Fire and photography

So the ranch has been CRAZY busy lately- Stacy and Elaine went to the east coast, their oldest son and his wife just moved here, OPB came to film the ranch for a segment they're doing on modern ranching, six Japanese are here to learn about beef/take pictures, another large group is coming in tomorrow, and meanwhile there's a fire in frenchglen so everything is smokey and the phone rings all the time with either news or questions about the fire!

The awesome sunset that the photographers wanted to have in the background of the dinner scene.

Three of the six. Out of all of them only the girl in green could speak English, she was the translator. The man on the left is one of the best photographers in Japan, and takes pictures for a high end magazine where the pictures will be featured.

It was a weird evening, Elaine was going crazy cooking up a storm while her daughter-in-law (Melissa) and I helped out cleaning and cooking and finding tablecloths and pitchers. The the Jappanese people came and picked Stacy, Elaine, their son Wes, Melissa, and ME to be in the picture. They picked the least cowboy person there, I wasn't even wearing plaid like everyone else.

So we all sat there and had pictures taken, some looking at the camera and some "candid" ones. Smiling wasn't too hard because we were all laughing anyways. The photographer kept speaking to us in Japanese with instructions as if we knew what he was saying while the translator no where in sight.

Everyone else was extremely relieved to not be in the pictures and stood by watching the funny scene. This is Scott, the Davies' youngest boy.

I'm sad I forgot to take a picture of the food- it was really really good, the Davies certainly know how to cook steak.

They're climbing in your windows!

They're climbing in my windows,
Clogging my showers up
So ya'll need to hide yo garbage,
Hide yo water
And hide yo self cause they're hoppin' up errywhere.

Seriously though.

They gon find you.

PS This is still my most favorite thing ever.

The Move.

Last Friday this Swiss man came to the ranch and Stacy askedme right then to move out of the tin house.

I now live in what was once the original ranch house... from the 1920's! Obviously it's been updated since then, but really it's just a big empty house.

I'm grateful to be a little closer to other people though, i.e. I don't have to cross two streams to get to the bunkhouse.

The house was a little messy when I first came in, but I've been working on it. There was poop all over the kitchen, I didn't know what from until I was going to sleep when I heard a rustling from my garbage in the kitchen. I got out of bed, turned on the kitchen light, and there were three frogs on the floor, another in the sink, and more in other parts of the house. I'm not really sure what you're supposed to do about frogs... so I just moved the garbage and shut my bedroom door.

The house is better than the shack though- I'm no longer living out of a suitcase, and instead of a rock chucks  I have frogs.

Planting Trees

I don't want to dwell on this one. Let me just tell you.

It sucks.

Food!

So the bunkhouse where the buckaroos stay has a kitchen and dining area. The cook, Santos, is a Mexican woman in her early 60's, and she cooks breakfast, dinner, and cookies every day.

The Kitchen.

I've only caught breakfast a few times, mostly my first week, because it's served at 6 in the morning, and I've found that I can sleep in until 6.30. By the time I come in at 6.45 everything's put away so I just have a bowl of cold cereal. There's always food out.

Generally Santos makes scrambled or easy over eggs, either bacon or sausage, and either pancakes or biscuits. There's a large walk in fridge that has a ton of milk and plenty of eggs.

For lunch the buckaroos have to pack a lunch, and I guess sometimes they never get the chance to eat it. But the office is attached to the bunkhouse so I just go over and make myself a sandwich.

Dinner largely varies. Well, half the time there's some shady looking meat that is pretty tough. When that happens I just make myself a quesadilla. It's awesome to have Santos as a cook because she makes homemade tortillas and keeps them in the fridge. Yummmm. Sometimes she makes us some Mexican food for dinner, those are always my favorite days!

5/20/12

Sunday

My legs are STILL tingly but not so bad as yesterday.

Here’s something embarrassing-

The Davies left for their son’s air force graduation/wedding, and I really wanted to go to the Burns ward, so I decided Iwould drive myself down in “my” truck. Thankfully there aren’t any stops until you get into Burns itself, so I drove all the way down there… and then couldn't find the chapel! I might have been more willing to make a better search for it if I wasn’t so freaking inept at the stick shift! There was one stop sign, and one red light. Between the two of those I probably killed the car 15 times. No exaggeration.

