Saturday, December 23 2006

Dear Friends,

     First of all, a very happy Christmas and a great New Year to all of you – and I guess, to be politically correct, I should add Happy Holidays, however you celebrate them.
    Next I want to apologize for the long silence, but I have had a death in the family, and just plain didn't feel like writing. However, life goes on, and here we are, almost another year gone – the big Christmas dinner, served at 2 pm, where we founder ourselves, followed a week later by a New Year's Eve bash, all celebrated with many friends, old and new, from all over the world. A nice way to begin 2007.
     As you may know from the past letters, our summer was just great – lots of rain – well, for us! Seventeen inches for the year is a lot – and lots of grass – almost to the proverbial belly height on a horse. In fact, when we gathered the cows in the fall, to sell the calves and to change pastures from the flat country to the mountains, we put them into one of our holding pastures – and several weeks later, there is not even a sign that a cow had been in there, so thick is the grass.
      Our year began, as some of you may know, with a Norwegian television company making a reality show here through all of January and a part of February, a nice way to begin the year – and, as a nice way to end the year, a German television company came here to make another reality show for over half of December. The topic of both? What else but how to make a city slicker into a cowboy – something we are pretty good at, one way or another! The wranglers did a great job in getting both shows together behind the scenes, and Adam, our barn boss, outdid himself at teaching total beginners not only how to catch, clean, saddle, bridle and sit a horse, but also how to run a horse when gathering cattle, which is a whole other thing – and they all did well, we were proud of them.
     But the real stars of the show, to my mind, were the cows. It's as if they know they're on camera. When we gather them ourselves, they're used to a pretty strict order of things – gather the pastures to a certain place, wait until everybody is gathered there, then drive them to the corrals – and, after many years of doing this, for several generations, they pretty well know the routine. However, try to do something outside the routine usually brings rebellion and non-compliance – why do we have to do it this way?? We are used to doing it the other way... etc. etc. you almost hear them grumble.
    So I was understandably worried when the movie directors kept dreaming up different ways of using the cows – can we drive them over that hill, and then through that gate..... can we take them over that rough country, because it will film so well, and then go over that pass....etcetera. I had trouble sleeping before all of these proposed events – but I needn't have worried. It appears that as soon as our cows see a television camera, they say “Ah! Another movie crew. So what do they want? Oh, I see, this way..... OK, let's do it!” And they do.
     The last day of shooting of the German crew consisted of moving the cattle into our large horse vacation pasture, quite rough in terrain, and unfamiliar to the cattle. The director wanted to drive them there (on camera, of course) in the evening, leave them there overnight and then drive them out through a narrow gate at the opposite end in the morning. The plan then was that they should go through that little gate, and sedately be driven to a tank (a watering hole) a good distance away, all the while allowing the camera crews – on foot, as the country is too rough for a vehicle – to get some kind of viewable footage.  As things are wont to go in filming – and we are experts in this now, having had many television crews here over the years – nobody is ever on time. It is a total mystery to me as to what exactly happens to delay things, but inevitably, and as a foregone conclusion, things get delayed. It always amazes me to see TV people at work – they seem not to realize that the day's light is finite, that the earth perversely will keep on turning so that the sun will set and they will be out of light, but nonetheless, they insist on behaving as if they had 72 hours of daylight for just this one shot. As a result of all this fiddling around, the cattle were stuck in that pasture - with not too much grass and no water – not only overnight, but for most of the next day. The cattle drive, which was planned to begin at 10 am, eventually began after 3 pm.
     I fully expected the cows, on seeing that gate open, to stampede through it with tails in the air, and head for the nearest water, which wasn't the one planned on. It quite made me sick wondering how we were going to pull all this together – some of the crew were out of radio range, they had long distances to walk – or I should say, run, because film crews never walk, they always run – and I had no idea how we were going to correlate all this. The director, the producer, a camera crew and myself drove to the gathering point, the watering hole, about 3 pm. We sat there for quite a while, wondering what the hold up was at that gate, which was too far away for us to see – until someone shouted, they're coming, they're coming! I looked, expecting to see the anticipated tails in the air scenario, but to my amazement, here came the cows in a cloud of dust in the far distance, strung out like a proper cattle drive, trudging along in an apparently endless stream, obediently following the point rider, heading straight for us! Have you ever wanted to kiss a cow? I did, just then – all of them. Real Hollywood cows! They reached us, waded into the water to drink, and then spread out to graze. As the pasture is some 7 square miles in area, and there was no way of holding them in, I expected them to be scattered all over hell and gone by the next morning. But surprise, surprise – the “cowboys” pitched their camp near the tank and the cows bedded down around, at a respectable distance to be sure, but there. And next morning, the majority of them were still there, ready to be rounded up to continue. It was truly amazing.

     And now they're back in their original pasture – and, as Danny and I, who did the gathering, didn't have a camera crew with us, we were of no importance in their eyes. They were scattered over the pasture, several of them high up on the most unscalable pinnacle of the mountains, and would they come down? Not on your life! No camera, no co-operation, so there!
      So with this let me end this final report of the year 2006 – and again, I wish all of you a great holiday and a happy, successful and safe 2007!


Eve

Saturday, November 04 2006

Dear Friends,

     Well, Fall is upon us, and it's hard to believe it's almost Thanksgiving – well, almost- and you know what that means!! Christmas, and another year. I read somewhere once that when you're a child, and it seems forever between the beginning of December and Christmas, it's because the three weeks represents a large percentage of your lifetime – e.g. if you're 5 years old, then a year is 20% of your lifetime. But when you're 50, then it's only 2% of your lifetime, so time seems to go faster. Or is it maybe because you have so much to do and so much to keep you entertained – you know, along the lines of “time flies when you're having fun”?
      Enough philosophizing – Fall is upon us and this was borne in on me more than ever when I took a ride out to the Chiricahua Mountains across the valley. For some reason, the Chiricahuas seem to have more fall color than the Dragoons – more sycamores and cottonwoods, I guess. Anyway, we drove out to old Camp Rucker, which, in the 1870's was a military camp and a supply camp to Fort Bowie, which is quite few miles further along to the north.
     Camp Rucker was named after Lt. Tony Rucker, who rescued a drowning soldier in the flooded Whitewater Draw River. He saved the solider, but he himself drowned; for this act of valor he had the honor of having the camp named after him. After the army abandoned the camp a few years later, it became the headquarters of a cattle ranch, which, sometime in 1919 or thereabouts was bought by a couple called Charlie and Mary Rak. The Raks ranched there for almost twenty years and some of their experiences were immortalized in a most interesting book called “Cowman's Wife”, written by Mary Rak. The book is out of print now – periodically it is reprinted by some university press or other, and when that happens, we buy as many copies as we can for our gift shop, because it's a wonderful picture of how life used to be in this valley.
     The Raks did their shopping in the town of Douglas, some 50 miles away. They did it in their old ranch truck, which often died en route and had to be coaxed back to life; they had to open not one, but about 9 wire gates – not the nice, metal ones that we complain about having to open on our ranch roads, but the ones we call, in Arizona, Texas gates. (In Texas perhaps they call them Arizona gates?) They are made of wire strung between two poles, one of which is attached to the post in the ground by a wire loop, so the gate can be opened. If the gate is loosely constructed, cattle can get through it – for that reason it's generally made quite tight. But then it takes a gorilla to open it. The method is that you put the gate pole into your shoulder, grab the post stuck in the ground and pull the whole gate towards it so as to get enough slack to get the loop of wire off the post. Doing that you bruise your shoulder, get the barbs of the wire stuck in your skin and the gate wire tangled around your legs, and generally the whole process is most unpleasant. Years ago one of our ranch hands summed it up very well. He drawled “This 'ere's what I call a fam'ly gate - takes the whole fam'ly to close it!” and he was right. So imagine having to open nine of these suckers on the way home, often on cold, rainy nights!
     The Raks, like most people in those days, didn't lock their house when they left, and the accepted rule of the range was that anyone riding by was invited to enjoy the hospitality of the place, whether the owners were home or not. Therefore, they often returned to find that someone had slept in their bed, eaten their food, sometimes left other food in return, sometimes only a thank you note – but that was the way of the west. One cold, rainy evening the Raks came home late, their truck having quit them at the bottom of an evil little slippery hill just short of their front gate, only to find a weary traveler asleep in their bed. Hospitality demanded that they let him sleep. They got out their trundle beds, and spent the night in their kitchen, leaving their unknown guest to rest in their warm, comfy bed. I think those were better times, don't you?
     Anyway, we set off to Rucker. There were four of us, and four horses in the trailer behind us. As we were tooling down Highway 191 at a good clip, we suddenly heard an ominous bang from the back, loud enough to have been a gun shot, and the truck listed to the left a bit. A blow out – on the trailer! We decided to limp down the highway another mile or so and pull off at our turn off road, the dirt road leading to Rucker Canyon. Of course, every person in every vehicle passing us felt it necessary to lean out of their window and wave madly at us – didn't we know we had a flat?? No, we didn't - we always drive down highways at 5 mph!!! But I guess it was kind of them.
     We pulled off the blacktop and surveyed the damage. By this time there was nothing left of the tire but flaps of rubber waving sadly in the breeze. We off loaded the horses, and tied them up on the off side of the trailer and went to work. Tire changed, we began loading – I loaded the first horse, then took the lead line of the second, my Scotty, and saw there was something odd about him – a lump on his side. A second look (we were in a hurry, you understand) revealed that well fed, round backed Scotty had shaken himself a bit vigorously while tied up, and the saddle and blanket and everything hanging off it had slipped down 90 degrees, so it was hanging off his left side. But was he worried? Not a bit of it – he stood there looking a bit bemused by the way it didn't feel quite right, but no hysterics – not bad for a 6 year old!
      Horse re saddled and all loaded, we finally reached Rucker and had a wonderful ride. A lot of this trail is actually an old logging road – it had got sadly washed out in this summers' rains and it was therefore extremely rocky, but we finally made it to Coalpit Tank, a cattle pond way up in the mountains, where we enjoyed lunch on the bank. The ride back was enlivened by our having to go way up off the normal trail in order to avoid the water and boggy banks, and fight our way through a lot of unfriendly trees with lots of sharp branches. So, blazing the trail, I got hung up on a tree branch by my jacket, and almost dragged off the saddle. If it hadn't been for the fact that good ol' Comanche stopped dead in his tracks the moment he felt the unwarranted pull, I might have been left dangling off that tree by that coat, and it was a good drop down. Thank goodness for empathetic horses! He stopped and I got untangled, but got a good bruise on the ribs for my trouble.
 

