The Ranching Lifestyle — Living the Good Life!

LIVING THE GOOD LIFE

November 26, 2008

This is the first entry in my blog about ranch real estate, hosted by Land Unlimited, the land broker network and MLS.

Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Gary Hubbell, a Colorado native and ranch real estate broker. I live with my wife, Doris, and two boys, Reed and Jake, in Crawford, a small town in western Colorado.
There are reasons why we choose to live where we live and do what we do. Some of you like to be urban sophisticates, with a wide variety of choices close at hand—theater, fundraising balls, pro sports teams, shopping malls.
That’s just not my cup of tea, and it’s not my family’s, either. When you live the ranching lifestyle, you choose to forgo those urban amenities, and you simplify your life. We didn’t choose this lifestyle because we like to be the first ones in line to buy the new i-Phone or Wii or whatever new creation is cool and happening. We chose it because of more satisfying events.
I’ll give you an example. Two days ago, my wife and I were walking our dogs (we have four Labradors and a Brittany spaniel) when I noticed movement from my neighbor’s property. One cow appeared, then another, and ten more, until there were 70 cows moving up our driveway. Local rancher Monty Todd and his wife, Karen, were behind the cattle on horseback. My dogs, having been around cattle many times, didn’t even bark or look up. Monty rode over to us on a nice bay quarter horse.
“Do you want to help us move our cows up to Fruitland Mesa?” he asked. “I mean, there ain’t no money in cows,” he drawled, “so we might as well have some fun.” Doris and I looked at one another, laughed, and said, “Sure. We’ll saddle up and join you. Where should we meet?”
We arranged a meeting spot, and half an hour later, we were unloading two horses from our trailer and mounting up to join the cattle drive.
Monty and Karen lease a ranch about 12 miles from town on the west end of Fruitland Mesa. It’s a good place to winter cattle, as it’s protected from wind and weather in a canyon that gets a lot of sun. If you’ve ever followed a bunch of cows up a quiet country road, it’s a great way to chat with your neighbors and get to know the countryside in a manner that you just don’t experience when you’re zipping by in a car.
Several of the neighbors came out to block their driveways, preventing the cows from making their way into the farmyards and hayfields, and we got to visit with them as we rode along. Every time we passed a ranch with horses in the pasture, the herd came galloping up to greet us, tails flying, as the exciting event of cattle, horses, and cow dogs passing by their quiet domain enlivened their morning. Ranch dogs came out from each place to look over the scene, and fortunately they were all well-behaved.
Karen’s mother, Kay, joined us, riding Monty’s quiet gelding, and she admitted that she hadn’t ridden a horse for several years. I couldn’t tell—she sat the saddle well and she and Karen looked like two peas in a pod. Kay made a point of reminding me that I had called her an “old dog”, which I certainly couldn’t recall. I flushed with embarrassment. She laughed. She had been the secretary at the elementary school, and I had asked if the school had a website for its calendar. She said she knew nothing about computers, and I said, “Oh, I bet we can teach an old dog some new tricks.” So I guess I did say that.
Doris and I like to ride with the ranchers whenever we can, because it’s a great way to put miles on a young horse. Doris was riding Walt, a bay appendix quarter horse gelding and a grandson of the famous racehorse Dash for Cash. Walt needed some miles, and the experience of moving cows was good for him. I rode Sherman, our biggest horse. Sherman is half Thoroughbred and half Percheron, and a wonderful horse. He got wringy every time Walt and Doris got some distance away from him, so I got a chance to school him about not being buddy-sour, as the condition is known. He actually worked cows pretty well for such a big horse—16.1 hands and about 1,400 pounds—and he got a nice sweat going as we moved down the road.
After five or six miles of trailing the cows, I knew I had some phone calls to make to keep some real estate deals moving, so Doris and I bid adieu to Monty, Kay, and Karen, because they still had another six miles to go before they got to the ranch. We turned our horses around and jingled back to our truck and trailer, moving them along in a crisp trot along the borrow ditch. Not quite 45 minutes later, we were loaded up and ready to go home.
Doris agreed to take the horses back to our ranch to unsaddle and turn them loose, and I stepped back into the office, refreshed and envigorated from my morning of playing hooky, and feeling great about living the ranch lifestyle.