Pat & Sharon O'Toole

Sangre de Cristo,
Blood red against the sky,
Smoky crimson sunrise
Illuminates the dry

And murky landscape,
Grey haze that turns to pink,
And throws a rosy glow
To make night’s shadows sink.

Mountains rise ephemeral,
Magic light against their rock,
A brief illumination
Shows their beauty with a shock.

Of this pink and hazy glow
Wrought by fires in the south,
Fire in the sky,
And fires bred by drought.

Flames that rise and roar
And eat all before their path,
Nature and man’s doings
Give way before their wrath.

We watch from distant fastness
As smoky fingers curl,
Long tendrils reach with greed
To menace with their swirl.

And spread a grim grey threat
To make us tear and choke,
We wear a gauzy veil
Of ash and haze and smoke.

It filters through our valleys
Where grass stands stiff and dry,
Where leaves hang low and thirsty
Beneath this pall of sky.

Tales now come to haunt us
Of flames that leave a stark
And ancient calling card,
Borne aloft by wind and spark.

We watch and wait and fret
That such could be our fate,
While distant matches flare,
In a tinderbox, we wait.

Such thoughts all disappear
With wonder and with awe,
As sunrise works its alchemy,
Paints the country with a raw

And glowing pinkwash,
With a brief and fleeting dye.
Sangre de Cristo,
Blood red against the sky.

Sharon Salisbury O’Toole

Posted by at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently wrote a column for "Writers on the Range" (High Country News service) about the impacts on tiny Wamsutter, Wyoming, which is the poster child for towns impacted by the energy boom. As a result, I received a great letter from a 90-year-old gentleman who used to fish on my cousin's neighboring ranch. It tells a great story, which I wish to share.

Here is Vernon's Ewing's story..

"During the 50's and later, my wife and I and two sons enjoyed many a happy day fishing and skinny dipping in the Little Snake on Saddle Pocket ranch, with permission of Mr. Salisbury"(my great-uncle Ralph)...."Some years later, my wife and I stopped at the old ranch house to ask for "just one more" fishing day down in the meadow. Mr. Salisbury answered my knock, said nothing but motioned me to follow him to the barn. He entered a horse stall, pulled a bottle of Old Grandad from the feed box and offered me a snort. I did. He did, and said, "Go ahead and fish."

Posted by Sharon O'Toole at 3:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In May and June, we have thousands of baby lambs born. It is a major task, and often hot, thirsty work, to dock the lambs. We typically bring a bunch of ewes and their lambs into a large corral, then sort the lambs into a smaller corral.

Our docking crew usually consists of family members, sheepherders, neighbor kids, and whatever company we can lure into the process. The lambs then go along an assembly line, where they are earmarked, castrated, vaccinated, tailed, and paint branded. The whole process takes less than a minute.

On one hot dry day, we ran out of liquid refreshment by mid-afternoon. We'd split the band into two bunches to lessen stress on the lambs, so had to move the finished bunch away and bring in the second. I decided to make a run into the nearby town of Dixon, and visit its only establishment, the Dixon Club. Now the Dixon Club can be a lively spot, but it was a Tuesday afternoon.

I bellied up to the bar and ordered two cases of pop and one of water (with a hair). While I waited, I chatted with a customer, the lady who runs the Bed and Breakfast in Baggs. The
B & B’s memorable feature is the tame bobcat which has the run of the place. But I digress.
The gal sitting next to her said, “Pop and water? Why when I docked for old J.B., he always sent me to town to buy beer.”

I explained that we usually stuck to non-alcoholic beverages, and besides, half the crew was underaged. She continued on about old J.B. and his belief that a crew should have their beer.

“Tell me,” I asked, “Is old J.B. still in business?”

“Come to think of it, no.”

Posted by Sharon O'Toole at 4:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blackfaces at Johnson Ranch
Routt County, Colorado
Photo by Pat O'Toole

99, 100, Slide

99, 100, slide.
The smooth worn bead
Along the leather strap.
Another lamb runs by,
Wooden beads worn glassy
By the hands of my grandfather
My father,
And me.

The leather
Cut from the hide
Of a long dead cow,
Kept supple with oil
From generations of hands.

Beads—yellow and tan
Carved from the hearts of
Serviceberry bushes
By the careful hand of a craftsman
Also long dead.

An ancient abacus
Counting out the spring lambs
As they shoot through the run.
The government requires numbers
If they graze the forest grass.

Ewes and lambs.
Beads and leather,
Contemporary hands on
Old tally beads.

99, 100, slide.

Posted by Sharon O'Toole at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is finally time for our blog to be “up.” It has been an exciting few weeks since we started this endeavor. The best, most exciting, most life changing event has been the birth of our new grandson, Seamus Brian Lally. Our daughter Meghan lives and works with us on the ranch. She graduated from Colorado State University with a degree in Farm and Ranch Management in 2001. She married her college sweetheart, Brian Lally, in 2002, and brought him home. He is now a Deputy County Sheriff, and EMT and a volunteer firefighter in our rural community.

Seamus joins his two-year-old sister, whose picture appears on the opening page of this blog. Her Uncle Eamon gave her a saddle for Christmas, and she has both a bouncy horse and a horsy “potty chair,” but we are not trying to influence her! Actually, we don’t need to—she loves Chief and Aveena and rides every chance she gets.

