Memorial Weekend '10

This past weekend was just a hangout-around-the-house holiday for us. We usually have the Reed family come up from Pendleton to do a family BBQ with us on Memorial Weekend, but this year we made plans with Kittee's sister Kuon, and husband Dale, to make an overnight run for their place in Yamhill. With the advent of last week- Kittee taking Shaiela to the vet, we found that Shaiela had a pulled tendon in her foot and needed to be put on stall rest for a month with a twice a day dose of bute for a week. Our plans of going anywhere were turned around, flipped up-side-down by this child's injury. We spent our 4-day holiday resting and playing around home.
This worked out OK with me, since the week prior I had been on four road trips with different school's all day field trips. This last week of school work was typical of rainy Thursday's trip, when I pulled out of Ferndale School at 6:30 a.m. heading for Baker City and the gold fields of Sumpter, to return at 8:30 p.m. to Ferndale School, so for the weekend I was ready for a break. Kittee and I had recovered from our illness of the week before, which turned out to be much like a flu, and left us very much looking forward to this long weekend break of just resting and horseplay.
Friday, we started the day very casually since it was a rainy day. After breakfast we headed for Walla Walla to do a bit of shopping and worked our way back home with the weekend's supply of videos, groceries and beverage. I did buy a new Canon digital camera while out, since my old HP camera was more and more in the mode to give up the ghost. The new little camera is nice, it fits well in a shirt pocket, which I need for trail rides, fishing trips, and general outdoor photography. Friday afternoon after we got settled in I pulled out the owner's manual for the camera and started to figure out it works. Does a nice job but has quite a few whistles and bells that I have not been used to.

















Since we were basically shut-in for the balance of the day, Kittee was my main photo subject for testing the camera. After dinner that day we watched a movie and a half.
Saturday started out the same as Friday, raining. This made about a week in a row of days with mostly rain for our daily weather conditions... not complaining, but it seems we are getting enough rain for the time being. Wish it would spread itself out into July and August, but that won't happen. Saturday morning was a bit cool with temperatures in the upper 40's so Kittee built a fire to sit beside most of the morning.

After breakfast relaxing, watching and waiting for sunbreaks

Kittee reading some SS worksheets, working on a client's claim.

Anyone out there needs help with Social Security claims? Kittee is phasing out her dom-rel law practice and is now working with (for or against) the Feds in Social Security claims.

Thereafter we spent most of Saturday running in and out of the house, to the pastures to visit horses between the warm 60° spring showers.
We have been asked from time to time if our horses are always clean and shiny. After a week of rains most days our palomino amigos look like this...
Now the above condition of horses can be quite typical on rainy days, but this weekend with off and on showers/sunshine, Kittee and I were quite entertained when after a shower all the horses, one after the other laid down on the wet ground and rolled with their feet waving high in the air. Made quite a site to watch ;>) horses with their feet waving through the air - cheap entertainment... except for the price of horses and hay. Anyway Saturday was just a catch can day, with high hopes that TWC's Sunday's weather forecast would be correct, sunshine for most of the day.

Sunday at 6:00 a.m. we went out to walk around the yard in the sunshine, there was not a cloud in the skies and all was springtime beautiful. A great day for cleaning up horses and going for a ride, out of our ranch's gate. I went out before breakfast and took some pictures around the yard with the bright morning sun on the driveway's flowerbed blossoms and Hawthorne tree.

After breakfast we headed out to catchup horses and prepare for our ride. After Derby and Misty were tacked up we warmed them up in the front pasture, just walking, trotting, cantering across level ground, green grass. Then we headed up Cache Hollow Rd. to see what we could find. It was a most pleasant ride and we began running into Western Tanagers. Until this year I think I have only seen two of these beautiful little birds around the ranch. Sunday we spotted at least 3-4 of the guys flying around while on our ride.

