Country Girl for the Weekend

This weekend I went up to Twin Falls to visit my friend Ruby. Ruby lives on a ranch all summer. The ranch is about an hour away from civilization. So I had the pleasure of getting the full ranch experience.

We woke up at 6:00 a.m. to get ready to head out for the day. We rounded up our horses, loaded them in the trailer, and took them up to the mountain.

(This was my horse, T.J., we became quite good friends by the end of the day)

Once we were on the mountain, we rounded up all the cows in the field so we could fence them in and sort them from the branded calves and the non-branded calves.

Once they were all sorted it was time for the scariest part of the whole day, branding.

I mainly tagged their ears, while Ruby's brother, Levi, branded, but he let me brand a few. I didn't like it so much. Tagging their ears was pretty bad for me too, but I got used that pretty quick. I didn't, however, ever get used to the smell of burnt skin and hair from the branding.

(This calf was too small for the shoot, so they had to tackle it to brand it)

After we finished branding, we went back out to the fields just to move cattle to a different spot on the mountain. Moving cattle was my favorite part of the whole day. I was out in the middle of a beautiful field, on a sunny day, just sitting on my horse.

It really couldn't have gotten any better.

I had such a good time on the ranch with Ruby. I had a lot of new experiences and learned a lot. I probably drove Ruby crazy with all of my stupid questions, but she put up with me. Kyle, a worker, even told me he was going to make me a harness, so I would have to come back up and have a reason to use it :)