hi I'm Mike today starts a new series here on our wearing life where we get a
chance to take a look at the history of the ranch and what really keeps us here
from homesteads to battlefields to modern ranches during this series we're
gonna travel over hundreds of years in northeast Wyoming history and I hope
that you can join us as we look at it from the ground up on our Wyoming life
welcome back to our while in life is the picture Claire sometimes when you come
inside from outside likes to fog up on you if you're new here this is a great
place to start and if you're coming back thanks for continuing this journey with
us as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary no matter where you
are or what you're doing history is all around us it's from history that not
only we learn our best lessons but also sometimes find an explanation of what we
do and why we do it I'm really excited for this run of videos and I'll let you
know how it's gonna work each month we're gonna feature a video in this
series we're going to travel back to the time that this land was homesteaded who
married who and how the ranch was built we're also gonna live through the
conflict that people here had to deal with at that time and how they learned
to overcome it one of the questions we get all the time here is why we're here
why not just sell the place buy another ranch where things are easier and in all
reality that's a good question and it's one that we've thought of long and hard
my hope is that by the end of this series both you and I will have a better
answer to that question to start it we aren't going to begin when just a small
portion of this land was homesteaded back in the late 1800s we're gonna start
with us Aaron and my beginnings here the second video we ever made was called
our story chronicling some of our back story well now we invite you to come in
even deeper with more stories and some very hard decisions that had to be made
long before this was our Wyoming life
there and I met when we both worked here at a local radio station in Gillette
Wyoming I had come to this small radio station from Denver where I worked in
radio also but I took a step down to hopefully work my way off air and into
management I took a job as an afternoon disc jockey and music director and did
well I met Aaron shortly before leaving that station truth be told I was fired
not an uncommon thing in radio formats change ratings drop things happen and
lives are shaken up if you remember that show WKRP well it's town to town up and
down the dial that was my life Aaron however was in her home town where she
lived her entire life her mom and her stepdad Gilbert lived here and Gilbert
had three different ranches scattered across the county at that time I didn't
care much about that and quickly took another job moving away but this time it
was a little bit different as Aaron came with me I went to work for a radio group
out of Boston and I made it into management and ended up right back here
in Wyoming managing 17 different radio stations as a VP of Operations Aaron was
a sales manager at one of our stations and things went along like that for
quite a while Aaron's mom Rita and Gilbert kept on doing their thing too
they managed the ranches here and with an employee at each ranch to take care
of the day-to-day operations the ranch were on now was known as the south ranch
there was also the north ranch and the rawhide ranch which was purchased by a
coal mine years ago but Gilbert leased it back until they began mining it when
the person that took care of the south ranch on a day-to-day basis quit in late
summer Gilbert found himself in a pickle his
health was failing he couldn't do all the work himself
I needed help Aaron and I had just recently married and it was less than
four months later that Aaron called me and informed me of the situation back
home she told me of an idea for us to go back and feed for the winter take care
of the cows until her mom and Gilbert could find somebody to take care of the
place we both left our jobs a crazy stupid move both Aaron and I always had
a belief that family came first and with the experience that I had in management
I had jobs waiting for me when the ranch was past this little hurdle I had no
idea what I was doing luckily I didn't have to do much Aaron
and I came out daily we fed the cows I checked their water and that was pretty
much it after years of struggling to get started in radio overnights morning
shows and finally having to manage a bunch of people who all knew that they
could do my job much better than I could the break was actually kind of nice I
started doing voiceover work and Aaron took a job in town our first year on the
ranch was interesting to say the least everything about our lives had changed
we've gone from working corporate jobs Monday through Friday to working seven
days a week 365 days a year I think one of the first big shockers is one
Christmas Day rolled around and we had to go feed the cows who's also really
interesting to see how the work on their ants changed with how the seasons
changed on the ranch and feeding the cows every day in the cold and the snow
and the wind turned into calving and the cold as the snow and the wind and then
spring came and summer came and it was time to
hey and move the house to summer pasture and this job that is super monotonous
and boring every day during the winter changed and every day is different and
it was really interesting to see obviously we'd always had seasons it's
not like we were oblivious to seasons but the seasons on the ranch really
determine what your everyday is gonna look like after that winter and I'm not
really sure I had how it happened we slid right into calving I was thrown
into a brand-new situation one that I knew absolutely nothing about but there
I was helping cows be born and before I knew it it was spring now if you knew
Gilbert you would know that his mind worked like no other he didn't hire
somebody to come take care of the place after we left he had the people that he
wanted to do it even though we didn't know it yet there are a few occasions
that come to mind when I really thought this wasn't the life for us Aaron and I
were newlyweds we had put ourselves in an extremely situation a stressful
situation and boy we fought a lot I would definitely say that our first year
of marriage was not what I expected it to be I remember our first anniversary
which is something that I looked so forward to I think even from the time
that we got married I remember even the day of our wedding thinking about like
