Days 75-83
Oct 23-29, Traveled, TX, NM
GETTIN' M' COWGIRL ON
After my glorious time in Marfa I started to head further west into New Mexico for a stay on a working ranch. I could only find three ranches in America that would allow dogs and by pure luck Burnt Well Guest Ranch had a vacancy for their final week of the year.
The ranch is an hour from Roswell so I stayed overnight there. Someone described Roswell to me as ‘a strip mall and an alien museum’.. and that pretty much sums the place up. I did go to the “alien museum” or more grandly titled International UFO Research Centre and Museum. Like Roswell itself, it was looking rather tired and worn down and after an hour or so looking around I wasn’t exactly convinced that aliens had landed back in 1947. It seemed odd that now we all carry videos and cameras on us permenantly there hasn’t been any better UFO footage in recent years if they really did exist. According to several locals, the 'alien’ bodies were actually those of down-syndrome children who’d been abandoned at a local orphanage, which is why the military had to cover up the incident as they were using the children in test flights. Sadly this explanation seems more plausible than an alien invasion.
Back to the reality of Burnt Well Guest Ranch run by the incredibly warm and generous Kim & Patricia Chesser and their son Tye. Kim’s dad ran the ranch before him and it’s one of the few surviving owner-operator ranches in the region; cattle ranching is a tough industry to be in and wealthy people have driven up the price of ranches so it’s not affordable to raise cattle on them any more. But fortunately for me and the other couple staying - a lovely English girl and her Irish boyfriend - the Chesser’s hadn’t sold out and having guests helped keep the ranch going.
They had over 15,000 acres and 300 head of cattle - which doesn’t sound a lot, but you only count the adult cattle, so was more like 600 when you included the calves and with each head worth over $1000 when sold for beef you can understand how vital it was to keep the cattle healthy.
We were at the point in the season when the calves needed to be branded, vaccinated againts blackleg, tagged through the ear, and for the steers, castrated. First we had to round the cows up and this was in pastures of several miles wide, with hills, so no small task. We rode some excellent quarter horses and were in the saddle between 7-8am and stayed there until around 5pm with a break for lunch. It was tough, rocky ground to ride over but the horses and dogs that came with us were built for these harsh conditions. We also all had to learn to ride 'Western style’ which means much longer stirrups and you hold the reigns in one hand, it took a little getting used to but I liked the change from the English style.
Once the cattle had been driven to the alley - a metal alleyway with various corrals off it - we then had to separate the mums from their calves. This was the most fun job as we got to fully experience how responsive the horses were - you had to ride into the alley full of cattle, including bulls, and then use your horse to separate a calf out from the herd and drive it into a corral. My favourite horse for this was Jonah (pictured above), super responsive and a really smooth ride… and he had commically big ears.
Once separated the noise was defeaning as the cows and calves bawled for each other. Then Tye, Kim’s son, would rope a calf’s hind legs, drag him down so Kim could get the head in metal lock and within two minutes the calf was branded, injected, tagged and if male castrated. I was on injection duty, but I did also castrated one calf; experience of a lifetime! I have to say considering we had to snipe them open and pull the testes down before cutting them they didn’t complain that much, probably in shock!
Evenings were spent having dinner with Kim and his wife Patricia who cooked amazing Mexican and home fare, we were certainly well fed. Over dinner they told us stories of cattle drives and floods they’d endured, rattlesnakes and wolves.
It was a magical 5 days on the ranch, I loved the simplicity of getting up and out on a horse every day. Living off the land, watching Kim kill a rattlesnake with a rock - I even have the rattle from the snake to give to my nephew! - and the pleasure from driving 60 head of cattle by myself. By the end of the day you’re exhausted, I think I went to bed before 9pm every night. I would highly recommend visiting Burnt Well Guest Ranch if you ever want to experience a true working ranch and a completly different way of life.
I left Burnt Well feeling extremely content and ready to start heading back East towards NYC.