So I turned around and went home.

The lovely truck.

Anyhow, three hours straight in that car and no church. I then proceeded to watch all of Downton Abbey season two. Ummmm yes please!

Who remembers that scene in Princess Diaries where Mia and the queen are driving in San Francisco up that horrible hill? I never really understood why it was so hard for her, but then I had never driven stick before. There is a hill as you’re leaving Frenchglen, it’s steep and you have no momentum to push up it. Thankfully I didn’t pull out the emergency brake and roll back onto a trolly of tourists, but it was a little scary. 

Saturday Half Day!

Saturday 19^th

Saturdays are half work days, so I get off at 12.00.

Half of me says thank goodness and the other half asks what on earth I’m going to do all day.

I decided to go on a small hike on the cliff in an attempt to figure out how far over some caves are. Traveling sideways while going up is pretty difficult and slow, so I just guessed on how far over to go to get approximately under the caves, then started climbing up. I guessed incorrectly, and came back down. Going down is always much more difficult than going up. 


I had decided earlier to go hiking in shorts.

Shorts.

I knew my legs would get a little scratched, but didn't care much about that and didn’t think much of it.

Lately I’ve been worrying about snakes. There are rattlesnakes out here, and I heard that they like to be near water. Great. There are streams EVERYWHERE around here Roaring Springs, the water comes right from the cliff!

Notice the streams.

So I was worrying about that and then took this picture-

 to show where I’m afraid to go because of the snakes. and then I got stuck on a rock and had to jump right into that nice bright green bush pictured below.

This was my immediate reaction to stinging nettles.

My knees and shin got all mottled and gross.

I very nearly put some windex on it.

And thus ended my Saturday adventure. It proved to be very educational, and quite painful.

My Time in Burns

Tuesday 15^th to Friday 18^th

Thank goodness for Burns. Stacy (ranch manager) told me he might send me outto their house in Burns for a few days to help Elaine (his wife) with some brochures.  I later figured out that he sent me out there because I’m all alone all day every day, it was really thoughtful of him-especially considering his crazy busy schedule. It was nice to actually be around people during the day, to feel useful, and to be in a house.I also won’t deny that I much prefer being there than here. I reallllllly liked the room they put me in.

I actually was helpfulthough. I got the hang of the brochure program quickly and we got a lot of workdone.

On Thursday the Davies hosted a young single adults activity….. or what was supposed to be a young single adults activity. Usually there aren’t enough young single adults in the Burns ward to have activities, but during the summer there are enough interns to put together a group. Unfortunately for us the guy in charge of activities is…. Unusual.

His name is Josh and apparently it was his idea to put together a FHE group of the single adults- young and old, and old married couples without children. SOMEHOW the Davies’s barbeque for the young single adults got turned into an FHE activity.

So Elaine and I were getting all the food set out and ready,when this old couple shows up at the door. Followed by another. Elaine and I were both a little weirded out until we realized what had happened.

We probably ended up with 10 old people and about five young single adults.

The funniest thing was right as we all circled up to introduce ourselves to each other. Josh told us all to say our names, where we’re from, what we do, and two interesting things about ourselves. The first man happened to be pretty old, and all he said was “My name is John Tanner, andI came here to die.”

It was silent for about twenty seconds and it was all Icould do to hold in my laughter.

All in all it was fine though. I wish there had been more people my age, but I’m sure as the summer goes on I’ll get to meet more of them.

Burns was fun, and I was sorry to have to go back to my little shack and empty office, but I’m glad I got to go.

Office & Cricks

So far work is just normal secretarial duties- photocopying,filing, faxing, answering phones etc. I still feel a little hokey saying“buckaroo”, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

Front of the Office

View from the Office

One thing I do not want to get used to is pronouncing ‘creek’ like ‘crick’. This may be a challenge because everyone out here says it, and there are a lot of places I need to be familiar with that have 'creek' in their names, like ‘three-mile crick’ and ‘skull crick’ and ‘dry crick’. Someone please shoot me if I comeback saying crick.

I spend about 55 hours a week in that chair. Pathetic, no?

"Meet your bishop"

Sunday May 6th

Said my mother.

