But MM has a habit
Of tickling my side
Whene’er we pose for pictures
I can’t not laugh; I’ve tried.

 
 
But MM, he can’t help it
He tickles to show love.
Thank goodness we have Walter
To distract MM’s glove.

 
 
“Aw, Master,” Walter mutters.
“I sure love you a bunch.
Now, could you please ask Mama
To go and fix me lunch?”

a) Charlie
b) Pioneer Woman
c) Ronald McDonald
d) Marlboro Man

 
 
 
What is this cowboy’s name?

a) Harvey Wallbanger
b) Tom Collins
c) Jack Daniels
d) Josh

 
 
 
What is Marlboro Man doing in this photo?

a) Working with his brother
b) Riding a horse
c) Sorting cattle
d) I don’t care. He’s wearing chaps.

 
 
 
Who is this man?

a) John Wayne
b) Sam Elliot
c) Clint Eastwood
d) Cowboy Tim

 
 
 
What are these cowboys discussing?

a) The cattle market
b) The price of grain
c) The extended forecast
d) Exactly how long it would take them to construct an authentic Iron Man suit out of the scrap metal from our old horse barn, and whether or not Hulk would be able to bust through it if he ever put it on

(All answers: d)

Love,
Pioneer Woman

Today, for obvious reasons, I’ve got our troops on the brain.

A couple of years ago, I held a “Coming Home” photography assignment over on PW Photography. The contest received some of the most beautiful photos of troops coming home to their families, and I don’t think I was the only one who couldn’t hold in the tears as I looked through the submissions that week.

Here’s a link to the Coming Home posts if you’d like to look through the photos. They are an effective reminder of the sacrifices military troops and their families make.

“Coming Home” Photos

Whenever I see someone in uniform, or a veteran who’s served, all I can ever think to say is “thank you.” So today, let’s thank everyone who’s ever served our country: Feel free to leave your messages of gratitude, your prayers, your thanks to service members and their families in the Comments section of this post. It’ll be nice to have all the well wishes in one central spot, so troops can be reminded that we love ‘em.

The Giveaway

For every “thank you” left here over the next 24 hours, I will donate one dollar to Operation Homefront, which provides emergency assistance to troops, their families, and wounded warriors. Operation Homefront has received the highest rating (four star) from Charity Navigator, and you can read more about their mission here.

NOTE: This donation will be made on behalf of PW readers/friends, and I’ll post the contribution info here once it’s done.

(Small note from P-Dub: I’m not affiliated with Operation Homefront in any way. I just love the work they do.)

 
(Photo by Katie Mihalak.)

Thank you all for your messages of support.

And thank you again to our troops. For everything.

UPDATE: Entry time has ended. Thank you all for your messages of thanks to our troops and their families! Here is the donation confirmation from Operation Homefront:

Thank you all for your participation!

 
 
Ages in this photo: Almost 8, 9, 43, 12…and almost 15.

I think I have those earlier ages right. I’m not 100% sure.

What I am sure about is that my kids are growing up so fast, I see a blur every time I look at them.

On one hand, it’s fun because they aren’t tiny kids anymore and I can shoot the breeze with them and see their brains and personalities develop…and get a glimpse of who they’ll be when they’re all grown up.

On the other hand, it’s just awful. They aren’t tiny kids anymore.

They don’t wear wittle Wranglers.

Waaaaaaaaaah!

Okay, I’m better now. Just had to get that out.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

P-Dub

Did I mention that?

Oh. Well, we did!

It was intentional, though.

 
We started by moving all the saddles and the rest of the tack from the old horse barn to our other barn, which is also an old barn but has never been a horse barn before.

Until now.

 
 
 
Marlboro Man had some new saddle stands made and Cowboy Josh welded a bunch of old horseshoes to the rails to be used as hooks, so there’s a new place for everything!

 
 
 
After that, it was about getting anything out of the old horse barn that we did not wish to go up in flames.

 
 
 
I have no idea what my husband is going to do with that piece of metal.

And I probably don’t want to know.

 
 
 
I made the girls gather up all these old horseshoes, which have been hanging on this wall since I’ve been on the ranch.

I’m going to save them forever.

 
 
 
“Aw, you don’t need those ol’ horseshoes,” Cowboy Josh said.

“Listen up, little buckaroo.” I said. “Yes I do!”

I sure told him, didn’t I?

 
 
 
My girls get distracted sometimes.

I can’t imagine where they get this.

