Life On The Ranch ... Getting Creative

 I'm off extra early to the Elks Lodge this morning for that wonderful Father's Day breakfast.  If you're a member and around this area, be sure to stop by for a free bunch.  Maybe even SCHEDULE it for next year because we're going to have steak and eggs in 2024!!!  Shhhh it's a secret!

Luckily I can wear Levis and any old t-shirt to this shindig because I'll be in the kitchen.  

Back on the ranch, it was do or die ... and we were dying.  The bank account was empty and the ranch payment due.  There was no choice but to sell off all the cattle to try and keep the property.  Time to get creative in the money department.  A few months later we were lucky enough to find a big cattle guy up in Madera who offered to lease the property for HIS cattle.  The caveat was that we had to move out of the house on the right.  That's the barn in the middle, which used to be surrounded by corrals.  The house on the left was added years later.  The one across the street is a neighbor.

Again, extremely lucky ... one of our neighbors south of us moved away and offered to rent his house to us.  It was tiny.  It had two bedrooms and a closet.  The best part ... there were two fields for my horses.  That didn't last long because if OUR cattle prices were in the toilet, so where the Madera cattle prices.  

What to do ... what to do.  My mom finally got a job as Secretary at the County Road Department.  She had not one wit of experience, but a work ethic like no other.  Thankfully, that rubbed off on me.  Next my Dad went to work at the Federal Game Refuge doing what?  Driving caterpillar at night.  During the days, he got his real estate license.  I don't know where that came from, but he knew land and cattle, which is what he signed up for.  I found a job typing up insurance policies for Farmers Insurance.  OH BOY!!

It soon became evident that Dad was WAY too honest for real estate.  He would tell them how many cows that land would really support, instead of what the broker TOLD him to say.  That didn't bode well for his real estate career.

By then, I was off working at a pack station in the Sierras.  When the cattle lease fell through, my Dad and the neighbor (who grew rice on his property) came up with the crazy idea of planting all our land in rice.  He knew someone who had his own markets in Japan, for all the rice we could produce.  Sign us up!!

It took some doing, scheming actually, to get the County to approve growing rice this far North in the county, but we finally got the okay, only because my dad was so stubborn.  I guess we know where I got THAT from.  

That's when tractors like this rolled in.  It was pretty crazy the first year.  By this time my parents moved BACK to the old ranch house.  In no time there were fields of green just like above, along with big cats and bank out trucks buried in the mud.  When harvesting the rice, the bank out trucks with big balloon tires (to keep from getting stuck) would run alongside the harvester as the rice was dropped into their bins.  Once full, they would drive out to the hard dirt road to transfer it to trucks.

You've probably seen rice growing in water 12" deep?  Did you know it's flowing?  Water has to be kept flowing all the time for rice to grow.  In the middle of all this my Dad got his license to sell life insurance.  It was a big thing back in the day, though I rarely hear about it now.  He made enough money to keep eating ... a good thing, until the profits from the rice came in.  It all went on the ranch loan ... every dime.  

Over the next many years, they made more money, but being from the depression, every cent went in the bank and on the loan until it was paid off.  That was a miracle in our book.  My Mom even saved every piece of aluminum foil she ever used.  Eventually they were able to build a NEW small house, drawn up by my College drafting teacher.  That's the one on the left in the above picture.  Of course half of that roofline is repair shop!  

About that time I ended up moving back to the ranch into the old house.  Time to become a heavy equipment operator!!  That's coming up tomorrow.