A Hard Winter Ride

Mar 16
Jan Swan Wood

Taking Care of Yeller

Mar 14
Jan Swan Wood

Bull and Feminine Vapors

Mar 7
Jan Swan Wood

Recent Posts

Skijoring Ranch Style

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 […]


Blind Runaway

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. […]


Cold Perspective

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 […]


Queen of the Road

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 […]


Street Gang Saddle Horses

November 21, 2022
Jan Swan Wood

Nearly everything that was done on one ranch I worked on was somewhat slaunchwise and sometimes ridiculous. That actually described the owner to a T. We’ll call him Frank. I lived about 30 miles from the ranch as there was no housing there for me, so I slept in a little house in town and […]