Horseback riding 101 @ McKuster Ranch

This past weekend began last Thursday with the arrival of Miriam, our dear friend from the westside metro area, to visit the ranch. She and Kittee met here after getting off work that afternoon. I was on a school sports bus trip to Boardman, and found when I got home that Kittee and Miriam had feasted at our local La Ramada Mexican Restaurant for dinner. The leftover made a very good dinner for me upon my return home. Thursday evening we just sit around visiting, and making plans for Friday.

Here's looking at you
from a
horsey weekend.

Friday, after running my a.m. bus route I came home and stirred up breakfast for myself as Kittee and Miriam had already had breakfast after having slept in late for the morning. They were calling it their weekend OFF. After breakfast we headed for Walla Walla. There I spent my time helping on the trail-riding course of the annual spring show of the Northwest Quarter Horse Assoc. while Kittee and Miriam went into town and did some round-the-rounds and shopping. Friday afternoon, we were planning on getting in some horseback riding after my p.m. bus run, but the winds started kicking up and we decided to just sit it out and have a few beverages, dinner, and call it an early night in preparation for Saturday's activities.

Saturday, our plans were to horseback ride, ride, ride. After a breakfast of very whole wheaty hotcakes and sausage, Kittee and Miriam had an a.m. appointment in Walla Walla for a pedicure. They were only going to be gone for a couple of hours and upon their return we were going to groom, saddle-up our rides and ride, but again we found that the wind was very cool and gusty. So for most of the rest of the afternoon we made walks out to the pastures to just pet and play with horses.

I laid around with some of the herd while sunbathing

Kittee and Rosey played soccer for awhile

Kittee laid around stratching Kootenai's chin

A bit later while we were eating a late lunch, downriver Robert and son Adam came up and wanted to visit with Nugget. They spent most of a half-hour petting, grooming, and walking Nugget around his pasture.
While Nugget was getting so much attention, Kittee petted Derby and Miles the mule.

Again most of this day was quite windy with wind chill, so we shelved our plans for horseback riding, I build a fire in the house fireplace and continued to make frequent dashes to the pastures to pet and play with horses. Saturday I also watered the garden since our rainfall around here has been quite sparse lately. After watering the planted rows of veggies, I laid water on the 125 ft. asparagus row, planted my asparagus seeds and soaked that row again well with anticipation of warm sunshine to help get it sprouting and growing. We lost our original asparagus row when we built Rusty's keep on top of it.

Miriam and Kittee spent most of the afternoon playing cards, with the occasional outside visit with horses.




After their card playing they mixed up a couple of drinks and took in a video, while I was on the computer doing something.



Saturday evening we had a delicious dinner of onion, garlic, olive oil, stirred in with mixed veggies over large plates of pasta and thereafter Kittee and Miriam visited while I fooled around on the ‘puter and watched 60's-70's YouTube concert videos. Our plans now were to put in a lot of time with horses on Sunday, and to get to bed for a good night’s rest before this day got too late and into our Sunday’s plans.



Sunday was a beautiful day from start to finish. I fixed breakfast for all – corny grits, sausage, eggs and biscuits. Thereafter Kittee and Miriam did their things while I made another application of Round Up along / between the garden rows to kill unwanted weed and grasses. By the time I finished, Kittee and Miriam were working on grooming Misty for some riding time with Miriam.

When I got back to the barn I was able to catch Miriam playing / petting a couple of our fillies.

After all that petting Rosey was just a bit tuckered out.

Now here I will let the next series of pictures and the McKuster Ranch YouTube channel tell the story of Miriam’s progression with horseback riding this day.

Sitting in the saddle, testing stirrups

On lead in the pasture getting in tune with Misty.
(video link)

On lead in the round pen getting in tune with Misty.
(video link)

Miriam and Misty having fun on their own, no strings attached.
(video link)

Miriam did VERY WELL with handling Misty. If you watch the videos don’t forget that you can increase the resolution to 480p and make the presentation FULL screen, which makes a pretty nice video show of this day around the ranch.

Links to McKuster Ranch's One-Day horseback riding course -
Horseback Riding 101a -- 1:06 minute
Horseback Riding 101b -- 1:05 minute
Horseback Riding 101c -- 54 seconds
Horseback Riding 101d -- 18 seconds
Horseback Riding 101e -- 48 seconds
Horseback Riding 101f -- 1:25 minute
Horseback Riding 101g -- 47 seconds

On an annual basis, we ask Miriam to spend some time with our foals so as to make a year-to-year comparison of development. Here are pics of her stands with Rosey.