 
 
 
It took us awhile to clear everything out of the two boxcars that Marlboro Man’s dad moved out here to the homestead close to fifty years ago, before Marlboro Man and his brothers were even born. He combined the boxcars and rigged them to hold and dispense feed for his ranch horses, and he built horse pens and a roof and kept on building until the two old boxcars became a barn.

That barn was Marlboro Man’s horse barn—and his two brothers’—throughout their whole childhood.

 
 
 
Marlboro Man and his dad both agree the old barn needs to be torn down. Its usefulness has slowly and inevitably dwindled. The boxcars are rusted, and the roof is in disrepair.

Its time has come.

 
 
 
But yesterday, when it all became real, I started getting emotional about tearing down the barn. It’s so old. It’s been here forever. It’s where we’ve kept bottle-fed calves and it’s where my kids have saddled their horses since they learned how to saddle.

It’s not where I’ve saddled horses, because nobody wants to ride a horse that I’ve saddled.

But that’s another story for another time.

 
 
 
Guess what? Cowboys don’t have time for sentimentality when they’ve got their mind made up that a building has to go.

And when they’re holding a container of diesel fuel…

 
 
 
And matches.

 
 
 
“Man…must make FIRE.”

 
 
 
Um, yeah. So I guess it’s a little late to reconsider.

 
 
 
At least my baby understood the bittersweet nature of what was happening. As we watched the flames grow and the smoke grow thicker, he walked up and put his arm around me, knowing I had a little bit of a lump in my throat.

 
 
 
“Mama?” my baby said. “Did you remember to move your car out of the barn?”

“MY CAR!” I screamed. “Oh no!”

Just kidding. But wouldn’t that have been an unexpected twist?

 
 
 
Because I’m a photojournalist, I actually went back inside the barn so I could get a different angle.

It was hot in there!

Ouch.

 
 
 
The already-peeling paint started falling off in sheets—look over there at those exposed yellow areas.

 
 
 
That was the first boxcar.

 
 
 
This is the second. POOF!

 
 
 
I realize all fire is hot.

But this fire was really hot.

 
 
 
This is from the other side.

 
 
 
And that’s the first stage of our saying goodbye to the old horse barn. All the wood inside is now burned out of it. Once it’s cooled down (sometime in the year 2098) Marlboro Man and Josh will cut it all up and sell the scrap metal.

Then they’ll take down the old pens inside and keep the gates, which are still in good condition, and they’ll put them somewhere…well, somewhere that needs a gate.

Just part of the never-ending job of keeping and maintaining a homestead.

*Sniff*

 
 
“Let’s grab some rocks and skip them!
Let’s wade and splash and play!
Let’s go look for some turtles!
It’s such a lovely day!”

 
 
“Wait, Cow—where are you going?
We’ve still got lots to do!
Our friendship’s just beginning.
Do you not love me? Moo?”

 
 
I guess she didn’t hear me.
I’ll just come back next week.
Then me and my new cow friend
Shall frolic in the creek.

(You can call her P-Widdy-Dub-Diddy-Diddy-Dub-Dub for short.)

 
We have three types of animals we run on our main ranch: cow/calf, yearlings and wild horses. We contract with the U.S. government to take care of wild horses gathered from government land out west. They contract with many different ranchers to take care of horses. In order to be awarded a wild horse contract, you have to have the ability to take care of a minimum of 500 horses and you have to go through a competitive bidding process.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency in charge of all federal land, is responsible for maintaining the horses on federal lands in the western states. When they experience droughts or when the horse population gets too large, they are forced to gather some of the horses from the range to prevent them from overgrazing it. The excess horses are kept in holding pens; the younger horses are put up for adoption in various wild horse adoptions throughout the country, but the older horses don’t make good candidates for adoption. So the BLM will put out a bid for ranchers to take care of those horses on private lands.

As you can imagine, whenever you’re talking about the government and their care of wild horses, it can be a highly politicized issue. I won’t get into the politics here, but will just explain the BLM’s process, how we ended up with horses, and how the horses work in the management of our ranch.

The BLM prefers to contract with ranchers to take care of the excess horses because it’s cheaper and obviously more in line with their natural habitat than housing them in pens. Between my brother and my operations, we currently take care of a little over 3,400 horses.