   When we returned to the Camp, we took the time to ride through it and look at what is left of it. We rode through the old artillery range to the site of the camp hospital; to the commissary, which the ranchers had turned into a lovely big ranch house, but which, sadly, burned down while the Raks lived there; the officers' quarters, one of which the Raks had turned into a house for themselves once they lost the old ranch house; and the bakery, where the army had turned out tasty loaves for the many men stationed there, and which the ranchers had converted into a shoeing shed. The outlines of the bakery ovens are still visible on the far wall, evocative of times long gone.
     The Forest Service, which now owns the place, has shored up the old horse barn, which was in sad shape last time I had been there. It's a good thing, as it was about to fall down – at the same time, the new logs are offensively bright, set amongst the old wood. Hopefully a few summers' rains will darken them and they'll blend in.
     We left Camp Rucker to its dreams of the past. As it is not maintained nor patrolled, the old camp is behind a closed gate, and, while the public is admitted, it is not encouraged, in case of vandalism. So far the approach has worked – it has a remote air of the past, a place where you would expect to see ghosts on a full-moon night. A lovely place.
     And I guess now I should tell you of some of our new ideas for Grapevine. As our black powder shooting range is so successful, we have decided to introduce archery as well, as we now have an archery instructor on the staff. To this end, the lists have been set up by Grapevine City, where the shooting takes place, and we should be in business for the archery in the next couple of weeks or so.
     We are also looking into introducing another day ride, and this one into the fabulous rocks of Texas Canyon. When we had the Norwegian film company here, I had the extreme pleasure of being their helicopter guide, and we flew among those rocks – it made me realize what a beautiful spot it is, and how little seen. So we're about to do an exploratory ride there, to see what we can see.
     Recently we installed a new hot tub, as the old one had seen some years and was beginning to be a bit tired. The new one is a monster of many jets and programs, and it's sure to be a hit in the winter, when the pool is too cold to be used by any sensible person. We have, of course, had some hardy souls in it – but these were mostly folks from tough places like Sweden or Norway, who probably swim in icy water before breakfast, just for the fun of it.
     And finally, I guess that, as one never knows who reads these pages, I want to mention that I have a buckboard I want to sell. It is a restored 1888 Studebaker, and it's lovely, but I have finally come to realize that driving horses is, like a lot of other would-be activities, something I just don't have the time to do. Therefore, the buckboard just sits in our garage, and I feel that it can be put to better use. If you know anyone who may be interested e-mail me at eve@gcranch.com

     And so that about wraps it up for another time. Have a wonderful fall, and I promise it won't be so long before the next letter!!


Eve

Friday, August 18 2006

Dear Friends,

     You really should come and see us!!! We haven't had a year like this for a long time – in fact, I don't remember a summer quite like this, ever. Not that it's rained all that much, but it's been a different kind of rain. In years past, we had violent thunderstorms often accompanied by drenching rains, and then days and days of nothing. This year we've had what Danny calls “good grass rains” - soft showers, on two occasions lasting most of the day, but very often after dark, and lasting most of the night. How nice is that!! You get the rain and yet you don't get unhappy guests!
    And the country looks correspondingly exotic. The grass in the Cochise Pasture, which was all eaten down to nothing but stubbly brown tufts, is lush and thick with grass at the proverbial “stirrup height”, and the wildflowers are amazing. In rainy years we often have a good display of wildflowers, but this year has surpassed all others. The whole of the pasture between Grapevine and the cattle ranch headquarters is covered with grass and Arizona poppies, a deep yellow like splashed gold trailing down the mountainside,  interspersed with tiny blue flowers as if someone had dribbled ribbons of blue paint across the yellow. And the Noonan Canyon is covered with a twining green vine flaunting huge white flowers with purple centers – I used to know what they're called, but it escapes me right now. Suffice to say that they are incredibly exotic and altogether splendid. Of course, no good cowman would enjoy such a display of floral exotica – if a cow can't eat it, it's no good, it's a weed, and don't tell him it's pretty! But for me, even though I am intensely involved in the cow operation, both financially and physically, it's still the height of summer beauty.
    Our summer program is proceeding nicely, and in spite of the thunderstorms, we've only had to cancel one evening sunset ride. That one was worth canceling though – we got a downpour that lasted through the night, and moved our total of rain for the summer to a whole staggering nine plus inches! I bet those of you reading this who live in some of the recently flooded areas are laughing at that – but for us, every inch is a miracle of life, and each little shower a promise of a better tomorrow.
    I might add also, for those of you who have been here during the last nine dry months, when our total rainfall for the whole time was 2/10^th of an inch, (a measly 1/10^th at a time), that all those dead oak trees in the canyon, sad and silvery gray, like hundreds of ghosts, have amazingly come to life, with a thick covering of bright green leaves. Such a relief – I felt I could hardly live with those acres and acres of poor dead trees – but the desert flora is so incredibly resilient! I once had a botanist tell me that there are seeds in the desert that have lain there for 200 years, dormant and waiting for just the right combination of rain and warmth to germinate. Indeed, the high desert is a miraculous place. One year, while working in the front office, we noticed an agave beginning to bloom. It so happened that we could reference its rate of growth by some mark on the window frame. That darn stalk grew at the rate of about two feet a day - unbelievable! And, for those who don't know, once it's flowered, the whole plant dies, and babies come up from the seeds the mother plant scattered around. The common name is the Century Plant, as the old timers thought, mistakenly, that it only flowers after a hundred years. Actually, it's about 30 years under adverse, dry conditions, and about 10 years in a place where it gets some water now and then, like ours do.
    Talking of century plants brings to mind a cow I once saw using her horns as a most ingenious tool. We had brought a herd of around 500 cows into a holding pasture, in the middle of which was a goodish stand of flowering yuccas, also a spikey sort of plant with many tall, flowering stems. Now there is nothing a cow enjoys more than a good munch of yucca blooms, but, thanks to a good design on the part of Nature, these are high up and well out of reach. However, Nature had nothing on one clever cow. She had long, curved horns, and she knew well how to put them to use. She marched up to the first yucca, sized it up, then hooked her horn around the stalk, and brought it smashing down. Alas, her pasture mates were too greedy – they ran up and stole her trophy. Undaunted, she went to the next one, brought it down, lost it likewise to other hungry cows – went to the next one, and to the next one, and to the next one, until she had brought down at least 20 or 30 yuccas stalks, when she finally got to keep one for herself. I thought it was a most ingenious way of using horns as a tool, and it made me think of the intelligence of a cow, an animal that one normally does not associate with an overdose of brains.
    But you know, we are wrong!! Since that day, I have had the pleasure of intimate association with a cow, my pet, Clementine. Clementine was a calf who was abandoned by her mother at birth. We found her after spring round up, starving, hopefully waiting for a mother who wasn't going to return. (Would I like to know who that hussy was - she'd have been down the road on the next truck!)
    We took the calf in, named her Clementine, and raised her on the bottle. When she was around 3-4 weeks old, I began taking her with me on my daily goat walks, where my herd of goats and sheep accompanies me for some quality afternoon grazing time – that is, they graze and I day-dream. Anyway, Clem became a fixture, and today she is no longer starved, but rather a formidable bovine matron of some 1600 lbs – when she walks, the earth shakes! 
    But I am getting away from my point, which is that cows can be incredibly smart. Clem, for one, is obsessed with the idea that she may not get enough to eat - maybe a result of that babyhood abandonment? - and with that in mind, her brain works constantly and furiously to make sure that she is never shorted. One day I took the goats, the sheep and Clemmie for a walk. I got halfway down the little hill in front of our house and thought, I should have taken the horses as well. So I ran back up the hill, let the horses out and together we rejoined the others. Clementine was standing halfway down the hill, waiting for me, and when she saw the horses, she got a very studied look on her face. I could almost hear her thinking “Ah, the horses are here. I bet that means their gate is open and I can go eat their hay!” - and she turned, went up the hill into their corral and ate their hay. I was blown away by this example of idea, planning and execution – that is intelligence!
    I was telling Jim this. He began to laugh and told me he was feeding one day and left the gate to the hay shed open. Just as he was pulling away in the feed wagon, he caught a glimpse of Clemmie hiding behind the horse trailer, peering around the corner, watching him. As soon as she saw he had left hay shed open and was leaving, she began legging it to the gate. Jim said had to sprint pretty hard to beat her to it, as, once inside, there's no moving her short of gelignite.
    I remember another cow we had, many years ago, called Linda. At that time, as now, there was a gate to the grounds around the Cook Shack, but Linda had the run of the rest of the place, grazing here and there, enjoying her life. By chance she got through the gate once, and discovered that we had, in a small shed, now long gone, stored a large bin of dog food. From then on her whole aim in life was to get into that shed and dine, and to this end she bent her superior bovine intelligence, with some positive results from her point of view. But not so positive for us – our cost in dog food was escalating, as she could easily suck in a 50 lbs bag in a few chomps, and so our mission in life became to keep her out of that shed at all costs. Once somebody gave the alarm of “Linda's in the yard” it became a race to get to the shed first, and try to close the rickety door, as, once she got inside, there was absolutely no dislodging her. Her large bovine behind filled the doorway completely, and no amount of pulling on her tail would move her. One had to get in front of her to beat her on the head to make her back off, but there was no getting past her, or indeed, over her, as the doorway was small and she filled it wall to wall, top to bottom. That was another cow who knew what life's all about! So don't tell me cows are dumb! Or, for that matter, that any animals are dumb. I could tell you stories about clever horses, pigs, goats and, believe it or not, sheep. So, as far as I'm concerned, the dumb one is the human who calls animals dumb!
     Since I wrote this, we had our August cattle round up, where we get all the cattle in, spray them for flies, sort off the bigger calves and, most importantly, sort off the bulls, as it's the end of the breeding season. We had intended to do this a day earlier, but for various reasons we were delayed a day, which meant that the calf shipping was too close to sale day, so we decided to leave them until October – they can only get bigger, after all! And the frequent and lovely rains meant that the fly spray would wash off, so the only thing we finally did was to sort off the bulls, which is actually the most important task. However, did we have a day and a half getting the cattle in! Imagine that you are being herded through the Hershey factory, surrounded on all sides by goodies – how fast would YOU go? No difference – wading through the lovely knee high, fresh green grass, I thought we'd never get those girls in. To make matters worse from my point of view, was that several thunderstorms blew up almost on top of us, and so we were accompanied by a light drizzle and treated to lots of lightning and thunder, not a happy situation for me. I was once caught in a horrendous lightning storm on horseback, and never want to experience another one. This one wasn't as bad, but the potential was there, and those cows just would not move! We finally got them all in, and nobody was hit by lightning, so all's well that ends well. The bulls are now in the roping arena which is knee high in grass also – unheard of, that! And they're making sure that the grass isn't going to waste.
    And so our summer is passing pleasantly – we hope yours is as well! Take care, enjoy the months to come, and come visit us – you won't believe it's the high desert.

