Code of the West

[red]

The CODE OF THE WEST

Taken from Evan Rayl-  Livestock Plus

1.  Live each day with courage.
2. Take pride in your work.
3. Always finish what you start.
4. Do what has to be done.
5. Be tough, but fair.
6. When you make a promise, keep it.
7. Ride for the brand.
8. Talk less and say more.
9. Remember that some things aren’t for sale.
10. Know when to draw the line.

 

[cowz]

Good topic Red!

One of our neighboring counties actually enacted a county regulation regarding "the right to farm and ranch" and they call it the "Code of the West".  I thought some of you might enjoy reading this since we all were recently venting about our "City neighbors".  As a meek and mild ranch wife (HAHA) who has had a visit from the county sheriff for baling hay at night.....I just love this stuff!!

Agriculture
The people who tamed this wild land brought water to the barren, arid east slope of the Rockies through an ingenious system of water diversion. This water has allowed agriculture to become an important part of our environment. Owning rural land means knowing how to care for it. There are a few things you need to know:
5.1 - Farmers often work around the clock, especially during planting and harvest time. Dairy operators sometimes milk without stopping and hay is often swathed or baled at night. It is possible that adjoining agriculture uses can disturb your peace and quiet.

5.2 - Land preparation and other operations can cause dust, especially during windy and dry weather.

5.3 - Farmers occasionally burn their ditches to keep them clean of debris, weeds and other obstructions. This burning creates smoke that you may find objectionable.

5.4 - Chemicals (mainly fertilizers and herbicides) are often used in growing crops. You may be sensitive to these substances and many people actually have severe allergic reactions. Many of these chemicals are applied by airplanes that fly early in the morning.

5.5 - Animals and their manure can cause objectionable odors. What else can we say?

5.6 - Agriculture is an important business in Larimer County. If you choose to live among the farms and ranches of our rural countryside, do not expect county government to intervene in the normal day-to-day operations of your agri-business neighbors. In fact, Colorado has "Right to Farm" legislation that protects farmers and ranchers from nuisance and liability lawsuits. It enables them to continue producing food and fiber.

5.7 - Colorado has an open range law. This means if you do not want cattle, sheep or other livestock on your property, it is your responsibility to fence them out. It is not the responsibility of the rancher to keep his/her livestock off your property.

5.8 - Before buying land you should know if it has noxious weeds that may be expensive to control and you may be required to control. Some plants are poisonous to horses and other livestock.

5.9 - Animals can be dangerous. Bulls, stallions, rams, boars, etc. can attack human beings. Children need to know that it is not safe to enter pens where animals are kept.

5.10 - Much of Larimer County receives less than 15 inches (38 cm) of precipitation per year. As a result, we have a problem with overgrazing, and fugitive dust. Without irrigation, grass does not grow very well. There is a limit to the amount of grazing the land can handle. The Larimer County Cooperative Extension Office can help you with these issues.

 

[cowz]

Here are more "Code of the West" ideals:

The Code of the West
A Cowboy's Guide to Life by Texas Bix Bender

After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him. The moral: when you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.

Always drink upstream from the herd.

Always take a good look at what you're about to eat. It's not so important to know what it is, but it's critical to know what it was.

Ask no more and give no less than honesty, courage, loyalty, generosity, and fairness.

Don't get mad at somebody who knows more 'n you do. It ain't their fault.

Don't interfere with something that ain't botherin' you none.

Don't let so much reality into your life that there's no room left for dreamin'.

Don't never interfere with something that ain't botherin' you none.

Don't squat with yer spurs on!

Don't worry about bitin' off more than you can chew. Your mouth is probably a whole lot bigger'n you think.

Generally, you ain't learnin' nothing when your mouth's a-jawin'.

Go after life as if it's something that's got to be roped in a hurry before it gets away.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.

If it don't seem like it's worth the effort, it probably ain't.

If you find yourself in a hole the first thing to do is stop diggin'.

If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.

If you want to forget all your troubles, take a little walk in a brand-new pair of high-heeled ridin' boots.

If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there.

It don't matter so much how long a ride you have, as how well you ride it.

It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.

Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

Never ask a man the size of his spread.

Never drop your gun to hug a grizzly.

Never grumble. It makes you about as welcome as a sidewinder in a cow camp.

Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much.

Tellin' a man to git lost and makin' him do it are two entirely different propositions.

The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with watches you shave his face in the mirror every morning.

