My Mom is back in town

In writing this blog posting, I am a bit behind in the most current events around the ranch. Things have been busy lately since my Mom arrived in town on Saturday, May 23. That morning Kittee and I met Mom at the train station in Pasco, WA.

Since I was 3 years old, my Mom and I have been making trips to the west coast – Pendleton, OR from N. Carolina, by car (family vacations), by plane (vacations and fishing trips), but my Mom has always wanted to do a cross country trip by train. Well she has finally gotten old enough to make a 4-day train trip on her own, so this year she made the cross country train trip from Charlotte. She said it was a beautiful, relaxing trip, and she met some interesting people on the way out. She also said that the service and food was excellent with a "we want you back-- by Amtrak" attitude all the way across country. After we got back to the ranch Kittee and I rode horses in our riverside arena, then we spent the balance of the day relaxing with Mom and handling horses. Mom even was hand feeding my Misty (up close and personal) as we sit under the shade of the backyard walnut tree waiting for Misty to dry from her after ride shower. That evening we introduced my Mom to a FIRST new experience --- eating in a Mexican restaurant. Now don't get me wrong, my Mom has traveled the world since she retired... Germany, the USSR (before it turned back into Russia), Austria, the Czech Republic, etc. and lived in Peru for awhile, but had never eaten in a Mexican restaurant. Well, Kittee and I have taken care of that. Now at 80 years old my Mom has eaten twice in Mexican restaurant since being on this trip to Oregon.

Sunday, morning we treated Mom to our ranch's apple-bread French Toast and sausage breakfast. She enjoyed that. Thereafter we prepared for the arrival of our Pendleton family to have an evening get together with a BBQ ribs dinner. A lot of the meal preparation I had done on Saturday, so Sunday was an easy day with a Fuzzy Navel in Mom's hand to keep her relaxed and on holiday.
Mid-afternoon the family from Pendleton began to show up, and everyone circled up for a chit-chat family gathering.
This year we missed cousin Worth, as he was working the graveyard shift at the flour mill and cousin Nicole, now hanging out somewhere in Texas. I did get a three generation’s picture of Aunt Pat with cousins Lynn and Brilynn. With Aunt Pat and Mom finding the need to eat by the clock, we had a good spread of munchies for them to work on before the evening BBQ meal was presented. Afterwards the saucy ribs and trimmings were consumed, I think everyone was well sufficed. So as the sun was sinking slowly in the west, a few mosquitoes became present and everyone began to go about their own merry way.

Monday, was Memorial Day so Kittee and I did a little horseback riding after breakfast. After lunch/ mid-afternoon we took Mom for a stroll back to our Contemplation Station by the river.

There we probably sit and chatted for the better part of an hour, watching the shades and shadows of the sun change on the backyard bluff wall. Heading back to the house we stopped for a few piques of the green view of the Upper Walla Walla River Valley.

By the time we strolled back to the house, had dinner, sit around and chatted until it was time to call the holiday weekend done. Tuesday Kittee and Mom headed for Pendleton, I was off in my Big Yellow school bus for my last week of schoolwork.

Interesting FIRST new experience --- for me took place on Friday, 29 May; I had my first acupuncture treatment from Dr. Vu in Walla Walla. More to come about this experience, as it progresses. The needles are painless.

This past Sunday, we had another ranch BBQ with Mom and introduced our upriver friends the Cospers, to our Walla Walla friends the Hopwoods. It was another most pleasant evening get together, dinner, but my Mom has now developed a hay fever allergy reaction to the pollens of the great outdoors over the past week. Sad. Even my stallion Rusty has also developed an eye irritation reaction this past week.

and that's the way it is with life around the ranch lately --- Dale

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.

The CHANGE has come.

This past week spring has definitely come to Northeast Oregon and McKuster Ranch. Last Sunday Kittee and I did our first horseback riding of the season in our riverside arena. Before riding I came into the house to put on my riding boots, and heard a knock, knock, knocking at our back door. I turned around and there stood my ole pal Dale Cosper with a beautiful headstall and set of riding reins in his hands. I quickly made a comment about how nice the headstall was, and he told me it was mine. All I could say was WOW!!! and Thank you. He said that he and wife Cheri were heading out to go horseback riding and he was on his way, I told him thanks again.
Dale, Cheri and I have been working on their website for the past few months, through the winter weather, and it is mostly done ---
South Fork Horse Ranch, home of EAGLEFROMTHELIGHT ---
our Rosey's sire. Yes, we still have some fine tuning yet to do, but the site is now presentable. What a wonderful headstall to say Thank you. I told Dale, that his move would now make me have to polish up the silver on my saddle to sparkle/ match this headstall. Gee, the silver on this tack is bright.

Kittee and did have a wonderful ride last Sunday, so much so that we decided we needed to do it again on Monday. She got out of her office early enough for us to get in a late afternoon ride, again in the arena. Right now we are doing a lot of schooling of our horses to get them in tune for the long distance riding time they will get once they are shod, in three weeks.