Our usual work this time of year is trailing the sheep and cows onto their Forest grazing permits, and getting them settled for the summer. For the cows, this means going into a grazing rotation system which involves quite a bit of riding, by us and by our ranch hands, in order to keep them on fresh feed and to manage the grass. The sheep are all herded, so each band of about 800 ewes and their lambs go to a specific grazing allotment. We lamb on our private land and adjacent BLM allotments for most of May and June.

Sheep at Badwater, Wyoming. Photo by Pat O'Toole

Generally, our “off date” for the lambing grounds is late June, and our “on date” for the Forest is early July. We have to stage the trailing so that each band is about a day apart, as we move the sheep camps, with their attendant dogs, horses and paraphernalia. After we pass through the “government corrals” where they are counted on, the trails diverge, with four bands going into Wyoming and three into Colorado. (We live on the state line.) In addition, we have to coordinate with neighbors who are on the same trail at the same time.

We have just completed this portion of our “transhumance” year. For the rest of the summer, we typically move each sheep camp once a week in order to keep the sheep on fresh feed and to avoid overusing any one area. It is a big help to have experienced herders who know their allotment. This season we have a mix of experienced guys and new guys. All are from Peru.

An added element to our usual trailing days has been the presence of the Rainbow Family Gathering on our Big Red Park allotment. This has changed our management, as we have had to avoid the Gathering area. We trailed the Colorado bands on early. Our range conservationist, Eric, told us to keep the sheep well away from the Gathering, which lies right in the path of our sheep trail. We did not want any to become unwilling guests at a barbeque, or have conflict with any of the Rainbow’s ubiquitous dogs, heavy on the pit bulls.

They have come and mostly gone. Since 1972, Rainbow Family members have gathered the first week of July. They contend, with court backing, that they are exercising their Second Amendment Rights to free assembly. The U.S. government maintains (also with court backing) that the authorities must issue a permit and oversee the activities, as they would any other group of 75 or more.

The Rainbow Family and the Forest Service played out their annual impasse over a permit. The truth is, short of bringing in the National Guard and risking a Waco-type conflagration, the government could not stop the Gathering.

The Forest Service and local law enforcement had a heavy presence. Early on the Rainbows surrounded officers and hurled rocks and sticks at them. Hundreds of citations were issued, mostly for illegal camping and drug related infractions.

Yet—the same Second Amendment protects the right of all of us to gather—from the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade to the recent immigrant parades.

Where does this leave us, who do have a permit with rights and responsibilities? The Rainbow group has a reputation for thoroughly cleaning up after themselves, filling in their latrines and fire pits, and hauling off trash. They cannot restore the trampled meadows and streams. The grass, in this record drought year, will not come back. The grazing animals, domestic and wild, who depend on this area for fall feed, will not find the grass restored.

So it has been interesting so far, and the summer is yet young!

Posted by Sharon O'Toole at 5:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Welcome to our blog. I gotta tell you, this will be a new experience for us. Mostly, Sharon will write and Pat will photograph, although we might change roles sometimes. Ranching is all about flexibility, right? I remember sitting on a bale of hay at our neighbors’ 100th ranch anniversary party chatting with a lawyer friend (yes, it’s possible) about the old days when his family was in the livestock business. He said, “Sharon, I don’t know why you do what you do, but I’m glad.” I told him, “I can tell you why—because every day is interesting. Sometimes it’s interesting good, sometimes interesting bad, but when I get up in the morning, I know the day won’t be dull!”

Or as we sometimes say, “Wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from bad experience.”

Our ranching operation includes several hundred head of cattle and several thousand head of sheep. It is a traditional, “transhumance” range operation. We trail our cattle to the mountains in the summer and to the home ranch in the winter. Our sheep trail over 150 miles from our summer country in the high mountains of Colorado and Wyoming, to Wyoming’s Red Desert for the winter months. Along the way, we ship, shear, lamb and calve. I think we probably put in more trailing miles than any livestock operation in the United States. We have traditional sheep camps, with Peruvian herders, horses, Border collies, and livestock guardian dogs.

Our most interesting experience so far this summer—which will surely lead to wisdom—is the arrival of the Rainbow Family on one of our National Forest summer sheep grazing permits: Big Red Park, north of Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

The Rainbow Family is an amorphous group who style themselves as “the largest non-organization of non-members in the world”, (www.welcomehome.org). They call themselves hippies (I remember the hippies. They were happy!), who choose a different National Forest for a gathering the first week of July each summer. They show up, about 20,000 strong, with the high (so to speak) point being a huge circle in a meadow where they hold hands, meditate and pray for peace and love. I really hope that part works out.

The arrivals so far are mostly young, overwhelmingly white, and dressed in goth black. They looked like the homeless sorts you see hanging around big city bus stations, only less washed.

Spokesman Bodhi, from New York City, said, "We need a fresh water source, one main meadow that is 100 acres or larger and about five to 10 square miles of hippie land.”

"And we will need another large meadow to accommodate thousands of vehicles," he said.

Said meadows include riparian areas which we have carefully husbanded for years, under the watchful eye of the Forest Service. The Rainbow Family plans to leave a team to “restore” the area after the Gathering.

So it goes. An employee recently asked Pat when the work would end. Pat told him that we consider our year a circle and a cycle, so as time goes by, we just continue with new beginnings. In this blog, we will, over the course of the year, explain our doings, our philosophy of the issues and of topics as varied as genetics and immigration. We will talk about the impacts of the nearby oil field and the trophy ranches on our traditional rural community. We will keep you folks posted on these interesting days and others.

Posted by Sharon O'Toole at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)