Eve

Saturday, July 08 2006

Dear Friends,

     RAIN!!!! To those of you who have got sick of my whining about the lack of rain (we had 1/10 inch total, from September '05 to the end of June '06, that is almost ten whole, long, dry months!) - be happy for us. We got a few sprinkles in late June, and then on July 3^rd and 4^th, came a veritable downpour, totaling over three inches, plus another 20/100 on the 5^th – untold wealth here! And, of course, we are hoping for more rains to come...
     I was thinking just this morning about those unique summer smells, sights and sounds here in the high desert – the warm, humid feel of recent rain - the sight of fresh, green, grassy stalks poking their heads out of the sad, dry tufts left over from last year – ripening mesquite beans hanging like chandeliers off the branches, delighting cattle, horses, goats and deer with their sweet, crunchy taste - the sounds of croaking frogs emerging from their year-long life underground, to enjoy the rain and the social life, unfortunately often cut short when they jump into the pool and have to be rescued!! Some wildflowers are already to be seen – the ocotillo are flaunting their bright vermilion flowers with just the promise of rain! - and the sad, gray oaks are already showing a faint dusting of green. Too late for some, to be sure, but hopefully the majority will survive.
 

     And what is even more exciting is that we have had, so far, none of the wrecks generally associated with lots of rain. Usually a certain number of roofs are shown to be deficient when they begin to leak, necessitating many buckets and bowls placed in strategic positions here and there; lots of plans are made for fixing the roof, postponed of necessity until the rains stop, and then forgotten till next season. However, this time we worked while the sun shone, replaced several roof with metal, fixed others, and so far, all is dry. So much nicer to be listening to the rain outside instead of in! I remember some summers when we seemed to get one inch in the rain gauge outside, and two inches in the bucket inside! The only casualty so far seems to be the trail by the swimming pool, which got sort of washed out, and the irrigation pump, which drowned by the sheer force of the water, and promptly burnt out.
    The other side of the rainy coin is a horse. Annie's colt, Jimbo, the one I raised for her on the bottle (so you could say he is sort of ours, emotionally speaking), had to have surgery on one front foot. The surgery was expensive, of course, and the veterinarian impressed on Annie the necessity of keeping the bandage clean and dry, for some seven to eight days. Well, of course!! Three days into it, the rains came, the sick- pen got flooded, and the other night, after leaving the CookShack, Annie and I found ourselves out there with a couple of shovels in the pouring rain, trying to divert the water to the outside - not the most entertaining occupation! And amazing how cold it can get here in the middle of summer, when you're soaking wet in a thin shirt!!
     The following morning all was well again – foot dry, stitches OK, and Jimbo relocated to the barn at the cattle ranch HQ, where there is a roofed and fully walled in sick pen, dry and cozy. Plans are now afoot to make a similar dry, water proof sick pen at the Grapevine. Hopefully it will be needed, not because of sick horses, but because of all the rain we are going to get!
    Our July 4^th passed quietly – first of all, we had all European guests, and, most of them being English, it seemed almost churlish to be celebrating too much!!! The second reason was, of course, the lovely rain, which washed out the fireworks in all the nearby towns. A couple of the staff who had gone to Benson to watch the fireworks there, said that at 9 pm the Dragoon Road turn-off at the Freeway was totally under water, and so they had to make a 25 miles detour via the Willcox turn-off. By 11 pm, other staff members returning home found the Dragoon turn-off passable, but the short-cut via our recently paved Cochise Stronghold Road was flooded, necessitating a longer return by Highway 191, also underwater in parts, but luckily navigable. I guess all those people who laugh at our “Do not enter when flooded” signs along the roads should be here at times like these! In fact, I think that more people drown in the desert than anywhere else, simply because they don't believe all those warning signs – hard to believe, I know, when it's wall to wall blue skies and not a rain cloud in sight!
    Our summer riding program is in full swing, with its evening sunset rides, very popular because of the spectacular skies. The colors on the distant Chiricahua Mountains can be so incredibly magnificent, with blues, purples, lavenders, and pinks fading into a misty gray, that people return almost spellbound by the sheer beauty of it. And, of course, the air is cool, generally with a light evening breeze, with the horses delighting in the fresh air and the absence of flies. Later we all sit around on the patio, enjoying our drinks and good conversation under the big old oak tree softly lit by its twinkling fairy lights, with the flaming reds of the giant canna lillies, the graceful sweep of the weeping willow, and the bushes around the pool forming a dramatic backdrop – unforgettable Grapevine evenings!

    And now, as our webmaster, John, is about to depart on his semi-annual vacation, I have to get this to him to be posted on the web, as such technicalities are far beyond me – so goodbye for now, have a lovely summer and come see us!