The easiest way to eat crow is while it's still warm. The colder it gets, the harder it is to swaller.

The quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it back into your pocket.

The wildest critters live in the city!

Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

Trust everybody in the game, but always cut the cards.

When you give a lesson in meanness to a critter or a person, don't be suprised if they learn their lesson.

When you give a personal lesson in meanness to a critter or to a person, don't be surprised if they learn their lesson.

When you're throwin' your weight around, be ready to have it thrown around by somebody else.

Write it in your heart. Stand by the code, and it will stand by you.

 

 

[jason]

Can you imagine living in the time when they gave you free land to settle it or had land rushes where you literally staked your claim?    I love watching the old westerns.

 

[knabe]

Jason, that land was not free.  you had to live on it, make improvements.  most homesteaders would get a little annoyed by that.  they were "paid" with land to settle the west.  nothing free about it.  can you imagine living in the time of entitlements?, when they gave you free money to spend it anyway you want and you literally didnt' have to do anything?  i love watching the new westerns (washington) where the bribes are more incremental and for votes, not what's right. 

 

[farmboy]

Jason, that land was not free.  you had to live on it, make improvements.  most homesteaders would get a little annoyed by that.  they were "paid" with land to settle the west.  nothing free about it.  can you imagine living in the time of entitlements?, when they gave you free money to spend it anyway you want and you literally didnt' have to do anything?  i love watching the new westerns (washington) where the bribes are more incremental and for votes, not what's right.   

True. You never actually think about it like that

 

[cowz]

A few of you on here know that I am a huge antique nut.  I also love local history.  My parents ranch had the old sawmill where most of the lumber for Colorado Springs was cut.  We have the remains of homesteader style "shanties" and old cook shacks.  We have found everything from indian arrowheads to oxen shoes.  The most interesting thing we have found was the parts of a tiny china doll.  We still have the ruins of old potatoe cellars. Looking at the bare bones way of life these people actually live is really amazing.  It really gives you an idea of how hard these folks worked to make an living. 

 

[knabe]

here's a photo where my great grandfather homesteaded.  right between the trees is where he lived in a hole in the ground for two winters.  all he had was a silver spoon and porcelein horse from the his homeland as well as an ax he bought from labor making limestone fenceposts.  

the other photo is of that supportless staircase in a chapel the mysterious carpenter built for the nuns so they wouldn't have to climb up the ladder so they could sing in the choir.  originally it was made without handrails.

 

[cowz]

Is that the Chapel of Loretto?

 

[knabe]

yeah, it's kind of a tourist trap.  no services anymore, but you can rent it out.  and don't buy turqoise jewlrey in santa fe, there's really only two or three decent stores, go to gallup, i can't remember which time of year.

 

[aj]

knabe, was your great grandfather a immigrant? Did he or his ancestors come in the west coast or the east coast. Mine came in through the east coast. Both of my great, great, grandads homesteaded in kansas in1885.

 

[knabe]

great grandfather was a legal immigrant from denmark.  him and his brother were born in the same house, one was a german citizen, the other danish.  it was because of the war.  most of my mixed ancestry is danish and german, the rest welsh, scottish.  probably explains why i'm such a pest, always at conflict, both with myself and others, and why i'm a recovering sore loser.  those scots sure needed the '45 (1745) conflict to get it out of them as far as forming a responsible government and getting on with commerce instead of feudalism.  many scots were in george III cabinet, and gobbled up most of the tobacco trade.  relatives came from the east.  they settled in OK about 1895.  grandmother was born when OK was still an indian territory.  my mom's side of the family homesteaded in one of the land rushes after the initial cherokee strip which included kansas.  man did i not like that tom cruise, nicole kidman movie.  i had several relatives die strange deaths, including one in a combine, yes, eaten from the front, lots of yanked fingers.  the knabe's wife, she was a smoker, both did pipes.  she always took pics with her hand behind her back.  they didn't drink, but smoked and lived well into their nineties.  no one came out in the dust bowl, kinda hid in texas while that passed.  no one in the next generation really had a knack for farming or ranching, so it kinda stagnated and got split up and sold off.  too bad.  one more interesting thing about knabe, was that he married a divorced women with two kids. the original ran off and she divorced him.  they had one more kid, my grandmother, in the pic with my daughter a few years ago on the farm.  i cried for about 3 or four days cause i knew it would be the last time i saw her and that kaitlyn would never see her.  the other pic is of the water tower in alva, one of the prettiest towers in the land, with or without the horses.

