Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 63004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
“Tell me you’re not nervous? You did the hard part already!”
“Meeting your parents?” I asked.
Laughing, he replied, “Yes.”
“Ladd, I have the rest of your family to meet. Your brothers, grandparents, and who knows who else.”
“Everyone else is going to love you, Viv. Trust me. You’re hard not to love.”
I blinked back tears and looked out the window as I tried not to think about how the two people who should have loved me didn’t.
Pushing all thoughts of my parents away, I smiled at the sight before me. “Oh, this is beautiful, Ladd.”
“This is my home.”
The drive was flanked by pastures covered in snow. To my right, I saw a small group of horses, each wearing a blanket and walking in a straight line in the same direction we were driving. On the other side, there was a sprinkling of cattle. Their black coloring stood out against the backdrop of the snow. A few of them lifted their heads to see who was driving down the road before they started walking in the same direction as the horses.
“It’s feeding time, clearly,” Ladd laughed.
Ahead of us was a bridge that went over what I was guessing was the river. It wasn’t as wide as what we had seen earlier.
“This is the same river you asked about. It goes through the ranch and down through town. Hence the name of the town and our ranch.”
“Is there a waterfall close by?”
“There are a few. Even one here on the ranch. Maybe once the snow melts and the temperatures warm up, we can come back and hike up to see it. It’s beautiful.”
“This whole place is beautiful.”
Ladd grinned as he replied, “It is.”
“How do the cows and horses get over the river?” I asked.
“There are spots on the ranch where we have something called Fords. We reinforce the bottom with filtered fabric and gravel to provide a firm footing. They aren’t used often, and only in places where they cross infrequently. We have crossings strategically placed throughout the ranch that are located on straight, narrow sections of the river. The cattle, and horses, can use them without entering the water at all. Trust me, they’re smart. In the winter they’re usually on the other side of the river and placed in fenced pastures, but there are some that are out here as well. I’m guessing this week my father will have us round up the rest of these cattle and bring them closer to the barns.”
“Wow, that is amazing that the animals know where to go to cross.”
He smiled and nodded.
As we drove down the drive, a few side roads sprang off in different directions.
“Where do these roads take you?”
“To different parts of the ranch. Let me show you something.”
He turned to the left and started to drive down a road that had also been plowed.
“Does someone live down this way? Is that why it’s been plowed?”
“No, but this is the west side of the ranch, and the ranch hands make weekly trips around the ranch to check the fence. The last thing you want is your cattle to get out or someone else’s to get in. This is my favorite part of the ranch, and someday I plan on building a house here.”
I took it all in. “How much land does your family own?”
“A thousand acres, but there’s BLM land, which means Bureau of Land Management, to the south of the ranch, so we’re able to have the cattle graze on that as well. That gives us an additional few hundred acres. You see that mountain right there? We own part of that. That’s usually where the cattle will go in the summer to graze, if not on the BLM land, so that we can grow the fields on the ranch to stock up for winter.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of land. And you own part of a mountain!”
His smile faded. “It was a lot more, but my grandfather sold off the land that the BLM owns when he got into some financial trouble. My father also had to sell some of it off to keep the ranch going. It about killed him to do it. This ranch has been in the family since my great-grandfather started it in 1887.”
“That is so sad he had to sell it off.”
“Yeah, I know it was hard for him to do. My grandfather, Flint Wilde, didn’t have a head for business. He was the only son of my great-grandfather, Lawrence Wilde. Flint liked to spend money faster than it came in and was a gambler. By the time my father got control of the ranch, we were in debt. Big time. So he made the hard decision to sell off over five-hundred acres to the state of Colorado like his father did. They turned it into BLM land and gave us grazing rights. Some other ranchers have grazing rights as well, and my father has sold a few grazing permits to a couple of smaller cattle ranches near ours, for the higher elevations, and that money also helps a lot.”