Tree- 1; Tom- 0, and nobody wants a rematch.

On most ranches in the West (or “the edge of the West,” as my manager likes to say) plastic ear tags are used as an easy means of cattle identification. Usually the tags are numbered and a different color tag is used for each year. By the time a cowboy has to reuse a color, the previous class of the same color is usually gone or old enough so you can tell the difference.

We generally place these tags in the ear when we bangs vaccinate our replacement heifers. (That mostly means we get them ready to be mothers.) One year we were using purple ear tags and the thirty first critter through the chute, an oddball Charolais (that means “off white cow”) became Purple 31.

Purple 31 had begun to distinguish herself long before she got her tag. Continue Reading

The kind citizens were a little disappointed in the less than stellar effects of last week’s rain and snow. This week brought balmy and windy weather, which really didn’t help anything.

A crew of kind citizens and others began residing the Elm Springs Hall this week, and are already half done.

Several of the kind citizens attended the Cammack Ranch Supply Open House in Union Center either Thursday or Friday.

And Baxter Anders and Joe Trask left Rapid City Continue Reading

My brother Nick entering the District 29 senate race got me to thinking about my own political endeavors.

I think it’s safe to say that I have always been a little odd.  One of the ways this became apparent at an early age is that I was a devoted bookworm.  That might not have been so strange, but my two favorite books as a child were Homer’s “The Illiad & The Odyssey” (which I read three times) and “King Arthur & The Knights of the Round Table” (which I read twice.)

All of the time spent reading medieval morality tales and the quiet introspection that followed produced the most chivalrous, idealistic, romantic idiot that ever walked the face of the earth.

I only remember the Elm Springs School holding one election while I went there.  As near as I can tell, it was only to foster interest in the election process Continue Reading

One of my grandfathers died before I was born, and the other one died when I was about four.  I remember him, but not well.

I mentioned in one of my podcasts that I spent parts of four years of my life poisoning prairie dogs.  I enjoyed almost every minute of it, and I particularly enjoyed my boss and his wife, Leo and Rosalie Stangle.

They had reached the stage in life where they had happily assumed their identities as “Grandpa” and “Grandma.”  Virtually everyone else who worked for them was part Continue Reading