Welcome to our Ranch

Welcome to R 121 Ranch!  We are glad you decided to visit.  Follow us to stay up to date with goings on at the ranch.  Throughout the year we focus on a variety of activities.  Each season finds us preparing for the next season, as well as engaging in seasonal activities.

In the winter you will find us occupied by clearing snow from our roads and around the buildings. As well, as doing equipment maintenance, caring for our animals and planning for spring irrigation, fertilization and planting.  For fun you will see us engaging in various community activities, snowshoeing, and occasionally skiing or snowmobiling.

As spring arrives (sometimes known as mud season), the snow melts the frozen ground turns to mud. There is an abundance of water, so everything turns green and the wildflowers start to bloom.  The animals that migrated to warmer areas for the winter return and give birth to their spring young.  As we anticipate the coming of warm weather, we get our garden areas ready for planting, we turn on the irrigation and begin irrigating the fields, we prepare the fields for planting and the coming growing season.  In what little spare time we have, we are hiking the property and adjacent public lands.

Summer is our busy season! We continue to irrigate changing our irrigation every 12 hours every day.  As the grass grows we will watch the weather carefully for a 10 day rain free period.  When we identify such a period we will harvest our hay.  This is the exciting season on the ranch, it is where everything we have worked for all year comes to fruition.  It is also a community time.  It is a time when my neighbors offer their wisdom and assistance to augment my relative inexperience.  Rebecca spends much of her time in the summer canning fruits and vegetables and making jams and jelly.  This is her time to experiment with new and unique flavors, like wild rose jelly using rose pedals harvested from the mountain paths above our house.  Summer is glorious on the ranch.  The days are long and warm, and the nights are cool.  It is a time when we observe the elk and deer with their calves and fawns.  We enjoy beautiful sunsets over our multiple ponds.  Late in the summer we excitedly anticipate a small herd of horses grazing part of our property.  We especially enjoy interacting with the horses, feeding them treats and caressing their necks.

As fall arrives we begin to close things down for the winter.  We winterize the equipment and drain the irrigation.  We move the summer equipment into the barns.  As the cattle ranchers move their cattle from the mountains down to the valley, we welcome a herd of 150 head of cattle to the property to graze until they are moved to their winter grazing range.  We are also busy gathering firewood for the coming wither.  While we don’t heat exclusively with wood, wood fires supplement the heating of our house and add a great sense of atmosphere to our indoor living space. Fall is an exciting time of the ranch.  We typically welcome hunters that come to try their skill at elk and mule deer hunting on the public land surrounding our ranch.

Throughout the entire year, Rebecca, enjoys baking seasonal flavors which provide us with continuous treats.  She also is active in donating the products of her labor to various nonprofit causes and selling to community members who request her offerings.  She specializes in “practical, ranch and western inspired baked goods”.  You won’t find in her cooking French pastries and intricately decorated cakes and cookies. What you will find are comfort foods and specialty treats that keep you coming back for more.

If you are looking for Dave and you can’t find him outside ,he is probably to be found in his hat making studio where he fashions custom and semi-custom hats, and cleans, reshapes and restores well used and vintage hats for clients throughout the Southwest United States.

We hope that you will follow along with us as we journey through the glory and wonder that is R 121 Ranch.