My Friend, the Pitchfork

My new "favorite" tool has become my pitchfork. I have been pitching tons and tons of hay, because my tractor is still basically disabled. I never thought I would covet a pitchfork. It fell out of the pickup box the other day and I had to backtrack a couple miles to find it before I could go on with my day.
There is a difference in pitchforks. I had been using manure forks to try to pitch hay, and it made the job even more onerous. I finally bit the bullet and spent the $35 for a hay fork. I now guard it with my life.
The handles kept falling off those old manure forks I was using, and even off the new one a friend had given me. I would jamb the handle back down on the tongue of the fork and struggle with it for some time. Then I tried duct tape. That worked for a time, too, but soon the fork was flying off into the hay again with every forkfull.
Mr. Dent had a drill press in his garage, so I took fork and handle over to him one afternoon. I asked him to drill a hole through the handle and into the fork tongue so I could bolt the handle to the fork, which he was happy to do.
When he finished, I exclaimed, "Oh boy, now I have a good pitchfork again!"
Clark shook his head and smiled a wry smile. "I'll bet those words haven't crossed a woman's lips in a hundred years," he said.
Clark always trys to act gruff and grumpy, but he sure has a heart.
Being the country bumpkin that I was when I moved to Cheyenne, I knew outdoor burning was allowed, because we were in the county, but I didn't know there were laws that said you had to call in and inform dispatch when you were going to burn. One Saturday, I had a yard full of neighborhood kids, and was trying to keep them entertained and out of trouble. I had a pile of old, moldy hay out by the shop that needed disposed of, so I decided a bon-fire would be fun for the kids. I stretched a hose out there and set the hay on fire. It wasn't long, and the dad of some of the kids came screeching into my driveway in his mini van. He jumped out and grabbed the hose and started dousing the fire.
I didn't know him from Adam, and was yelling at him not to put my fire out, and he said excitedly, "They're coming. Someone called the fire in and they'll give you a ticket!" The guy had a police scanner, heard the dispatch, and he knew his kids were in my yard.
Right then, I could hear sirens. Most of the kids had bikes and they bailed on them and flew out into the street. Some of them jumped into my stock trailer to hide. These kids were from the wrong side of the tracks, and they knew what policemen meant--someone was going to jail!
There were so many kids on bikes out in the street, the fire trucks had to stop and the Deputy Sheriff's vehicle in front of them slowed down. I went out to meet the nice deputy. When I explained to him that I was new in the neighborhood, he just told me I was supposed to call the emergency center about a controlled burn next time before striking the match. I said, "OK."
The emergency vehicles left and the kids began filtering back into the yard.
"Did you get a ticket?" they asked with eyes wide.
"Nope," I said, "I told them you were all my kids, and they felt sorry for me, so they didn't give me a ticket."
When I told Clark that somebody in the neighborhood had called in my fire, because they didn't like the horses, he guffawed and said, "Why, you're the best thing that's happened around here in years," then he realized he'd just said something very nice, and continued, "well, you know what I mean."
"Well, I know what I heard you say," I replied, "and thanks!"
The day I told Clark I was moving back to the ranch, he said, "You can't move," and then quickly added, "you have a tractor," to save his reputation.

