(Garrett inhales deeply) - Ah, nature. Hi. I'm Garrett.
- And I'm Niki.
- We're fascinated by how other people live.
- [Niki] So we're gonna try to find
some really interesting living situations.
- [Garrett] And live there,
experiencing a totally different lifestyle.
- [Niki] To see which ones will bring us closer together.
- [Garrett] Or push us farther apart.
- This week, we're livin' on a ranch!
This is what ranches look like.
- It's thousands of acres. - It's huge.
(hip muzak)
(upbeat guitar music)
- I'm Jeanne. - I'm Eric.
- [Jeanne] And we're here at the Cold Creek Ranch,
and we've been on this ranch for 12 years.
- [Eric] This idea here is to apply everything we know
to manage the land for its best health.
Not for the cattle's health. For the land's health.
- And then the cattle's health will follow.
- Lifestyle on a ranch, to me,
sounds like you're wearing cowboy boots
and you're using those cowboy boots to step
in horseshit all day long.
- I've never lived in any sort of ranch or farm
or wild countryside in the Wild Wild West.
Wild. (laughs)
- [Jeanne] We're our own water company,
our own electric company.
Only one part of the ranch has real electricity.
- [Eric] A typical day could start out shoeing a horse,
and because of something happening two hours later,
you might be repairing a water line.
It's all over the place all the time.
- All I know about ranches is what I've seen
on TV and movies.
Not a great frame of reference.
I feel like I'm gonna meet a farmhand
and fall in love with him while he carries hay bales,
and I sit inside drinking tea in a ridiculous pink dress.
- A lot of people get excited about ranches. I don't get it.
I don't think horses are cool. I don't think cows are cool.
I don't like the idea of ranches.
I like barbecue.
- Look at this beautiful door.
Is that a horse foot knocker?
- Yes. - Yep.
- [Niki] Use it.
- [Eric] That's actually Trampus' foot.
- Niki and I, we live in a lot of different places
that all feel like the 21st Century.
This feels like it's from the late 1800s.
That wood-burning stove in there is amazing.
- [Eric] This is the only heat we've got.
- [Niki] Oh, my goodness.
- We only have this house about three week out of the year
and the rest of the time you're trying to cool it off.
- I've lived my entire life in cities.
This is gonna be a very, very different lifestyle.
I'm pretty scared.
- [Eric] This is the living room,
although there's gotta be a better name for it than that.
We're turning it into a library.
The wood work is all made by local joiners
who really know their craft.
It's hard to join something that's not straight.
I'm gonna show you the way upstairs.
- [Jeanne] We have the Western Room and the Africa Room.
You guys can choose. Flip a coin.
Whatever you want to do to decide who gets which room.
- Do they join? - Yes, they do.
- There's a shared bathroom in between them.
- This is perfect.
- So this is the Africa Room. - Wow.
- [Jeanne] We have spent a lot of time in Africa.
- To be honest, that thing freaks me out a little bit.
I mean, it's very beautiful, but...
- The eyeballs. - Yeah.
- So you can have this room. - That's fine.
- I think this is gonna require
a lot of early mornings and labor.
I am probably gonna look like a real stupid city kid.
I'm not gonna know how anything works.
- I'm really nervous about this ranch.
Hopefully we can rely on each other
instead of feeling burdened by one another.
- I don't think it will bode well for our relationship.
- Well we're gonna head on up the telephone trailer.
This is something I do usually once a day
because there is no cell phone coverage
down at the bottom of this canyon.
- So many people now think of a landscape
as just sort of a backdrop.
It has nothing to do with anything they do in their lives,
and they come away from here generally
with a very, very vivid idea of just how involved
we are with our landscape.
It's a lifestyle. It's not a career in that sense.
- [Garrett] It blew my mind that you could own
all of the land to, basically, the horizon.
- [Niki] We got to see as much of the property
as we could from one vantage point, which is crazy
because that's something like ten thousand acres.
- They only have to conserve electricity at night
for six weeks out of the year.
And we just happen to be here during one of those weeks.
- [Niki] We cooked dinner in the dark.
Which was a little scary because I was working with knives,
but still have all my fingers.
Tomorrow should be a full day of work,
and it's really whatever the ranch needs
taken care of tomorrow is whatever we will tend to.
- [Garrett] Let's go say goodnight to Niki.
