The Old Ways — And the Real Deal

 

Note: This story was dealt with in several scattered posts on Old Ones Dream back during the summer of 2013. The following is to collect and expand and replace those posts in more appropriate fashion.

Classic Rock, a Longhorn steer with a story and a part to play — one of the trappings of the Shade Ranch — at the foot of Tracy Mountain.
Photo by Old Ones Dream

It was a Wednesday evening, in January 2012, in Bandera, Texas. We walked up the hill from the campground for the weekly “BYO” (burn your own) supper at the Eleventh Street Cowboy Bar. The Bar furnished us with caldrons of flaming hot coals and sold us a plate with baked potato and salad for $5. So, you bring your own meat and you buy your drinks from their bar. The room was crowded and by the luck of the draw we shared a table for supper with North Dakota rancher Kim and his friend. We were in Texas by different means and for different reasons but we "hit it off." We talked about horses and the people that keep them. Kim loved Tanne's stories, especially the ones about the lead pony Big Red Fletcher. I was attracted to Kim's stories about his outfit in the Little Missouri National Grasslands amongst the North Dakota badlands. He told us that he gathered several hundred acres of grass the old fashion way, as loose hay, in stacks instead of in bales, and that he used 60-year-old tractors and horse teams in the process. Bandera is famous as a “cowboy town” that is arguably “all hat and no cattle,” but Kim was obviously the real thing. I had won my bride, she says, because I wore old boots, had two old cowboy hats, and horses and cattle — so I know. I invited myself to be hired on his haying crew at Shade Ranch and we agreed to stay in touch.
    From Bandera, Kim headed out to the Big Bend, to check out the area around Fort Davis before heading home to North Dakota.

In the spring and summer of 2012 there was no rain in the Little Missouri National Grasslands and no grass — so no hay. I setup Medora, ND in the weather "app" on my smart phone and I watched then as the snows came all winter and the rains came all spring in 2013. I got a call from Kim with several weeks lead time to let me know to get ready and come on up to "hay camp". He said the grass was so green that the badlands looked like Ireland.
    I got my affairs and my gear in order and in the middle of a Thursday night boarded Amtrak in Greenville, South Carolina bound for Minot, ND. The Crescent Limited (New York - New Orleans) took me from Greenville to Charlottesville, The Cardinal (New York - Chicago) took me from there to Chicago. The Empire Builder (Chicago - Seattle) dropped me off in Minot, North Dakota first thing Sunday morning. I took a cab from the train station to the airport and picked up a rental car and drove to Medora, ND, arriving in the mid-afternoon. I met Kim and Jay Hicks, his part time cowboy, at a local bar and grill. I was appropriately hatted and booted and Kim looked at me and said, “you’re going to fit right in.” Kim is a traditionalist, a bit of a reenactor, and requires authentic buckaroo duds and rags of his helpers — no ball caps and tennis shoes at his roundups and brandings. That afternoon was day one of 4 weeks of hats and boots and rural social life.
    I slept on an air mattress on an open loft over the great room and kitchen and shared a down stairs bath with the master bedroom. Jay lived in the furnished basement. He worked an oilfield job and left for work each morning at 5:30 and returned about 3:30 or 4:00.
    My first assigned tasks were to feed and water the chickens twice a day, to tend the garden, and to rebuild the carburetor on the riding lawnmower. I also began to do much of the cooking and rebuilt the blade and sickle bar of a single bar mower that had obviously been in limited use. Kim worked on preparing the main double bar mower while working and moving cattle with Jay in the afternoons — all done on horseback. There are no 4 wheelers or any other ATVs at Shade Ranch. All cowboying is done on horses. If the work is a long distance from the ranch house then the horses are saddled and loaded up and trailered to the work location. The operation spreads over 17,000 acres of owned land and leased public lands.
    I made most of the runs for parts and other supplies, to Belfield and Dickinson in the rental car, known now as “one trick pony.” Jay would pick up other needed items on his way home after work. I don’t remember much grocery shopping — we lived out of the garden and from the home freezer where there was an ample supply of beef liver. Kim once cooked a memorable pot of ox tails, which he gave a decent burial after one meal. At Kim’s behest; I picked lambs quarters leaves, a very nutritious wild member of the Amaranth family. I found them in the corner of the horse paddock and cooked them as greens. They were tasty. We had good breakfasts of eggs and potatoes and bacon.
    After 5 days of preparing equipment, and a trip to Miles City, Montana, to pick up the square baler from the repair shop, we were prepared to make hay. We started in the alfalfa fields down south which had been lush but weren’t any more because alfalfa pests were quickly eating the crop alive. We salvaged what was left of it, mostly stems — a disappointment to Kim. And then we moved on to the pastures of lush native grass.