Eve

Friday, May 26 2006

Dear Friends,

    I wonder if any of you have noticed the self satisfied look on the face of the horse (Scotty) at the top of this page?? Every time I look at it I have to laugh – talk about a horse in whose world everything is always A-OK!! It must be nice, mustn't it, not to know anything about the world's travails – no thoughts of bird flu, terrorist attacks, rapes and murders – the most troubling thought would be “so what's for dinner, eh, Danny?” or “I wonder if the slave wants me to come out and do some of those silly things in the place she calls the arena?” Yup – I think I'll be a horse in my next life – but, I hasten to say, not just any horse, but MY horse. I have seen other equine fates that I would want to avoid, but one of my guys.... now, that's a life of luxury and ease.
    And, talking of horses, we have added hugely to the Grapevine horse herd. While our total number of horses is still high, some of them are now retired (I hate to sell a horse that's done well by us, worked faithfully and hard .... how can you send them down the road?) - so several are here with us, having taken the place in the Grapevine equine nursing home of the four or five who went to the happier hunting ground last year, aged 34 to 39 - but the working herd had to be augmented.
    So Adam and I contacted various people and the upshot is that there are about 14 new horses in the corrals, and, bummer!! most of them sorrel. And not only that, but most of them also with hind white socks. We already have Boots and Socks – can hardly have someone called Stockings! so other new names had to be found, and eventually we came up with a good collection.
     There's Lil'Bit, a feisty lil' bit of a horse, but as tough as nails, pretty as a picture (to use some hackneyed, trite similes) and spirited, sure to be a hit with some of the slighter riders; there's Doc, registered name being Doc something or other, revealing an illustrious ancestry; there's handsome Dude (nice name, don't you think?), pretty, well built Missy, and Venn (Norwegian for “friend” - what better to call a horse, after the Norwegian reality show filmed here), Dinero of quarter horse racing blood, though not an ex race horse, thank you!!, his friend and stable mate Rio Rojo, now Rojo for short (roho – Spanish for red, so his name is actually Red River, good John Wayne name for a horse, I guess), Banjo – he has a banjo shaped blaze on his forehead, but to me, he's also named for a famous Australian bush poet, Banjo Patterson; two non-sorrels, Moro – a gray, and Gus, a bay - he just came with that name, and thankfully, saved us the trouble of naming him. And there are four more still in quarantine, waiting to be named, so if you have a good idea, do let us know. Color? They're all sorrel – what else! One has no blaze, the other three have white blazes of varying length. Every so often we go through this horse intake, and I am confused for months after. I'm fairly near sighted, and, as I don't have all that much to do with the Grapevine horses, tend to forget the pairing up of a shape with a name – thank goodness the wranglers all know them!!
     And other news – we just finished the May round up and branded well over a hundred of the bigger calves, leaving the smaller ones to the August round up. Just as well there are less to do in August – we are hoping for some good summer rains, and it's not fun to be fooling around in the corral during a thunderstorm!
     And not only do we have new horses, but we also have new staff – so I guess you might say the new staff is both two legged and four legged! One of the housekeepers has left us for the greener pastures of Colorado, and one of the cooks also left for a new lifestyle, so we have two new faces in those departments, as well as a new maintenance man due to start in about three weeks or so. Nothing like new blood, human and equine!
     The Norwegian reality show taped here was well received in Norway, and I guess the format of the show was sold to a couple of other countries, one of them being Italy, who duly applied to us for making the show here also. That would have been so fun!! But, sadly, we had to refuse. Unlike the Norwegians, who wanted to be here in January and part of February, the Italians wanted all of September, October and part of November, traditionally our high season, for which we already have quite a few reservations, and they wanted to come with 45 people – well beyond our capacity, especially considering that I know from experience that the 45 people would have magically stretched to 55 people. Ah well – it was not to be.... much to Adam's relief, as he emphatically does not like being a movie star!
     Our summer program is almost upon us, starting June 1, and for those who don't know, every summer we move the clock back by an hour, which allows us to take some magical evening sunset – or moonlight – rides, very popular with the guests. And, as we are at 5,000 ft., the days are cooler than Tucson, so the morning rides, which depart at 8 am and return at 11, are pleasant, with the afternoons being free for swimming or sightseeing. This change in program is always confusing to all of us for the first few days – your stomach says it's too early for lunch!!! too early for dinner!!! your head says it's too early to get up!!! but we soon get used to it, and the pleasure people take in the magic of those evening rides sure makes up for it.
    And talking of rides, it's amazing to me that, having lived here for well over 20 years, I am still finding new places in these mountains. Some time back I was out for a ride, and I noticed a wash (Arizonan for dry creek bed) leading away from one of the tanks (Arizonan for pond). It made a sort of bend, so was normally out of sight among some bushes, but, the weather being so dry, the bushes were a bit bare, and I noticed this wash. So I rode up it and found a most marvelous secret world, a narrow canyon with steep sides and mysterious twists and turns, leading to - a dead end. The dead end was a dry waterfall, one totally unnavigable on a horse, so I went back the way I'd come. Later, wrangler Dan and I returned and scoped the place out a bit better, and did find a way out of it, up a steep bank. We decided to return when we're less busy and make that way out safe for all riders – it should add a lovely new trail to our many trails repertoire. But I did wonder how many more beautiful places there are on this ranch, well hidden from the casual eye – you'd think that after 24 years here I would have seen them all!
     My horses take a dim view of these explorations – they enjoy meandering down a safe old path, and are not much for scarping up rocky washes and unfamiliar territory. The other day I tried another such trail, the word “trail” being merely a courtesy term – undoubtedly the cows considered it a good trail, but we of the equine persuasion thought it very unsatisfactory. However, up it we went, Comanche and I, he grumbling all the way, and finally abandoned it when it became apparent that it would have been better tackled on the other side of the wash. So it was left for another day....
    Wrangler Russ, along with some guests and me, explored another such “trail” only yesterday, this time with me on Scotty, who considered this definitely outside his job description. Unfortunately, we found that this trail really does lead nowhere – and, being rougher than rough, we decided to abandon it. It was a trail that Russ had found and decided to explore – but it turned out to be one that Comanche and I had already once been on, except that we had come to it from the top. From the very top, of a nasty high mountain. The mountain was so darn steep that I, not being very fond of heights, decided that it would be safer to get off the horse and lead him down. I got off, my feet went out from under me, and I slid all the way to the bottom of the canyon, with Comanche sliding along on his butt behind me. It is not, Russ and I agreed, a desirable trail, whichever way you take it, from the top or from the bottom – so we abandoned it.
    But, whether you like your trails rolling and scenic, or steep and adventurous, we have them all – so come see us, the weather is always pleasant and those evening rides are the stuff dreams are made of! And, if you can't make it here, then have a wonderful summer, a great Memorial Day weekend, and keep in touch!

Eve

Thursday, March 30 2006

Dear Friends,

    Hard to believe that Easter is almost upon us again and you know what that means!! It's almost Christmas! - or so it seems. I get a very warped sense of time here – some events that happened years ago seem to have happened yesterday and some things from last week have already receded into the dim shadows of yesteryear. I guess being busy with lots of fun people coming and going makes the time just fly by - or is it just having a selective memory?
    Anyway, what's new... Well, it hasn't rained. Some of the little rains that have come through Arizona managed to miss us in a big way, and we are once again anxiously scanning the skies and getting excited about those few and far between promises of “20% chance of rain” predictions. I can quite see how it came about that the early people in this area, called the Dragoons Culture, but very similar to the Hohokam and Anasazi, up and moved out during a 40 year drought, some time in the 15^th century. I can't even imagine what an impact such a dry period would have on a people – just imagine, not only no water to drink, but also no animals to hunt – so nothing to eat, and no way to help yourself.
     At the same time, how lucky for some people to be situated in an area with natural artesian springs – such as, for example, the Slaughter Ranch, where I went recently with my niece, who was visiting me during Spring Break. The Slaughter Ranch is some 15 miles out of Douglas, along a dusty dirt road which runs along the border and eventually leads to New Mexico. In the late 1800's, John Slaughter, a Texas ranger and lawman, settled there and established a ranch on an old Spanish land grant. The original rancher, a Spanish nobleman, was run out by constant Apache attacks, and the land had lain unused for many years when Slaughter took possession of it. It was said that he could sit on his porch and as far as the eye could see he was looking at his land. It extended across the border far into Mexico, and in fact, his Mormon foreman made good use of that fact. He was desirous of having two wives, according to the Mormon custom at the time, but the US law prohibited this. He solved his dilemma in a most ingenious way. He built his house right across the international boundary, with half in the US and the other half in Mexico – and installed a wife in each half!!
     The Slaughter Ranch is now a museum and a wonderful piece of history. The house has been restored to exactly the way it was in Slaughter's time and as you wonder through the rooms you have a feeling that the people have never left it. Their spirit seems to linger in the main building, in the adjoining ice house, and in some of the staff quarters nearby, as for instance, in the room of the Chinese cook, who reputedly retired there after his day's labors to smoke a peaceful opium pipe.
    But the most wonderful thing about the Slaughter Ranch even today is the fact that, having several artesian springs, it has a good size lake, complete with fish, ducks and other water loving birds, rolling green lawns and huge old trees already in leaf – a true oasis.   Nearby the old homestead are also the ruins of a military camp which was established there before Slaughter's time. It was called Camp Supply and was later moved to the Rucker Canyon not far from us, where its ruins are still to be seen. The story is that the Mexican government was a little uneasy to have a US fort so close to the border, so the military obligingly moved it some 50 miles further inland.
     John Slaughter died many years before his wife, being some 20 years older. She died in 1926 and the ranch changed hands – but in all the years since, I believe it had not changed ownership more than about three or four times. I remember visiting there for a cattle growers' barbecue some 30 years ago, and it was quite different, with an extensive rose garden and many modern improvements. When the historical trust purchased it, they studied the old photographs and records from Slaughter's time, and then restored it to exactly the way he'd had it, so in visiting it, you really step back in time. Among the exhibits is also an original Model T Ford in super condition, and a whole building full of old time ranching and farming implements.
     The Slaughter Ranch, or the San Bernardino Ranch, to call it by its correct name, is about 15 miles out of Douglas along the Geronimo Trail, and Douglas is about 50 miles from Grapevine, so you need most of the day. There is a little gift shop with a few books but no food available for sale, so take a picnic lunch. A great day to spend the day!
    And of course, come visit us too! The weather is lovely, even if it is not raining, and the mountains are full of baby calves with their mommas, so lots of opportunity for those hankering for a bit of cattle work to see how it's done! And, if you're not here, then have a wonderful Easter, a nice spring and the best of times!!