Mr. Dent

I had great neighbors in Cheyenne during the five years I lived there, after being transferred there on my job in 2002. I chose a corner lot on the edge of Cheyenne next to a big vacant lot, for the precise reason that I am a country girl, and I didn't want neighbors that close. The first six months I was there, no one in the neighborhood spoke to me or even waved. Then one day the lady across the street waved to me as she went from her house to her workshop.
I can imagine what they must have thought, because most of them disclosed to me what they were thinking after I got to know them a little. I pulled in with trucks, tractors, trailers, and went to work cleaning up the place. The previous owners had operated a welding shop on the premises, and someone told me the whole back acre had been a junk yard at one time. I hauled tons of junk out the first year I was there, and after I put horses on it, their hooves kept churning up various car parts like springs, brake shoes, mufflers, air cleaners, hub caps, etc. I think I dug up a whole car out there. That's when I decided to call my little place the "Redneck Ranch."
I got to know the waving neighbor, and she was a fun lady. She'd lived in Cheyenne most of her life, except for a few years following her first husband around in the military lifestyle. Then she married Mr. Dent, from Dent County, Missouri. Yes, the county was named after his family. I call him the original hippie. He is definitely a redneck. A retired Consolidated Freightways truck driver, he drives a jacked up 1970 Chevy Van, 4 X 4, and has an original C.H.I.P.S. motorcycle. He was jealous of my tractor.
Said tractor had a low front tire when I went out to do a job one Saturday morning. I knew Mr. Dent had a portable air tank, so I walked over and asked if I could borrow it to air up my tractor tire. He said he'd bring it over. After loading the five-pound apparatus in his 4 X 4 van, he drove the 100 or so feet over to where my tractor was. I had to open a gate and take down a fence to get him and his big, honkin' van in there.
He puffed up the front tire and said, "Any more of 'em need it, there's a few more pounds left in here."
I looked and one rear tire was a little soft, so he came around with the air tank while I pulled the valve stem cover off. He squashed the air chuck up against the stem and fluid began squirting from it.
"That's gonna have to be fixed," he stated.
I stuck my finger up against the stem to keep all the air and fluid from escaping, while he walked back over to his garage to get his valve stem tool. Large tractor tires are sometimes filled with calcium chloride, a corrosive substance, and it had rusted the valve stem away. Clark came back and inserted his valve stem remover, and promptly got it stuck. He worked and worked, but couldn't extract either the tool or the valve stem. He finally stepped back and I reached in there, grabbed the tool, gave a sharp tug, and out it popped. I stuffed the valve stem cap back on and stopped the leak.
Mr. Dent's mouth dropped open and he scratched his head as he looked at me. "No wonder you don't have a man living over here with you," he said. "A man would just be in your way." Amen to that.

Gremlin and Cushings

Gremlin grass foundered at an early age, but not badly. There was no rotation of the coffin bone, so I was able to keep the problem under control by limiting his green grass consumption and frequent trimming and shoeing. In his old age, however, I noticed he was growing very long hair and not shedding it readily in the spring. He looked like a Chia Pet.
My daughter, by this time, had finished her Bachelors Degree with honors in Animal Science at Texas A&M, and also a Masters Degree in Equine Reproduction. She told me to suspect Cushings when I began telling her of Gremlin's hairy problem. So, off we went to the vet for a blood test. Jesi was right, and Gremlin was diagnosed with Cushings. The vet told me the founder was probably an early symptom of the disease, although we didn't know it at the time. He was also losing muscle tone along his top line, like so many older horses do.
The vet first prescribed a tiny capsule to be given with his grain once a day. Well, Gremlin soon realized his grain was being spiked, and he would eat everything except that tiny pill. I watched him one day and he had it in his mouth with a mouthfull of grain and he managed to spit that pill out and swallow most of the grain. I had already seen some results from the medication--Pergolide--so we went to a liquid form for top-dressing his grain. He also figured out how to eat all the way around that little lump of grain that was infused with the tincture.
I was at my wit's end, but the other day I was doing some research on the Internet about Cushings in horses, and I read an article by a lady who had been treating an older horse with a natural remedy, Chasteberry, for a year with great results. It not only reversed the symptoms, a follow-up blood test showed no signs of the disease. So yesterday I was in Casper for Jason Miller's victory celebration and I paid a visit to the natural foods store on the off chance they would have this herb. They did. It costs $1.00 an ounce, but it only takes two teaspoons of ground up Chasteberry a day, so it is going to cost much less than the Pergolide, also. If it clears up Germlin's Cushings, that will be a win-win situation. I'll let you know how this works out.
Already, I'm dreading the day I have to say goodbye to my old friend. He's the first horse that I've been with his whole life. I had a Red Heeler for fourteen years, and didn't even think I liked her that much, but when the day came that the vet said all her bodily functions were shutting down and it would be kinder to let her go...well, he went from worrying about the dog to worrying about me.
He kept asking, "Are you sure you're going to be able to drive home?"
It was pretty hard to see to drive through the wall of teardrops falling all the way home. So I know, 24+ years with a buddy that has been my best cow pony, I'll be running and bawling the fences, pining for him. Somebody close the gate!

