January 25, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
My dad was a great storyteller and brought my family’s history to life for me. One of the stories he told me was about my great-granddad Swan and a long ride he took looking for blizzard drifted stock. This would have probably been in the 1910-15 era, but I’m not sure. My great-grandparents ranched in […]
January 19, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
My ongoing dilemma of working for Dick because I needed the paychecks didn’t end when the nice registered cows were hauled away. I had decided I was done with his nonsense, but he called and begged, so I helped him with his commercial cows. I don’t know where he’d had them running, as I’d never […]
January 17, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
The saga of working for Dick continued after the preliminary day. The cows had to be gathered after a few weeks to sort the bull calves off so he could haul them home. Those nice cows walked right into the corrals and they sorted fine. The bull calves, who were big boys, loaded into his […]
January 7, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
Day working is sort of a feast or famine way of making a living. I must have been in a time of famine, probably had something like medical bills to pay, when I agreed to go to work for a guy that called. His reputation as a womanizer was well known, but at almost 40, […]
December 26, 2022
Jan Swan Wood
We’d bought a place back in my home country that was right along the county road. Just across that road was a pasture that my Uncle Paul owned. He wasn’t really blood kin, but, he’d always been Uncle Paul. He was a stock contractor. During the summer he ran his bucking horses in that pasture […]
December 21, 2022
Jan Swan Wood
I’ve had many horses over the years, mostly good, some awful, but this one has lasted the longest. His name is Buckskin Joe, Joe for short. I received him for Christmas when I was a tiny girl, though I don’t remember for sure how old I was. My brothers and sisters got him for me. […]
December 19, 2022
Jan Swan Wood
My brother Dave was home for Christmas from Texas. He loved the outdoors, especially in the winter when he could hunt fox and coyotes on the ranch. He had gotten a set of cross country skis and was learning how to use them. I had been out gathering the sheep into the winter corral in […]
December 14, 2022
Jan Swan Wood
My high school years were spent going to school and doing the riding on the ranch, since I was the last kid at home. In the winter, my Dad was gone about every week day buying cattle, so it was my job to do chores and any riding necessary when I got home from school. […]
December 6, 2022
Jan Swan Wood
When I moved to northeastern New Mexico to a ranch job, I thought I was in a veritable winter paradise. It might get down to the upper 30s at night, but the days were sunny and usually up around 50 degrees. I’d never wintered anywhere but northwestern South Dakota, and left there to head south […]
November 27, 2022
Jan Swan Wood
Dad used to tell me stories about my Great Grandmother Swan. By all accounts, including his, she was a tough lady who had survived some hard circumstances and made a good life in eastern Colorado, having emigrated there from Scotland, via England and Canada, in the very early 1900s. She adapted to ranch life as […]