 

[Show Heifer]

Yes, it was in the mag that evan rayl wrote the Code of the West, but he did not write it....I have seen it many times on wood plaques etc.....not sure who the orginal author was, but it was not rayl.

 

[red]

Well I just wanted to give credit where I read it from. He didn't give any credit to anyone so I just said it came from his column.
Knabe- fasinating family history. Thanks so much!

Red

 

[aj]

Keep up the excellant post's knabe. Most peoples grasp of history is from there birthdate to their death. I am german, scotish, english  and french. My uncle(not blood) did some research on his lines one time. He discover his greatgrandad was traded for a wagon wheel on a wagon trail so he hit kind of a dead end on that one.

 

[jason]

Knabe that is really neat

 

[shortdawg]

Nice story Knabe !

 

[Will]

I am very lucky to live on a farm that has been in my wife's family since the 1840's.  Her ancestors came to Oklahoma as early settlers from the Cherokee Tribe.  They left the Southeast before the trail of tears.  The house we live in was built around 1900.  We have two barns that are at least 125 years old.  My wife ancestors were immaculate book keepers and pack rats.  We have ledgers from the 1870.  They documented everything from their annual expenditure on stick candy to seed corn cost.  The big barn that was used as a dairy was built in 1891.  The material cost $272.00.  The men that helped do the labor each received a fat hog and had to make their mark that they had received their hog.  We have a granary that they lived lived in the attic of when they  first moved to the property, we believe it is one of the original buildings.  This fall I plan on renovating it and making it into a show barn.  It has 8 grain storage areas that are made out of oak tongue and grove boards. My father law says they used to keep those bins full os seed.  We have lots of old equipment and hand tools.  Some day I am going to clean them all up.

 

[knabe]

cool will, the seed bins off the ground, and probably circulate some air good right?  aj, i have knabe's hand saw that he traded for a half quarter section of land when times were really tough.  he was into making stuff he could sell.

here's a letter to the editor i had published in last weeks paper.  grammar kinda sucks in some spots, but i had to get it out by the deadline.  some of the info is context baesd from an article published by our local paper editor who is for more public ownership of land and land use restrictions on people who own land.  i didn't include some information about the two local raised highways being offered to minority owned businesses with little experience in pile driving in marsh lands.  the entire highway through those areas had to be redone as they sunk and the road became wavy, at of course taxpayer expense.  the roads still suffer from the sinking.  i perhaps should have titled the letter "new code of the west"


letter.

editor mark paxton's article alst week about cattle was almost hilarious, if it weren't so effective.  Adjectives such as muscular bull picking on those poor sandy soils, oh it tugs the heart strings.  Perhaps I can take Mark on a visit to buffalo wallow's on my family's farm.  These wallows are veritable pools of diversity throughtout the year.  what those bull feet, and rolling bodies do is pulverizie the soil and create a pocket for water to collect and allow wildflowers to flourish.  Perhaps the sierra club could list the successes of grazing on protecting species. 

perhaps we can repopulate california with the elk herds, mastodons and other fauna that used to muscularly, mindlessly pounce all over the place.  the more we actually research grazing, the more benefit is actually revealed as a carbon source is recycled, and a fire danger minimized by people who are willing to eke out a 2% return on their investment.  these areas are easily fenced off to minimize year round trouncing, and can be opened up to allow periodic trouncing to recycle the excess carbon and plant and distribute seed.  cloven hooves are uniquely designed to do this as oppossed to hooves like those found on horses.

i noted as well the muscular jeep road was traveled on to get to pristinia with nary a comment about it's damage.  also not criticized was just the general presence of man on earth at all.  perhaps we can tear down highway 85 and 87 in the marsh areas and bring those places back to life.  economic growth through population expansion is causing more damage than a connection with cattle.

perhaps we can convert to eating argintine ants, invasive mussels and other non-native species and trade them on some wort of carbon trading equivalent.  more human species equals less wetlands.  more private ownership of land equals equals more protection of endangered species if the environmentalists wouldn't penalize  landowners with restricitive use policies that actually encourage eradicating any environment for animals for fear the government might come in .  talk about trying to do something good and get the oppostie effect. 

in the end, it's obvious that most environmentalists actually want to end land ownership.  perhaps we should just tear up the constitution while we are at it and put the sierra club in charge.

 

[Gypsy]

Bravo Knabe - stay on em.