Eve

Wednesday, February 22 2006

Dear Friends,

    Well, our five weeks of movie making is over and we feel as if we'd been swamped by a huge tide of ..... I don't even know what. I think I might best describe it as energy, because I want to tell you, that movie crew was full of it.
    I have never seen a group of people so energetic, so full of enthusiasm and life – I mean, they didn't walk, they ran everywhere. Wherever there was action, there was the camera crew, cameraman and sound man (or women, as the case maybe) and they were everywhere – up the mountains, on rock summits, up narrow trails - and on horseback, even though they couldn't ride, which didn't deter them one bit! In fact, one of the girls almost gave our wrangler Annie a fit – she was sitting on a big, energetic horse and dropped her reins. The horse put his head down to snatch a bit of grass, the reins slid down his neck behind his ears, well out of reach of the rider, a rather small woman hampered by a huge TV camera propped in front of her on the saddle. At this point the horse, Remi, decided he wanted to join his corral mates, and promptly took off at a trot. Annie had a dilemma – to chase the horse meant he would go faster, to let him go could mean he could go faster yet, and maybe all the way home. Luckily Remi's aim was to join the group of horses carrying the contestants – maybe he just wanted to make sure he would be in the movie?? and he stopped when he reached them. I think the person more in need of reviving was Annie rather than the camerawoman.
    But it wasn't just the camera crews – the support staff were amazing as well. There were the people who cruised around the countryside looking for additional interesting snippets on western life, on history of the west, on beautiful locations outside the ranch; there was the gal whose job was to think up and organize the contests, and to make a lot of the props – she really enjoyed our workshop – and our carpenter, Jim, really enjoyed her projects as well! There was the production office staff, who were housed in the Adobe cabin near the office, outfitted for the occasion with desks, computers, telephones, faxes and copiers – quite a change! And, of course, the indispensable “gofers” - who ran here and there and everywhere, from here to Tucson to rent a crane, to Phoenix to rent more camera equipment when their own was lost in transit – just imagine.... The first week was truly stressful, until their stuff turned up, having been lost by the carrier. They were so incredibly organized it boggled the mind. Every evening a new “call sheet” would be printed, showing the exact itinerary of each camera crew, the location of each camera, each person, each car, each job – it was an incredible job of superb organization, and I learned a lot from it. And they were so used to operating in “foreign” environments – they had no problems lining up events, asking for ideas, finding places – I should be so well placed in a foreign country! Of course, they had done TV shows in places like way up in the tropical forests of northern Australia, in Indonesia, on little bitty islands in the middle of vast oceans, with no conveniences, no shops, no help of any kind – I said to myself, no wonder the Vikings conquered their world! They certainly passed their energetic genes to future generations. And – their English was excellent! We found we could speak at our normal speed (and for me, that's fast, fast!) use all our American slang, talk any sloppy way we wanted to, and they understood us perfectly, the first time around.
    Anyway, to give you an idea of the synopsis, this was a reality show, based on the idea of 12 Norwegians, men and women, driving cattle across Arizona. Along the way they encounter many obstacles, and, contrary to most reality shows, they are not eliminated by some hateful voting and jockeying amongst the other contestants, but rather by the holding of fair and difficult competitions, and their success or failure in these. It was all very well thought out and most interesting, and I am sure that not only they, and we, enjoyed the show, but the cattle and horses had themselves a good time as well. It was, after all, such a break from their routine!!
     The cattle, which I had expected to cause the most trouble, behaved magnificently. It was, first of all, totally outside their normal program to be gathered up and driven around in January – pleeeze!!! unheard of!! Their strictly programmed times are engraved in their woolly heads so well, that at the beginning of November, when it's time to move them from the Flats to the mountain pastures, they begin to cruise around the fences and hang around the gates, as if to say, well, hurry up, guys!! We haven't got all month to do this! Likewise, their path through the ranch is generally well programmed – we usually gather them into the corral to do various things according to the season, then drive them along a customary route to the first of the winter pastures, later to be rotated through the rest of the ranch. This was going to be completely outside their routine and I was a bit worried that, being handled by a group of total amateurs as well, they would cut up and cause mayhem. But surprise, surprise!! I almost thought they must have read the script! I can't tell you too much more about the program right now, as the premiere is to be held on March 5^th, but there is a web site you can go to where the whole thing is outlined and the first part of the first episode is shown – the link is at the end of this letter. Allow time to load – and then remember to click on all the images, as other action shots pop up. It's a very good, interesting web site and, judging by that, it should be a good show.
    As in other television programs we had done here, Adam was the star of the show. It's not only that he is a good horseman and the barn boss, but he is also very photogenic – in fact, a natural movie star. The only obstacle to his movie career is the fact that he hates being filmed with a purple passion – he has no patience for the standing around (in movies of any kind, as Gerry used to tell me from his movie days, you “hurry up and wait”.) This kind of behavior is not in Adam's scheme of things, movie or no movie, and he was constantly coming up against the fact of “Shooting at 2!!! Please be ready!” and then waiting around till 4. We never did figure out the cause of these mysterious delays, as the crew was otherwise so efficient and so well organized, and as they also finished each day's program on time and indeed, the whole five weeks' shooting was finished exactly on time – but there it is, one of the mysteries of film making.
    In recognition of his great performance in this – he had to teach these 12 city slickers how to ride, rope, and cowboy – no mean feat, in just a few days! - he is being invited to the premiere in Oslo on March 5^th. As he worked without a day off for the entire five weeks, he is taking almost two weeks for the trip, and, knowing his fierce hatred of the cold, I just hope he bundles up well enough to enjoy it. On second thoughts, going by the “end of production party” held here on the last Saturday, he should be well warmed by all the “skols” he's about to enjoy!
    As I said at the beginning of this, I have never met a fitter group of people, contestants and crew alike – in fact, maybe the crew were even fitter! During some of the cattle drives, there they were, legging it along on foot if the terrain was too difficult for their horse, picking up and running, always a duo, camera in front and sound behind, linked by the everlasting umbilical cord tying the two together, up hills, scrambling into gullies, over rocks, into washes - it was amazing. Of course, let's admit they were all a young group – I think the eldest was about 36 – and that was the producer – the rest were probably in their twenties or early thirties – but I know a lot of people their age who couldn't hold a candle to them. They were also all very slim – and as a result, good to look at! There were several camera crews, as they filmed starting at daybreak, through the day and into the evening, and of course, unlike the contestants, and Adam and myself, they had their days off, during which they generally went off to terrorize Tucson, coming back with various goodies from western shops. They were a truly lovely group of people and I miss them tremendously.
    And at the beginning of the filming I had a special experience. They had hired a helicopter to film some of the ranch, and the beginning of the first cattle drive, and I got to go as the guide. It was amazing – some of you may know that I have many hours in a fixed wing aircraft as instructor in Australia, but I had only ever been once in a chopper, and than for about 10 minutes. This was about 4 hours, and it was certainly one of the best experiences of my life. (So much so that I feel that perhaps my idea of a future ultra light airplane to putz around in should be changed for that of a small helicopter. Very appealing – the only trouble is that the only time I appear to have free is between 2 and 3 in the morning, and I sort of need that for sleep!)
    One of the places we flew over was the Willcox Playa, which is all that is left of a huge inland sea that was here many, many years ago, and it was like flying over the Sahara. I had no idea the place was so huge, so uninhabited and so unappealing – and to think that in the old days, the Butterfield Trail led right over it, and you had to cross it in a stage coach or wagon, with no water, nor any protection at all from possible ill intentioned Apaches! Better the helicopter.
    So now we are back to normal and Adam is getting ready for his trip to Norway. For someone who is chronically averse to cold weather, he is really looking forward to the experience - and of course, also to meeting up with “his” contestants, of whom he had got to be very fond during their time together.
    Anyway – the link you want to look up is www.villevesten.no Remember to allow time for the page to load, and then click on all the images – it opens to some great action shots, especially the one with the smoking gun!!
    Enjoy, keep in touch, and come visit – the weather is lovely, the horses are rested, and we're eager for more company. We look forward to seeing you!

