by Cowgirl on January 4, 2015
I’m not big on New Year’s Resolutions. Personally, I would rather be honest with myself and not make any outlandish, pie-in-the-sky claims to change immediately or “from now on”. Why set myself up to fail? But I like having an idea, mulling on it, letting it grow, see where it leads, and eventually following through with it. And like a true procrastinator, why should I be in any hurry about it? If it doesn’t ever get followed through with, then it probably wasn’t that good of an idea after all. That being said, I do have a few dreams and wishes for the new year.
by Cowgirl on December 15, 2014
So guess what was waiting at the front door when I came home from work yesterday? A big box marked “Circle G”….Merry Christmas to me! It was my new cowboy boots I had ordered. They had emailed me that they were on back order, and I was fine with waiting, but I never expected them to arrive before Christmas! It was a fun surprise. I am glad I didn’t have to wait until Christmas day to open them. I tore the box open and tried them on immediately.
by Cowgirl on December 9, 2014
You know what it’s like when you get a brand new pair of tennis shoes and you aren’t quite sure what to do with the old ones? They’re scuffed, dirty, holey, and in bad shape, but you just can’t quite throw them away. Those shoes have been with you for miles. And the new ones are so much nicer, but they don’t quite fit your feet like the old ones did. Inevitably, as soon as you throw your old ones away, you’re going to have a muddy day when you wish you had them back.
I am celebrating! This is officially my 200th blog post, and in honor of the event, I am getting a new pair of cowgirl boots! You might have seen my previous post with a picture of my old riding boots that I’ve had since tenth grade. They are a size too big (men’s, I believe) and scraped and worn in spite of a recent oiling. They’re good for working and riding in. But believe it or not, that is my only pair of boots. So I am boot shopping for some cowgirl boots with style.
by Cowgirl on October 23, 2014
You might be wondering what’s going on with my new mare Bluebird. I got her in April, after my sister in Idaho called and asked if I’d like to have her, and we had her shipped all the way to Iowa. She has fit in well with our other four horses, but summer was busy and she was underweight and I just didn’t find the time to work with her at all. She’s five years old, and still not broke, but I was mostly concerned with putting weight back on her. But I have been feeling bad about letting her go so long without training.
Summertime is busy. I love summer, but there is just so much going on, so much garden work to do, so many kids’ activities, so many vacations….nope, I am not complaining! But here it is nearing the end of July, and I finally got my saddle out and dusted it off and discovered that my stirrups were still set long from the last time I rode it…which was back at the first of April when Penny bucked me off! We rode at the end of May in Idaho, but here a month and a half later, my own horses have not been ridden all summer. I am just now finally get back to it!
by Cowgirl on June 20, 2014
We visited my parents in Idaho around the end of May. They live in a beautiful valley in the southeast part of the state where they raise beef cattle, Quarter Horses, and mules. We spent a week out there riding horses, hiking on mountain trails, enjoying their western scenery, and catching up on life among the Lewis family. I took two cameras, and when I got home there were over 700 photos on my memory cards! So this blog post is to share some of the sights I saw, most of them taken from the back of a horse.
by Cowgirl on May 28, 2014
I’m on vacation this week. No, not sunning on some beautiful beach somewhere like most people would think of, but in my opinion this is better—I’m visiting my family in Idaho and spending a great percentage of my time horseback. I usually refer to my folks’ place as a “working cattle ranch”, with emphasis on the “working!” I am not used to this much physical exertion, andevery muscle aches, my arms and neck are sunburned, and I am saddle sore. But this is my kind of vacation!
by Cowgirl on May 6, 2014
Branding smoke….a fragrance that isn’t likely to be bottled and marketed by Dior or AirWick anytime soon, but nontheless a smell that evokes strong memories, pulling me into a reminiscent state of mind. I started helping brand calves when I was five years old, back when getting to go along for daily ranch work alongside my dad and siblings was what I lived for. Considering that a normal five year old would probably recoil at the sight of what goes on at a branding, I admit my abnormality of looking forward to branding days when I was a kid.
by Cowgirl on April 12, 2014
You can never have too many horses, right? My sister from Idaho called me the other day and offered me her beautiful blue roan mare. I didn’t know what to say, other than, “Please and thank you.” Other things went through my head, such as how will I get her here, it’s twelve hundred miles to Iowa from Idaho, and I already have four horses that I don’t work with as much as I should! But there was no way I could turn her down.
