November 22, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
I was looking through old photos the other evening and came on one that brought back a memory that made me smile. It was a bad photo of a beach off of Baja California, Mexico. I don’t know why I hadn’t zoomed in more when I took it, but the photo was of tiny figures […]
November 8, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
It had been a wet fall with rain, cool temps and even an October snow storm that melted and soaked in. The end of October had the ground saturated with moisture. We were hired to go and gather a bunch of cows and ship the calves off of some genuine gumbo country. We’d ridden this […]
October 23, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
I’d never met the lady who had called me about starting a colt for her, but I’d known her late husband and thought a great deal of him. What she had was a three year old Thoroughbred stud colt that was sort of halter broke and pretty gentle. I knew the stud he was sired […]
October 5, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
We had gathered a big chunk of country that morning. The owner had made the outside circle and “rode” the canyons out in his Bell Jet helicopter. The New Mexico ranch was huge and rough, so that helicopter really saved some horse sweat when he was able to get in the air. We had the […]
September 17, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
He came with a mare I’d raised and sold as a yearling. My son and I got her back as a six year old with Johnny thrown in. He was a three year old gelding catch colt, untouched aside from the day he was roped and gelded, and was pretty watchy. Over the winter he […]
September 13, 2023
Marisol Tarango
There are many different ways and traditions to achieve the same end when it comes to tending cattle, and there are many different words for the same thing in the cattle industry across America, even the world. But one thing holds true, a cowboy isn’t much without his horses, and depending on where you are, […]
September 5, 2023
Marisol Tarango
Recently my family took a road trip to visit friends in South Dakota. Traveling from the heartland of Florida through the Pine Belt, the Bible Belt, and the Corn Belt, I saw many different landscapes and more corn than I cared to see. I had been through or flown over most of the states that […]
August 19, 2023
Marisol Tarango
The Sunshine State, Disney World, Universal Studios, beaches, and the Everglades: I bet you know what state I’m talking about. These are the many things that people associate with my home state, Florida. And while they play a big role in our culture and economy, there is another big player that not many people know […]
August 17, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
It had been pretty dry up in the foothills on the ranch where we were working. To save the grass on the home ranch, the boss leased some pasture about 90 miles away and out on the prairie. He and his wife ran their yearling replacement heifers there, and in an adjoining pasture, their daughter […]
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 […]