Thanks for the explanation of your horses' tack, mustang. I couldn't recall the name "britchen" for that piece on the back. Your explanation makes sense.
I sort of remember it from my grandpa Calhoons' draft horses which were still on the ranch after he died. Guess everyone was afraid to sell them! I know they did fear another bad blizzard like the one in '49, and we did get one in '52, and it was earlier that year that he died, so he was right......again! The draft horses were helpful then. And we did recently see some snow shoes for horses which helped them travel when snow conditions were just right. They would have been useful for us just a few years ago.......when we got a blizzard that even our shod horses could not travel in. Snow built up and caused them to stumble and fall. We lost every calf born that day, probably the biggest day of our calving season. Tractors, pickups, saddle horses all were helpless. Hope we never go through that again! That was one time where calving in muddy corrals may have been better than on the clean prairie grass, but over the past 125 years, it has only happened that one time, for us.
I sure do hope you are finding some time to organize your photo's. I'd even keep the bad ones because often there is some good element in each one of those, unless they aren't visible at all. And I REALLY hope you are preserving and/or sharing them with someone or some place for posterity. I just don't know of any other record of that sort, but of course there could be......someplace. I can't believe any are as authentic or have followed the same bands in that beautiful, if stark, terrain.
I should talk, our 60+ years of photo's are totally not organized! But our grand dau.in law is going to force me into helping her do it, and put them on computer. Achieving that will be the major 'celebration' of our 60 years marriage and 125 years of origin of our ranch, which is now three different ranches, tho we have some of the original one, buying more land to support five families of our fourth, fifth, and sixth generation 'branch'.
mrj