by Cowgirl on April 8, 2014
That old Kenny Rogers song came to mind today, as I was thinking over the happenings of my weekend. In terms of horses, you should never be too sure of a horse. Riding horses is always a gamble. There are no sure bets, and you can win or lose with a stroke of luck, good or bad. I always say, “That’s the way the cookie crumbled.” And there’s no predicting it, how events are going to go or what exactly is going to take place. I think the cards were stacked against me in the hand I was dealt on Saturday!
by Cowgirl on April 4, 2014
You might remember my previous post regarding Dorothy the Hereford Cow. She has been part of our family for six years now, and we have grown fond of her. But Dorothy cannot have a baby calf, having suffered a stillborn and difficult birth in her third year, and so ever since she has just been a companion animal at our farm. If you keep horses or livestock, you know that it costs a lot to feed a large animal, and we raise beef cattle and aren’t really in the business of keeping cows as pets. So we have continually weighed our options and questioned ourselves on Dorothy’s purpose in life. We did not want to send her to the auction, knowing she would only sell as a slaughter animal. So we decided to try to find a good home for her as a pet cow, and try to get a little money for her as well, since we’d like to buy a mother cow to replace her.
by Cowgirl on January 14, 2014
You may have heard about the recent study sponsored by Harley Davidson that deducted that women who ride motorcycles are happier than women who don’t. The study was conducted by Kelton, and interviewed 1,013 adult female riders and 1,016 adult female non-riders. “The findings make it clear that riding a motorcycle greatly improves a woman’s feelings of overall self-worth.” I wonder what a similar study would find, if they interviewed women who ride horses rather than motorcycles?
by Cowgirl on November 29, 2013
I didn’t follow the trend on Facebook of sharing daily posts with something you’re thankful for during the month of November, but mentally and in my prayers I listed many things, and decided to post them here. One of the locals has a good response when he leaves the bank I work at and I tell him, “Have a good day!” He always says, “It is a good day! If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.” I like his state of constant thankfulness. But these are some of the things I’m thankful for…
Riding horses is dangerous. So is operating an automobile. So I’m not saying we shouldn’t engage in either activity, but I’d like to point out that when you are around a horse, virtually anything can happen. I’ve seen good horses in bad wrecks, great riders get broken up, and not-very-cautious riders get away with doing some stupid things around horses and get away with it. What we all should keep in mind is that there is great risk involved in riding horses and training horses, and a smart rider will do what he can to protect himself and his horse.
I’m concocting a grandiose tale in my head about what might have happened last weekend. It goes something like this…Cowboy Dad and I loaded up our horses and trailered out to the South Dakota plains where our cow herd spent the summer. We then rode all day gathering up the herd, enjoying the beautiful western landscape, sorting the cows from the calves, pushing them onto a semi truck trailer, and driving home to Iowa. It would have been a wonderful weekend, with stories to tell of how well our horses worked cattle, and lots of photographs to share of the splendors of the prairie. But alas, it didn’t quite happen that way.
by Cowgirl on October 8, 2013
I’m sitting here after a long day, wondering what to write in this post to sum up the very best parts of my day to share on CowgirlDiary.com, and I’m not coming up with a whole lot of words. I went for a horseback ride this evening with JoAnn. It was a beautiful, windy, fall day…the kind of day that just beckons. I stuffed my old camera in the hip pocket of my jeans and away we went. Basically, it was a super fun ride. And the rest, I’ll just say with pictures….
by Cowgirl on September 24, 2013
If you’re looking for me these days, I’m probably out riding. The weather is unbelievably sweet, the horses are nothing short of amiable, and horseback riding is my number one favorite thing to do in the whole world, so I’m livin’ it up. I’ve been averaging a trail ride a week for the past month, and am loving it so much! I have two great people to give all the credit to.
by Cowgirl on September 13, 2013
Our horse herd has changed. Over the summer, I decided to put up a few of our horses for sale because it is always a financial strain for us to feed five horses through the winter and I hate having skinny horses fighting over the hay. (Last winter was hard–we ran low on hay and hay quadrupled in cost around here, and the hay we could barely afford to buy was not good quality–it was a nightmare!) So I listed three of them on craigslist, thinking if we sold one then our horse herd would be of a more reasonable number. Me being a horse lover, you can never have too many horses, but until I win the lottery there has to be a limit. We really don’t have the space for five horses, so somebody needed to go.
My horse friend and I went riding again this week, this time to some new equestrian trails that are being developed five miles northeast of Shenandoah, Iowa. The Pierce Creek Recreation Area is a beautifully serene park with ten miles of well-developed trails for horseback riding. Some of the local riders have done a lot of work at the park to make it more horse friendly, and we chose a beautiful evening for a ride.
