Diggin up bones........

As I started looking for the records Jeremy was asking for I have stumbled upon tons of treasures. Of course now I have an even bigger mess to put back away and I am not that organized to begin with!
I must have wanted to write one of those cool Christmas cards that a person tells everything that has been happening in their family the year leading up to Christmas. I hate to admit it but I never got it done apparently and I had forgotten I even had done it. Must have been the newborn baby I had all during that first year here on the Broken Arrow Ranch. For those of you not familar I should paint the picture so you can understand the letter better. My husband is a dreamer, The End. Just kidding, about the end part. Jeremy is a dreamer, and I love it but it still stresses me out sometimes. I am the get it done part of our equation. Not that he doesn't get it done, he surely does. He is the hardest worker I know and never complains. Me on the other hand, well I have stopped threatening to move back to town just this last year! Anyway, he has always wanted to cowboy. He has worked on a few different local outfits after a brief stint of trying to continue his rodeo career in Arkansas. At the urging of his Mom (thank goodness for that cause that is ultimately how we met) he got a job at the local windmill company. I call it his "real job". That lasted seven years and at the end he was operating the crane and hearing constantly about layoffs that were coming. He was going crazy with sitting in a crane all day watching other peoples cows graze the hillside and feeling like he would always have to work for someone else. Sitting in a crane all day provides alot of time to think and he was becoming restless. A couple years into out marriage we found a lease in Tehachapi to have a herd of cows of our own. Of course there was no water there, we would have to haul water in and the fencing on the entire 222 acres needed repair. We set out fixing fence every night after work along with the help of some of his friends from work that would occasionally stop and help as they would drive by and see us. I will never see an Arizona Cypress the same again. The whole one side of the property was lined with them and over the years of not being taken care of they were growing out of control and all over the fence line we were needing to put back up. My job was to throw the tree branches over the fence as Jeremy would cut them. I swear everytime I would throw one a branch on the end of it would grab me and tear up my back. I never cussed before that.
I have to run down to the gate to let some clients in so this will continue later..................
Ahhhh, I am back now. Where was I?
It was funny the ridicule we suffered from people that, looking back now were jealous. Fixing all that fence on property that we didn't own.........blah blah blah. There isn't even water there........yada yada yada. If you want something bad enough you bust your ass for it. Plain and simple. No, we didn't own it but it was a beginning of a dream. A small price to pay to run your own herd these days. Especially being as we didn't come from ranching families with the family place worked down to us. We pulled it together. Our blood, sweat and tears. And let me tell you sitting here in the position we are now, I am sure there will be more. I shouldn't go into the downfall of society in this story but I truly believe that is part of what is wrong with this great country. People thinking something is owed to them and should be freely given away. A sense of entitlement because maybe their parents didn't have it so good when they were kids and they think they are giving their kids a better life by making it easy on them. Nothing worth having comes easy. Honestly, I can't believe I am sitting here writing those words after all we have had to do to get to this modest position in life. But it only makes it more worth having.
Soooooo back to the story. We purchased our starter herd in 2003 with eight cows. We had just barely finished the pasture in Tehachapi so we brought them to our little house we rented in Rosamond. I must have been a nightmare to the landlord. As we grew we just kept claiming more space on the land. We needed to brand them before we just set them out on the pasture so we planned the branding before we even had out registration in our hands. It was still in the mail. I never liked playing by the rules anyhow. We were too poor to want to feed them for too long and we wanted them out on the pasture. I remember that first branding like it was yesterday. We had a bunch of our family and friend there to help us. They were big cows so mostly we used a chute. I was looking aat a photo album from that day and saw myself dallied off to a calf riding a horse of Jeremy's and it hit me. I think that was the very first time I had ever roped anything and dallied before in my life. I guess that is a good trait to have in this life, not afraid to jump in and get a job done. I lived. The calf lived. And so did the horse. Something was said about my roping the other day and why don't I come out and rope with them on the practice days............puhleez I said who needs practice. The bunch of buttheads. I am just lucky to survive this place much less add more danger into the equation. Jeez, I am getting way off tract with my original story and didn't really intend to get this involved. Well, I am entered up now so I will have to post the letter in its own post and continue the lead up later.