Holy Thursday

Receive. 

           https://youtu.be/eJxUB0YhWmo         

Spring Cleaning

With the sun finally coming out to shine, it was time to get Paddy Wagon dusted off. She's always ready for work, but a little sprucing up before the spring fun was in order. 

First up was to clean out the manure and hay from last year. 

Muy bien.

The tack room was in decent shape but she needed tidied up. The foam pad with a sleeping bag set up was accomplishing the cool factor, but it wasn't allowing me to get much sleep. 

So we replaced it with an actual mattress that we can put sheets on and not have such a hard time climbing into. Solid. 

Ranch ready. 

Catholic Cowboys don't get ready, they stay ready. With spring springing, it is necessary that we be ready for whatever circumstances come our way: hauling hay, picking up cows, over night brandings... You name it, we're ready for it. 

Reasonable

God may not be practical, but He is reasonable.

           https://youtu.be/InbZY787iu0         

Ropin' the Wind

Lately, John and I have had the roping bug. It comes every spring as brandings begin to loom in the air. Well, Palm Sunday seemed like a good day to get together and loosen up our shoulders. 

Ropes come in every shape and size. My favorite is ole blue in the lower right. It is a 3/8" extra soft 30'er. 

Doesn't matter to John, though. He'll use whatever he can find. 

And nail it!

I wasn't used to this Texas Longhorn dummy. 

But we seemed to manage. 

Fun stuff. Roping is like dancing. I'm not worth a darn at either, but it's sure fun to watch those who are. The only way to get good, however, is through practice. That I can do. Brandings are coming up and I need to be ready. You never know when you're gonna get the call to enter the pen. When it comes, you don't want to disappoint. On to the next one. 

Palm Sunday

Our Lord shares in our passion as much as we share in His.

           https://youtu.be/IZEi9XTo4Y0         

Land and Nation

Our true nation is the Kingdom of God.

           https://youtu.be/JJBjZ0IbjIs         

Oats

Either one of my horses would gladly leave me in the deepest part of the wilderness if I lost a rein. However, they would both sell their birthright for a bucket of oats. 

So funny. If I show up without a bucket in hand they run to the other end of the corral. But anymore, when they see Whitehorse and hear a honk of the horn, they come running. 

CHS grain combo with molasses is the candy of choice. 

It's got a little bit of everything. Growing up, we just used straight oats. They seem to like this better. 

Some folks oat their horses everyday with just a cup full or so. But I'm only around a couple times a week so I give them a pretty good dose. 

Patience is a virtue. 

I always feed them in the catch pen so when its time to go to work, I close the gate and they are easy pickings. Oating them also gets them out of my hair while I throw them some hay. 

Happy campers. 

The trick to good horsemanship is to make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard. I don't press my luck anymore. If I have a bucket of oats or their lead rope in my hand, these horses are my friends. If not, they're wild mustangs. I set us both up for success by oating them every time I can. Then when it's time to go to work, no problems. 

Deposit of Faith

Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium.  

           https://youtu.be/H-dVvXbPchQ         

Advocate

God is our advocate not our accuser.

           https://youtu.be/0fH3wpQFmlg         

Heart Healing

Be not afraid to roll back the stone!

           https://youtu.be/X2MXizBvJZ4         

Hauling Hay

With this extra long winter, the horses are almost out of hay. Remembering that about 3:30 this morning, I decided we better head to Hulett early to get some. Thankfully, Maverik had just finished making their first batch of Bonfire Burritos when White Horse and I hit the trail at 4:30.

Ole Reliable 

Beings I wasn't able to call ahead of time, I was a bit worried that Jim might meet me with a shotgun. Fortunately, he told me that he always fires a warning shot. 

Might as well make the trip worth while.

After celebrating Mass in Hulett and Moorcroft, we arrived home safe and sound. Only had to stop three times to adjust the load. 

Happy campers.

I honestly love ranching. Being responsible for critters and having to fight to keep them fed is invigorating. Such wholesome activity fuels my priesthood. Homilies come easy because I'm operating out of the human nature God blessed me with. On to the next one.

Saddle Repair

I really like my Billy Cook saddle, but I've always felt it sat too far forward on my horses. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it would sure be nice if it sat further back. After visiting with folks, it turns out that there are different rigging positions that saddles come with. So I thought, if there options, why not adjust my saddle's cinching up point. 

The main three rigging positions on a western saddle are full, 7/8, and 3/4. Full is directly under the swells, 7/8 is probably where this saddle is, and 3/4 is further back. I wanted this saddle to be full, so we set out to move where the latigo attaches to the saddle.

I picked up a solid brass D-ring at Thar's tack store in Gillette. It took many evenings of pondering to come up with a game plan. But in the end, there was only one way to find out if it would work.

So we cut the rivets attaching the regular rigging points on both sides of the saddle, in order to braze the new D-ring on them. 

Brazing is a way of welding almost any metal. It's not the strongest weld, but is particularly good for brass. A gas welding tip is essential. Bring the oxygen up until you form a nice dark blue cone. 

I find that you don't necessarily want to melt the metal like you do in normal welding. The brazing rod melts at a lower temp than most metal so the idea is to get the metal up to the heat of where to rod wants to melt and then you can fuse the two together. Generally speaking you are looking for functionality with brazing and not class. 

Should work. I put the weld on the inside in order to avoid the criticism of professional of onlookers. 

Then it was time to reattach. Rivets are the best for leather. These guys you just push them through, hammer the washer down, cut off the excess, and peen the left over rivet. We also added another rivet on the new D-ring for extra support. 

Money. 

I'm hopeful. Saddles are designed a certain way, but I don't think this will negatively affect the way it sits on a horse. Actually, I hope that the tree fits the horse better. Billy Cook's are good saddles but I think the tree is a bit narrow. It puts white wear spots on both of my horses. It doesn't sore them, but it seems to be undue pressure. All that being said, now we have options. Spring is coming and you want to be ready when it arrives. Time to ranch.