A key component for the BLM when choosing contractors is that the potential contractor must have enough land to allow the horses room to roam. As part of the bidding process, you have to describe how you propose to stock and take care of the horses on your land. You have to put together a lengthy and exhaustive document where you describe your management process and the quality of your pens, fences, land, and water. The BLM wants to see maps and charts with pastures, acreage, pond counts per pasture, water volume per pond, grass species in each pasture, and the plan to maintain those grasses with a prudent stocking rate—all documented by a qualified third party. It’s the typical government paperwork/information overkill, but it’s part of their process of weeding out unqualified candidates.

The main reason we applied to run the horses was to diversify our operation so that we would have another source of cash flow besides cattle. In ranching, there aren’t many opportunities to diversify your cash flow. As part of the wild horse program, the government pays you per horse per day at the end of every month. Another key advantage to running the horses is that you don’t have millions of dollars tied up in inventory; when a horse dies of old age, it’s sad of course. But it doesn’t cost you a thousand dollars as it would if one of your cows or steers dies.

We got our first horses in 2003. We were awarded a contract to take care of mares. The BLM puts studs/geldings and mares on different ranches to prevent them from breeding and exacerbating the overpopulation problem they are continually trying to fix. In general, the horses are easier to take care of than cattle, but the first couple of years when they are getting acclimated and many of them are bred, they can be pretty difficult.

We started receiving the wild horses in September of that year. The acclimation process takes a couple of months of moving them from the pens to small traps to larger traps, then on to the larger pastures. During this transition, we feed the horses with our feed trucks in order to get them used to the trucks. This will ensure that when winter comes, the horses will know to come to the trucks to be fed. This is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, but it’s necessary to minimize the stress of moving the horses to a new and strange environment.

 
Once we get the horses acclimated, the next challenge is weaning their foals. Since many of them arrive bred, the end of the first year they’re here, we have to gather them to the pens and wean any offspring. Because they are wild horses, this can be an interesting process that can certainly test one’s ability to handle livestock. Since we have received more horses over the years, the weaning process has been an ongoing thing—albeit on a much smaller scale than the first year. Here are a couple of Ree’s posts about weaning the colts.

Weaning Wild Colts
And I Do Mean Wild
Saturday Morning Thrills

Once we got past the initial onslaught of receiving and weaning, the horses became easier to take care of than cattle. With both cattle and the horses, you have to do your routine maintenance of feeding, putting out salt and mineral, periodic countings and taking care of fences. But with cattle, there’s much more working involved in order to keep them healthy. You have to doctor sick ones, treat foot-rots, prolapses, etc.—then you have the shippings, working the calves, processing the steers, shipping the steers, weaning calves, pregnancy testing the cows, managing the bulls, and more.

 
 
Aside from the cost of the land, the primary expense involved with running wild horses is feeding them through the winter. Here are some posts Ree has written about feeding the mustangs:

The Rest of the Story
The Days of Winter
A Day of Feeding

 
As part of our contract price, we are responsible for all the expenses related to taking care of the horses: the feed, land, salt, and all the equipment required to do our job. The government contracts with us to “keep them in good condition” and they inspect us annually to make sure we are.

 
 
They’re pretty smart about their inspections: for instance, they always do ours in February towards the end of winter when any negligence in feeding would definitely be obvious.

 
 
I like having the wild horses. Besides giving us a way to diversify our cash flow, they are fun to take care of. Watching a herd of horses run across the pasture is pretty cool, even for someone like me who has grown up around animals my whole life.

But there are disadvantages also. For one, the horses are less profitable than cattle—especially in today’s market. While you don’t have money tied up in inventory, you also aren’t seeing an appreciation of value that you get when you own the cattle. Another disadvantage is that they can be harder on the land than cattle. For me, that is the worst part.

It’s like anything, though: there are always pros and cons involved. Cattle are more profitable, but the horses take less work. The horses are harder on the country, but you also get a regular check every month. With cattle, you have money tied up in inventory, but you also can see some nice gains on that inventory when the market is good. We’re cowboys, so we like working cattle. That’s our job and part of our identity. But we also like taking care of the horses.

 
Let’s face it, they’re pretty cool. So it’s all just a balancing act of trying to do not only what will help you pay the mortgage, but also what you enjoy.

 
From this photo, I can deduce that my baby is riding a horse.

Boy, I’m good!

 
 
 
And from this photo, I can deduce that the guys were gathering cattle.

I’m awfully sharp today.

 
 
 
From looking at this photo, I can deduce that either:

a) One of these calves is confused
or
b) This cow had twins.

I’m going to have to find out the answer or it will bug me the rest of my life.

Or at least the rest of this five-minute period.