Okay, goodnight Niki. - Goodnight.
- Sleep tight. I'm just gonna be...
- Right over there. (they laugh)
- In there. With my door open so the heat stays.
- Goodnight. - Goodnight.
(loud bang)
- Ooh, god. - Ooh. Are you okay?
- No, it wasn't my head. That was the thing.
- Okay. (laughs) - I'm fine.
(bright string music)
- It's about seven-ish AM, and I think it's raining.
So I don't know what that means for today,
but we might have to change our plans.
- Good morning, guys. - Morning.
- Thank you for breakfast. - You're welcome.
- [Niki] Thank you so much for breakfast.
- [Garrett] There are the solar panels.
They're not gonna get much electricity today.
- We've made some alternative arrangements
depending on how up to learning how to shoe a horse you are.
- How many horses did you say you got up here?
- [Eric] There's four in here now,
but we got three more up on top
and then a whole bunch of strays
over on the other side of the ranch.
- Get outta here. Leave me alone.
- Garrett's taller than the horse.
- I'm gonna feed ya.
- [Niki] We had to switch to plan b
which involved taking care of the horses.
That was kind of an opportunity
that Eric and Jeanne had to do tasks
that they don't usually have time to do.
She didn't choose me.
- This is Sugar right here. The deep red one.
- [Niki] You so pretty.
Sugar needs a new pair of shoes.
- Two pairs. - Two pairs of shoes.
- So one of the main purposes of trimming horses' feet
is to make sure that finger nail is trimmed back
so it doesn't interfere with proper movement.
Now I've pushed the tang away from me
and use only the corse side.
Pulling is easier than pushing it.
And you go around like that until you shape it.
And you'll see there's a white line here.
You don't wanna go any closer in than that.
But that's how we're gonna do it.
(upbeat muzak)
- [Garrett] Been wrestling with Sugar
for a little while now.
It's tough working with this gigantic animal
that can kill you if it wanted to.
- [Eric] Come on.
- This horse doesn't even know what's good for it.
This is gonna be so much nicer.
Come on.
(Garrett sighs)
- Alright. Hi again.
Hello.
It's cold. I can't feel my hands.
Been out here for like an hour I think,
and we've done two of Sugar's feet.
It's like a pedicure.
- Looks like half of a coconut.
- What? - It does, doesn't it?
Look like half of a coconut?
- No.
- I'm gonna confess something that may not
be that surprising.
These are my first time putting on chaps.
- Well, your first problem is pronouncing it correctly.
It's 'shaps', not 'chaps'.
Chaps are British dudes.
- So this is to protect us from horse nails.
- In this case, yeah.
- Can you help me?
Garrett and I have just been working all day,
but we've been working together so I think,
you know, we're enjoying each other's company.
- How's that? - Good.
- [Garrett] We were doing things way
outside our comfort zone so it was really nice
to have a friend check in on me to make sure I was good.
- How do I look?
- Great. Like a million bucks.
How do I look?
- Fine. - Alright.
- You look like your chaps are too short.
- Mine? Yeah.
(bright string music)
- So the trick is to drive the nail
in such a way that it goes through, gets a good chunk
of the hoof without cutting into the quick,
and still enough coming out the other side
that you can crimp it.
- I don't have enough hands for this.
(laughs) I just keep missing.
Oh, my hands! This is tough stuff.
And I feel like a total weenie, but it's rewarding, I guess.
This is part of taking care of your horses.
- How ya doin'? Ready for another one.
Eric said when he came out to this land
he would shoe eight horses a day.
A filing and nailing it in, and oh my god.
It's a lot of work.
You got it Niki. Keep at it.
- I'm half covered in poop.
I can't believe we did so little in four hours.
We gave her two shoes because we were taking too long,
and she was getting fussy.
- My hands are so tired. I can't even hold a hammer anymore.
And if I swing a hammer it's gonna fly outta my hand.
If I had to do this by myself, I don't know what I would do.
I guess I would shoe a horse with one shoe a day.
(uptempo harp music)
- After lunch, we oiled saddles.
- That sucked.
- We are going to be doing annual maintenance
on our working stock saddles.
- Should I take off my cute socks?
- Well you could actually use your cute socks to oil with.
- I'm gonna go change my socks.
- You just go ahead and put some oil
on the sponge and just sponge it in.
- [Niki] How do you know you've done enough?
