Pushin’ Up

July 1, 2020 by Sariah 2 Comments

Have you ever heard a rancher say they’re pushin’ up? Or maybe they say something like –

“Have you pushed up?”

“When are you pushin’ up?”

“I’m starting to push up next week.”

“I pushed up last week.”

What are they talking about? Does it have anything to do with pushin’ up daisies? No, it doesn’t.

Pushin’ up refers to moving cows to a new grazing allotment where the feed is better. Cows graze in areas called allotments and they can only stay in those allotments for a certain number of days as designated by the Bureau of Land Management. When we push up, it is typically to a higher elevation where the feed is still green and not as dried out as the low country. It could be up a mountain or it could be to another allotment on the high desert where the water sources are better.

Little groups of cows are gathered into larger groups. Cowboys line the cows out and push them in the right direction to help them find the gate to the new allotment. It can take a few days to gather and find all the cows, line them out, and push them up.

Let me explain this differently.

Imagine you have 100s of kids and they are scattered in Costco. Your job is to get them out the door by 5pm so they can have better food than the food samples. You spend all afternoon gathering them and another adult takes the lead so they know where to find the door. Gathering them and getting them moving in the right direction takes all day. Finally, you push them through the door at 4pm, counting them as they go out. You realize you are short a few kids, so you go back inside to find them, gather them, and send them in the right direction so they can make it out the door. This time they are all accounted for and they are pretty happy with the new food they get to eat.

It takes some time to push up. Day by day it gets done.

The next time you hear a rancher say, “I’m pushin’ up this week,” you’ll know exactly what he is talking about – finding all his kids in Costco and getting them out the door to have better food.

Jasper is on another ranch that has cows and calves. We only have yearlings right now. His push looks a little different that ours.

Why the Name Every Day on the Ranch?

May 24, 2020 by Sariah

The seed was planted.

How and why did we decide on the name Every Day on the Ranch for our blog?

Last spring, I remember sitting on the edge of my bed one evening looking through pictures on my phone. We had been getting ready and setting up for cow camp. Cow camp set up involves many trips up the mountain to haul horses and gear to camp, set up branding traps in several locations and take propane tanks to each of the traps. We set up tipis and a wall tent. We hauled up all the camp supplies, food, and water and the set up preparation could go on and on. I had taken some pictures each day while we were setting up our camp. As I looked through the pictures that night, I thought, “Something is happening every day at the ranch. What we do as a family is not a common thing. I should share our life as a ranching family.”

The seed sprouted.

As I thought more about blogging and sharing on social media I realized I needed to tweak the name I thought I would use. I didn’t like how every day AT the ranch (everydayattheranch) looked when it was one word and it wasn’t clear. I decided every day ON the ranch (everydayontheranch) was better and was clear and it felt right. I searched to see if anyone had claimed the name Every Day on the Ranch. It didn’t show up on any of the searches, so I claimed it as ours on several social media platforms.

The fall of 2019 I started learning about blogging, again. Over ten years ago I had a private family blog. A lot has changed in the blogging world since that time. By January of 2020 I learned enough new information to get to a point where I liked what I had created with the blog, but I didn’t hit publish.

In January 2020, I started posting on our Instagram page. This gave me the chance to post pictures and share things about our life to see if I was ready to blog. A few months have gone by and I feel like we are ready to go beyond the Instagram posts and do more and share more. It was time to hit “publish” on the blog. Content is created every day because of the things we do in our normal, daily ranch life. I need to transfer it all into picture and word form to share on the blog. But, I have been busy because…something is happening every day on the ranch.

The seedling has become a plant and it is growing.

Thanks for joining us on the start of this journey.

Our Family

November 11, 2019 by Sariah

We are Jeffrey and Sariah.

Our children are: Jasper, Justin, Joseph, Sage, Sophie, Saylor and Jimmy.

L to R back row – Joseph, Justin holding Jimmy, Jasper
L to R front row – Sophie, Saylor, Sage
PC: A. Walters

Our son, Jasper, got married in May of 2018 and his wife, Aspen, is a great addition to our family – she loves Nevada and the desert! Last September they welcome a little boy, Jubal, into their family. They live on another large Nevada ranch that is about two and a half hours from town.

We live on a ranch in the high desert of northern Nevada. Our lifestyle is becoming more uncommon and rare. We ranch, we have a large family, we homeschool, we work with our kids, and we live about 40 minutes from town. We want to share our lifestyle with you!