Tomorrow is Father’s Day. I have a great father who loves me dearly and although I’ve chosen to live a thousand miles away I know he would be here at the drop of a hat if I needed him. He’s always been that way – even when he couldn’t quite understand his moody teenage daughter. I love my Dad, he’s not perfect, but he did his best with what God gave him to raise and he never quit on me, and boy, am I glad!
R.W. is a great father too. Matter of fact, when I met him he was trying hard to figure out how to be a single parent to his daughter and two young sons. His love and commitment to them were some pretty strong factors in my attraction to him… along with the fact that he looked good in those Wranglers and has the most amazing blue eyes, strong character, and can serenade a gal so fast she’ll swoon…
But back to being a Dad.
One of my favorite past-times is watching R.W. with our boys as they grow. He believes in “learning by doing” and sometimes I have to force myself to stay out of the way as they struggle with what they think is the impossible, only to find that they really could do it after all.
Today was one of those days. You see we branded Calvin Danner’s one calf, a little heifer this morning.
Of course you are probably wondering why we have only one calf on our “ranch” so I will digress to explain that we bought this place to run summer yearlings on to allow us to travel. Normally we will pasture about 200 yearlings on the gain from May through October. We also keep a dozen or so saddle-horses, a few broodmares and babies, 3 full grown Longhorn steers as pasture ornaments, and whatever 4H projects the kids have year around.
But, like a lot of other folks who are going through this drought here in the SW, we are down to just the bare minimum of what we want to keep. Which brings us to Calvin’s one calf, a little heifer, who needed branded.
The fun was in watching the boys go gather her and her momma into the corrals, then help build a fire for the iron, and once Dad got her roped it was Calvin’s job to hold her hind end (with me on her neck), and then it was time to put our brand on her.
There were times in that short exchange when Calvin didn’t know what he was supposed to do, where he was still intimidated to get too close at the wrong time and get kicked, and when he wasn’t sure he was strong enough at 11 to hold onto her legs and keep her down. But in the end, with encouragement and instructions from Dad, he did it.
And, once again I fell in love all over with R.W. as a man and as a father to all of our children. Happy Father’s Day hunny.