Single bar sickle mower
Photo by Old Ones Dream

Double bar sickle mower
Photo by Old Ones Dream

After the grass was cut down flat with the mowers, it cured quickly in the airy sunshine and low humidity. It was then raked up with a side delivery rake into windrows the length of the field, resembling a rope of piled hay. Once the hay was in the windrow it continued to cure. Next it was pushed into what is called buck piles by running a circa 1970s John Deere 3010 tractor and Farm Hand Loader down the length of the windrow until the loader fork was completely loaded with a mound of hay. Then the operator would veer to one side, stop, and reverse away from the newly created buck pile and back onto the windrow line. Then the process would be repeated pushing up the next buck pile, and the next. The buck piles, resembling small haystacks by the hundreds, are left for a day or so to settle and then the JD 3010 and loader returns and stacks the individual buck piles in 12 ton loaf shaped hay stacks. The haystacks are stored outside until fed. The low annual rainfall and snow cover on the stack maintains the hay quality. The timing of all of this is managed based on the weather and the forecast with the primary goal of not getting any flat hay rained on, and secondarily, to not get any windrows rained on. Kim came pretty close to managing that perfectly.

An almost complete 12 ton loose hay stack. After it settles for a few days, it will be topped off with a few more buck piles. Photo by Old Ones Dream

 

 

Pushing and stacking hay at sunset
Photo by Old Ones Dream

After 8 days of non-stop field work from dawn to dark — ”from can to can't" — we swept up the last of the as yet cut flat hay just as a high wind with a little lightning blew through quickly and a good slow rain set in to settle the dust and renew the earth. The interruption allowed us the time to renew ourselves physically with a couple of extra hours of sleep, fresh washed clothes, and trimmed whiskers. I once heard a cowboy poet, an estimable woman named Jerry Brooks, say that "there has never been a Presidential Inauguration as important as a good slow two inch rain,” and that concept is universally appreciated by those who live on the land in the western United States.
    Next morning, I made a run to Belfield, 20 miles east, to the NAPA store for parts and back west to Medora for a buffalo burger lunch and some internet access. We got back on the mowers that afternoon for the next push. We had by then stacked more than half of the 450 acres of hay. I would get back on the train East in about 10 more days.
    We cut and raked and stacked and repeated. We rested and washed clothes and made repairs when it rained, and the three of us went down to Medora one Saturday night. Jay Hicks was a man with a good heart, and he was good company when we three met up around the Yeti Cooler at the end of the day. I hope he is well.
    For the Fourth of July we got off early, but not early enough. We headed out to celebrate with young rancher friends of Kim’s down on the Cannonball River. We first swung by Dickinson and washed clothes at a coin laundry, and arrived at the celebration too late for supper but in time to literally get shot with Roman Candles — I had holes burnt in my shirt as proof. I slept that night in a bedroll under the stars. We were back in the pickup before daylight and harvesting hay again by mid-morning.
    I estimated at the time that we stacked over 150 12 ton haystacks for over 400 head of cows, calves, and yearling steers. Kim claimed to not know how many acres it was but by my own time and motion study, I calculated it to be around 400 acres. Because of the heavy snows and good rains, the cows needed fewer acres to graze and so there were more acres than usual to be hayed, and the hay yield per acre was excellent. The two of us got it cut and stacked or baled in 18 consecutive days, interrupted by three high plains thunderstorms and some equipment breakdowns. Kim and Jay kept the cattle tended, and I made the parts runs, kept us fed, and did our laundry. Jay and I kept the Yeti stocked for when we gathered around at the end of the day. It is easy to see that all of that would have provided employment for many horses and people if it had been done with horse teams.

