The Ranch

A few weeks ago I was pumping some iron at the gym, just wearing my BYU shorts when I noticed a girl looking at me. She then asked if I was a BYU fan. She used to live in Provo and said she knows people from Delta. I asked who and she said, "Mike Corey." Also, I used to date her cousin (from Alpine) Sara Squires, who is now married to a guy from Delta.

Anyway, I ended up meeting Kenzie (the girl from the gym) and her friend for dinner about a week later. Kenzie said that her family has a 6000 acre ranch outside of Lewistown, MT and that I should come out sometime. I happened to go out on Branding Day. I have not worked that hard in a long, long time nor have I had some much fun. We got up before six am, ate breakfast, and then jumped on the horses. I told them that I had never really ridden a horse but they didn't seem to worried. No instructions later, I was riding out into the pasture to round up cattle. It was absolutely beautiful out there. We had things under control until the cows (all mom cows and their calves) started crossing a creek. I had to cross a few times and my horse almost dumped me. We got spread a little thin and some of the cows changed direction and then began to stampede in the wrong direction. Kenzie's brother, Weston, and I were the closest and her dad, Russ, started yelling for us to turn the cows. I was not exactly sure how to control the horse but I just went for it, kicking my heels into Captain's sides and we were off! So fast, in fact, that my cowboy hat went flying off of my head. There was no time to go pick it up. The next thing I knew, me and Captain were going full speed alongside stampeding cattle and I was yelling all sorts of cowboy words.

After we got them (probably 350 cows) turned and into the corral we dismounted. We ran around in the corrals separating calves from their mothers. Once seperated, we herded the calves into a barn. Then began the hard work. We started by running the calves into a gate and then branding and vaccinating them. However, we didn't want to be working until 3 am so me and two of Kenzie's brothers started branding them old school. One brother would grab a hind leg and drag the calf out and then I flipped the calf and held it while the other brother vaccinated and her uncle branded. I think I flipped about 75 calves. It was very tiring and sometimes painful but was a lot of fun.

My knees and shins were swollen and bruised but there was no way I was going to wimp out. Kenzie's sister-in-law was convinced I had branded cattle before and her brothers gave me a rancher nickname, T-Cro. One of the girls said, "how come I don't get a ranch nickname?" Jaxson, Kenzie's brother, responded, "because you gotta earn it like T-Cro did!"

We finished up just before dark. I woke up Sunday morning with a pounding headache and threw-up, then I felt great! Just had to get rid of all that branding smoke and dirt in my system.

I will be going out again this weekend. Also, they want me to come out when they transfer all the cows from their lower ranch to their upper ranch in the mountains. It is about a 16 to 18 hour day of herding cattle. I hope I can go out!