Back on the trail again...

Our #1 priority for yesterday was to be on horseback and riding up the Ole Cashe Hollow Trail. We started the day with our favorite breakfast of apple bread French Toast, sausage and coffee. Weather was perfect, skies were crystal clear blue, with pure sunshine on our shoulders, and morning temperature in the mid-70's. Right after breakfast we hurriedly rinsed off our plates and headed out to pastures to catchup our rides for the day.

Misty and Nugget came to the hitching rail like old pros, ready to go. Before we hit the trail we took both horses out to the riverside pasture and arena. Kittee rode Nugget around the pasture chasing about a dozen Canada geese feeding in the pasture, I took Misty to the arena. There Misty and I warmed up as she had not been under saddle in over a month. After going through several drills, I took my feet out to of the stirrups and dropped Misty's reins out of my hands and proceeded riding her just using leg cues with weight shifts. She did very well following these cues and we worked the arena course for about a ½ hour. Kittee was quite amazed at what Misty and I had accomplished --"Look MA, NO hands". After this warm up we headed for the trail.

Since this was the first time off the ranch for the season we followed the Ole Cashe Hollow Trail up to the 2½ mile mark. There we let the horses graze on some lush grass and a bit of wheat at this turnaround point.

In the background of this picture is Walla Walla, WA and The Palouse. After our ride we washed the horses off, gave them a quick spot of grain, for ourselves we had a smoked buffalo steak sandwich for a quick lunch and headed for Walla Walla to do some shopping.

Returning from Walla Walla we rushed around getting things done waiting for our horse trainer Travis to show and work with Rusty and boarder Sunny. After a full day of riding and work, Travis had not shown up so Kittee stopped for the "rest" of the week. I proceeded to finish mowing the lawn, cleaning up and watering the garden.

After my work was done I brought out the Pawley's Island Rope hammock for the season and went into a semi-conscience state of relaxation, with a bit of applejack on the side.

As our spring weather has settled in we are now getting garden sprouting and the lilac bush and Hawthorn tree has bloomed this past week.






























Before the evening breeze turned from the west to blow down the Walla Walla River Canyon our afternoon temperature reached a balmy 85º, the first time over 80º this season. Believe me, after a hard day of riding and/or work, it feels great to have the cool breeze off the mountain coming through the yard and house to finish the day.

For the record: Saturday, Kittee worked on the continuing destruction of our indoor bathroom shower while I attended our forth Walla² Fly Fishers meeting.

This Saturday afternoon was a get together of fly tying and lawn fly casting practice. Everyone felt that it was a beneficial meeting for all. We had 16 in attendance for this meeting. It gave all of those attending a chance to get to know each other as our group continues to form.

NOTE: A blog has been created for the Walla² Fly Fishers. Please follow this Walla² Fly Fishers link to follow the development of our local fly fishing club.

Next weekend we have my Mom coming to town, and with that event we will have the family from Pendleton coming up for an afternoon of around the ranch activities and BBQ ribs and chicken. Once again here at the ranch, BBQ is my description of meat/smoke/sauce preparation - No. Carolina style, taught to me by my Grandmother from eastern Carolina - the birthplace of BBQ.

That is the recap of the coming and going around the ranch this week.
Hope you will come out and join us for a BBQ-ing some time.

That's life around the ranch... Happy Trails.

ADRENALINE RUSH - AHA stallion

This past week our "Rusty" has once again gone under the saddle and had a couple of nice workouts with trainer Travis Webster. Travis has found Rusty to be a very quick learner, a most co-operative stallion to work with. We feel that it is all in the genes... as Rusty is the get of AHA Western Pleasure Riding Champion
Fire An Ice.

We have been working with Travis for the past three or four years and found his work to be worthy of handling our McKuster Ranch, LLC horses. Travis is an accredited Josh Lyons natural horse trainer, and he continues to connect with Josh and John Lyons a couple or few times a year and helps them with their horse training clinics across the USA. We like Travis' work because we have never found him to "push" our horses around by force or use of any brutality. We feel quite fortunate to have Travis' talent and ability living in our Walla Walla River neighborhood.

