Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
We hope that this finds you healthy and happy as the year comes to an end. 2021 was a good year for us with some big changes in the mix. Thank you all so much for being a part of our life!
Zack and Patty are doing well, staying strong and continuing to work hard. Patty has had a feat keeping track of all the bookings and necessary adjustments due to Covid the last few years. However, in October and November she took advantage of some mild weather and free time to assist in starting and developing five young horses along with Justi, Bridgid, and Julia. Zack spent much of the year working on the normal building maintenance and farming tasks. But he got the opportunity to start a new project as Ben and Maria finally decided to build a house up at the Beach place. Zack has been assisting with the design, drawing, and building of this new home, just a few miles upstream from the main ranch site.
Ben has had a busy year managing pastures with the current and ongoing drought, while at the same time juggling horseshoeing and house building. The cattle are looking good and he welcomed a new foal out of his best rope horse mare, Lulu. He named the foal Beach to commemorate their new home up at the Beach place.
Maria was just as busy as usual all year, riding and training all day every day from March until September, until she sadly tore her supraspinatus muscle in her shoulder. This required shoulder surgery in October, followed by many months of recovery and physical therapy. She is healing well though and insists on cooking and taking care her niece and nephew while she is stuck inside.
Anna and Tom had a baby girl on February 18th and named her Sofia Patricia. She is simply amazing when she laughs and it brings so much joy into the room. Today she is working hard on walking, taking Grandma’s hands, and traveling all through the lodge. Arthur will be four come next February. He is continuing to work on his talking and taking good care of his baby sister. He is always up to something and loves to build! Anna is managing the horse herd through its natural transitions and training when she can while acting as mom, wife and horse guru.
The ranch had a fun-packed year with our guests and staff. The 2021 guest season was possibly one of the busiest on record, even with all the great staff and interns. Justi is back to Mexico for the winter, but she was able to work with three young horses (Cider, Chief, and Ocho) this fall which she is very excited about.
Julia is staying warm working through the so far mild winter we’ve had helping everyone with winter tasks and projects. She has a three-year-old colt named Jack she is riding, as well transitioning her project horse Maggie to the guest string for 2022. Tilly continues to grow it seems, but recently reached that milestone age of 1 years old!
Bridgid continues to work with her colt projects (Wyatt and Lynx) with more time to spend with them. She has learned a lot and had to get creative as both were keen on some aerial acrobatics to start!
Maddie is restarting and progressing some older horses that have come to the ranch this year with the hopes that they will be ready to work come next season. She continues to handle much of the day-to-day care of the horses and really enjoys the time she spends with them.
As usual, much has changed and yet very little has changed on the ranch this year. We have many new faces in the horse herd and we’re excited to continue their transition into the guest string while offering our staff new and exciting training opportunities. We’re hopeful that 2022 offers more opportunities for our European friends to visit the ranch again. Stay healthy and remember soon we will all get to be running free across the fields once again.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at the Rocking Z!