Eve

Saturday, December 17 2005

Dear Friends,

    I don't know about you, but I sure don't know where this year has gone!! Well, actually, when I think about it, I can sort of tell - it got lost in a blur of unpleasant happenings. Never mind – I am the eternal optimist, and I just know that 2006 will be a better year!! And that's all I'm going to plan, as a good friend of mine said: If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. Yes, indeed – but Lord, this is just a little, little plan, one for a better year for all of us!!
    However, some of the year has been good – for example, I have been enriched by a dog, and not just any old dog, but a most superior example of the species, by the name of Tuffy.
     It happened like this – my old dog, Sadie, had to be put to sleep about a year ago, much to our sorrow, followed fairly fast by Gerry's Border Collie, Bob, and then by his sister, Molly, all of them 14 or 15 years of age, so that suddenly the only dog in this hitherto dog-rich household was Sasha, aka the Moose, our Anatolian Shepherd. Now Moose is a lovely dog, but she is also very independent, something that is part of the breed, I think. When you call her, she looks up and then considers – “Do I REALLY want to do this? Do I want to descend to the level of a dog and COME when I'm called ? Ah well, perhaps just today I will humor my people, but not too often, lest they get too used to it!! And a doggy cuddle?? Forget it!! I will tolerate it for just so long, but then I will rise majestically, make my polite excuses and toddle off”.
      So what do you do with a dog like that? Love her and leave her, of course – but my life was deprived of a loving dog, one eager to please and one wanting to be with me, no matter how grumpy I might be, no matter if I'd fallen on my head and didn't feel well – in short, as some character once put it in a movie – “If you want a friend, get a dog”.
     And, right in the middle of this dogless state, my veterinarian's office called and asked if I was interested in a dog, seeing as they had put down my little old Molly not too long ago, and seen my sadness. The dog was a cross between a Border Collie and a Catahoula, and had been dumped at their office, tied to the fence (really, some people should be shot, eh?). Anyway, as good as I felt about their efforts on the part of dogs, somehow the Catahoula bit daunted me. I ran it past Gerry, and both of us hesitated for about a week. Long enough for the vet's office to call me again and tell me they had
found a good home for the Catahoula, but now they were looking for a home for a Border Collie. She had also been dumped, with three puppies, also tied to their fence.
     It was amazing, but I didn't even hesitate. I heard my voice saying “I'll take her” while my brain was bleating “What are you saying? You haven't even thought about it!” But my mouth said again “Yes, we'll take her” and then I went to tell Gerry. Of course, being a Collie, he was agreeable, so it was a done deal.
     The vet said that they would bring her to the local clinic the next Thursday, so saving me a 90 mile round trip to Willcox, but there was a snag. I had to go to Tucson that day – so I asked Jenny, our bookkeeper and also a dog lover, to pick her up for me.
     When I came home from Tucson that day, I was greeted by a black, white and tan bundle of doggy enthusiasm. She jumped out of Jenny's car, restrained by the leash and rushed over to me, wagging her tail and grinning comically. She is the only dog I have ever met who can grin – and I mean, grin. She somehow turns her lips back and smiles, showing her teeth and wagging her tail and the expression is so quick, so passing, that you wonder if you're seeing things. It is one of her most endearing characteristics – this fleeting, bashful doggy grin, and it wins everyone over. She was not only good looking, but also quite well rounded and I wondered how anyone could feed a dog so well and then leave her tied up to somebody's fence with three puppies.
     I found out later that that wasn't quite the case. She had been left tied up, rail thin and starving, with two of the puppies dead because of her lack of milk, and the vet had kept her for 5 weeks, feeding her and getting her back to health, before even attempting to find her a home. That lady has my heart forever – she is not only the greatest dog vet, but she is a lovely lady, with true compassion for animals, and she saved my Tuffy's life.
     Anyway, Tuffy came to me complete with an ID tag in her skin somewhere, all shots done, and spayed, thankfully, courtesy of some dog loving program and the good lady vet. And as I type, she is lying at my feet, snoring away, blissfully sure of her new home and her new people, whom she is beginning to rule with her little paw. Actually, not so little – she has comically large paws, arguing that perhaps she was destined to be much bigger but, being so starved, never did make it – they think she is around 16 months old, so probably won't grow too much more. But that's just right with me – I have a big dog in Moosey.
      And talking of big dogs, and the reason why Tuffy is called Tuffy, is that she immediately took over the house and decided she wouldn't allow poor old Moose in! This resulted in three good and big dog fights, wherein, however, I was pleased to see no blood was shed - just a great deal of noise, snapping teeth and horrendous rolling around, just enough to save face for both. So she is called Tuffy (from tough, get it?). So – have I bored you enough with my new love?
     And so what else has happened at the ranch? Well you probably know it has
rained this year, over 14 inches for the year, which for us is over the average, and the grass and the trees are happy. And not only the trees and the grass – the cows also are happy, and by extension, so are Gerry and Danny – as it looked that if it didn't rain, we would have to sell all the remaining cows, as all the grass had been eaten up. But – saved! And hopefully, perhaps the drought is over – I did tell you I'm an eternal optimist.
     And if you have wondered - in fact, if you have read these newsletters before and wondered why I haven't mentioned horses this time – the reason is very miserable – I refer you back to my opening statement that it hasn't been much of a year for me. In August I had hip replacement surgery, a revision of one done eight years ago which hadn't worked out too well, and following it couldn't ride for three long months. No sooner was I able to ride, just after the November round up, in fact the day after Thanksgiving, I tripped over a tuft of grass and crashed backwards, down on my head, causing severe concussion and an epidural bleed, which thankfully stopped by itself, but
- you guessed it – no riding for another month! So this has been a miserable year for me and my horses. However, the month is up just at Christmas, and I plan a good ride on the 26th or thereabouts. In the meantime they are all turned out, happy and fat and sassy – no loss to them, I guess!
      And, if you have been trying to book in in the month of January, and thought that the web program showing no availability is wrong, it is not – we have a big group in for the whole month of January and part of February, filming a television show here, so bear with us! and try again for later – we sure would love to have you come and visit us!!
     So with this, all best for a wonderful Christmas and New Year, with everything you want and all your dreams come true!!
 

Eve and all of us at Grapevine.

Saturday, October 22 2005

    So Fall is upon us, the season the Apaches called Earth Turns Reddish Brown, and I was thinking, while driving home across the pasture, what an evocative name that is. The grass, grown so nice and tall by the summer rains, turned silver in September and now has progressed to a golden brown as the seeds mature, the trees are slowly turning yellow, and the pyracantha bush in front of the office is flaming red with its ripened berries ... and we know that winter is not far off.
    In fall comes also the fall round up, where the cattle are gathered, and the calves separated from the mothers and sold, and even though I know that it's the annual pay day for the ranch – and a good thing too, as the cattle ranch bank balance dips precariously low around the end of summer – it's still a somewhat melancholy time. The sight of the mother cows, all crowded around the ranch gate, bawling for their babies, always saddens me a little and I wonder what right we have to cause unhappiness in others. But I guess that perhaps if we didn't take that calf away, a coyote might eat it, and after all, it's life, and, it is what it is – we must face reality. And the reality is that the cows, after about three days of mourning, give it up and go back to the pasture and to being cows, happily munching away and making (hopefully) a new calf. Perhaps we should learn a lesson from that – mourn for a while, then resign yourself and go back to living the good life – it's here to be lived, after all!
    And, talking about the good life, I have added another chapter to the Perils of Pauline, aka Eve. Last night, coming out of the Cook Shack at 10 pm, ready to drive home, I got into my car, turned the key – and .... nothing. "Grrrrr" – it said. Now it happens that about two months ago it did the same thing, about the same time of night – (always so inconvenient) and it was, of course, corroded battery terminals. So I said to myself, darn if I want to mess with this at 10 pm, let's just hitch a ride home with Jenny who lives next door, and I'll leave the car here for the morning for the Maintenance crew to fix for me. So I did.
    Next morning I gave early departing Jenny the keys with my blessings and a request to the Maintenance guys to straighten the darn thing out, and later borrowed Gerry's truck to come to the office.
    I was greeted by a puzzled Maintenance team - it wasn't the battery cables at all. They couldn't find what was wrong with it. They checked and rechecked, climbed under it and over it, turned it inside out ... Frustrated I began imagining costly repairs, electrical rewiring jobs, car-less for a week and having to tow it to Tucson to the dealer, yet – just my luck!
    And then, after a two hour hunt, the mystery was solved. As they began to tell me, too late I remembered the night before. I'd got to the Cook Shack and found I'd forgotten to take a comb with me. Damn, I thought, I wonder if there is one in the glove box thing between the seats. There wasn't, but the glove box thing in this car consist of two compartments, one below the other. So I lifted up the top one, reached in to the bottom one, no comb .... but now I vaguely remembered brushing past something on the way up. As soon as John began telling me about their discovery, that memory came rushing back. The thing I had brushed against was nothing less than the switch which disconnects the starter, thus preventing thieves from making off with the car. Of course!! And I had vaguely noticed that strange little noise it made as I turned the key. It was the car saying, “Turn off the burglar alarm, stupid!” It's the kind of thing that keeps one humble – had this happened to someone else, I can just imagine thinking, “Now how dumb can you be!” Yes, indeed. Best stick to a horse.
    And, talking of horses, I am about to get on one. For those of you who don't know, I had hip surgery on August 2^nd, and had confidently expected to be able to ride again after two months. Unfortunately, the surgeon dispossessed me of that foolish dream with remarks about “major surgery” and other unpleasant statements, and, on learning that I had planned not only to ride, but to ride on round-up, sternly forbade any such venture and laid on me the injunction not to ride at all for another two weeks! That was a real bummer, I tell you! Not to ride round-up! Unheard of – I'd ridden on the last one only two days before surgery with one hip almost out of joint and managed, and now he tells me I can't ride at all! It was a dismal moment. But ..... time passed, as everything passes, and here I am, contemplating getting on Comanche in two days – Sunday, to be precise. About time – my horses also had three months off, and are exceedingly fat and sassy – it's time for a reality check.
    And, as for the ranch – we are getting ready for Halloween and Thanksgiving, which is being rapidly booked up, and I can't believe it's almost Christmas and another year gone. But – it's a fun time for the ranch – we haul in a 6 ft. Christmas tree, have a bang up New Year's Eve party with lots of happy guests celebrating, the fire gets lit in the Longhorn Room fireplace every night, and one can hardly remember that once summer was here, with those long evenings and wonderful sunsets.
    Winter has other compensations – the color of the distant Chiricahua Mountains turns blue gray, almost misty in the distance, and the sunrises are breathtaking – the sun's angle, being so far south, throws different shadows across the face of the mountains, reminding me once again of another evocative Apache name for a season – they called winter Ghost Face.
    Years ago, before I met Gerry and moved to this ranch, I lived about 40 miles south of here and we had, as well as cattle, a crop farm, where we grew winter wheat. The farm was around 1600 acres with nine wells, each putting out 1,000 gallons a minute, irrigating the vast fields. I really enjoyed seeing the first faint green of the wheat shadowing the earth, and then rapidly maturing into a good crop on which we grazed some 500 head of cattle until about April, when the cattle were taken off, and the wheat headed out to make grain – the best of both worlds!
    Anyway, one year our irrigator quit, and then it became my duty to take care of about 160 acres of baby wheat. As this was before the days of more sophisticated irrigating systems, we used the siphon tube method, which consists of long black siphon tubes, bent to accommodate the shape of the irrigation ditch where the water flowed, and the procedure went like this: you bent down, picked up a tube, bent down lower to the water, closed one end of the pipe off with your hand and with the other swished the pipe through the water so as to get water siphoning up into it. As soon as the water sloshed up the pipe, you threw the pipe down and the water then flowed up out of the irrigation ditch, over the hump of the cemented edge, and down into the furrow. It was quite a trick at first to learn this, but once learned, I bet I could do it the day I die – and enjoy it. I spent some of my most memorable winter mornings pulling siphons like this, and watching the early morning sun's first rays hit the distant Chiricahuas, turning the valley into a fairyland. Just before sunrise it used to be so cold down in that low part of the valley that the water gave off plumes of rising steam into the colder air, and the fields took on an unreal air of fantasy. The tubes had to be changed when the water reached the end of the furrow, so as not to waste water, and if this happened to be at 2 am, then you rolled out of bed, pulled on lots of warm clothes, tottered out to the old irrigating truck and banged your way to the distant field. Again, the cold moon high in the sky, the steam rising off the water and the distant howl of the coyotes made memories I will never forget.
    So how did I get here – ah yes, telling you how wonderful winter is here. And, as we are not in the low, cold part of the valley, but up on sunny slopes, the temperatures here are pleasant, especially if you don't have to roll out of bed at 4 am!!
    So come see us!! All twenty of us on the staff, to say nothing of the 80 odd horses and collection of other four legged friends, are eager to have you come and enjoy our world.