This past Sunday and Monday, we had an appointment with Travis to come out and follow-up with his saddle work training and Rusty handling.


During these training sessions I was able to make a series of 2-minute videos of the progression of their working together. I have now uploaded Lesson 103 through 110 videos of this series to YouTube™ - follow this link to see McKusterRanch's Channel. I still have a few more videos to work on to complete this series. My plans are to continue this video library of Travis' and Rusty's work as they progress together throughout the summer. My objective at this point in time is to be riding in Rusty's well tuned saddle myself by Labor Day '09. Hope you will be sure to come back to see that YouTube™ video when it is published.

This week began with a most beautiful Sunday -Mother's Day- Kittee and I had coffee... and read the morning's newspaper on the lawn, while watching 4-6-8, then 10 horses relaxing -flagged out flat- in their pasture.

Kinda funny... the look on her face. Monday, a couple of folks came with Travis to watch him working with Rusty. The young woman asked me why a couple of horses were flat on the ground? I told her it appeared they were dead.
Humm, I quickly recanted, and told her they were very relaxed, asleep, and that the day before there were ten horses flagged out flat in their pasture.
Watching our very pregnant Goldie, she is one girl that is having a hard time finding a position to lay down in and get relaxed. She is now due to foal in about a month, and we are looking forward to that event.

Un lugar sequro para los caballos.

After a Sunday breakfast of coffee, apple bread-French Toast, with sausage, we proceeded to clean out the basement, barn and loaded the "stuff" into the horse trailer and made a run to the dump, stopping for lunch while passing through Athena... Oregon Territory that is.

The rest of this past week has been Kittee and I getting up each day between 5-5:15 a.m. having our coffee, a quick breakfast and heading for work. Busy, busy, busy... Kittee at her office until 5 or 6 p.m., myself making my school bus runs and working the veggie garden until time to go to my 7:00 meetings (M-F City Council, Northwest Quarter Horse, BM Flycasters, this week).
Last evening, (after making the last tilling of our garden) while I was in Pendleton at our fly fishing club meeting, Kittee and Tammy tore apart our bathroom shower stall. Tammy is a commercial ceramic tile setter...

















and Kittee was tired of the old stuff. Hopefully all this work with be finished by next weekend, when my Mom is due to arrive in town, and we have a Pendleton family BBQ planned to be held here at the ranch. Hummm.

Plans for this coming weekend is calling for beautiful spring weather - pure sunshine and temperatures around 80°. I have a Walla Walla fly fishing club meeting on Saturday, Kittee will be staying close to home/horses, having a lady friend coming over for a ranch visit, and we will be horseback riding most of the day on Sunday... 'tis the season.

This is all the news I have to share for now. Today we are having morning spring showers with sunbreaks; so I am heading for the garden to finish planting seeds and potatoes as we have passed the last frost/safe period for our garden growing season.

♫ Happy Trails to you, until we meet again ♫

That's Life around McKuster Ranch...
Dale

Rusty, Rosey, Kootenia and The Shack

Spring is now in full swing around McKuster Ranch and the Walla Walla River Canyon. The snows are beginning to recede further up the mountains and our river is running fast with steelhead green spring runoff waters. Wheat fields are becoming dark green and most of the open range vegetation and area trees are turning fresh spring green.

During this spring warming period the herds have really been enjoying the weather. The middle of April we separated the mares and gelding in order to keep everyone at peace. Last Sunday morning this was the view out of our bedroom window... some mares' early morning R&R.

