Hope you all had a wonderful Holiday season, however you celebrate it. We celebrate a pretty traditional Christmas here on Alderspring. It starts with the tree, about a week before Christmas Day. We get ours high up in the mountain forests that surround our remote valley. We just …
The Great Hotwire Stampede
During the summer, Alderspring beef cattle graze on green pasture. The yearlings and two-year-olds bound for the online market stay home on the ranch. Once the mother cows have "calved out", we turn them out on the range. When the grass is growing two inches a minute during the hot months, the …
Range Riders
Before we load the horses, we always tack them up instead of packing our saddles and headstalls along in the back of the truck. We have a stock trailer made for hauling cattle, so we don't have a tack room built in. The horses are currently out in the big pasture behind our house, so someone's gotta …
Remuda
To start the year out, we had about fourteen horses. I think. Then, I found an orphan mustang colts in the hills, left behind after a round up. And we also found craigslist. So now we have twenty horses. Since it's winter in the Pahsimeroi and this valley makes snow look pretty good, I decided to …
Border Collie Puppies
It was a late and very balmy fall so far, especially for the Idaho mountains in mid-December, but the weather forecasters began to speak about payback time. They talked about an Arctic air mass bearing down on us like a freight train from the polar regions. The rail cars were carrying a payload …
Springtime on the Ranch
Springtime in the Rockies is not what its cracked up to be. At least not on idyllic Alderspring. But we finally got a break with some warm weather--nice break from one snow squall after another. And the wind quit instead of continuing to feel like Kansas (started wanting to call our …