Pretty, pretty little birds. These pictures I took while riding Misty and trying to catch a bird with our new camera. Monday I was back on the river (which is too high/ fast to fish this weekend) and saw two more Tanagers.

This day's ride was most enjoyable, and we did find that the locust trees were beginning to bloom, but their blossoms were not open and diffusing their sweet perfume which smells like Niagara grapes (vino).


All week I was hoping to get to ride Goldie in the round pen, but with the weather and the pool of water sitting in the round pen that was not possible. So Sunday with the weather forecast calling for sunshine, I thought I might get the opportunity to ride my golden girl. But wouldn't you know it... with the bright warm sunshine on everyone's back, Goldie and Kootenai were showing signs of going into heat and were screaming at the boys. Silly girls.

Later in the day I did get a shot across pastures of Goldie and Summer stratching each others back.

Since Goldie's return from Chad's training, she and Summer have been the best of mother and daughter pair of horses. It did both of them a lot of good to be apart for 40-days. It is now hard for us to believe that Summer is now 11-months old and how tall she is getting. Though she is ¾ Arabian, she is showing her Quarter Horse ¼ in height and rump size. She is making a nice horse.

Monday was another on and off rainy day. Mid-morning we gave everyone their 3-months worming treatment. This went very well as I was able to worm Summer without having to halter her at all. She is such an easy handling horse, a pet, but not one to get in our pocket. She is making a really nice horse. Late afternoon did turn out to be pretty nice, so Kittee and I just sit out in the barn, watching rain showers passing through, drinking glasses of beer and wine while watching the horse herds play and graze.
Now with tomorrow morning's alarm to get up and go to work... I will have three days of school bus driving to run before summer's vacation.
Hip-Hip-Hooray!!! I do enjoy working in the school system.

So this is the way things have been around the ranch for this another holiday weekend.





Dale

Summer at 5-months old

This past week was a week’s vacation from my school bus chores. Speaking for myself it was rather relaxing, with sleeping in late a few mornings, working and playing with horses during the mid-day. With the seasonal re-introduction of eggnog at the Safeway store, Kittee and I now start everyday with an eggnog lattè. Mmmmmmm, what a treat to start the day with.
Our baby "Summer" turned 5 months old last Monday.

Well, in northeast Oregon we got sucked into the 21st Century a bit deeper last week. In order to furnish the Californicators with more electricity, there has been a massive host of wind turbines popping up in our area. Last week they turned on the marking lamps to a number of new installations and these things are now visible to our horse herd all night long. These things are about 9-10 miles away, but it bites my butt to see RED night light pollution in our Oregon Territory to satisfy the California oink, oink electricity hogs. Calfornicators, turn off the lights and your computers when you leave the room. What a waste to our beautiful Oregon Country skyline.

I shall descend from my soapbox now.

Last week was beautiful weather-wise, with highs in the upper 50’s most day and lows in the upper 30’s, plenty of sunshine. Tuesday and Wednesday our horse trainer – Travis came by, which allowed me to get a bit of mid-week riding in with Misty. We are still into cattle rustling training (maybe that should be re-phrased… cattle penning training) with Travis. While he was here, he saddle broke Sunny a boarding horse, and saddled up Raji a to be 3-year old boarder we have here.
This past week I got my confidence up enough to put Misty into a canter and attempted to make a 180° turn. We did it once, and that was about as much excitement in the saddle that I need to handle at this point in time/training. I am very pleased to say that the riding feels good and diminishes most of my lower back pains, just about as much as acupuncture treatments. Thursday night and half the day Friday we had rains, our round pen got swamped so I was unable to ride in there for the rest of the week.

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day we were invited to join some upriver neighbors to share late lunch/dinner with them. Kittee and I had a most enjoyable time with Connie, Jerry and one of our very best young riding friends, Kasey. It was such a pleasure to be with these folks this day and we went with the instructions of "bring nothing with you". I find it really nice to be obligated to take nothing when invited to a feast and a party with dear friends and family. In this way the day starts relaxed and remains relaxed through the end. Again we ended up staying out way past our bedtime, and I was glad that I had put out hay that afternoon so the horses could have dinner by the 8 o’clock dinner hour (that is very late for them as well). When we got home all I had to do was open the gate to feed dinner.

