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Some ranchers still work with draft horses. My neighbors feed calves using this team, Rex and Zeke. Like most draft pairs (and most relationships) one is more bold and one less so. Here you can see Rex taking the lead, picking the direction, and Zeke following where Rex goes. The history of the west exists because of strong horses and strong teams. The buildings on my ranch were hauled in board by board using teams like these from 30 miles away. It was a two day trip into the railroad town and back out to the ranch.
Some ranchers still work with draft horses. My neighbors feed calves using this team, Rex and Zeke. Like most draft pairs (and most relationships) one is more bold and one less so. Here you can see Rex taking the lead, picking the direction, and Zeke following where Rex goes. The history of the west exists because of strong horses and strong teams. The buildings on my ranch were hauled in board by board using teams like these from 30 miles away. It was a two day trip into the railroad town and back out to the ranch.
This is another very locally historic saddle. It is a Hamley and Company Saddle from Portland, Oregon, built in 1923 . It was commissioned by Night Lowe, whose family ranch is "next door" to mine. Then through unknown circumstances it was acquired by another neighbor around 1935, whose grandson owns it now. The tooling on this saddle is just incredible and the brass oxbows are very unusual. This is one of the most detailed and time consuming pieces I have ever done.
There are no native trees to the Nebraska Sandhills and the hills are so smooth that there is almost no native shade. In the absence of shade, horses and cows often just stand on the edge of a hill, shading each other and sharing tails to swat flies in the heat.
I spent November of 2024 in California along the Mendocino coast. There are many historic dairies and sheep ranches along the coast. Their barns and corrals are made of redwood and they are underneath long windbreaks of cypress trees; trees far taller than any growing in Nebraska. Short rows of blackberry brambles are native there as well. The fog drifts up from the ocean and wisps through the cypress trees. It is an environment foreign to my eyes which are accustomed to rolling grass hills. This is an unusual piece for me, a landscape, but the scale of trees to barns is so different than Nebraska agriculture. Sandhills ranchers might have a bit of tree worship because we work so hard to care for them and often don't achieve a 20 foot tall tree in a generation of caring for it and they are so necessary for blocking the wind! I thought these cypress trees were beautiful.
Prairie snows are so interesting because the ground and the sky can be the same value. Even the sun can disappear, part of the gray, yet light of those days. The ice clings to the soap weed spikes, breaking off with a rattle as horses graze by them. The ice falls down into a the pillow of snow, leaving a hole. It is cold and makes life harder, yet easier at the same time because the death of the plants on the surface of the ground creates new life under the snow for next year's grass. The harsh Sandhills desert could not produce the life that it does without this yearly death.
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Ranchers in the Nebraska Sandhills have always dealt with coyotes killing or maiming calves. Some ranches kept a herd of dogs, usually greyhounds, to catch coyotes. This piece shows two early settlers in our area, one from my ranch, with their coyote hunting pack. The man on the left is rolling a smoke and they are visiting about the hunt. |
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The young men on the trail from Texas going north were often 13-18 years old. They grew up quickly and even before "there was enough hair on their faces to catch dust" they were men. They ate a hard bread called "pan de campo" known as "Trail bread". |
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The invisible, unwanted hours of the day, those before dawn usually, provide the foundation upon which much visible success is built. Hardworking people, in agriculture and otherwise, exert their efforts in the dark, using hours that many people don't even know exist or ever have intention to use.
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R.E. Lamble and his horse Missy graced us with their presence at our branding again this year. Some people grow into the land and animals over their lifetime and they reflect the land; how it moves and acts. Their body language and movement reflects the softness, or hardness, of the land they've spent their life on. R.E. ropes gracefully and with fewer motions than most of the people around him. Missy doesn't waste a step. They are a team sculpted in time.
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This isn't a common style for my previous work, but I was so struck by our corral at sunset with the uneven posts reaching into the sky and the unsettling amount of curvature in the supposedly straight metal pole fence.
So many times in life, and in artwork we have a perception about something in our head and it isn't accurate to life. If asked to draw a corral I would draw a straight fence, perhaps curving with the land, but that would not account for time and animals wearing on the fence. |