Kim and Jay after a late afternoon cattle drive
Photo by Old Ones Dream

When I signed on to help with harvesting that hay crop I had been told that horse teams were used there and so I had visions that came straight from the pages of Ivan Doig's 1979 memoir, This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind; and his novels about homesteading and ranching near the Rocky Mountain Front.
    But there was not a horse team at Shade Ranch.
    Although Kim Shade still talked about using a horse team to feed hay in the winter, it seemed that he was in transition and taking stock. He told me that he was letting an Amish family use his team to keep them fed and working. I think maybe he had softened a little to the idea of using a tractor with a heated cab to feed hay.
    The 2013 harvest was accomplished using Kim’s preferred system of aged tractors and equipment. His only departure from the Old Ways of stacking loose hay was to bale 3000 small rectangular bales of the surplus bounty (about 60 tons total) to feed horses and to sell, but that was from just a small part of the total acreage harvested. For that task he used the baler pictured below and a mechanical bale loader and stacker.

1952 Model 88 Oliver raking windrows
Photo by Old Ones Dream

That summer of 2013, appeared briefly to be the Swan Song of the Old Ways of making hay at the foot of Tracy Mountain. Kim had always railed against the expensive modern haying systems that his neighbors used to cut, condition, and bale the big round bales — and he said that he just couldn’t stomach that — and so I was shocked when he told me the next year that he had given in and bought a big round baler. And then he told me that he hated it: he hated operating it, and he hated the esthetic disaster that his pastures had become when covered with big round pills, instead of his sacred ground of 12 ton loaf shaped hay stacks. He was one of the last of his breed to tip over to super mechanization in order to save labor. But not for long. He told me that a hired man burned up the big baler and the tractor and 250 tons of hay — and he returned to making hay the old way. And the horse teams returned to Shade Ranch — and the pack horses.
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As I talked with Kim about haying with horse teams, he said that the guru is a man named Buck Bucholz down in the Nebraska Sand Hills. When I started the research for this piece, I discovered that there is not much information out there on the subject of horse teams and hay. At the web site for Rural Heritage Magazine, I did find a post written by an "rdennis" about a horseman named Buck Bucholz or Buck Buckles. Here is that post quoted with permission from Rural Heritage Magazine.

Buck Bucholz feeding hay
Photo courtesy of Rural Heritage Magazine

Buck Bucholz
Posted by "rdennis" at 2012-02-13 10:26:56
            Got to thinking after my last post on here, I mentioned Buck Bucholz from down in the northwestern corner of Nebraska. He is one of the few who was still using teams to put up and feed hay. He is a legend in that area and around these part and a hero to many of us who know about him and his horsemanship. Maybe you folks have never heard of him.
            I have a friend, who, years back, made an appointment to go see Buck and maybe buy a team from him. It was middle of the winter and Kim, my friend, got there a bit before daylight. Buck stepped out of the house and told him to come in and have a cup of coffee and maybe a bite to eat. They did. Then they walked out to the barn where 6 Percheron's were standing, already harnessed, in their stalls as Buck had already been out before Kim had arrived.
            Buck opened the big doors wide and then walked up and untied every horse in succession and they walked out the door by them selves. Kim said when they got to the last one, the turned him loose and then followed him outside and there were all of the horses standing in the yard, lined up as they would be for 6 abreast. Buck walked up and hooked all his lines and cross ties up and then drove to a hay sled and they went and fed cows.
            Buck told of having a set of teams one time who were so good and well trained that he decided to see just how long he could drive them while feeding and not have to pick up a line. Just use voice commands alone. Someone asked how it worked out. He said, "Worked real good for about a month then I just had to pick up one line to help straighten out one horse."