Friday, with everything on the ground being wet, we made our in town rounds, and that afternoon cooked our turkey dinner to be picked upon for the balance of the week. I prepared the turkey and stuffing, while Kittee worked on potatoes, gravy and a large apple crisp. While all was cooking, we played cards and listened to rock-n-roll on the stereo. After dinner the outdoor cats were so happy with their turkey treats for dinner.

Saturday, we had made plans to have Kasey and her Bow from Montana, to come to the ranch and we were going riding. Kasey may try her hand at riding Rusty, with his Arabian saddle or her English saddle, but this week was too wet. I also had made plans, for Friday a.m., with a friend to smoke some wild Alaskan salmon that he had come upon, but that got rained out until Saturday. The smoking of salmon and petting of horses kind of overran my schedule of horseback riding, so Kittee, Kasey, and Sloane went horseback riding in the fields behind our bluff, while Randy and I had another beer and waited for the salmon to finish smoking.
After all the above activities and lunch were said and done, Kittee and I took the time to celebrate Summer with a 5-months-old birthday party, with allot of hugs, kisses and green grass grazing.
Sunday, our main objective was horseback riding in the arena, either in Walla Walla’s indoor arena or in our riverside arena depending on the ground conditions. The ground conditions here at the ranch were great, and the weather conditions over our heads was wonderful. So we spent the best part of two plus hours running and jumping our rides. Just having fun.













This is when I put Misty in the 180° turns at a canter, and worked her in quite a few 360° turns at a trotting gait. After all our riding we made a quick lunch of a couple of beers and the smoked salmon pastè that I had made Saturday night for this day. After lunch we got really energetic and wormed all the equines. This we usually do early in November, after a few killing frosts, but this year our weather has been warm and wonderful since our mid-October quick chill. After we finished worming everyone, Kittee had a procession coming at her for more pets and maybe more worming paste/treat(?).
To polish off this afternoon... I had found some October plums in our cool storage pantry this past week, so Sunday late afternoon I threw out/handed out plums to everyone's delight.

Yesterday was again beautiful outdoors and for the first time since my August 1st horse wreck I pulled out the OLE weed-eater and machete and went to work on a blackberry bush that had overgrown a portion of our electric fence. Again last evening I put out two meals for the mare herd, one for last evening’s dinner, another for this morning’s breakfast.
The weather forecast for today was for a.m. fog, giving way to afternoon sun breaks. I am glad I put out breakfast yesterday evening as today we are cool, gray and mostly damp with fog. Can't even find the bluff in the backyard this morning.

Now this looks like December.

But wait, the weather forecast is correct...
as I finish this blog posting I look out the office window and see that we are now lining up to get sun breaks for the rest of the day.

♫ Home, home on the range, where the skies
are not cloudy all day ♫

And that the way it is around the ranch this week --- Dale

Thanksgiving '08

This Thanksgiving Holiday weekend, Kittee and I did not get into allot of running around nor did we have company in.

We began this holiday season with our traditional eggnog latté morning treats. Mmmmmm good stuff. These have always been quite the treat, while soaking in bed on cold holiday/weekend mornings, waiting for the house to warm up around us.

This year for Thanksgiving dinner we went up the So. Fork of the Walla Walla and had a most pleasant afternoon- evening with our ex-boarder, Kasey and her grandparents Gerry and Connie Schmeckpeper. Gerry's sister also joined us for dinner, and there we all consumed a delicious feast, with plenty of vino on the sidebar. This was a very casual dinner party, (I was instructed not to attend in Black Tie) with too much good food and wonderful company to share it with. This was our first opportunity to break bread with Connie and Gerry, it was a good time; we have now invited them to come down river and join us with a ranch BBQ when the winter weather breaks.
Kittee and I roasted our 20 pound turkey, with all it's trimmings on Saturday. It made a very good dinner for Saturday and all day today, pick, pick, pick... Mmmmmm Good!