Our weather this week had been springtime beautiful. The horseback rides both days felt great, and I am happy to announce that my old back injuries did not suffer from the wear.
During our ride in the arena, I knew that my work was cutout for me as the week progressed. Our sandy riding surface had become grown over with grass and weeks during its non-use over winter and early spring. So Tuesday I brought out the Round Up and sprayer. I sprayed the garden, the fence lines and the arena to knock back the new growth of spring. Wednesday 24 hours after spraying the garden, I re-tilled it again with a new application of Rusty's keep horse manure in the rows.

Wednesday evening, we had our third meeting of the Walla² Fly Fishers. The name Walla² the group found "catchy" from my use/reference of squaring Walla Walla in most of my recent communications. This is a newly formed group of fly fishers from around the Walla Walla and Milton-Freewater area. At this meeting we discussed the club's organization and affiliation with FFF as a Charter Chapter. I was elected to be club Secretary. This week's meeting we had 16 "member" present, and for those that could not make it we now have about 25 interested individuals making up the club to date.

Friday was a pretty busy day. This was the day I let my hair down.
During the p.m. school bus run, I had a number kids tell my that my hair looked different. It was not in a ponytail. This was the day I was letting my locks relax and hang free.

~~~~~~~

I shall step back -digress- at this point, and express some of
my feelings about my hair; for anyone who cares.
This is not about the comings and goings of Kittee and Dale,
but my personal feelings, my conscience.

~~~~~~~

For years I have despised the lies of politics, and the hatred generated by those that have created torture chambers for human beings, with US/my taxpayer $$$$. Mankind has learned so little, from the days of the Nazi-Jewish Holocaust, the "Christian's" Inquisitions of his fellow man, and the killing fields of Vietnam. War is nothing more that a man-made killing machine where only the greedy, and government power leeches win. Goddamn the likes of those that embrace and wage war for their cause of greed.
My ponytail was in part a flag of my defiance and hatred of those that feel that killing babies, their mothers and fathers is an answer for the American corporate profits/greed & US oil consumption/need. The burden of this hatred for the US killing breed has now been lifted from me, by a new age, a change. It feels good to once again be free of those that have created the killing fields of Iraq, for the unquestioned profiteering of the US industrial-military complex that President Eisenhower (R) so warned US about developing during his presidency. Up until the day Richard Chaney take over our White House; who had every heard of a "NO-Bid" corporate profits contract to wage war on the innocent people of a third world nation?
It was the night of the '08 Elections, I began telling friends that with the Baghdad Baby Bomber leaving our White House along with his Halliburton Oil Corporation-Puppet Master; that I could feel "The Times, They Are A-Changin". My ponytail was my flag to wave in hopes that no one on Earth would associate me with the likes of the US #1 moron G.W. Bush, his den of Enron and oil corporations thieves.
Each day I now thank the
Great Spirit-Creator of All
for the man of intelligence, social grace and compassion we now recognize as our President. I am so very thankful that now we have a true leader, a Peace Maker, a world class standard of being a civilized, and straight shooting man for our President. God Bless America for this CHANGE of the civilized American heart. I salute you, Barack Obama, the President of the civilized USA.
This is all I have to say for politics and the shape of things left US from the past eight years of the Me, My, I-greed society; that cared nothing about the tomorrow payback their children now have to face for many years to come. Goddamn those greedy SOB's and their years of human torture at US taxpayer expense.

