Working on a ranch gives a person an opportunity to wear more then one hat. You most likely wake up thinking about the immediate needs of the stock your running and while your doing the normal chores, your brain is running a hundred miles an hour on what you family needs are. If they are not awake and running beside you, they will be when you hit the house. Once you have the chores done, well then the real work day begins, it depends on if it is haying season, round up or keeping all the irrigation pushing water in the right direction.

Oh and P.S. I forgot to mention unless you inherited from a "Very Rich Family" you had better be thinking of that bottom line, the business side of the ranch. Now my grandpa l worked a ranch in Ucross WY about 26 miles from Sheridan were my folks lived, would come in about noon and grandma would be putting dinner on the table, I was always told supper came after dark. He would eat his dinner / lunch and take a quick nap to catch up on the first 7 hours of work, then it was off to the second half of the day. I got to learn at a very young age that working on a ranch is something you better love.

When I got into my teenage years, I got to climb back into the saddle so to speak and leave the small farm my dad had me working on and run back to WY and work on a real ranch again. Forty thousand acres, I could not figure out why so much land was needed until I figured out that it took allot of acres for per head of cattle. Now that I am in AZ, with the cactus and brush for grazing, it takes even more. If you are going to be a cowboy it has to be for the love of the life.

I miss it, but I travel around the west every moment I can to go find and record the cowboy way of life that you all get to live or have lived in the past and loved.
jimmoon.photoshelter.com