It is easy for me to conclude that this “rdennis” is Kim’s friend Robert Dennis; and that in this telling, Robert’s friend Kim that visited Buch Bucholz that morning is Kim Shade. Robert is a singer songwriter rancher in South Dakota, a leather-smith and saddle maker who crafts chaps and other cowboy trappings, and who writes about family and ranching. I have not had the pleasure of meeting him in the flesh but we listened to one of his CDs the morning of that trip to Miles City to pickup the square baler, and we sometimes jostle each other on our blogspots.
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In July of 2020, I drove all over the grasslands of Idaho and Montana. It was all hay, “As green as Ireland,” and I didn’t see a single large loose haystack. I saw mostly large rectangular bales, which lend themselves well to mechanical loading and stacking, they will not roll down hill, and may be less likely to burst into flames. It appeared that most of the preparation work was being done with self-propelled cutter/conditioner/wind-rowers — a one-man system for large acreage and large herds.
    Kim’s operation required a part time cowboy to help him see to the cattle during haying time. And he needed an extra equipment operator during that time. For a while, Kim had difficulty getting the help that he needed because of increased competition from the oil field. North of Medora at Williston, the Bakken Shale Play had driven North Dakota to become the second largest crude oil producing state in the United States, second only to Texas. Wages were high and outsiders were streaming into North Dakota for the many lucrative oil field and refinery jobs — with some people reportedly camping in highway culverts and shipping containers. Then, family and work caused Jay Hicks to move far enough away from the ranch to not be able to cowboy part time with Kim.

Jay Hicks, Oil Field Cowboy
Photo by Old Ones Dream

Shade Ranch is an organic grazing operation. The cattle are fed only hay. The only soil nutrition supplementation by man is several tons of minerals each year that are fed to the cattle, and the spreading of manure and rotted hay to the spots that need it most. Meadow Lark Beef (meadowlarkbeef.com) is Kim’s grass fed-beef business. The website tells the soils, plants, animal and human nutrition story very well.

When Kim saw the first reports of COVID-19 at Wuhan, China, he sold his herd and retired that week. He kept 20 Longhorn cows as trappings and for breeding. He leased his grazing operation to his friends at Richard Angus Ranch and launched a new life as a horse and teams wrangler and consultant — buckboards, chuckwagons, stagecoach and prairie schooners — for movie sets in Medora and the Badlands.

It is a cultural fact that the definition of “the real deal” is a matter of opinion. Some Outfits, like Kim’s will wear cowboy boots and hats and buckaroo duds all of the time, while others choose to wear cowboy boots and helmets when working on horseback, and cowboy hats and work shoes when working on foot. But it is a scientific fact that the carbon sequestration channel comprised of growing plants returning carbon to the soil through their roots, is enhanced and energized by the grazing and soil cultivation of cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle and bison. So, Richard Angus Ranch cattle grazing the well managed grasslands on the Shade Ranch Conservation Trust are inarguably “the real deal” whether they are tended by real cowboys wearing authentic buckaroo duds and boots, or real cowboys wearing helmets and work shoes. It is a real deal for the Earth and for future generations.

The oil fields and refineries are quiet now, and the dust has settled.

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The visitors see Blue Duck coming down these roads and they say ‘here comes the real deal’ and so, we are.
- Kim Shade

Being a friend of Kim Shade is always a great adventure, but it ain't free.
- Dick Taylor, Medora Artist and Musician
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The writer and Blue Duck, the 1971 ranch truck with long expired South Dakota tags.
Photo by Old Ones Dream

 

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