Our weekend weather has been mostly off and on clouds/fog banks going through, with sun breaks to let us get outside with horses and do a few chores around the ranch before December/winter is upon us.
I did some more work on burning, cleaning and tilling the garden area these past few days. I was hoping to move the asparagus plants out of Rusty's keep, but all I got done on that project was to till the bed I am moving the asparagus crowns into. Hopefully this next week I will be able to move the crowns before having to move Rusty back to his keep.

Other than these little projects, we have just stayed home, relaxed, watched some good movies, "worked" /played with the horses, and Kittee her cats.


Kittee did load Derby and Nugget up this morning and took them for a ride at the Walla Walla Fairground Arena. Since it was quite chilly and foggy this morning when she left, I did not feel like going out trying to ride my horse and have my head chilled out this day; so I stayed home and when the sun came out at high noon I went out and groomed and grained horses. Everyone is now wearing a winter coat, but so far their coats have not gotten very long or shaggy. Hope this might be a sign of a mild winter to come.
After working and playing with the herd, I tilled a couple more rows in the garden, getting ready for spring of '09.

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

Rosey is VI months old

Thanksgiving Day '08 was Rosey's six months old Birthday.

She now stands 12 hands tall and tapes at about 450 pounds.

She is getting to be a big little girl. Still as lovable, soft to touch,
and gentle as ever.

I will be posting more photos onto Rosey webpage
and photo album soon.

Lest we not forget Rusty.
It was just over a year ago that we made the trip to Bend, OR and bought our Adrenaline Rush. Since that time he has become such a very gentle pet stallion. Rusty has recovered from his bout with Pigeon Fever and has spent the past week - 10 days out on pasture. He is currently in our 4 acre pasture being fed hay twice a day, and grazing the balance of the day, so he is showing being well winter fed. He does stay busy pacing/prancing the fence line as he watches the rest of the herd about 200' away in their pastures. This past week we wormed all the herds (horses & goats), and blended the mare and gelding herds back together to be one for the winter.

Our Quarab mare Goldie is beginning to show to be quite pregnant x Rusty, and loving her extra rations of mare/foal grain and sweet COB. She is still the #1 Blond Bitch in attitude, right behind Shaiela being the Queen Bitch of McKuster Ranch. Horse herd hierarchy, is a very interesting thing to watch.

This has been our Thanksgiving '08 holiday weekend. Schools has been out for over a week now, and tomorrow I get cranked up again driving two buses to make my rounds. Gee, just think... we have another holiday coming at us in just a few weeks.

Happy Holidays and to all a good night.

Thanksgiving '08 around McKuster Ranch --- 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

Christmas Day '07

Stardate 122507

Our Christmas cactus is in full bloom today!!

It was shortly after sunrise that Kittee and I finished our last eggnog latte and climbed out from under the heated blanket. The sun was shining bright, and we were ready to get started; feeding horses, cats, ourselves and maybe do a little horseback riding in our riverside arena today. Our first sight of the day was the house cats sitting in the living room window soaking sun. It was a beautiful morning outside with temperature in the 40's. Looking out the back window of the house to scope out the horses, there was Jasmine, Ginger, and Sinwaan eating one of the barn doors. Hummmm, our day's work was being cut out for us from the get-go. I started on breakfast and Kittee headed out to feed the horses. When she came back in she announced that the ground was frozen, which meant that it was too hard to ride on now and when it thawed it would be too slick to ride on later. So much for horseback riding on Christmas Day.

We now just enjoy our coffee, breakfast, and plan to tackle a couple of chores around the ranch. After breakfast we cleaned up around the house a bit, and then dressed to work outside for the morning.

