June 2, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
This is a story my Dad shared with me over a decade ago, so I’ll do my best to remember it accurately. My Grandad Swan had an uncle who settled on the eastern Colorado plains in around 1868. He came to that area from Texas with some mares and a good stud and lived in […]
May 22, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
Most of the time I’m pretty fond of the memories I have of the “good old days” growing up on the ranch and learning the industry from the ground up. There are some things that don’t charm me to this day, though, and one of those is the scourge of the heel flies. If I […]
May 10, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
My son was a senior in high school that spring. It was a practice high school rodeo and we were there early to get a good spot to park with room for his horses. We had unloaded and had the horses tied to the trailer, hay nets hanging by them so they could pick at […]
April 10, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
When I was in high school I always had summer herd cattle to ride on, besides doing the riding on my folks’ place, so I had miles to put on horses and could work the kinks out of horses that just needed time and wet saddle blankets. A guy had sent a horse to me […]
February 14, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
It was time to be gathering bulls after breeding season, but some of the pastures on the ranch made that a challenging job. Also, some of the bulls had gotten big and hard to handle, plus didn’t want to be gathered, so it was some long hard days that resulted. We’d gotten the “easy” bulls […]
February 6, 2023
Ruth Nicolaus
A special bucking horse went to a special retirement home in January. When Sammy Andrews from the Andrews Rodeo Co. in Bagwell, Texas, retired saddle bronc horse No. 012, Lock and Load, the 23 year-old gelding went to live with Isaac and Britany Diaz in Desdemona, Texas. Isaac has a special tie to the sorrel. […]
October 26, 2022
Jan Swan Wood
It was time to wean two of our colts. They were both well able to carry on fine without their mamas, so one morning Colin and I caught the two mares, left their colts in the corral with an old babysitter mare, saddled the fine ladies and loaded up to go to my folks place […]
September 22, 2022
Jan Swan Wood
In my writings, I’ve mentioned the buckskin mare, Penny, who helped raise me. She and I were foaled on the same year, her in June, me in November, so we literally grew up together. She was orphaned before she was old enough to wean, so was raised around the corrals and was an absolute pet. […]
August 11, 2022
Jan Swan Wood
The first ride on a colt is always a pretty important day. How that goes can set the colt up for his whole saddle horse career. My son Colin was not quite 13 and had started some colts at some clinics I’d invited a respected horseman to put on. He’d learned a lot and had […]
July 30, 2022
Jan Swan Wood
Her name was Sage. A 30 pound dynamo of Australian Shepherd/Border Collie/Kelpie origins, she was a bob tailed, gray murl demon. She was a useful stock dog, nice companion and entertaining in a way I’d never encountered in a stock dog. She was over 30 years ahead of her time in her favorite trick, but […]