    And in the meantime, have a great fall season, and happy pumpkin carving!

Eve

Friday, September 23 2005

Dear Friends,

    I think that perhaps fall is one of the prettiest times here in the high desert – providing that the summer brought rain, that is - and this summer has certainly done that. Now the evenings are growing shorter, the grass is turning a lovely silvery color as the stems head out and make grain, and the cattle and horses lie down replete and contented in the shade to snooze. The light on that silvery grass is so beautiful as it sways in the breeze, making glittery ocean waves across the pasture, that I can quite forget that winter is right behind it. Mind you, what we call winter here is probably what other people might almost call summer but then, we are spoilt – as I said before, living in the high desert is easy ...
    But what I really wanted to share with you today is the wonder of duct tape. I mean, this is magical stuff. I came to admire it all over again the other night when I dropped a glass jar of face cream on the tiled bathroom floor and bashed the bottom out of it. As it's a big jar, and as the fractured glass remained more or less in place, it was the work of a moment to envelop the jar in several feet of duct tape, and it's good to go! I mean, why pay for a new jar when a remedy is at hand? And so I got to pondering and remembering ....
    The use of duct tape on the ranch at times approaches the inspired – we've used it to bandage horses' legs, wrapped it around their hooves when infected, mended shoes, torn clothes, radiator hoses, exhausts (a temporary fix, but it works), water lines, and Gerry himself has brought its use to the state of an art. Some years back he overbalanced and fell through the window and literally cut his ear off, and I mean off – the whole of it, so it hung down by his collar like a dachshund's. As he was home alone at the time – I was in Tucson – his first reaction was to try and stop the blood, which proved to be a vain effort, as it poured out in what seemed to be gallons. Eventually he called Ginger, who at that time lived in the house next door to us, and she was finally able to staunch the flow by the use of several towels. (The house looked as if a pig had been butchered in it – while I was in Tucson in the hospital with Gerry, Bonnie very kindly cleaned up and it took her four hours. She said there was even blood on the bathroom ceiling.) However, back to the ear – predictably, Gerry refused the hospital – he was convinced that if Ginger would only tape it up, it would grow back to his head by itself. “Just put some duct tape on it” he kept advising her, keeping it up even in the ambulance. One doubts it would have worked - it took the plastic surgeon three hours to sew it back on.
     I kind of enjoyed the surgeon's reaction on seeing us, too. He said, “You people again!” and well he might, as he was the one to sew up several horse caused injuries to Gerry's kids, quite a few to Gerry himself in his horse-breaking days, and one on me, when a cow gored my forehead open from the eye socket to the hairline. He probably regarded the Searle family as job security, but on my last wreck when I wanted him to fix my busted lip, I was disappointed to find he had retired.
     However, it was my most recent large scale use of duct tape, prior to the face cream jar, that really made me thankful to its manufacturers. My old ranch car, which at times is apt to have a mind of its own, backed into a tree. You might wonder how this was accomplished, seeing that it's the only tree in several hundred square feet, and I will tell you, it wasn't easy. It really had to work at it. In fact, I will say that this particular car is really quite bloody minded - it enjoys backing into things and even hitting things head on, in spite of my care and control. Once, with my mother in it and me out of it, it backed up several hundred feet by itself, and then, when she, in panic, stuffed it into forward gear, it surged ahead and hit a gate, taking it off the hinges. It actually was very funny at the time, and I had a hard time of it not to laugh, especially in the face of my mothers' loudly given opinion of me, my vehicles, my ranch and generally my usefulness in life.
     Anyway, this time it backed into the tree and really did a number on itself. It tore off some kind of plastic trim and shattered the side back window – I mean a mess. I was quite put out – winter is coming, as I said, and with it, hopefully a little bit of rain, and here was this window, seriously intending to fall out in bits. However - you guessed it! Duct tape came galloping to the rescue in the form of John, who taped up the window like a surgeon, on the inside and out, crisscrossing it so that it is encased in the tape like a mummy – and the car looks quite good – in fact, sort of interesting – the back window looks as if I'd installed an expensive window shade to screen dog Moose, whose transportation it largely is. So there – another successful duct tape fix!
     And so I guess the only other thing to tell you is to check out our specials on the web – Halloween promises to be a lot of fun as always, I think there maybe one or two spots left on the November cattle round up crew, and of course, later on there's all the fun of a Christmas and New Year, where someone else does the cooking and the housework, and all you have to do is to ride horses and enjoy life! So come see us – and if it's not to be, then have a happy Halloween at home, carving pumpkins and trick and treating!!

All best for now,

Eve

Saturday, September 10 2005

Dear Friends,

     I seems as if the god of water has finally smiled on us – the rains have come, the grass is belly high on the cows with only the tips of the calves' ears sticking out, and, as the song says, the livin' is easy.
     The mountains are full of wildflowers, many not seen for years and all the tanks are full. Can anything be better on a ranch, I ask you? It just goes to show how unpredictable farming or ranching life can be – only a couple of months back we were contemplating having to sell all the cattle, as, if it hadn't rained, our grass would have been totally gone. Now there seems to be plenty of it, and our feeling is that the rains are not completely done yet. Yesterday we got another big monsoon rain, and quite often in September, we get some moisture spinning off a hurricane in the Baja California – as we always say, “Not wishing the Mexicans any harm, Lord, but do send us a hurricane off the Baja!” At least the Baja is very unpopulated, not like poor Louisiana. Anyway, we are hoping this is the end of the drought!
     The other night we played Spoons. I wonder how many other people out there are familiar with this game of skill, refinement, cunning .... no, actually, I lie. I'll start again - this game of brutal strength, determination, concentration and, yes, I'll concede the cunning. The point of the game is that players compete for the possession of a spoon, of which there are one less than the number of players. Get it? At the beginning of the game, the spoons are placed in the middle of the table, and each player is issued four cards; the dealer then commences the play by picking up a card off the pile and either keeping it, or discarding it. The object of the game is to acquire four cards of the same value, i.e, four queens, four sevens etc. The game moves fast, fast - and as soon as a player gets his or her four, a grab is made for a spoon and then - look out, the fight's on! Everybody dives for a spoon and the last one ... well, you know the saying, "You snooze, you lose!" As you will see by the photos herewith, this night's game, as always, began somewhat decorously and politely - however, before the second round was over, politeness went to the devil and the battle was on!! From eight players, the number was finally whittled down to one (Sally) the lucky winner and champion for the night!

Things began kind of quietly.

But quickly deteriorated.

Tempers flared......