Good Old Gremlin

After Gremlin was past age 10, I started letting my kids ride him, as he had finally settled down enough. He actually likes kids better than he does me, and has never tried to pitch a kid off. My daughter showed him as her first 4-H horse. He placed a blue at county fair one year and then took third place in the halter paint division at the Wyoming State Fair, and we were both pleased with that outcome.
He became quite a cow pony. Chasing cows was his thing and there weren't very many that got by him. Never could use a rope off him, though, due to a bad experience involving an elk and ropes when Gremlin was four. My ex decided to take Gremlin elk hunting that year, although he had a good, older rope horse. He said it would be "good" for Gremlin, so I consented. It was to be a family outing, our first (and last) hunting camping trip.
We went to the mountains in the area where my ex had his elk permit and set up camp. He went out the first morning and shot his elk up over a mountain from where we were camped. So he took my son and Gremlin back to the woods to retrieve the elk. My daughter and I were out gathering up some firewood around camp late that afternoon when we saw Gremlin flying down out of the hills on the dead run with ropes flapping in the breeze behind him. He ran on about a quarter mile past camp where he became entangled in some willows. We girls went to catch him. I asked the ex what had happened, and he said he had tied the elk to the saddle with the ropes, and Gremlin was supposed to drag it. The dead elk was not upsetting to him, but when he started to pull and the ropes began flapping around his hind legs, Gremlin went into orbit. He charged up the mountain until he wrapped the elk around a tree, breaking the ropes, freeing Gremlin from his burden, but not his fright, as the ropes continued to flap against his hindquarters.
Since it was too late that day to go back after the elk, and my ex was not in any frame of mind to do so, I talked him into waiting until the next day when we would all go. He started out the next day with his rifle, and I asked him why he was taking that, as he had already filled his tag, so he left it at camp and it's a good thing, or Gremlin would not have lived to be a geriatric horse. We led Gremlin back and forth across the dead elk and that didn't phase him. I suggested my ex get on Gremlin and let me hand him the rope, then he could dally the rope while having control over the horse and make him pull the elk.
Gremlin got a little nervous as I approached him with the rope, but I quickly handed it to the ex, he dallied, then it began to get western. My son and ex had pulled the elk carcass down the mountain into a little creek-bed. Gremlin began to pitch, and the ex flew off right into the creek, face down! Boy was he mad when he came up. He was talking through gritted teeth when he said, "That horse is going to pull this elk if it's the last thing he does!" (Good thing I made him leave off the gun.) So we earred Gremlin down while he hooked the elk back to the empty saddle, then let him go. He took off like a rocket again and would run for all he was worth until the elk got snagged on something, then he would stand and blow until we caught up with him to unhook the elk, and the process would start all over. He ran on past camp until he got caught in the willow thicket again. By that time, the elk was flapping in the breeze behind him. Only got about 50 pounds of meat off that elk, hamburger, already ground, and it was rancid.
I tried everything I knew to get that pony over the trauma of that day, but to this day, if you take down a rope on Gremlin, you'd better be hanging on. Anything else involving being a cow horse, though, he's the greatest. Several of the Cheyenne neighbor kids learned to ride on him after I moved to Cheyenne, and they all loved him.

Geriatric Horse

I have a geriatric horse. His name is Gremlin, so if you are a movie buff, his name would date him. He's named after those little creatures in the 1980's movie, "Gremlins." He has lived up to that name for almost 24 years. I haven't been his owner that whole time, but Gremlin has lived with me since birth. His dam, Boots, was about 24 years old when she was given to my nieces. They were instructed to share her until she could have a foal, then one of them could claim the foal and they'd each have a horse. I remember thinking, "If she lives long enough..." Well, Boots did live long enough to produce a foal, and that was Gremlin, born in May, 1984. But the winter of 83-84 was a hard one, and it took a toll on her, along with being old and pregnant. Boots lay down and died in the fall right after weaning Gremlin. Pictured above is Gremlin in the recent past with Allyissa up.
That was the same year I moved to Lance Creek, and my nieces had already left the ranch, so Gremlin came with me to Lance Creek in the spring of 1985. The niece that he belonged to was able to come help me start his riding program when he was two, then she left for the Army. Planning to make her career there, she decided to sell Gremlin to me. It was a good fit. Turns out, the very first horse I owned as a youngster was closely related to Gremlin. So I kind of knew what to expect from him as far as temperament and mannerisms. He was a handful! Half Quarter Horse, 1/4 Thoroughbred, and 1/4 Shetland Pony is a dangerous combination in a horse. He used to unload me at least once a year, usually in a very unkind manner, until he got to be almost ten years old.
I rode him as a three-year-old in a local outdoor pageant where there are cowboys and Indians, teams and wagons, fires, waterfalls, crowds and gunfire, among other scary things. That's how he went from green broke to sorta broke. The first year, he did great. Everything was new and held his interest, except for those Longhorn Cattle hitched up and pulling a wagon. He just tried to quit the country every time they came near. Guess he knew that wasn't natural--cows pulling a wagon. The second year, he was a little harder to handle. He knew what was going to happen and he didn't really want to take part. The third year, he piled me up at the beginning of the show the first night. The second night he also unloaded me and kicked my leg as he shot past me on his way out of the arena. Some spectators in the bleachers said they heard my leg pop like a rifle. Didn't break it, but the bruise went clear from one side of my knee to the other.
But we kept going back, and Gremlin eventually came to know the cues for the pageant as well, or better, than most of the Indians.
Gremlin finally gave up trying to pitch me off, when he decided it hurt him more than it did me, because I kept climbing back on.

