June Adventures at the Rex Ranch

June is definitely branding month. Each of the 18 ranches has a couple of brandings, and the cowboys travel around to help each other out.  The distance between the two furthest ranches takes 3 hours to drive pulling a horse trailer...much of it is on bad roads.  it's a family affair where the older kids are on their horses roping calves and the younger kids hand out water to the cowboys and play with their friends.

 It's not like you see in the rodeos where cowboys are chasing calves all over the place and scaring them to death by roping them around their necks. Instead they are roped by their back legs and secured by a collar around their heads.   It's pretty calm and humane. The wife of the hosting ranch serves a breakfast at 6:30, and then a big lunch around 11:00 when the branding is done.  Because each herd is large and the calves vary in age, each ranch hosts two separate brandings so it's a big deal for everyone involved and a lot of hard work.

Some of the roads here are flooded due to an underground aquifer, a rainy winter and spring, and a naturally high water table.  This road is how we would normally get to a ranch that is only 9 miles down our lane.  The alternate route is through cow pastures where you have to open and close gates, dodge cows at times, and the driving is pretty bumpy.  There is a bigger "lake" covering the same road with another detour, so it takes a good 50 minutes to drive the 9 miles.

Going a different route to the same property, we came across a damsel in distress.  She was driving on the road to one of her pastures when her 4-wheeler slid off the road into the lake and was tipping dangerously in the water.  We attached a chain to the front of the 4-wheeler and pulled her out. The engine started right up and she was on her way with a big smile on her face. When she saw our name tags she knew immediately who we were and what we were doing in the middle of Nebraska.

This is us on the way home from church getting a "Redneck Carwash" on our own flooded lane.

Growing up on a farm, Elder Fillmore knew the danger that a thistle could present to a property.  Once it goes to head, the whole pasture is full of them.  So as we travel around Elder Fillmore is ever alert, and if he sees some he will stop the truck, grab his shovel and bucket and dig up a thistle or three.  He'd determined to save the 228,000 + acres up here from the thistle curse...single handedly.


Here are a few pictures of some of the jobs we have been doing this past month.  Most of them involve Elder Fillmore up on a ladder, laying on the ground or in tight quarters.  I am either handing him tools, fetching parts for him, or painting and  plastering elsewhere in the house.

This was a project that I did on a Saturday.  The mailbox for the Ranch office was looking a little scruffy, so I gave it a facelift.  I couldn't do anything about the dents.



 

I got to dig four holes for a deck that needed to be built off the laundry room on the left. It wasn't hard because we live in the sand hills of Nebraska, so the soil is all sand.  Two of the boys who live here liked playing in the holes.



 Bruce took the project from start to finish with the help of his measuring tape, a level, a trusty saw, and his wife.

Bruce Installing a stove

Installing rain gutters

     























Replacing a broken dishwasher isn't usually a big deal, until you find that the pipes under the sink have been leaking for awhile.  Of course the needed part is an hour away.   

Water heater project.  Big heavy bunk bed in the way

Removing old vanity and sink

Drilling holes in bottom of vanity to accommodate pipes
Big vanity in a small bathroom....cramped working
conditions.

Finished vanity installation.  We also added a new toilet
and floor covering.

Hole in garage roof, letting skunks into house

Hole fixed

   

We helped with a concrete pouring project one day with 3 other missionary couples who are building a new house

These are just samples of our work projects.  We have also replaced a tub and shower surround, installed ceiling lights and fan, ballasts in light fixtures, repaired a sprinkling system and much more. Our to-do list is long!





















While Elder Fillmore was installing a new gas range, this charming young lady asked me to help her with her chores. We fed the cats and kittens, the dogs and new puppies, goats and sheep, and even the gold fish in a big trough.....but not the horses.  I was climbing over fences and lugging water and feed. It was quite the workout.  She gave me a big stick while climbing into the goat pen because there is a billy goat who can be most unfriendly.  She asked if we were going to sleep over so I could help her with her chores in the morning.  Tempting offer....but I had to decline.
On another work trip to their house to fix the sliding glass doors, the family was getting ready to leave for an animal fair where the two oldest (shown above) were going to show their goats.  (They both got ribbons, by-the-way.) . The new baby was all strapped into her carrier ready to be carried to the car, when the 2-year old came into the house covered in oil.
The dad had been changing the oil in his truck and left the pan of old oil unattended while he went in the house to get cleaned up for the fair. Curious child and warm oil equals trouble. While the mom and dad scrubbed down the little guy, I wiped oil off the floors and rocked the baby.  All in a days work!















Saga Of The Mushrooms -  We have enormous mushrooms that grow in our grass outside.  Elder Fillmore looked them up on line and found they were edible so he has been frying them up.  One day we noticed that some water drips through our bathroom ceiling every time the neighbors upstairs bathe their boys, so Bruce cut a hole in our ceiling to check things out.  A few days later we noticed a small mushroom in the tub.  Were mushrooms growing in the ceiling!  How could that be? Have the mice been nibbling on this mushroom?  Will Elder Fillmore try to cook the mushroom in our morning eggs?

Upon closer inspection we discovered the "mushroom" was a piece of dried construction foam that fell through the hole after the last bath upstairs.  Pretty funny!

We were asked to give the talks on Father's Day, which was pretty fun.  After giving some sage words of wisdom, and honoring fathers, I ended by giving snippets of comments that my own children had sent in to honor their father.  (He received the unabridged version for his Father's Day gift from the kids.)  When Elder Fillmore began his talk he commented that he felt like he had just heard the eulogy for his own funeral.  (We will definitely save the comments for the actual event.)