Church is in Burns, a small town about an hour away. I say small, but to people out here (and me too now) it feels like a metropolis. This is where you shop for groceries and spare parts. Apparently I’ll be sent outhere on errands from time to time. This worries me because it’s a lot of driving with a lot of turns on a lot of long unmarked roads and the truck I will be driving is a stick. Guess who’s never driven stick before?

This girl right here.

Last night I slept well though getting to bed feltunnerving. It’s really quiet here. The house is really empty, and shutting my bedroom door felt unnerving. I fell asleep though, and woke up at 7.10 so I could be at the ranch manager’s house at 7.30 so that we could stop at their second house in Burns, then go to church which went from 10-1. Church was good, I let people know that I'd be going to their ward so we'll see how it goes.


Once I got back I decided to climb up the cliff thing behind my house.

My "house"

I can only imagine what day one of real work will bring. Hopefully not a dead cow or crashed truck but you never know…

Saturday May 5th

I’m going to say something cliché.

I don’t know what I was expecting out here, but it certainly wasn’t this. I already feel so alone. I don’t want to touch anything in my living quarters and the family isn’t as warm as I was expecting them to be.

Everything so far is isolated and quiet and matter of fact.

There’s also a lot of poop.

I don’t know who I’m going to befriend, the buckaroos? 13year old scott? The cook who only habla espanol?

My one potential is leaving in a week. His name is Walker, a24 year old cat whose name is quite ironic considering he’s limping around. I’ll try to catch a picture if I can.

Anyways, we’ll see how things go. Until tomorrow!

Oh ps. Did I mention I sleep next to a slaughter house?

An Introduction... a Few Weeks Late

Sorry it's taken me so long to get this blog thing up and going. When I'm in the office the day seems so long, but then I get out and all of a sudden the day is over and I'll be dead in the morning unless I go to bed quickly.
By way of introduction, I just copied and pasted my mother's email to some relatives. It's a pretty good description of where I am and what I'm doing. Mostly I'm just a regular secretary doing regular office work- receiving phone calls, filing, sending faxes, etc, but there are some other unusual things they have me do as well. I'll work up to that though.


My blog posts were written in order, I just never uploaded them, so please excuse the first one. It's a little melancholy and not entirely true. The Davies are great and I'm settling in just fine.


Let me now just say thanks to everyone for keeping me in your prayers and especially to my parents for giving me this opportunity and talking to me on the phone.


-Kennan 5/22/12


If you are getting this I figured you might be interested in what Kennan is doing this summer....

Friday afternoon Lynn was talking to a client who markets beef but also runs a huge ranch in eastern oregon.  Lynn was trying to set up a time to come out and shoot multiple ranches for the beef website.  The ranch manager was swamped with work and very unorganized because his office manager/assistant had just quit a few weeks ago and he was not caught up with the office work.  Lynn said he had 2 daughters that could solve all his problems and proceeded to tell him about Kennan's qualifications.  Stacy, the rancher, said bring her out and I'll put her to work.  Saturday morning at 6am we were on the road to drop her off.

To give you an idea of where Kennan is watch this first video.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoXlzTKhzAE Her boss is Stacy Davies and he is the manager of the ranch.  She will be his right hand "man" in the ranch office everyday doing everything an office worker would do.  Today she is helping entertain and coordinate activities for executives from Burgervill USA as they stay for a few days on the ranch just learning about the operation.

She will also learn to drive a stick shift truck, brand cattle, ride a motorcycle and horse, be lonely on the bald-headed prairie and drive 75 miles one way into Burns for church!  She will slaughter or rather watch them slaughter animals and she will be feeding deer, swimming in a pond, and who knows what else.

Breakfast bell rings at 6am and dinner at 6pm.  She does not live in the bunkhouse with the cowboys, or buckaroos, but will eat with them when they are not out on the range.  The woman who cooks for them has been there for 25 years, is mexican and she and her husband raised their 4 kids on the ranch.

She sleeps in a metal shack/house that has facilities!  No out house here!  But she is all alone unless they hire some cowgirls, which some years they do.

The Stacy Davies and his wife have 6 boys.  They are LDS, 3 boys have served missions, 3 yet to go.  The local ranchers have had some getting use to Stacy because he doesn't have an adversarial relationship with the government like the the other ranchers, yet he has been very successful.


-Kathleen Howlett 5/7/12