Gail Steiger

Howdy,

Welcome to this page. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks also to my friends at the Western Folklife Center for giving me a chance to participate in this digital adventure. I'm flattered to be included in the crew they've assembled so far.

I guess the idea is to share a little bit about who we are and what we're doing. I'll try to post some notes and some pictures of what's happening on the ranch.

If we can we'll post some video clips and maybe a little music, too.

I was born on my father's ranch about 45 miles northeast of where I'm working now. My grandfather had a ranch about 20 miles to the southeast. I worked here at the Spider Ranch full time from '81 - '85.
My brother Lew and I had recorded some songs about cowboy life and a friend in the video business in Phoenix heard one he liked and said he'd come shoot us a music video for room and board . The owner of the ranch saw the video and liked it enough to want to see something " a little longer". With his generous support and the help of a lot of friends in both the video business and the cow business we managed to shoot a film on cowboy life around here called "Ranch Album". We were lucky enough to get it released as a national PBS special, and that project brought in more film and video work . It also got me a ticket to my first Cowboy Poetry Gathering at Elko, in 1988. Talk about an eye-opener. I couldn't believe there was anybody else as weird as me, trying to write stuff about ranch life, and here were all these people up there singing songs and telling poems right out loud. I made some great friends on that trip, friends I count now among my very best. Opportunities came my way and things led to other things and all in all it had a profound influence on my life.
I pretty much split my time from then on between ranch work and video projects, with a little music thrown in whenever possible, coming back to manage the Spider in '95.
I'm having a great time these days. Life at the ranch is a gift. My boss is patient enough to put up with a couple of video projects a year and about the time I get tired of hunting cows, it's time to go do some video stuff and vice versa.
I feel real lucky to be alive and where I'm at and I'll try to share as much of that with you as I can.

Posted by Gail Steiger at 3:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

For the last few years the big question around here is where will you have water from June-August. We have several dirt tanks on the mesas and lots of live water (springs and creeks) which is fine when it rains but can get pretty scary when it doesn't. It got pretty dry here from 2000 - 2002 and it was real scary. This year we got no rain from October05 - March06. None. We'd had a good summer last year though and there was still some tank water up on the mesa where the cows were this spring, but not much and towards the middle of June I got nervous as usual, and started to move off the mesa down into Cottonwood, where this year there was plenty of water in the creek.

Frank Begay and his son Dustin came to help and one day I sent Frank and Dustin around towards Trail tank and I went the other way. I got to Smith tank around 10:30 with about 20 cows and their calves and here comes Frank and Dustin bouncing down a really rough road in the pickup, which I had left at the holding trap about 3 miles away with a little hay. They've got a young black cow bogged down in the last little puddle of mud left in the bottom of Trail tank. Looks like she'd been there a while, but she's still alive and has some try left. They couldn't pull her out with their horses, they tried digging her out, throwing rocks in there, no go. Frank thinks he maybe can drive across about a mile and a half of malapai boulder strewn cedared up roadless mesa and get her out. I say ok, I'll take this bunch to the trap and trot back and see if I can help. When I get there sure enough, they've made it in and got her out and on her feet even though she keeps falling over every time she charges them. Her little red calf isn't helping her any but he's hungry and he doesn't really care that mom's had a hard time the last couple of days.. I drive her over to the trap where there's a tank with some water left and she makes it ok but it wasn't easy for her. I'm proud of Frank, really impressed that he figured out how to get in there and bounced that truck all the way in and got her out. I wouldn't want to drive through there, even if it was in a company vehicle.

We got all but a few cattle I'd left on purpose way up high where there was lots of old dry feed, and drove them off of there into Cottonwood. We cut Frank's cow and her calf back as we figured she was still too weak to make the drive.

The evening Frank and Dustin pulled out we had to go to a wedding. I was kinda wore out as we'd been getting up at 3 to beat the heat and I was looking forward to sleeping in. We had a great time at the wedding but Juanita had to drive home and when we got here at 1:30 am I learned from my neighbor on our answering machine that lightning had started a fire right where I'd left those cows.