April 2010

June 2009

July 2008

Sunday afternoon after lunch and Miriam hit the road for home; Kittee and I saddled up Derby and Nugget and played with these guys right up until beer-thirty. We did some trotting in the arena, Kittee did some cantering/ jumping with Derby while Nugget and I did the limber-up and rail course at a jog. I have found Nugget to be much slower and stiffer than Misty in working these courses and I intend to work with him more on limbering up and moving faster.

McKuster Ranch
YouTube links

After working in the arena (pic on the left) I then took Nugget out to pasture and did some walking, trotting and cantering through the open space.

After Kittee finished with Derby’s workout everyone headed for the barn, for the horses' buckets of sweet grain and our first round of beers.

The late Sunday afternoon felt great sitting in the sunshine, watching the horses and life go by at a leisurely pace. We were quite impressed with the progress that Miriam had made with riding Misty this day, as we continued to sip in a couple of Sangria wine coolers. I told her we would be glad to continue into Horseback Riding 102 if she wish to return next weekend. As the sun begin to sink into the western skies there was a little overcast so I suggested to Kittee that we build a fire and stay out for awhile, enjoying the rest of this day and another wine cooler.

And so we did.

Since I started this blog posting with the ending of the work week on Thursday, I will finish it with the work to be done on Monday, being a run, run day. I had cut the irrigation pump away from the irrigation weir and put in a butterfly valve last week. This week I hoped to be able to put the system back together again. So today in preparation for fertilizing pastures and the new irrigation season, I had talked to downriver Robert about coming up to give me a hand with this project. I found out how much of a hand/ help I really needed trying to align the pump's intake pipe with the weir's outlet pipe without being able to use a movable compression coupling. I was told that the pump weigh about 100 pounds… I don’t think so!! But Robert and I got the job done, THANK YOU Robert, and now I only have to replace one butterfly valve fitting of which I have put in maybe 20 around here in the process of laying all the irrigation water lines and mounting the Big Guns to cover our 16+ acres of pastures with water.

Glad this BIG and heavy job is done.
That pump ain't light.

And that's the way it is around the ranch this past weekend.

Peace be with you -- Dale

Tripping and Gardening – Spring ’10

This past week has once again been a very busy one for Kittee and I.

Last Thursday, Kittee had a full day of being in court in Heppner, OR. About a 2½ hour drive to the southwest from home, Heppner is further out in the middle of nowhere that almost anywhere else in northeast OR. A beautiful drive getting there, but once you arrive… you are still in the middle of nowhere.
Thursday after my morning bus run, I traded buses at our bus lot and came home with the trip bus and prepped it for a trip to Baker City, OR. Thursday was a beautiful day for traveling in both direction, but I got to run the interstate and landed in the beautiful Power River Valley, which is as pretty of a location as anywhere in the lower 48 particularly in April thru May. At Baker City to the south and west of town is the 8000' snow capped Elkhorn Mountain Range.

The Elkhorns

To the north of Baker City is the 10,000' snow covered Eagle Caps Range of the Blue Mountains. The Eagle Caps was the setting for the story of The Shack which I read last year while on a baseball trip to Baker. That reading was rather eye opening, and close to the heart, mind and spirit.

The Eagle Caps

Just before we arrived in Baker I noticed the rear window of the bus started to fog over. I thought from the uphill climb out of La Grande the bus may have sprung a coolant leak, but instead there was a pin hole rupture in the fuel line, so the bus spent most of the afternoon in the Baker County maintenance shop. On April 15 everything in the valley was green and temperatures felt great for going on open air walks around town and watching girls softball.
While in Baker I got to have dinner at one of my favorite eastern Oregon restaurants - the Inland Cafe- just great home style cooking served here. The MacHi freshman team lost both of their game miserably to the Baker City girls.

Friday, was another gorgeous day around home. Right after my a.m. bus run, I came home, fed the herds of critters here and then headed to Lowden, WA to visit my Goldie. Goldie had spent ten days with the horse trainer there and I was very eager to see how they were doing. It was about a half hour drive over there and when I got there Goldie and Chad were out riding around his place. I jumped out of Blue with my still camera and video camera and started taking pictures as the two of them approached. See video below of this Goldie ride. Found out shortly that my batteries were getting weak so my picture taking opportunity was short. Chad told me that Goldie was a very good saddle horse and was going to make a great trail horse. She was calm, mindful of the surroundings, didn’t spook, and paid attention to the directions of her rider. This made me feel good. I am really looking forward to having her back home, her spring shed brushed out and that pretty girl under my saddle.













