Here at Vickers Ranch, carnivorism is a way of life and a vegan is as popular as a pork chop in a synagogue.
On Wednesday evenings, everyone gathers on Gold Hill, a breathtaking spot overlooking Lake San Cristobal and the San Juan Mountains.
Slabs of meat (mostly beef) are grilled to perfection on a cowboy-style, wood-flame grill and home-cooked potluck dishes grace the sidelines.
Since 90 percent of Lake City’s visitors consist of Texans and Oklahomans escaping the brutal summer heat, potluck dishes tend to be buttery, eggy, cheesy and fried. . . and usually damn good.
Just two days later, the Vickers family holds another weekly get-together at the Friday night burger feed. You’ll find me babysitting the lonely veggie burger on the grill. Beans with bacon, chips and a five foot table filled with tasty potluck deserts complete our Friday meals.
A vegan can’t fall farther from the wagon than when visiting a dude ranch. Last week, one couple invited us to their cabin for dinner. On the menu: freshly caught rainbow trout appetizers. The husband was so proud of his catch, and the dish really was pretty….how could I resist?
Eating any kind of beef, poultry or other living creature is off-limits for me, but I refuse to be the kind of VegaNazi who can’t be open-minded enough to let loose once and a while and eat vegetable dishes that have been co-mingled with animal products.
I tasted the best homegrown Texas black-eyed peas simmered in a bacon broth this week. Was I going to miss the opportunity to experience a local culinary treasure, home-grown and handmade by a guest? Nope, not me.
Call me a hypocrite, but I’m going out of my comfort zone and loving it. Will this make me a carnivore after 22 years of not eating meat? Never. Just open-minded enough to know a good thing when I see it.
Putting in a good hard day’s work is good for the body. Put one in with good people, beautiful surroundings and fresh mountain air and it’s good for the soul. Do it on a ranch and you’ll likely get a chance to give your mind a good workout too.
I sit in front of a computer most the year, and have done so in fact for the past 25 years or more. There’s a scary thought.
Don’t be fooled by the plaque atop Gold Hill. At 96 years of age, Vickers Ranch patriarch ol’ Perk is alive and kickin’. His secret? It must have something to do with his outlook on life – that and a daily dose of whiskey. Just ask him how he’s doin’ and he’ll tell you, “Every day is a great day.”
Every day is a great day indeed when working with the Vickers. Ranch work at 10,000′ requires one to be fit for sure. And you can’t beat the beauty of mountaintop views or the calls of the coyotes for a good dose of awareness. Counting bales and troubleshooting a broken stacker or determining proper blade rotation on a multi-head mower tends to put the old noggin’ to work too.
This kind of workamping sure beats staring at a computer screen all day. What do you do to exercise your mind, body and soul?
After four years on the road and nearly 70,000 miles logged on the Dodge, there are a few places that have remained near and dear to us, the kind of place we want to go back to again and again. Vickers Ranch is one of them.
And now that the ranch cabins are for sale, there’s a lot more people who are going to discover the magic of this 100-year old Lake City legacy.
Recently I talked to Larry and Paul Vickers about the family’s exciting new Vickers Horse River Ranch Property that gives the public a chance to own one of their hand-crafted, historic log cabins.
In this 15-minute intervew we talk with Larry and Paul Vickers, whose family helped establish Lake City during the peak mining years of the late 1800s.
Jim and I worked at their ranch during 2008 when we thought we wanted to buy a small resort.
Then we realized: What, are we nuts?!
Now that we know the realities of the resort life, we can say we’re definitely not cut out for this kind of gig. The work was the hardest we have ever done but the family’s kindness and generosity made it all worthwhile.
Our adventures at the ranch were chronicled in blogs post such as:
We’ll hopefully be heading back to the ranch in a few weeks to get our share of hay buckin’, cowboy coffee and manual labor, so stay tuned for more Vickers Ranch workamping adventures.
Meanwhile, if you or someone you know would like to be a guest on our Blog Talk Radio show, drop us a line!
OK. Life must go on I suppose, as lonely as it is without Jerry …
But enough about my hay stories. By now, I’m sure you’re as tired of the hayin’ as I was when we finished. How ’bout some fishing?
This isn’t exactly timely anymore, but consider it my summer fishing report for Lake City, Colorado – from the Vickers Ranch fish ponds, to their upper ranch mountain lakes, to the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River.
A fun time was had. No gear was broken. And a few fish were caught. But not too many.
I told you nobody got hurt haying in my summary of workamping the hay season at Vickers ranch this summer
This is a good thing.
But this may come as little surprise – or a really big one – considering these safe haying practices I learned working with Paul:
Disregard the hanging bale spikes on the stacker no matter how many times you hit your head on them.
Ignore the same spikes when pushing any bales up to the top row that may have fallen loose. You can always just move your head really fast if they swing down, to avoid multiple stitches.
