windswept electric fence tape.
Saturday, Kittee and I took Derby and Nugget on a short trail ride up to the foothill's snow level, just riding up the harvest/ back country road that is across from the ranch. It was a gorgeous late morning ride with plenty of warm sunshine. We rode until we hit snow and the road turned to ice. A little slick of barefoot horses. This was the first time we had ridden Derby off the ranch since July's bucking ride. I still have sore/broken ribs from that ride I feel almost every night while lying in bed.
Sunday morning the wind was howling here, and as our usual Sunday morning activities go this Sunday we took Shana (one of our horse boarders), Nugget, Derby, and Sinwaan (Shana's horse) to the Walla Walla Fairgrounds indoor arena. At the arena Kittee and I both rode Nugget and Derby (my first ride on Derby since July).
~~~~~~~~~~~
We were planning to ride with Shana again today- New Year's Day, but the weather forecast was for mostly cloudy with winds from 20 to 30 mph... so Monday we headed out to our backyard riding range, on the north/bluff side of the Walla Walla again with Shana and our rides - Sinwaan, Nugget, and Misty. Shana had never been on Bowlus Hill so she was rather pleased to find what was on top. Yesterday's ride gave us a wonderful clear blue view of the Walla Walla River drainage and the Blue Mountains covered in snow. The view from Bowlus Hill is the river basin/confluence of the Walla Walla, Snake, the Mighty Columbia rivers, and the upper most part of the Blue Mountains of Oregon/Washington. This ride also give us quite a view on a clear day of the cities of Milton-Freewater, College Place and Walla Walla, not to mention the Cascade Mountain Range and The Washington Palouse --150 miles out across to the edge of the horizons. It was a good afternoon's ride that everyone enjoyed.

Today it was a bit too cold to horseback ride, so we didn't. This morning we started the day with the usual - holiday eggnog latte- while still under the electric blanket. Last night the outdoor temperature went into the mid-20's, and our fire burned down to just a bed of coals, which meant the house was quite chilly as the sun broke through our bedroom window this morning. I threw a nice size backlog in the fireplace at about 6 a.m. and we drank our hot latte's while we were waiting for the living room to warm up. Burrrrr.
This New Year's morning we were prompted to put on a little background music (Kittee's favorite R&R hit) and just warm up by the fire. We have a little video at the end of this blog if you would like to share the morning fire with us. We hope you can feel the warmth of our fireplace while watching this video.

You might notice in the above picture that Kittee has her foot in the air.
OUCH -*#$%@* !!
Yep, we heard that.

Kittee got stepped on yesterday as she was off-loading/handling Misty to head up Bowlus Hill. Fortunately they were both standing in a soft cultivated wheat field so her foot was able to sink into the ground as Misty was standing on it.


Nice hoof print here... don't you think?

We were not prompted to move too fast this day, as we were thinking about horseback riding to bring in the New Year, now we would NOT. We also had a new boarder coming to the ranch today, so we felt a need to stay close to home. Our new boarder was scheduled by our information(?), to come to the ranch "around mid-day". Well as I was taking our breakfast eggs out of the pan, Natchez -- "Nattie" shows up knocking at the door. Here is newly arrived Nattie putting our butts into gear earlier than expected.

It has been really interesting watching Nattie blend into the herd. Nattie is a nearly 3 year old filly that has been called a "Paint that A'int". Really a sweet girl and after the herd ran her around a bit to find out who she was, Nattie has appeared to be bonding with Baby, a 16 year old Arabian mare and her 6 year old daughter that have been boarding here for a couple of years. Very interesting to watch this three horse bonding, particularly as Baby and Nattie look so very much alike. These horses owners are really going to have to do a double take when they see this.

OH well, such is the way we bring in the New Year at McKuster Ranch. Our weather has been great and as the days get longer/ warmer, we are looking forward to more "Hiddy Hoe - Let's Gittyup and Go" riding time. Last year we were able to ride almost every weekend from January's MLK weekend until November's freeze. It was a very good year to live in NE Oregon.

Gee, do we love this place or what?

Now back to the eggnog/BV -Holiday Elixir- for the balance of this holiday weekend.

Happy New Year!


a horsey holiday weekend at McKuster Ranch, Yee Haaw, gittyup--- Dale