First thing was to cover the barn door that the horses were eating earlier with chicken wire, to create a tooth barrier. It was a few years ago that the pony sisters began to eat the barn, so we covered it with wire at that time. This fall after we let the goats into the paddock, they begin to eat the barn and found grain in the walls. Shortly thereafter we had horses trying to eat the barn alive, so I sprayed it with Habanero pepper sauce/oil. That slowed everyone down for about a week. We have now covered the barn with exterior plywood sheeting and chicken wire.

Next course of action for the day was to repair the electric fence tape that the wind had broken apart yesterday.
After mending the fence, we checked on one of the goat's feet that had been limping for the past day, we found nothing wrong there. After these morning outdoor chores, we headed for the house as the wind was blowing cold. Temperatures were suppose to be dropping today with snow coming in by nightfall.

With this weather forecast calling for skies to become cloudy, and snowfall by early evening, we decided to live by the home fire for the day. Getting back into the house Kittee proceed to fill the fireplace with newspaper and firewood, and with a handy little flame thrower she got the home fire cranked up for the day.

It wasn't too long she had the fire started, I was putting the finishing touches on the Xmas Eve blog I started yesterday after coming in from PDT, and Kittee began to look up the recipe for her lentil soup works.



















After I finished the Xmas Eve blog, we suited ourselves up for another trip out to visit horses, and feed them another course of alfalfa. We wanted everyone to be happy today.

Here are a few of the horses pics, up close and with hugs...




Derby up close













Sinwaan in your face

Nugget up close


















and Goldie.


Goldie is quite the dirty mud-bath mess in this pic, and she has enough pride that she asked that I use another pic of her for showoff.


This past week our Goldie had a day of sunshine, so I brushed her out and had her pose for a few pics.




Just to let you know that our guys and gals do not stay mud puppies for the duration of winter. Here is Goldie on the right cleaned up, and looking her usual self, without the mud.

About Goldie... I fell in love with her at first sight, actually we fell for each other upon first sight. Now, she is my 1000 lb. like golden retriever puppy and we are waiting for Rusty to show up and ask them both for AHA palomino Arabians gets to fill the ranch.



It is sometimes hard to believe how much from Kittee and myself, that our herd will put up with. They really are fun pet to have around the ranch, and then we can get on their backs and ride away!!!





Here Kittee is warming up Nugget, Ginger, and Shaiela's muzzle as the day is clouding up and snow is on the way.












After this turn out with the horses, we opened the back pasture and let everyone take a run. Kittee and I headed back for the house and she began to put together her excellent Lebanese lentil soup for the evening meal. This batch smells great.




























After preparing the pot of soup and getting it cooking, we gave the indoor cats a special Xmas treat of cans of tuna, went back out and fed the horses their Xmas sweet grain treat.















It was not until we sit down for our dinner bowl of soup that we realized that we had not stopped during the day to have lunch. This probably was part of the reason the bowl of soup disappeared so fast. After dinner, I started working on this blog, Kittee took her shower and was ready of bed by 6:00, but while she was in the shower I placed a very large log on the fire that tripped the damper closed and created a two alarm smoke screen through the house.

During this time my Mom called, Kittee answered the phone and told her we would call her back... she probably wondered what he hell was going on with these alarms sounding off. Let me tell you this is one hellava way to check smoke detectors on Christmas night. I called Mom back once the air cleared of smoke and ash we chatted for awhile.

While the house is standing wide open to rid it of smoke we notice it was now snowing outside as was the forecast for Christmas Night '07. With the fire still roaring in its place, this does lend to create the atmosphere of a warm winter's night, of nearly outdoor camping.

Well most of the smoke is about cleared from the house now, it is time to put another back log on the fire for the night. So here I will wish each and everyone a safe and Happy New Year.

A Christmas day in the life at McKuster Ranch -- Dale