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

Spring Break '09

It was a beautiful first day of spring last Friday March 20. During the mid-day break I was able to bring out the lawn tractor and mow down the remaining dried weeds left in the garden, and spread fertilizer across one of our pasture areas… forecast for Saturday was for rain to move in. With the last student to leave the Double Deuce, I was on Spring Break ’09. I made a beeline straight for the ranch with visions of all I could accomplish this afternoon, it is now DST and that makes a world of difference when living life outdoors. The skies were clear and the temperature was a most pleasant 70°, a perfect afternoon - first day of spring.

I still find is hard to believe the number of "holidays" there are working for the state... in the school system. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining because this job does give me time to get things done around the ranch that a 9 to 5 would not allow without consuming most weekends.

First things first for this Spring Break, the ground was drying out so I made a couple of passes through Rusty’s keep to mucked out his living quarters, brushed him off as we both enjoyed the fresh air and warm sunshine.


After working with Rusty I fired up the rotor tiller, first time since way back when and went to work breaking ground for our ’09 garden season. Gee, it felt good to be back into the garden works once again.

Kittee got a couple of picture of my tilling the garden for the record, as well as a couple of cat photos.

After making two or three passes over each garden row with the tiller it was time to join Kittee to brush and pet horses until beer-thirty. We brought out a couple of beers and just enjoyed the warm spring afternoon and petted the herd, watching the sunset until dinner prep time. Kittee made her clam spaghetti dish for us, while I went out to evening feed and water the equines. By the time we finished dinner it was time to call this a day. Saturday’s forecast was calling for rain to move in and what we hoped to do would have to happen fast.

First thing Saturday morning I hit the floor running to feed the horses so they would be out of my way ASAP for me to start fertilizing before the rain moved in. After putting out hay, I came back in and started breakfast for Kittee and I, the first time in quite awhile we had our apple bread French Toast with sausage and coffee, WOW, what a way to start the day… with dessert for a meal. Right after breakfast I jumped up from the table and headed for the barn and a ton of fertilizer. I was able to spread fertilizer over three pasture areas, which is what I hope to get done this a.m., before the clouds became very threatening. Just as I finished spreading the last load of fertilizer and was heading back to the barn I began to get hit with raindrops; my morning’s mission accomplished. Much to my good fortune it did not rain very hard, so after lunch I was able to work in the garden, opening a fresh tilled row for garlic transplanting, Kittee was working with Rosey and even groomed Nugget and saddled him up for a ride in the round pen. After I finished with the garlic transplant row it started raining, and raining, hailing and raining all the way through Sunday. Dissolved the fertilizer I had spread on Friday and Saturday into the ground very well.

Monday, the alarm clock went off at 4:20 a.m. in preparation for a school bus trip to take the M-F high school girls fast pitch softball teams to Boardman for the day. After a bit of breakfast, shower, and shave I headed for town to get the school trip bus ready to roll for a 6:00 departure time. We were ready-to-ride at 6:00, but were a bit delayed waiting for donut delivery that took until about 6:15. I have learned that on ALL school trips, there is a reason to be at least 15 minutes late on our departure time. Anyway, it was a good day for a trip as the clouds broke away and the sun was once again warm for the day, the girls won two of their three games. I returned about 8:00 p.m. that evening.

I had some pretty big work-around-the-ranch plans for all day Tuesday, but as I was leaving town on Monday a.m. I received a call over the bus radio from our Transportation Director asking me if I could/ would like to make an all day school trip run on Tuesday. This trip would be taking the boy’s baseball team to Heppner for the day. Sound like a good time and make some money to me, so my reply was… YEP, I can do that.

On Tuesday my time of departure was to be 6:30 a.m. so Monday evening I was able to reset the alarm clock for a 5:00 wakeup call since I was driving the trip bus home after Monday’s trip. Again this was a good trip, but the weather in Heppner was cloudy and very windy all day long – Burrrr, it was chilly out there. The high school boy’s baseball team played a double header that day, and won both games. During the a.m. game I stayed in the bus and read a book. As I sit and watching the afternoon game I reminisce of the days I used to watch the young rookies "Steady" Eddie Murray and "The Iron Man" Cal Ripken, Jr. play in front of me when I lived NC.
I shall digress here for just a minute.
Thinking about the Charlotte O's and those guys who are now in the MLB Hall of Fame... too old to play MLB. That was in my regular ballpark visiting days when a few 25¢ beers, a couple of 10¢ hot-dog made dinner at the park as I and friends were sitting right behind the O's dugout – enjoying the game and shouting at “Steady” Eddie playing first base. Those were some “Wild and Crazy” days we had then. This is for real… one evening I had Ted Giannoulas The “San Diego Chicken” not in costume but still a real entertainer/nice guy to be around; came to my house for an after game/birthday party. My home then was only a block from Charlotte’s Crockett Ball Park. These are some fond memories of days gone by.

Back to Tuesday; I was also thinking of the work I wanted to get done while on Spring Break… maybe tomorrow. It was a bit after 7:00 p.m. when I got home from the ball games, in time to feed the herd with daylight.

Wednesday, I had a slow start with NO alarm clocks/ radios going off to remind me to get up. Kittee even crept around quietly as not to wake me. It felt good to sleep in that day. I was up about 7:30 to feed the herd just before it started raining, snowing, hailing, sleeting with a few sun breaks through out the day. Made a good day to stay indoors, take a Spring Break, and make a corned beef casserole for dinner for Kittee and I. Kittee has been working late most every evening the past week or so as her law practice is very busy, and beginning Monday she is hiring a new office hand.

Thursday, started about the same way as Wednesday except with sunshine and all the rain, snow, sleet and hail from the day before was frozen over with a nice covering of frost. Even though the sun was shining it looked like another poor day for working outdoor around the ranch in half frozen mud, so I took care of some office/computer business, went to town to do some work around the apartments, did a little shopping for the weekend.

By mid-afternoon when I returned from town the daffodils had begun to bloom.

With sunshine and a nice breeze on Thursday most of the day, Friday the ground was dry enough to get out and get some things done around the farm. After feeding the herd, I started working on cleaning up the tackroom area in the barn, I spend most of the rest of the day in sunshine, again mucking out Rusty’s keep, brushing out Rusty and then most of the herd until Travis our trainer showed up to help me get started “re-training” Rusty. Over winter I have had Rusty in the round pen a few times, but now with the advent of spring I plan to really get down to business with him and have him under saddle in a couple of months and hopefully be riding him by summer. We worked with Travis for about 45 minutes to an hour on Friday afternoon and got back into the groove we had left last fall with our workouts. After finishing our workout Friday, Rusty was following me around like a puppy… a “good feeling” accomplishment. I hope the weather will co-operate with us this spring that Rusty and I can make these workout a couple or few times a week.

Saturday the weather started out overcast and 50°. By the time I was able to feed and water the herd it had started drizzling only to turn into an off and on rainy day. The snow level on the mountains to our east went up and down the mountains all day long. Made another less than great day for just working on our ranch website, dinging around the Internet, dropping hay from the loft, and feeding horses during a few lulls in the rainfall. One good feeling I got out of this day was that in sizing up the balance of our 27 tons of winter hay store, it looks like we will make it to the second cutting of hay this summer without having to buy more, that’s a good feeling.

Getting up this morning I see that we have snow at the 1600’ level with splattering around the house. I think that everyone around here including the cat pride, horse and goat herds are ready for warm sunshine and a real Spring Break; ready for 80°.
I am now getting ready to head for town to get some T-post to build a containment for Rusty to graze outside his keep.

and that's the way it is as I polish off my Spring Break '09.