The Circle B Bar T has many meanings to Marty and me. The B stands for Baxter, the T stands for Teegardin, the Circle is our marriage and the bar is how we finished the brand. Our web site for the horses is circlebbartarabians.com, our e-mail address is circlebbart@nemont.net, and Clint's Etsy site featuring his art is circlebbart.etsy.com. What you'll see if you return to this site is more about Montana, Clint & Marty, their home, their animals and living on a Montana ranch.
See more of Clint's Photographs
21 July, 2009
What makes a happy rancher?
An abundance of moisture. It started several months ago, mositure, more mositure, and at the correct intervals. What does this mean to a rancher? The best pastures and hay crops in years. What evidence do we have? The Montana Bureau of Mines has monitored our well for the past 7 years. Our well has averaged 56 feet from the surface of the ground to the top of the water for the entire period of time. 3 months ago it was 45 feet, an increase of 11 feet of water in our well. The spring tank in one of our pastures has been full for the last 5 months with no signs of weakness, the Davidson Creek (you never heard of this one) has flowed thru our property for over 4 months. The result of this is more hay and pasture than Marty and I have ever experienced. This grass is shoulder high, you cannot see our Great Danes when we take them for a walk in the pastures. The picture of the round bales is just some of the 60 that our neighbors have baled for themselves in our fields. This is equivalent to our total hay crop in 2008. The other picture is our hay crew that had just finished putting over 1200 bales of hay into our shed . . . . and we still have 5 fields that need to be harvested.
Where do we get the crew? Our neighbor, Theo Yanzick, cut and baled the hay. The 3 young men pictured here are members of the Absarokee High School football team who are getting in shaped for the upcoming season. Josh Royce and Cameron Rice on the right side of the picture had just finished picking up and putting 900 bales into our shed in the last 24 hours. Jordan Rice and cousin Baily Osterberg helped on the final 300 bales.
Raised on a farm in Ohio, Animal Science major at Ohio State and then made a left turn and spent the next 38 years in the computer industry with IBM and Unisys. On our second trip to Montana, my wife and I ultimately set the criteria for a place to purchase as follows: enough land for some livestock, could not see our neighbors, no buildings on the property, and no chance of finding ourselves in an Aspen or Vail in our lifetime. We found the place in June 1991, built the first part of our home in 1994 and have lived here permanently since 1999.
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