Finally.... the winner. Sally

     As I am still recovering from that hip surgery, I thought it wise to sit this one out - after all, it would be difficult to explain to the surgeon, whom I am seeing next week, how come this hip, so nicely in place, suddenly dislocated itself?? Better not - I applauded from the sidelines, and kept my fingernails, my bracelets, my hair, my shirt, in one piece - yes, all of those are apt to suffer in a real, he-man's or she-woman's game of deadly Spoons!
     And we are introducing a couple of fun packages to help jump start the holiday season – check them out on the Directory page. We think that particularly the Halloween thing will be fun. After all, how often do you get a chance to dress up like John Wayne or Calamity Jane? I know that I, for one, will be happy to be rid of my last three year's costume of the old witch. To be honest, it has gotten to be a bit tiring to be encased in that long black gown with the outline of a skeleton on it, and to have to balance that tall witch's hat on my head – no wonder witches are so notoriously bad tempered! I would be, too, had I to wear that thing year round, and navigate a broom as well! And that's to say nothing of the nose! It became mighty close inside that nose, if you know what I mean – my own nose, stuffed inside the witch one, suffered exceedingly, and began to itch, inside and out, so I had to retire periodically to the Ladies' Room and take it off to breathe.
     Actually, last year I had also had a stint of wearing a horse's head. As child I had always wanted to be a horse in the worst way, much to my mother's chagrin, as she wished for a sweet little girl with ribbons in her hair and a lispy little voice. What she got instead was someone who pretended to be a horse most of the time, down to pawing the ground, tossing the head, running in the right or left lead – and I even learned to twitch my ears, an art that has stayed with me to this day, I am proud to say. (One never knows when such a trick may come in handy, after all. ) I was working hard on learning how to twitch my skin in that wonderful way horses have to get rid of flies, when I ran out of time and grew up.
    Anyway, some time last year I acquired this most superior, life size horse head, made of realistic looking plastic, and with glee I put it on. Alas, it soon palled, much like the witch's hat – it grew exceedingly nasty and smelly in there, too, and I was hard put to it to stick with it for half the night. So this year I am looking forward to a real honest to goodness western character!! Calamity Jane? Annie get your gun Annie? Or one could come as Pancho Villa – after all, why get stuck in a gender glass ceiling, eh? Go for the best – maybe even Geronimo! And you will see, if you read the package details, that we are also having a shooting contest, in our new western town, which Jim had a wonderful time in building!
     So give us a call and start building that costume! It'll be a great time, and a Halloween you'll never forget.

Eve

Saturday, August 20 2005

Dear Friends,

     So after a longish silence, here I am, and with good news – it has
rained! And not the usual kind of halfhearted drizzle, but a series of
excellent rains, producing green grass and much water in the tanks. In
fact, it is raining even as I write, and not the normal type of summer downpour, but a downpour followed by a day long drizzle, something so seldom seen here that it’s almost like being in another world. As a result, the lake behind the house is almost full once more, the mountain tanks are overflowing and life is good.
    This of course, means that we can stay in the cattle business for at  least another year – and who knows, maybe this is the end of the drought!
     In fact, even the slower rains we'd had so far this summer have produced

Yes that's grass in the arena!

some unexpected results – that other day Danny brought in a bunch of wild grapes, for which Grapevine Canyon is named. These actually came from adjoining Noonan Canyon, and they are quite good to eat. Normally tiny and a bit tart, this year, due to all the spring rains, they have more juice than normal and make a tasty snack. The manzanitas, which for many years hadn’t flowered nor, of course, fruited, are loaded with thousands of little red berries, which I love to eat while out riding - they are an excellent substitute for the water bottle that I usually forget to bring, and their tart taste is very refreshing on a hot day. You can snatch up a handful as you ride past, without stopping, stuff them in your mouth, suck out the juice, then get another handful – ah, life is good when it rains in the high desert! No wonder the Apaches called this time of year "The Season of Many Fruits".
    Our summer program is progressing nicely, with the ever popular evening sunset rides. These are at times canceled because of thunderstorms, but nobody seems to mind that – the rain is so rare, and so much appreciated. And now we have another program to add to the fun. Adam, the barn boss, has been pushing for some time to introduce some adventurous items to the riding program and so now we have added single
action shooting. This is a lot of fun – real gun, black powder, but
harmless, and what you do is bust balloons with it. There are, of
course, mounted shooter programs all over the country, but both the
insurance and our consideration for the hearing damage to the horses, have made us moderate this to unmounted, single action shooting, or SAS. To this end Jim, our resident artist carpenter, is making a regular western village out in the canyon, with tavern, houses, and, of course, the ubiquitous outhouse. The idea is that people will ride out there
horseback, dismount, tie the horses up at a good distance away and then
..... have at it! Jim has already made some outlandish western figures, who will pop up, with balloons either on them or in them, for the shooters to hit, with accuracy and speed, may the best man or woman win.
It should be a hit, at that!

    So with this I'll end for the now, wishing you a wonderful balance of
summer, good weather and whatever else you wish for yourself.

Eve

Friday, June 24 2005

Dear Friends,

    Well, summer is upon us once more, with those magical long evenings, when the setting sun provides shade and beauty for the after-dinner rides, and I, for one, just can't get used to the summer time table. For those of you who don't know, for the three months of summer we move the clock back by one hour, so that rides can depart earlier in the morning, and the longer evening provides time for the much enjoyed evening sunset rides. As Jenny once said to me, I am a creature of habit, and when I get used to getting to Grapevine at 8 am. it's mighty difficult to get myself rearranged to get here by 7 a.m. Not that I am a late sleeper – on the contrary, I love early mornings, but I love to enjoy them on my patio, admiring my flower garden – and too often, oops! It's that darn summer time table once again and I'm late! I like to be at the corrals when the rides depart - not that I have to be, I just like to be. The barn crew do a wonderful job and probably don't need me standing around, but I like to visit with the guests and say Hi to the horses, but ... tearing myself away from the flowers is not easy.
    I mention my flower garden – I love flowers but I hate actual gardening – by which I mean the inevitable pulling out of weeds, and digging up of beds and fighting crawly creatures bent on destroying one's work – so some years ago I hit on the idea of having a garden in containers, and I want to tell you, it's the way to go! I plant almost anything I want to grow in a pot of one size or another, and then place the pots in suitable arrangements, allowing for height, color and type and I get more fun out of this than I would have thought possible. The beauty of this, of course, is the fact that it's just made for a lazy or ignorant gardener – if something doesn't grow, or it croaks on you, you just pitch it out and go buy another – or, if it stops flowering, you move the pot out of sight, until it comes to its senses and looks pretty once again. Anyway, this year it occurred to me that the one thing lacking in my garden was a pond.
    A pond is something I have wanted for a long time, and it has always proved to be almost unattainable, in that in order to have it, you must first dig a big hole, and then go to no ends of trouble concreting it, and sealing it, and filling it and... and... and. Besides that, there was no place in our front yard that I could have put it – either it would be totally out of sight and useless, or right there, a handy water hole for the dogs to wallow around in. But – totally serendipitously, some months back I was wading through Walmart's garden section, and I came across a whole pile of those wooden half barrels which once contained whiskey. Great – I trundled one home, filled it with water, and after only 3 weeks of topping up, as it leaked progressively less as the wood soaked up the water, installed it amongst my pots of what-have-yous, complete now with a water lily, some guppies to eat the mosquito larvae and soon to be goldfish. Now the only remaining thing is to install a water pump and filter, and perhaps a little fountain??? Fun, fun, fun.
    And I can just hear some of you saying “doesn't she know you can buy those plastic pond things so you don't have to cement that hole?" Well, I didn’t know!! That is, until yesterday, when, while in Tucson poking through Home Depot, looking for a pool pump, I came across a whole display of black plastic pond shapes, just ready for that hole. It quite blew me away – what fun! But, on reflection, I think my barrel looks better – and I didn't have to dig a hole either – impossible, anyway, on a flagstone patio. But I was amazed at the array of pond pumps, filters, fountains – all available to eager water gardeners. We are truly a consumer society – it took me thirty minutes just to shuffle my way through all the boxes, and I bet that even at that, I probably got the wrong size.
    And as the end of June approaches, we are getting our normal summer jitters about the rains – will they come, won't they come, when will they come, will they come in time to make grass for the cows to eat.... and so on. I do get tired, sometimes, of worrying about the rains – but then I guess other parts of the country worry about too much rain, or hurricanes, or earthquakes, so perhaps our worries are not so dire at that. Anyway, if you have too much rain wherever you are, send it our way!! So far the cattle look good – the winter rains which were above average this year, made lots of winter grass, and the majority of them are sleek and shiny, with little calves bouncing alongside them – but at the same time, if grass was a bank account, it's one that we have been steadily drawing down over the last few years, and, unless it rains plentifully this summer, we'll be joining the many other ranches in our area, cowless, or sin vacas, in Spanish. The nursing home my mother was in, is in a prestigious gated community in the Tucson foothills, called Sin Vacas – Without Cows. The history of that one is that it was owned, years ago, by a well to do couple who bought part of a cattle ranch, at that time a long way from Tucson. Because they were there for the beauty of the country and not for cows, they called their ranch Rancho Sin Vacas, ranch without cows – and the name stayed with the subdivision. I bet the residents get tired of explaining that one to their out of town visitors! Anyway, I hope we will not become a rancho sin vacas – so please! do the rain dance for us!!
    So I guess with this I'll close for the time being – we wish you a very happy Fourth of July, lots of watermelons and fireworks, and a great summer to follow!

Eve