- [Eric] Well, the oil soaks right in,
but you can see the difference.
- [Niki] So far it's just a lot of work
with your hands. Huh?
- Pretty much. - Manual labor.
- [Garrett] There's like a latitude here.
I guess I'm more used to like a precision
for everything you have to do,
but here, there's really a latitude
of like "Yeah that's fine. Yeah that's fine."
Which is what you need to survive out here.
- It is a hard life out here, and now I totally get it
when Eric says it doesn't matter what day it is.
They do what they have to do,
and they do what the ranch demands.
It's been like, what, a few hours now?
- A couple hours anyway. - A couple hours?
I think we're done. I'm done.
- I wish I were done. - Garrett's not done.
Just a lot of work!
It's a lot of work.
- It's a lot of work just to be able to work.
- My body is sore.
When I was sittin' there oiling the saddles,
I kind of noticed my leg was hurting,
and I found a gnarly bruise.
Here's the bruising. It's kind of blue.
Pretty gross.
- Today was just a grueling day,
and it wasn't even as grueling
as it could have been because of the rain.
- We still have another early morning ahead of us tomorrow.
Maybe the cows if the weather permit it.
We're not done yet.
Night.
- Goodnight, Niki. Good job with the horse.
(laughs) - Thanks. Night.
It's the morning of Day 3.
It doesn't look like it's raining so let's go see some cows.
(bright staccato string music)
- What we'd like to do is show the cows that we have
some additional supplement for them right now.
- Feels like a heavy med ball, you know.
- [Eric] Well, you get your exercise this way.
I can guarantee you.
- How many cows do we need to lure
in order for this to be successful?
- [Jeanne] We got fifty last time.
- You're looking at probably 30 right now. You can see them.
- I don't see any cows.
- Two right on the horizon there?
- Yes. Yes, I do. - Then on the ridge land.
- Oh, okay. And then I see a third one there.
- And another one down there. - Okay, so that's three.
- Heeeey coooows!
- Literally, hey cows.
- Yep, and I just do like this to kind of broadcast.
- Heeeey coooows!
- That was good. - You should try, Garrett.
- Heeeey coooows!
(cow moos in distance)
- [Eric] Alright, we're comin'.
(mimics cow sound)
- [Niki] It's like Chewbaccaca.
How long do we do this for?
- 'Til the come around. - 'Til they come?
- [Jeanne] This is the other lesson
you get from ranching is patience.
- Yeah. I'm noticing that one.
Heeeeey cooooows!
(cow moos in distance)
It's been only half an hour, forty-five minutes
of calling cows out here and we think it's too cold,
and they've kind of settled in for the day.
- You did a good job though. You got 'em moving.
You got 'em started.
- Thank you. Yeah, we got some progress made,
but not a whole lot.
- Thank you guys. - Thank you.
- Niki? Hi.
- Oh my god. This is one of the most difficult
living experience I've ever had.
- It took so long to get out to
where the cows are, and it's so hard.
And you just gotta be doing it for the good of the cows,
For the good of the land, and to survive.
- [Niki] Jeanne and Eric took care of us very, very well,
but taking part in a tiny part
of their lives has exhausted me.
It's physically challenging,
but it's also mentally challenging.
- I thought it was going to be Niki and I
barely hanging on and kind of looking
to each other for, sort of, strength,
but Niki was so strong shoeing the horses
and calling the cattle and doing everything.
- There's no time for Garrett and I to be annoyed
with each other or to piss each other off.
We were shoeing a horse, and when he couldn't do it anymore,
I had to step in and do it.
And when I couldn't do it anymore,
he would step back in and do it.
- At the end of the day, we were just there for each other.
This landscape can get really lonely
so it was great to have her there.
- It's only been three days
and I feel like my body's falling apart.
- It's so hard to live out here,
and I have so much respect for the people who do it.
- [Niki] Say bye to the Africa Room.
- Bye, Africa Room.
(Niki laughs)
- Next week - On Home Buddies...
- Earth ships.
- [Garrett] It sounds a little high highfalutin
and hippie-dippy.
There's a garage with, like, plants in it.
- I think they grow their own vegetables?
- That's kale. - I hear birds?
- There's birds. - There's birds?
This is fascinating.
- [Garrett] We're doing a pretty bad job,
but we're learning.
(hip muzak)