I staggered out of bed the next morning and trotted about 5 miles up there and found the fire. It had struck a ridge right below the top of the ranch, burned up a big steep bowl and rimmed out right where the cattle had been, then pretty much laid down and gone to sleep. There were just 2 little trees with visible flames about a foot high. The cows that were there had pulled out. I got behind one old bull that was leaving anyway and started him off towards a tank about 500ft and a quarter mile below. When I got there I found him in a kinda stand-off with 3 firefighters they'd helicoptered in the evening before. We had a good visit. The team leader had been gung ho the night before. He said things really got going for awhile there and he had wanted to call in the air-tankers and the whole nine yards. Fortunately we have a Ranger who is willing to let a fire burn when conditions are right and she had told them to let it go for awhile. All us professionals on the ground there decided it was pretty much out anyway. I told the crew to have the dispatcher call me if they needed me and started for home. The wind picked up a little and it warmed up a lot. I stopped to water my horse down the country a couple of miles and looked back up there. There was smoke all the way across the top of the ridge and in places the flames were probably 20 ft high. The fire would crackle around a big juniper tree and then whoosh, up she'd go. Amazing.
It rained a little that evening and things pretty much quit but we almost had a hell of a fire.

A few days later I went up there to see what was going on and I picked up a little bunch of cows with an extra calf. I started them over to Trail tank and tried to remember where I'd seen that calf before. As we got to the tank it dawned on me. Damn! That's the calf that was following Frank's cow. There she was. Again. Stuck up to her chin.
I probably would have just shot her if Frank hadn't already showed me the way to get her out. This time though, the pickup was about 8 miles away and it was about 3 pm when I found her. I trotted home, got the truck and got her out of there one more time. It rained again and those tanks caught enough water to cover up the bad mud so she'll be allright next time she goes by there.

Posted by Gail Steiger at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

cottonwood pasture

Posted by Gail Steiger at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Spider is a relatively small ranch. 300 head Forest permit on 68 sections.6 big pastures and a few smaller ones All pretty rough country. Lot of variety. Top end is about 6000ft. Pine trees and cedar mesas and bottom is 3400ft. Sonoran desert. Lot of granite boulders and chaparral in between. Lions, deer, elk, bears, coyotes, javalina and lots of other little critters.
This is a cow/calf operation where we calve in the spring and try to ship yearlings weighing around 700lbs.the following spring. Cows are pretty much on their own. We only feed bought hay to the horses we have up and to the cows sometimes when we're working and can get a pickup and trailer to whatever little holding pasture we're working into. We provide salt and mineral supplements and that's about it.
My job is mostly about trailing them up and rotating pastures according to a plan we develop with the Forest Service in January every year. Sometimes it's hard to figure out in January when and where it's going to rain in July and August and we have to adjust accordingly. We really have 2 growing seasons. Spring and Summer/Fall. If our summer rain is late sometimes that season can be pretty short. I try to not be in the same pasture during the same growing season for 2 years in a row. This is a little harder then just having a summer country and a winter country as cattle don't really know where they're going all the time, but I think it's a lot better for the country to let the perennial grasses have a chance to make seed at least every other year. I try to make a move around the middle of April, then again around the middle of July, and again middle of the fall. We stay long (5-6 months) in the winter.
I try to torture these cows as little as possible. The only processing they get is when we brand and vaccinate the calves. No hormones, antibiotics, bug spray or anything else not absolutely necessary. We drive them everywhere they go. The only time they get on a truck is when they're getting sold. All this really helps keep them gentle and that really helps in this rough country. I hire 1 or 2 day working friends to help me the first week or two of a move, and we'll usually get about 70% of the cattle in the pasture, then I pretty much go find the remnant by myself. There's always a little remnant somewhere. Job security.

Posted by Gail Steiger at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)