Ducks, Duke and Digging Out

In my perfect world, all of our children and their families would live within minutes away, we would spend time together often and every holiday as one big family.  I would never miss a single school or church event for any grandchild and time would pass slowly.  But in reality, anything that comes close to that is pretty wonderful.  Like our pre-Thanksgiving weekend.

All but two of our kids’ and their families were at the Ranch.  Those who grew up there call it the Farm, but I’ve never quite understood that.  The land is an active cattle-grazing and hay-baling acreage, but there are no crops grown or even a garden at this point.  Doesn’t matter, it’s a wonderful place no matter what you call it.  Rains or shine, you can hunt fish, target shoot, hike, chase cows, feed donkeys, pet horses, and all while dodging an assortment of kids, dogs, vehicles and animals.

This November weekend featured children ages 11 months to 15 years (Dakota, you aren’t really a child but I can’t quite group you in the adults category yet :), 6 dogs from King Duke at 12½ years old to the younger ones only a couple years over pup stage.  The atmosphere is all the more charming when God blesses us with rain, so that by the end of the weekend we welcomed sunshine and the chance to dry out even with the combined smell of wet dogs, damp clothing and not-quite-fresh men and children.

Whether it’s hog hunting at night or duck hunting in the pre-dawn morning, our guys are hard core.  Duke can still duck hunt with the best of them and continues to amaze the guys at his instinct and retrieval skills.   Saturday night they headed out in the pouring rain to hung for hogs in the Hog Assault Vehicle.  Katelyn and Emily, determined to go regardless of weather, donned heavy plastic bags over their clothes to try and keep our some of the rain.  No hogs were killed but the HAV got stuck and needed digging out.  Which only meant more fun the next day when Chris drove his brand new honkin’ big Chevy pickup down to bring it back.

Brother Joe worked his magic to prepare another fantastic Thanksgiving feast with turkey, dressing and all the fixings, topped off with Heather’s delicious pie.   On full stomachs we settled around games of Parcheesi or cards.  Bedtime comes early at the Ranch, because waking up does too.

Kids  as young as age 9 are allowed to drive the old jeep or mail truck around the property for fun and for free.  Kids from the age of 4 freely walk over to the hay barn and roam among the round bales, cowboy boots not slowing them down at all as they climb the bales and rafters.  That’s nothing after using the ladder to get to the top bunks in the grandkids room.  The mail truck was put to good use as Katelyn, too young to drive legally in the outside world, put the pedal to the metal and covered some serious ground.  The dads used the Jeep or the motorcycle to cover ground quickly as they worked to clear brush and gather wood to build a deer pen.  Our assortment of vehicles also included a brand new Chevy truck, travel trailer, and 4 door sedans.  No shortage of wheels.

Which were used to rescue the little girls.  They became enchanted with the idea of chasing the donkeys, not realizing how far away from the house they’d traveled and how heavy the bag of treats would become.  Also not realizing the amount of ant beds, cow patties and stickers they had to wade through, remnants of each now clinging to their leggings.  At the sound of their cries Carri drove to pick them up and we spent the next half hour scraping shoes and pulling stickers.  Note to self:  buy rain boots for the girls to use at the Ranch.

Inside I busied myself with mending Katelyn’s jacket hem, loving the sense of life back in the day where the most pressing chore involved a few minutes with needle and thread as I listened to my daughters share pregnancy stories and mothering tips.  In the distance I could hear rifle shots and shotgun shells, see several of the men wearing holsters for their pistols.  How many pioneer women had done just that?  Of course they didn’t have my modern kitchen with running water, a custom designed tile shower or a Dollar General close by for staples.   And they didn’t have a large digital picture frame showing pictures from our recent trip to Europe to provide beauty and grace amidst their Ranch life.  Come to think of it, my world is pretty perfect after all.