My Favorite Lifestyle

I think God meant for us all to be ranchers. Abraham was a big rancher, so was Job, Isaac and Jacob. What an idyllic lifestyle, even when the temperature outside is +15 degrees. Plus 15 doesn't feel that bad if there's no wind. It gives me great satisfaction to see my little herd of horses standing there dozing in the sun after filling their bellies on the good grass hay I feed them every morning.
Even solving a problem with their watering gave me great satisfaction, although I couldn't help thinking when I was in the thick of it, "Why did you ever want to do this?" Yesterday I went to fill up their tank with water from the hydrant that is over 100 feet away. The temperature never got above +25 yesterday, and I had left a couple pockets of ice in the hose from the previous watering, apparently. I had pulled it over the fence twice, just to make sure, but one little ice block is all it takes.
I fiddled with the hose for about an hour yesterday, trying to work the little ice cube to the end. I had a small trickle of water coming through the entire length of the hose, so I thought surely the friction from the moving water would melt the cube and soon, the hose would be running a full stream. I left it and went to do other chores as the sun was going down. When I came back, the trickle had ceased, and I had a hundred feet of hose that was now full of ice; a very bad turn of events. That ended my watering ambitions yesterday. I knew all the livestock had watered at least once for the day, and they would be alright until today.
This morning I went out and began hunting up hoses that had been drained out good before the cold weather hit. I found a few short ones that I could couple together, that is, if they had couplers that weren't mangled or mashed. Had to do a couple of quick repairs, then finally had enough hose to reach from the hydrant to the tank. I held my breath, lifted the handle on the hydrant, and listened for water splashing in the tank. Sweet success!
The daytime temperature is supposed to reach +35 today and +50 by Saturday, but it's going to have to hurry to get where it's supposed to be today. I laid the long hose that I froze stiff yesterday out where the sun will hit it, just in case. When the thermometer says +45, I'm going to try to drain it...good this time.

Happy New Year

'Twas the night before New Year
and all through the house,
nothing was stirring except my cats
and maybe a mouse.
I had just settled in
all snug in my bed
for a New Year's Eve nap,
and my prayers were said.
When, what to my scared ears should sound
like the clanging of a gong
and a crash to the ground!
I didn't spring from my bed
I didn't want to know what was the matter.

Well that's bad poetry, but it sort of describes what happened last night. I guess the powers just wanted me to ring in the new year, because about midnight, this crashing sound awakened me. It sounded like someone had fallen off the roof outside. I thought for a minute the Lance Creek youngsters might be playing tricks on me. My curiosity finally got the best of me and I got up to go see what had crashed. At least one of my cats had been on the foot of my bed when the crash happened, because she leaped up, and I thought the other one was there, too, but apparently not. When I got upstairs, there were pots and pans all over the kitchen floor. I have a pot rack hanging from the ceiling by the range, and one of those darn cats must have made a leap up there, knocking pots everywhere. Darn nocturnal creatures. Between the cats and racoons, it's hard to get any sleep around here.
I spent some time yesterday assessing 2007 and where I want to be at this time in 2008. My only real goal for the year is to finish the addition to the ranch house. Of course, that was a goal at the beginning of 2007, when I took early retirement from my job and moved home. Oh well, I'm retired, I have all the time in the world, right? Sure would like to get that done so I can get some time in on some horses. I'm sure my accountant has a goal for me to get some horses sold in 2008.