Jul 24
Jan Swan Wood
Jun 29
Jan Swan Wood
Jun 24
Jan Swan Wood
Jun 21
Jan Swan Wood
July 24, 2026
Jan Swan Wood
The summer before my freshman year of high school, I was riding on some cattle on the Klingler Range that bordered my family’s ranch. I started riding on summer range cattle when I was 12, on that very piece of ground. The deal was that I had to keep all the riding, including daily bog […]
June 29, 2026
Jan Swan Wood
In 1948, my Dad’s family sold their eastern Colorado ranch and started the process of moving to western South Dakota. The livestock were sold so they didn’t have to be moved. Restocking the new ranch would be done after a headquarters was established to receive livestock off of the railroad. My uncle and his wife […]
June 24, 2026
Jan Swan Wood
It was turn out day for the bulls on the ranch I worked on way back when. The bulls were all maturebulls of Simmental and Charolais breeding and they were big boys. Most weighed up in the 1700 to 2000 pound range, but several were even bigger.One purebred Simmental bull must have weighed 2400 plus, […]
June 21, 2026
Jan Swan Wood
We branded last weekend. We worked the cows first and replaced a bunch of faded out ear tags andpoured them for flies. They worked hard, as cows sometimes do, probably because there were just toomany people around, most of whom they weren’t familiar with. Cows know their people and aren’t tooworried about them, but strangers […]
May 12, 2026
Jan Swan Wood
Back 20 years or so, before everyone and their dog had a cell phone, cell towers were few and far between and cell service was very spotty over the whole country, but most particularly in rural ranchingcountry. Most people in the ranching country didn’t bother with one or only had one for when they wentto […]