wow every year we'll get to celebrate this and and then our first anniversary
came around and we were on the ranch and we were hain it was during Haines season
and we spent the day both in a separate tractor Mike was probably cutting hay
and I was raking hay and I remember and just seeing each other as we drove by
each other in a field and Mike had a horrific day and we had tractors break
down and we went to dinner to celebrate our one-year anniversary with my mom and
Gilbert I had a greasy spoon here in town and we were
both filthy and tired and dirty and definitely not the one-year anniversary
celebration that I had envisioned in my mind there came a day when I went to
Gilbert and I told him this might not work stress levels were high I still
really felt like a fish out of water struggling to breathe and in this exact
spot Gilbert sat on his Gator I told him that
I didn't think I could do this now Gilbert wasn't an emotional guy he was
hard to the very end but I remember him saying don't leave me I need you right
here yes that was it I was always said but it was enough I went home that day I
talked to Erin and we both decided that if we're gonna do this we were going to
bury ourselves in it dedicate all we had to making it work I think it took us a
couple years to settle into the routine of the ranch and a couple of years for
us to really decide that this is what we wanted to do and I think the reason one
of the main reasons that that made us committed to this was not wanting to let
down family but also the tie to the land I started planting gardens and the land
was nourishing not only our dinner table and our family but I was able to start
sharing that at farmer's market and seeing other people come back week after
week looking for more and we both really got attached to the cows and I think you
know that tie to the land you know really did tie us to the ranch and then
making the decision to have a family and wanting our kids to get to experience
this life on the land really made us decide that this is what we wanted to
where we want it to be for the rest of our lives
I gave up on the idea of going back to radio and we both continued learning
learning by doing we started a family and settled down
into this life not owning a single thing guilt working for Gilbert but dedicating
ourselves to a life that we quickly learned grows on you
very fast it was in 2011 that tragedy struck Gilbert fell he broke his back
they life flighted him to Casper and then as Gilbert was taken out of the ER
and put into an ambulance that it was then that he looked at me and he said
run it into the ground Mike run it into the ground I'm I kind of still wonder
sometimes what Gilbert meant by that did he know that he wasn't gonna come back
to the ranch ever again did he expect us to fail or was it a battle cry and a
challenge to do more than he could ever have imagined as Gilbert laid in a
hospital bed we took turns with him he was never alone and although he wasn't
Casper I still had to feed cows this was late March and I drove back and forth
every single day the hundred twenty-three 20 miles through snow and
ice to make sure that I could be there for him not only in the hospital but on
the ranch also the morning of April 1st i sat next to him holding his hand
actually the whole time I was there we knew that he was close to the end he
couldn't talk but his eyes would open and I think he knew I was there this was
my most poignant conversation I ever had with Gilbert although he didn't say a
thing I wanted Gilbert to know that the one thing he cared about most in this
entire world the ranch was going to be taken care of when I would
gone I couldn't guarantee anything but I did promise him that I would do
everything in my power to make sure that the ranch would be around for years for
our kids and hopefully theirs I promised him that I wouldn't fail in
my job that I would do everything in my power to make sure that the ranch was
safe it was then that he squeezed my hand I mean he squeezed it tight and
with power that I didn't even know where it was coming from in his frail body I
knew that he heard me and I hope you believe me he passed away a few hours
after that and that promise sticks with me every single day that I'm out here
now the ranch belongs to Aaron's mom after Gilbert passed things did start to
change the day-to-day operation of the ranch was now totally on my shoulders
and Rita sold the north ranch to consolidate operations out here Grace
and Lincoln were born and that's strengthened our family bond on the
ranch within a few short years we all had a bond that I could never imagine
having anywhere else everywhere you look is a memory and if we traded this in for
an easier life some of those memories would be gone forever and we're making
our own memories our own history along with you
everybody has family history and as we head into this series taking us back in
time I would love to hear your stories your homestead your family how you ended
up where you are today when I was young I thought the journey through life was
pretty much a straight road you get a job you get married you have a family
you live life as I've learned I'm sure that you have that the road is never
straight there are always twists and turns the road doubles back sometimes
you hit one of those damn roundabouts things and you don't know what the hell
to do but you keep on moving often that's your only choice please subscribe
and come along with us as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary if
you like this video give it a thumbs up this series will continue next month as
we go way back and look at the homesteads of the ranch some of which
are still actually here battlefields the evidence of skirmishes that pockmarked
the land and the people that Forge the way for where we are today if you'd like
to support projects like this you can sign up on patreon to be one of our
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even adopt account using the funds from patreon we've been able to donate to our
local museums in order to get some help with our local historians as well as our
historical museums so this should be a lot of fun and I hope that you get to
chance along with us this week we have no
Thursday video that's due to Thanksgiving but I would like to wish
you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving holiday I'll see you again on Tuesday
for the project list and until then have a great week and thanks for joining us
in our Wyoming life