I will now be sending my hair braid (16") to Locks of Love, and hope someone less fortunate than I can use a new hair piece of graying hair. I have had a lot of women tell me that my hair was too beautiful to cut off. I hope now someone will get good use of it. This is my feelings about my hair and why it became long and then 6 years longer.

~~~~~~~

Saturday, yesterday I spent the day taking the MacHi baseball team out to Baker City, OR. It was a beautiful day for tripping across the mountains. As we crested the Blue Mountains into La Grande the Eagle Caps stood truly like snow capped eagles.

As we entered the Powder River Valley the Wallowa Mtn. Range the "Little Switzerland of America" were mostly shrouded in clouds with some of its nearly 10,000' peak shining through on the north side of the valley, and the Elkhorn Mtn. Range showed only a few of its 9,000' peak of snow caps to the south of I-84. Even with the partly cloudy conditions the sun break on these mountain tops make a most beautifully, majestic scene that lifts the human spirit towards The Creator.

Today Kittee and I worked on fencing. We split the mares away from the geldings and "Miles the mule", turned on the water to the back pasture and let everyone graze sweet green pasture grasses.

And that the way it is around the ranch for another week in the lives of Kittee and Dale.

Happy Trails,
Dale

Happy Birthday Dear Kittee, Happy Birthday to you.

Woke up Friday to find another morning's snow covering at the 1300' level, in our yard.
Kittee and I started our day with coffee, breakfast was a bowl of cereal to get a quick start on the day. This, was the first day of my three day weekend. There was no school (a teachers' in-service workday) with no students for me to transport. Kittee had to work half a day.

Again I had plans to get a lot of outdoor chores done during this 3-day weekend. Snow didn't look like a great way to start this day, like we haven't had enough snow already. The weather forecast was for things to change as the weekend progressed, this I was looking forward to.

Kittee had Milton-Freewater court session Friday a.m. so I figured I would go watch her court proceeding until the weather changed, or we found something better to do. We also had plans to go to Tollgate to pick up Kittee's early Birthday present today, but Tollgate had an additional 8" of snow overnight, so those plans appeared to have been snowed out. After court was over, we had lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant in M-F and then went to Walla Walla to take care of some business there and get our monthly supply of wild blueberry granola and yellow grits.
Arriving back at the ranch the sun had broken out of the clouds so we went out and groomed horses. I did start laying out a small pasture area for Rusty Friday afternoon, so he could have more time outside his keep grazing without having too much exposure with the rest of the herd. The rest of the afternoon, evening we just kicked back and relaxed with a beer watching the sunset.

Saturday started out beautifully, with a touch of morning frost and pure sunshine from above.

Kittee went out and threw hay to the herds, while I prepared our breakfast favorite of apple bread - French Toast with sausage on the side. Again this was more like having a dessert than a meal to start the day. After breakfast we started grooming horses again with anticipation of getting to do a horseback ride on Sunday, maybe even this afternoon if we didn't go to Tollgate. I continued to work on Rusty's pasture layout, while Kittee rode Nugget in the round pen. We were staying busy; waiting for a 2 o'clock telephone call from Tollgate to see if the roads were clear enough to go after Kittee's present. While outside working with the herd the call came that the roads in Tollgate were clear. When we came in for our lunch break we got the call, grabbed some lunch and were on our way.

Now, let me give you a little story from a couple of years ago. I think it was on a back country trip into Minam Lodge, that we meet a woman with a six-pack of beer in her saddlebags, a package of Marlboro cigarettes in her pocket and one in her lips and as we found her; she was drinking a beer at 10:30 a.m. Can you get this picture... a blond woman geared up to take a four hour back country wilderness ride on the back of a Mule with a beer in hand at 1030 hours? The Mule was a cool character on the trail, and probably kept that woman from going over the side of the mountain being the more stable of the two.
It was again sometime last winter '07-'08 that Kittee and I were at the Walla Walla indoor riding arena and there we met a talking Mule, I think Jingles was his name. Well since then Kittee has wanted a Mule. It was about two months ago I ran into a vet-tech / friend or mine in the grocery store, and we were talking about equines. I mentioned to Lori that we had quite enough equines, but were still thinking that if the opportunity arose for us to get a Mule or a Leopard Appaloosa, we might jump it that chance. I told Lori that Kittee really wanted a talking Mule. Well to make a long story short, Lori had a Mule and now for Kittee's birthday I got her this Mule.

Let me introduce "Miles" Kittee's talking Mule. At McKuster Ranch birthdays and X-mas come on the occasion of we get what we are looking for, not on a particular date found on everyone else's calendar. Kittee does get to celebrate July 8th as her special day.

Miles is a most gentle character, and yes he does talk to us. As we took him out to pasture, Kittee walked him around the pasture a couple of times while I was reseting electric fence and Miles met the Riches -neighbors across the road- he talked with them a bit. After Kittee made a couple of circles, I walked Miles around and introduced him to the welcoming committee that had formed across the gate in the paddock. Derby was most interested in this new guy on the farm.

The rest of the evening Kittee and I spent brushing and talking with Miles and letting him settle into his new home. After petting Miles we sit back next to his pasture with a glass of wine and enjoyed the sunset until the air became a bit too cool to sit out. Sunset this weekend was at 7:21.

This was our Saturday, and with the advent of what really feels like Spring, we will be leaving PHC-Garrison Keillor and the news from Lake Wobegon to those that are indoor bound. Gee it feel good to be out in the fresh air and wide open spaces around our home. With a busy day planned for Sunday we went to bed early so we could get an early start.

Daybreak now is about 5:30 with sunrise happening at 7:15 this weekend.
Kittee and I started early Sunday with her going out to feed horses and goats, I prepared a pot of grits, with sausage patties to start our day. Right after breakfast we headed back for the arena to do repairs of the winter's storm/wind damage. We had horseback riding on our minds for this day. About half way through this job Lori dropped by to visit and say hello to Miles and Rusty. Lori had never met Rusty, and I have been inviting her out everytime I see her at Doc Kennedy's vet clinic... "come out and visit with my stallion Rusty." One of Lori's best friends and neighbor was Rusty's first owner about 8 years ago.

Anyway, after Lori left we got back to finish our arena repair work and took a quick lunch break. Thereafter we got Nugget and Misty saddled up and went for a short arena ride.

This was our first time really spent on horses this spring so we were not going to over do it for them or ourselves.

We rode about an hour to an hour and a half (first time since Kittee broke her wrist) and everyone was happy to be out on this nice spring warm-up. We are hoping that if we can find the time we will be able to get in a little horseback riding in on Monday afternoon/evening.

With the feeling in the air that 60° and 70° days might become the norm around here I am happy to announce that Spring has sprung at McKuster Ranch.

And so this is the way it is around the ranch this 3-day weekend. Wish you could be here.

Happy Trails,
Dale