If just a few bales – or a dozen – are left in the field, climb up the loaded stacker and have your coworker throw them up to you.
To dump the extras before stacking that load, put the tractor in gear and let it travel on its own while dropping bales to your coworker. Note: the tractor will tend to go downhill.
Jump off the stacker without considering how high you really are.
If a chain breaks while trying to steer a stuck tractor out of the mud when your coworker is pulling with a bulldozer, duck. Quickly.
Hold the extra baling twine needed to tie bales together in your teeth. Just try no to step on it when you need to run around the stacker.
Go ahead, jump on the back of the loaded stacker for a free ride back to the barn. It’s not moving that fast. And just hold on tight.
Forget to wear sunscreen in the high altitude meadows.
Trust your co-worker not to flip the second table of the stacker up with you on top of the bales.
Sit on the stacker right behind the tractor on its way back to the barn. Diesel fumes are good for you.
Stand behind the stacker as you direct your coworker backing it into the barn. Don’t worry that he can’t hear you.
Even better than promised in my discussion of workamping as a ranch hand for hay season, we are proud to present The Vickers Hay Chronicles … an independent short film trilogy:
A LiveWorkDream production. Playlist Run Time: approximately 15 minutes. Average Video Length: 4 1/2 minutes. Filmed on location in the upper meadows at Lake City, CO by René. Produced and directed by Jim. Executive Producer and Key Grip: Jerry G. Dawg. Made possible with a grant of the Vickers family generosity.
Meet the Vickers, five generations of hay farmers working the family guest ranch. Find out why 94 year old Perk calls workamper Jim by the name Boll Weevil. Hear Larry Describe what’s in the hayfield. See Paul and Jim find out the truth. And watch the youngest Vickers play in the hay.
You probably gotta hear that one to get it. Or have gay friends. But the point is, ya gotta have a good sense of humor when it comes to hayin’ because things can go wrong which may ruin your day, or entire season. And when you’re a hayin’ there are an awful lot of things that can go wrong.
We actually got all the hay in the Vickers Ranch barn a few weeks ago now. But with so much that happened to halt the hayin’ this year, its amazing we got it in at all. In fact, according to the Vickers we still finished earlier – and with more hay – than any ever before.
Collecting and stacking hay is hard work, but first it must be baled. Before that it has to be raked into windrows. But to do that it must first be mowed.
All of the above depends upon the weather. Oh, and the equipment working properly. And nobody getting hurt.
Luckily no one got hurt, which is amazing in itself. But apparently, the weather was on our side this year. Holding out just long enough for us to deal with each of the myriad mishaps… Read the rest of this entry »
I simply despise blog posts that begin, “My it’s been a while since I blogged.” But when you’re workamping on a ranch full-time, there’s little time for blogging. So we’ve got a lot of catching up to do now that we’re on the road again. At least I do.
Please stay tuned for belated dispatches from our time at Vickers Ranch. In the meantime here’s a little sampling, in a slideshow …
Here on the ranch in Lake City, Colorado, summer seems to have flown by. That’s because it has.
Locals are saying they can smell autumn in the air. And I can sure feel it when we get up in the morning. I overheard one neighbor say that around this time of year, “you can almost hear the switch flip” indicating the changing seasons – the end of summer, and the oncoming freeze.
Ol’ Perk Vickers even said they once had 30″ of snow on the ground for Labor Day! It must almost be time to hit the road.
Walking into a real estate office and meeting a new agent is akin to sitting your butt down in a dentist’s chair. It’s just gonna suck, whether you’re there for a root canal or just a cleaning.
Unfortunately, dealing with certain kinds of professionals that can rip your teeth out, make you bleed, and rob you blind, just seems like an evil fact of life.*
During our travels we’ve seen tons of great properaty listings, but we’ve never walked into a real estate office to learn more. Recently though, we got up the nerve to do just that, after learning that our neighbor’s daughter works for a Lake City broker. Thinking, “how bad could it be if we have an in with a local?” we went in.
We heard there was a 40 acre property just north of town, for sale at $200k, an unheard of price here. When we got to the office, we learned the property was actually listed at $299k, which is way over our cash-only budget, but still closer to it than anything we’ve seen for that many acres of western Colorado mountain property, with water rights.
We asked the agent if we could see it anyways (not mentioning that only a winning lotto ticket would give us a chance to buy it).
“Oh sorry, you’d have to cross private property, only I can take you there,” he said.
On Wednesday evenings, everyone gathers on Gold Hill, a breathtaking spot overlooking Lake San Cristobal and the San Juan Mountains.
A vegan can’t fall farther from the wagon than when visiting a dude ranch. Last week, one couple invited us to their cabin for dinner. On the menu: freshly caught rainbow trout appetizers. The husband was so proud of his catch, and the dish really was pretty….how could I resist?
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