Cattle Ranching In The Old Days

 It's a very good morning at 61 degrees in sunny California.  Sadly, I did absolutely nothing yesterday.  I sat on the couch with complete indecision as I weighed out the chiropractor recommendations from the internet.  

I've always been able to get my back aligned on my own, but this .... this is not good.  I finally called my fellow Elk Trustee who IS a chiropractor and asked if he could get me in.  He said he would be at the office in an hour.

I don't do pain well ... nor do I do the twisting thing.  He worked on my spine for 15 minutes until I screamed UNCLE!!  Yup it hurt pretty bad, but he got four of five bones back in place.  I think that last one is from getting bucked off a colt many moons ago.  He said to go home, rest and come back Friday.  

I have to admit, it really was much better as I sat on the couch with an ice pack.  Me thinks I better just sit on the couch like a slug all day today and let it heal up a little more.  That's a hard row to hoe for me, but I'm determined to feel better.

So in lieu of something exciting like moving boxes from the garage to the house, here's some pictures from the past taken on our old ranch in the high desert of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

We had to grow our own hay and oats for the cattle.  This is my grandfather with a bumper crop.  He immigrated from the Isle of Man with some of his brothers.  How he landed here is a mystery.  You didn't talk about stuff like that in the old days.

There were no hay balers back then, cutting and stacking hay was all done by hand and horses.  On occasion, we had hoards of locust that would hit the fields, causing havoc and loss of hay for the cattle.  I can remember walking through the fields, stepping on them by the dozen.  It wasn't the least bit fun hearing them crunch.

This is the ranch house where I learned to eat butter by the handful right off the table.  We basically lived off the land, mostly because there were no stores or supermarkets back then.  Mom churned the butter, baked the bread, grew the potatoes and of course we had beef (literally anything that died), along with turkeys that were raised to sell to the neighbors. 

This was my view the day the big kids ran off and left me on the hill.  Our nice big fat bull laid down on the road at the bottom and I was too afraid to walk back to the house.  I sat up there until they finally figured out I had disappeared.  

The house was moved to my uncle's property further up the valley before they flooded it.  When the water was low, you could still see the water tower on the left.  That was our drinking water from the well powered by a windmill.  Not exactly covered wagon days, but close!

Here's a current picture of the lake.  As the rains come down and fill the lake, the water pushes east up the valley.  That's where my uncle's place was.  My Grandmother on my mother's side lived in Kernville while we were closer to Weldon.  It's sad that the government forced us out.  

This big guy was the pride and joy of the ranch.  Not my dad ... the bull.  You couldn't raise cattle unless you had a bull with good bloodlines ... and they were not cheap.  They were also not as friendly as it looks here.  If you wanted cattle to sell, you had to have good bulls.  This was one of the best.

Obviously this was PRE me.  That's my Mom and Dad on the right, in the double wedding ceremony with my dad's brother Bill and his wife Grace.

A little further down the time road, from left to right, Ky (someone I never knew), Grace and her first son Billy who died of leukemia at the age of 20 I think, my Dad, my Mom, my Dad's Mom Jessie, my Dad's Dad Bill and another unknown face holding the baby.  You've gotta love those turned up cuffs on the Levis.  This was go-to-church day.

Grandmother Jessie died not long after this picture.  She doesn't look the least bit happy here.  I didn't even know I had these pictures until I scrounged through one of the boxes I was trying to clean out.  It was fun looking back at the old ranch.  I think I liked living there much better than this valley where we ended up.  We all had a great affinity for the mountains, not the flatlands.

Although there is a required Elks Lodge meeting tonight (tuxedo and all), I won't be attending.  Oh I could probably do it, but I'm not about to take a chance of those bones falling out again.  

I'll be on the couch .... with my ice pack!!