 
 
 
From this photo, it’s clear to me that some kind of confusion has occurred. Animals are going in different directions.

If I’d been there, this never would have happened!

 
 
 
Here, my deductive reasoning skills tell me that my baby is helping his dad sort cattle.

Look at all the twinkly little fairy bugs!

I mean flies.

 
 
 
From this photo, I can deduce that this cow is saying “Moooooooooooooo!”

Translation: “You have exactly twenty seconds to get out of my way.”

 
 
 
Here, it appears that my husband placed our baby up high on the fence because he realized that cow meant business.

Or maybe he was just tickling his ribs.

 
 
 
I’m not sure what I can deduce about this photo.

Someone accidentally snapped it while dangling the camera.
Or whoever took the photo is enamored with bumpers.
Or whoever took the photo was admiring the greenness and lushness of the grass.

I’m going to have to look into this one a little more.

 
 
 
From this photo, I can deduce that my girls have dirty jeans.

 
 
 
And look. Right again!

I tell you, I really should have been a detective.

We had to go to the farm in Waurika again last weekend to ship the last of the cattle we had down there. Our farm is on the southern end of the state, less than twenty miles from the Texas line. Our ranch in Osage County, is on the northern end of the state, about thirteen miles from the Kansas line. It’s about a four hour drive from our ranch to the farm, so when we go to the farm, we try to get as much done as possible.

The reason we call it “the farm” is that it is primarily a farming operation. We plant over 3,500 acres of wheat, then use it to graze cattle in the winter and spring. In the warmer climate of southern Oklahoma, the wheat will grow almost all winter long, providing an excellent source of pasture for grazing and fattening cattle.

Grazing cattle on wheat during the winter is common practice for many wheat farmers in this area, but most of them will pull the cattle off in February or March, then go ahead and let the wheat grow so they can harvest a crop. Our wheat farming operation is strictly for grazing cattle. In the spring, when the wheat really starts growing, we just add more cattle. In the fall, you can stock one steer per acre depending on the size of the cattle; that can increase to one-and-a-half to two steers per acre in the spring.

Steers can gain 2.5 to 3 pounds a day on good wheat pasture.

In an earlier post, I’d explained raising calves as part of the cow-calf operation. The farm, on the other hand, is used primarily as a yearling grazing operation, which is the next stage of the cattle cycle. Yearling or “stocker” operations will take calves that have been weaned from their mamas, then grow them. This is the stage where the calf will go from the 400/500 pound range to 700/800 pounds. This is a large part of the cattle business, and there are many ranchers and farmers that specialize in just this aspect. There are also ranchers and farmers like us that do both cow/calf and yearling operations.

We do yearlings both on the farm and on our home ranch. We use our own calves from our cow/calf operation and we will also buy calves from other ranchers. You can buy cattle at sale barns, through video auctions, internet auctions, order buyers or directly from other ranchers. Most of the calves are from spring cows and are weaned in the fall, so we buy and receive them in the fall. The hardest part of a yearling operation is receiving them—getting the calves in and keeping them healthy.

When they first arrive, we process them. This means we brand, worm and vaccinate them. Then they are kept in traps (smaller pastures) where they are trained to come to a feed truck and monitored every day to make sure they don’t get sick. (One of the many skills you need as a cowboy is the ability to identify sick cattle; the earlier you can identify and doctor one, the better it is for them.) Any sick cattle are gathered to the pens and doctored. If there are just a couple of sick animals, they’re roped and doctored (which just means given a shot of antibiotics) right on the spot. After a week or two, when the cattle have begun coming to a feed truck, they are moved to larger pastures. But they will still need to be monitored daily for a month or more to make sure they stay well.

The great part about a wheat-grazing operation is that the wheat is ready to graze in late November or early December. So as soon as the cattle are straightened up and ready to go, there is pasture ready for them. The hard part about a wheat grazing operation is stocking it right so that you don’t run out of pasture or let the wheat get too big. It’s a balancing act to keep the right number of cattle on the wheat. The hard part about the yearlings we run on our main ranch is that they have to be kept and fed through the winter until the grass starts growing in April. The good part is that they are usually sold in July or August, which is typically a good time to market cattle.

Personally, I like having the benefit of running yearlings on both wheat and grass. It provides a little financial diversity. The cattle on wheat will be sold from March through May, so it gives you come cash flow in the spring of the year when you can use it after a long winter of expenses. It also spreads out your marketing window to help weather any market blips that might otherwise hurt you.

