Family Farm Friday #76: The Thanksgiving Ride

"I'd rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world." ~George Washington

It's hard being a rancher.  Especially right now.  We're seeing the worst drought in decades.  The soil is blowing, feed prices are through the roof, cattle are being sold and things look grim.  But sometimes you're reminded of what's really important.  Of why, even in the midst of all of the bad, we're the luckiest people in the world.

The day after Thanksgiving, we saddled up 5 horses and loaded up 6 people.  My Dad, Little Brother, Sister in Law, Cousin Swiss Mister, Little Cowboy and me.  And for two hours, we just went riding. 

We saw turkey tracks and lots of jack rabbits and three deer.  We remembered the apricot trees that used to be in the old orchard and how Gran taught us that there's no water that tastes better than that coming out of a windmill.  We taught Cousin Swiss Mister why you don't let a horse run back to the barn, learned that the black horse will stop acting like a twit after an hour, and picked Little Cowboy and me up off the ground after a small incident (i.e. he was losing a boot, so Aunt Tiff tried to lean over to help and the saddle wasn't cinched on tight enough, causing us both to fall off the darn horse!).  We talked about crazy dude ranch schemes, waived to the neighbor as we passed by his place, and kept an eye on the crazy llama watching us from the next pasture over.  Little Cowboy decided that we should change one of my aunt's names to Cheryl and promptly announced after falling off the horse that, "I didn't cry, I didn't cry!"

But mostly, we were just together.  We were outside under the clear blue sky on good horses, riding across land that has been in our family for generations.  If that's not reason enough to be thankful for what we have, to consider ourselves the luckiest people in the world, I don't know what is.