Since the last posting to this blog, Kittee and I have had allot of comings and goings. It was prior to last posting of our ranch blog, that I was giving a copy of the book The Shack by my friend/ co-worker Marilyn. I started reading the book on the school bus-baseball trip-I made to Baker, OR. Baker sets near the southern base of the Wallowa Mountain Range, a most wonderful place to begin reading this book. What a book, what a story which takes place mostly in Northeast Oregon around Joseph and Imnaha on the north side of the Wallowa Mountains (back country and Hell's Canyon area). For those of you who have traveled, camped, fished, and looked up into the night skies from that wilderness area with me; I invite you to read The Shack. It will bring you back to this place and move you with fright, sadness, inspiration and joy. WOW, what a story, what an ending... really hit close to home and heart for me.

Kittee, had the opportunity to head for the beautiful Oregon coast during that same space in time. It was a couple of weeks ago that she went to an attorney's CLE at Newport, one of our very favorite seaside spots to visit. On her way to the coast she stopped and had an evening together with ole friends Ed and Sherry as she passed through Portland. Many of you may remember meeting Sherry and Ed at our wedding, a few years ago.

As she was heading for the coast, I had spring ranch chores to do and was scheduled to make a day trip to Ontario, OR on the Idaho boarder to take the M-F high school golf team for a tournament there. My trip was a pleasure, and the pun of the day around the golf course was the guys asking each other "Have you got the balls for this?" This tournament had golf teams coming from all over eastern Oregon and southwest Idaho. I was amazed at how far folks had traveled for this game, but we were nearly 200 miles from home ourselves.

M-F's MacHi won the tournament of that day, so everyone came back home with a smile on their face. The golf coach was very happy with the day's scores.

Since that day's trip, I have been running sports teams all over northeast Oregon, the tennis team I took to Boardman and Pendleton, the baseball team to Umatilla and Heppner.

Also over the past couple of weekends I build Rusty a mini-pasture for him to come out of his Keep and have the opportunity to graze and stretch his legs. His mini-pasture is irrigated and bit more than ¼ acre of tall grass with a 6' high electric fence around it. He has a bow gate between this pasture and his Keep, so he is kept quite secure and seems to be very happy with the configuration. Do we love our horses or what?

He seems to be enjoying this addition to his world and it keeps him safe and sound from the balance of the herd; or vice versa.

Mid-April we had a new boarder to come to our pastures. We now have Fly and her equestrian Stacey sharing our spring pastures. Fly will only be with us for a couple of months as her owner Stacey is a student in Walla Walla, and they will be going home for the summer. They both plan to return in the fall when Stacey's college restarts.

Here at the ranch we have had a most eventful week with our horses. This past Monday 4/27 our baby Rosey turned one year old. Quite a change she has made in the past year.

Rosey's birthday 4/27/08

Rosey at 1 year old.

Also while I was on my afternoon bus route this past Friday afternoon, our trainer Travis came by and saddled up and mounted Rusty. Wish I would have been here to get a picture of that, but Kittee was here and gave me a full report of the happening. Next time Travis is here I shall get pictures and video of Rusty's ride. It is our understanding that this is the first time he has been mounted. Rusty's sire-- Fire An Ice --holds several AHA Western Pleasure Junior Horse Championships from around the USA. I hope to be riding my Rusty before the autumn breezes blow.

Saturday, Kittee and I spent the entire day from 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. working with Kevin our farrier. I have been doing some garden work over the past couple of weeks, and today after the farrier work, started planting seeds.
Today we discovered that we will have to have Kevin back asap, hopefully this week to trim the hooves of our newly acquired AHA mare... SF Kootenai we maybe calling her "Koo".

Koo is a 12 year old AHA registered mare that we plan to breed with Rusty next month. She too is a very well bred Arabian with legend*Morafic being her Great Grandsire.

And that's the way it is around the ranch over the past few weeks. Kittee's law practice has been very very busy, my bus tripping, evening organizations meetings, and ranch work has kept me in a running mode for the entire month of April. We hope with our horses being shod, we will now be able to find the time to spend more time in the saddle, riding our neighborhood back country.

Happy Trails and hope you get the chance to read The Shack soon. Hey, better yet... come visit us and we will take you to the places where the story of The Shack was written about. Beautiful country.