The hardest part about running cattle for both types of operations is getting enough cattle in the fall and being able to afford buying the cattle. We will typically buy around ten thousand calves in the fall, and in today’s market that’s not cheap. As is the case with most ranchers, all of our equity is tied up in land, so we don’t have cash sitting in the bank at any given time. Fortunately, we have a good banker we have worked with for over twenty years. One of the first lessons my father taught me is that you need to have a good, longterm relationship with a lender who understands agriculture. Ranching is a capital-intensive business, and one of the keys to being able to make it in the long run is to have good banking relationships.

Most larger yearling operations, will borrow the money needed to buy their cattle. This introduces an element of risk. When you borrow money to buy cattle that you’re going to sell within 4 to 8 months, you take a risk that if the market goes down during that time, you can not only not make money, which is bad enough, but you could also lose money, which is much worse. The other side is that if the market goes up during that time, you can make really good money. The key, like any business, is that you have to be in it for the long haul. There will always be ups and downs, but if you’re in it for the long term, they will hopefully even themselves out.

Saturday was a good day. This year has been an up year in the market, which makes shipping much more fun. (We’ve had our share of years where shipping wasn’t as much fun.)

We shipped 1,564 steers Saturday.

 
We gathered them from two pastures. In this one, there were about 900 steers.

 
 
I know I’ve said it before, but early morning gatherings are the best.

 
 
One thing about shipping is that after you line up the buyer and the trucks, there is no calling it off. So even though it was supposed to rain that morning, we didn’t let it stop us.

 
 
See, here comes some more trucks. There’s no putting it off until tomorrow.

 
 
It wasn’t a hard rain, so it was actually kind of nice. It kept the morning cool and made it easier on the cattle. We had our usual crew of kids (Our younger daughter had a soccer game, so she got a pass for the day.)

 
 
We also had some day workers. A little extra help is always nice.

 
 Man, that pink jacket stands out. But she was quick to point out that “It took eight of them to watch the other side, but just me and my pink jacket to watch this side.” Here, we’re gathering them from a 640 acre pasture into a smaller trap that leads to the pens.

 
 
Once they’re in the trap, it gets a little easier.

 
 
They just follow the feed truck on to the pens.

 
 
Except this time, he got a little too far in front of us and because there were so many cattle, the front part made it to the pens and turned around before we could get the back part up there. Here, Miss Pink Jacket, Josh, and cowboy Todd are stopping them from running off.

 
 
We got them turned around now, back towards the pens.

 
 
Once in the pens, I usually weigh and Pa-Pa handles the loading of the scales, but I left him some of our very top hands.

 
 
After a while, some of them abandoned him—they wanted to go in the house and dry off. But these two stuck it out.

 
 
Actually, I told them they had to stay and help.

 
 
It doesn’t look like it bothered them much.

 
 
Todd, our cowboy at the farm, counted them off.

 
 
Tim helped Allen (the buyer rep) go through the cattle after we weighed them.

 
 
Oh, and while he usually stays on the ranch, we brought Josh to the farm on this trip. He and Colt loaded trucks after Tim and Allen had gone through them.

 
 
On they go.

 
 
We were finished by 11:00 AM. It was like a well-oiled machine…or trailer gate.

What kind of country kids have they been, anyway?

Anyway, they’re officially obsessed now. They get up in the morning and race to the pond to see who can catch the first fish of the day.

 
 
 
Josh took them fishing at our pond a few days ago. This is part of what has ignited the fire.

On another note, I almost entitled this post “Josh in Shorts” since Josh is…well, wearing shorts.

Cowboys in shorts: Not exactly a sight one sees every day.

 
 
 
Oh, were my boys in heaven.

 
 
 
Josh gave the boys some pointers about how to cast and how to reel it in.

 
 
 
And how to give the line a little yank when you first feel that nibble.

 
 
 
Kitten Kitten was very interested in this new fishing business.

For obvious reasons.

 
 
 
My older daughter eventually joined the fun that evening.

At least she tried to.

 
 
 
Have you seen Animal House? The part where Flounder goes up to the poker players at the rush party?

 
 
 
“Hi, guys! You guys playing cards?”

 
 
 
“Guess they didn’t hear me.”

 
 
 
He caught one!

Then he threw it back.

Eventually, the girls joined in and before the evening was over, they’d all caught one.

And they’d all thrown them back.

 
 
 
Much to Kitten Kitten’s chagrin.