Friday, Kittee was once again in court in Heppner, and left from there to go visit here sister’s family in Yamhill, which is way out in the metro area of western OR. I know that made a very long day for Kittee.

Saturday, Kittee was gone and I had plans to do some horseback riding with downriver Robert later in the day. Right after breakfast I headed for the garden to prep it for some planting this weekend. I moved up about 25-30 wheelbarrow loads of horse manure from the barn and Rusty’s keep and got that raked out and tilled in. About that time Robert came up and said he was running late in his schedule and would not be able to ride, so I just keep working the garden.

Asparagus bed ready for seeding.
Hummm, appears my tiller has a wiggle.

Saturday's temperature today hit 70°, first time this year, here at the ranch. Got my asparagus row prepped for planting and decided that this was enough work for the day so took a break and had a couple of red-beers and rested in the sunshine. Later in the afternoon a cool breeze came up with a storm cloud behind it so I went in and worked on the Walla² Fly Fishers’ blog site of last week’s meeting minutes. We did get a very nice evening rainstorm out of the weather system and at near dark I went out and fed the horses and grilled myself a steak and had that with a baked potato for dinner. Kittee called around 8:30 to let me know she was leaving Yamhill, and she had about 5 hours of driving in front of her to get home. I stayed up all evening, running around the Internet, chatting with folk on Facebook, waiting for Kittee to safely return home, she got in shortly after 1 a.m. It was pretty exhausting staying up until after 1:00 a.m. - waaaaaaaaaaay past our usual 9 o'clock bedtime. Plans for Sunday was to plant some of the garden and horseback ride, making up for lost time with our boys and girls.

It was after 9 a.m. before we woke up and started coffee on Sunday. After breakfast I went out and started planting the garden area worked on Saturday with lettuces, radishes, chard, and peas.
While I was gardening Kittee saddled up Derby in the round pen and gave him a short workout. The rest of the day we just took things easy. Pooped out from the Saturday night stretch we sit out in the backyard sunshine, then watched a Stephen King movie and attempted to take a nap, but really didn’t nap as the movie was pretty intriguing so right after an early dinner we called it a day, turned off the lights and was out. Hopefully this year with the Great Spirit smiling on me, I will have no horse wrecks and the garden will give us a good yield. Amen

Yesterday was another day back on the road as I made a trip with the MacHi girls softball teams, heading for Umatilla and Boardman, OR. This made a good trip, as both teams won all three of their games, hands down.

Varsity girls beat Umatilla handily

During the third game I walked around the Boardman Riverside Park which is located next to the Mighty Columbia River.

Girls warming up to play the next game

Seagulls following the migration of fish from the sea to Canada stopped by the park.

Standing on the banks of the Mighty Columbia River

It made a pleasant walk with temperatures in the mid-70’s just before sunset. The late afternoon was cloudy so I had no sunset views of the river. After last week's trip into the mountains of 8000'-10,000' it struck me that this day I was standing on the banks of the Columbia River at 275' above sea level (half the height of our backyard bluff), with fish and rivers that run out of Canada and seven states.
The OregonTerritory, quite a country.

Today after my afternoon bus route run, downriver Robert came up to the ranch, we groomed Nugget and Misty and spent the rest of the afternoon horseback riding along the river at McKuster Ranch. After work, Kittee joined us with a burgundy wine cooler in hand. It was a good day to be drawing air from these great Oregon outdoors.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not part of the comings and goings of K&D, but a slice of family history I will share here...
While cruising Facebook, I found that cousin Nicole has now exited the state of Texass (home of the likes of LBJ, GWB, Enron, the assassination of JFK, etc.) and moved back to the Turner Ranch in NM. I did find on Nicole's Facebook page a photo of she (while in Austin) and sister Brilynn (visiting), standing in front of The Alamo Memorial with our cousin James Bonham listed front and center as one of the defenders who gave his life for the Texass' independence from Mexico. Not sure that the lose of cousin James was worth it, but he was there as a Bonham and an American with the best of those that fell at The Alamo.
And that's the way it is around the ranch this past week.