One last tender mercy to share.  After arising at 5:30 one day and working all morning in a remote location we made a trip to town to get building supplies for the coming week.  We took a different route which took us past historic Chimney Rock.

The whole day took longer than expected, so when we left Home Depot at 9:30 pm, we knew it would be 11:30 before we reached home.  After the first leg of the journey we were both struggling to stay awake, when we received a text from our daughter Jill who generally goes to bed earlier than 11:15 pm.  The message was simple, "Hi, how are you?  Love you!"  We were able to text back and forth (another tender mercy that we had reception on that long stretch of hilly, remote roads), and it totally revived us and kept us awake and engaged until we pulled into our driveway and toddled off to bed.  We felt that Jill had been inspired to send us that text at that moment.  The Lord truly looks after His missionaries!

                         

Off To A New Adventure

So, we sent in our paperwork for a 4th adventure with Farmland Reserve, and sure enough, they wanted us back!  We were set apart to serve at the Rex Ranch in Nebraska and sent to the MTC. (Missionary Training Center)

The MTC was thoroughly enjoyable and we felt the Spirit of Missionary work there.

We took two days to drive to Nebraska, spending a day with the Gabels, whom we knew from our Florida mission.   Using our heads, we stopped in Scottsbluff to do some grocery shopping before driving the final two hours to our new assignment. Yup, it's a two hour drive to do any significant shopping...much less to find a variety of places to stop and eat.  So much for a date night to.....anywhere!

This is the road to the Ranch office and to our new home.

We are living in half of the basement of the Ranch Controller's house.  They won't be moving in for two weeks, so we are doing some badly needed repairs before they come....like replacing a moldy windowsill, putting vinyl plank flooring in the kitchen/laundry room, repainting two existing decks, and building a third deck off the laundry room.  (Not to mention repainting entry doors and door frames.)

This is our front door.  Come inside and we'll show you around!  The window to the right is in our kitchen, but the windows to the left of the door belong to the upstairs tenants.

Room #1  The kitchen is a decent size and has more storage than we originally thought.

We had no place to use as an office/computer station, so Bruce built this desk out of dismantled desk parts we found in the Ranch Office garage. He's pretty handy to have around!  He's wearing his winter coat because the past two days have been pretty cold and incredibly windy.

This is our dining area.  It also serves as our study area, our lounging area, our guest reception area, and my computer area.  Notice the picture of the Savior on the wall.  Our first priority was to hang this picture in a prominent place where we could focus on why we are here and who our life should always be centered around.

Room #2 .  The bathroom is small but works!  It's almost big enough for two people to occupy at the same time....but not really.  Bruce is going to build a little stand-up shelf between the toilet and sink to add a little storage space....again, out of scraps from the original desk.

Room #3 .   The bedroom is a good size, and the bed is high enough off the ground that extra storage is available for boxes stashed underneath.

The bedroom also serves as our laundry room.  How convenient to be able to take clothes out of the dryer and hang them right up.  I can also roll up Bruce's socks and chuck them right into his drawer!

The ranch provides a truck for us to drive, as well as an equipment trailer that we can tow with us and there is another shop for us to use, over an hour away.  Our truck is a 2007 Chevy Silverado.

The first order of every day is to walk through our house and pick up any dead, and not-so-dead bugs that are on the floors, blinds or walls. You might say our house is "bugged".

Our nearest neighbors live right outside our door. 

A breach in the electric fence allows the cows to come right up to our front door to "greener pastures".  A herdsman will remedy that soon, but Bruce jokes that our resident landscapers are all around us mowing the grass and fertilizing at the same time.

Speaking of cows.  The other day when the cows were in our yard I was directing Bruce while he was pulling the truck full of lumber and flooring boxes into the garage and I stepped into an enormous cow pie that the trespassers had left behind.....both feet were affected.  Bruce thought he was doing me a favor and covered the cow pie with sand.  Well the next day, I was hopping into the truck to run a mercy errand when I stepped into the same cow pie...with different shoes on....but only one foot was affected.

Obviously the county does not collect garbage out here, so we burn the burnables and haul the non-burnables into a nearby town (15 minutes away), to a dumpster.  Even though we had only been here four and a half days, we had enough burnable garbage to fill the burn cage, due to the 20 boxes that the vinyl planking came in, and the moldy windowsill that we removed.  With the persistent wind blowing to fan the fire, it took no time at all to burn everything down to ashes. Yes, I had a hose nearby just in case of an emergency. Note the flames blowing outside the cage! We hadn't thought of buying marshmallows while shopping!

We went to church on Sunday at our small branch building (45 minutes away), and met a lot of wonderful people.  There were about 32 in attendance, but six of the people were other missionaries that will be living on the other end of the ranch and attending a bigger branch over there.  We get the feeling that we might have the opportunity to give a few Sunday talks while here.  The chapel is inside the first door on the left and is about the size of a standard Relief Society room.  The restrooms are both 1-seaters. It's quaint and small, but the Spirit there was powerful!

That's it for now.  We are happy to be here and have met some very friendly people.  We spent one afternoon driving through the small towns and visited with clerks in two of the Farm Supply Stores.  They recognized by our badges who we were and what we were about, so their reception was great.  We are grateful that all the missionaries who have been out here have been warm and friendly.

We miss our friends and family (and convenient shopping), but are glad to be here helping others. So long until next time.