Happy Trails and Peace be with you,
Dale

Spring is getting sweet around the ranch

Goldie is now off at training camp, Aunt Misty and Summer

graze the driveway together

This past weekend started Friday with Kittee going to Milton-Freewater court which lasted until 10:00 a.m., I did some grocery shopping while she was in court and we both got home by 10:30. I gave downriver Robert a call and asked if he wanted to join us for an arena ride, and he did. Close to 11:00 we were saddled up and ready to ride. Kittee was going to try to start riding English this day but the girth strap she bought didn’t fit Derby or Shaiela, so she went western and then bareback; we rode about three hours.

From Misty's point of view

To finish this riding session I took Misty out of the arena and we rode the pastures at a trot and then a little ways at a canter. In the above picture Misty has her ear cocked back, while making arena circles, but running the pastures she is head high, ears erect, and happy with the wind in her face. Misty is just making a better ride all the time, actually we work together to make our rides better and more fun. After my p.m. bus route I burned the garden rows to eliminate any seedlings that had started since I had Round Up the entire growing area several weeks ago.

Kittee and I then kicked back and had a few beers and topped our day off with a couple of thick hot-off-the-grill ribeye steak, grilled mushrooms (from our new two person gas grill), a large baked potato split between us. Mmmmmmm good stuff. That and a glass of vino for Kittee and a red-beer for me made a fine dinner and we then capped the day off with an early evening video.

Saturday, was a beautiful day for fun, play and horseback riding. Right after our hotcake & sausage breakfast Kittee and I made a bee line to the tack store and bought a longer girth strap for her English saddle, I got a set of roper reins (that were too short) and we headed home to ride. Again Robert came up and rode with us for several hours. I will let these pictures tell the story of this day…

Kittee and Derby go English

After riding we put the horses up. I got a picture of our three youngest ranch fillies…

Raji is 3 yo (a boarder), Summer the yearling, Rosey the 2 yo

After lunch Kittee brought Sunny a 4 yo Arabian boarder filly, into the round pen, saddled her up and lounged her for awhile. Sunny’s owner told Kittee, she could have the freedom to ride her at will so Kittee is looking forward to that.

Kittee has not ridden Sunny yet... maybe next weekend.

Saturday evening Robert invited us to have dinner with he and Sherry. Pizza, & beer party with a Wii machine of fun and games to follow. First we had two sets of bowling, I made high score on the second game, then Kittee and Robert played 15-shot / 3-point basketball, then Kittee played two 9-hole rounds of golf. Everyone had a really good time with this toy, and now Kittee feels we should have one (Hummm? Would be good for winter). By the time we were through, it was waaaaay past our bedtime.

Sunday, we slept in for awhile, had our starter cup of coffee in bed, listened to Will Shortz's puzzle game on NPR, and later a corny grits, sausage and egg breakfast. The weather forecast for Sunday was temperatures in the 60's and a 40% chance of rain, which usually means things are going to get wet around here to some degree. With that chance for rain, right after breakfast I fired up the garden tiller and went to work.. on about 600 row feet of garden space.

Sunday it didn’t rain so Kittee and I rode, rode, and rode horses up to lunch time. This day I rode Nugget to put him through some of the arena course work that I usually put Misty through. Nugget not having done this in a long time was quite a bit slower and less responsive than Misty. But I worked him, and worked him and he was much better at running the course in a trot and canter by the time we were through working/ playing the course.

Kittee spent her time riding Derby in their new English attire.

Sunday afternoon, Kittee and I just kicked back and took life easy for awhile.

Taking a break, just taking it easy...

After lunch Kittee laid down for a rest period (we were out late Saturday night), and I hung out with horses. About time I was going into Rusty’s keep to groom him, I had company show up. Now this is neat… I met Jennie on Facebook a few weeks ago. She now lives in the BIG NYC, but is from Walla Walla, WA where she grew up on a 20 acre asparagus farm, and her mom Bonnie is a member of our Walla² Fly Fishers’ fishing club... small world. Jennie was on vacation this past week, spending time with her mom, so I invited both of them to drop by the ranch to pet horses and have a beer. They did, we did. After Jennie and Bonnie left, Kittee came back outside and we messed around with horses for awhile, had dinner and watched a video before calling it a full blown weekend… done.

And that's the way it is around the ranch this past weekend.

Wish you were here,
Dale