Bulldogging Baby
Baby Doll Combs (record). Ball O’Flash (record).
Baby Doll Combs, owned by steer wrestler and Rodeo Champion Willard Combs is thought to be the best Steer Wrestling horse, or “bulldogger” that ever rode the circuit. During her seven peak years of rodeo competition from 1953 to when she died in 1960 she earned over $400,000 in prize money, which in today’s dollars would amount to around $2,965,000. In 1957 Willard Combs won the Championship Steer Wrestling title on Baby Doll, and that year, the cowboys who took second, third, fourth and fifth in the standings were also riding Baby Doll. Famous Rodeo Cowboy, Bill Linderman said that Baby Doll knew bulldogging better than some of the cowboys who were riding her. When she died at a Kansas Rodeo in 1960 from a ruptured spleen, Willard Combs had her shipped back to his ranch in Oklahoma to be buried. Standing at the graveside, when she was laid to rest were many of the cowboys who had ridden her. Baby Doll was inducted into the PRCA Hall of Fame in 1979 with their very first class of inductees and is remembered as one of the greatest Rodeo horses of all times.
Pine Country Feed Fall Gallery
Today we would like to highlight all the new fall goodies we have at Pine Country Feed! Here is just a taste of fall here is Pine, Colorado!
New at Pine Country Feed
Here’s a new product we are carrying for your dogs and cats! Stella and Chewy’s freeze dried Raw Diet. Your animals will love this food! Makes a great treat too!
100% complete and balanced nutrition.
When you check the list of ingredients in our Dinners, you’ll see it reads like a “who’s who” of wholesome, healthy stuff. Like raw, naturally-raised meat, poultry or fish, sourced from USDA-inspected facilities. Organic fruits and vegetables such as cranberries, carrots, apples, spinach, broccoli and beets. Healthful, direct-fed microorganisms (probiotics), natural tocopherols, chelated trace minerals and taurine. Plus essential vitamins and minerals. And for your complete peace of mind, every ingredient is sourced from reputable suppliers. What you won’t see are any of the usual suspects, like grain, fillers, artificial preservatives, colorings, added hormones or antibiotics. We don’t even add sugar or salt! Check out their website for more information: www.stellaandchewys.com
A Side of Glam
What could be better than a store where you can buy feed for not only your horse or your dog, but you can get groceries for your goat, your bird, your chickens and your llama? Nothing, unless you could also buy a pair of sterling silver earrings, and perhaps a 
designer handbag, and what about a hand tooled saddle and some killer jeans, and a rug made of hand tied leather strips. Pine Country Feed is not your ordinary feed and tack store. It is a feed and tack and dog toy and cowgirl fashion and home accessory and turquoise bracelet watch store. Stop in for pellets for your stove then take a gander upstairs and see if you don’t find the belt of your dreams and some handmade natural soap to go with it. Pine Country Feed offers you an eclectic, “I have to have that” shopping experience and it all comes together with a big “welcome you home” atmosphere where you can shop for your horse and your wife in one fell swoop. Brilliant!
Wedding Wrap-Up
Bridal bouquets have become as individual as the bride herself. Style has moved away from the foam holder set-up and moved to the gathering of open ended stems, giving a canvas to an entirely new stream of creativity. Stem wrapping is taking the world of wedding flowers to new heights, presenting yet another means of adding the personal touch to your bridal flowers and those of your maids. A more rustic wedding, on a ranch, a cabin, a barn, or outdoors in the mountains or lakeside can feature bouquets wrapped with burlap or leather strips and “fastened” with antique jewelry charms, vintage buttons, or a pounded silver and turquoise brooch. The tack on your horse drawn carriage can be decorated to match your bouquet wraps and your groom and groomsmen can wear boutonnieres bejeweled with the same vintage jewelry or buttons. These bouquet wraps will bring a sparkle to your walk down the aisle and that sought after wow factor in your photographs, and the high country pop the discriminating bride is looking for.
Ideal Wedding Seating
If you’re looking for fresh ideas for your mountain wedding, you’ve come to the right place. At Pine Country Feed we are loaded with great mountain wedding ideas. If you’re getting married in the mountains – you’ve made a great choice. The Colorado Rockies are known for tying knots that last. The best reason for getting married in the mountains during the warm weather is that it is warm, not hot. You can seat your guests outdoors under the rustling Aspen, or in an open field and not worry about them fainting dead away in the heat, but the sun can be piercing. At issue is the seating itself. You’re outside, absorbing the better part of nature, and somehow plastic chairs don’t seem suitable. New hay bales, firmly packed, covered in white linen with nosegays tied on the corners make a wonderful seating presentation. Add white umbrellas spiked into each bale you won’t have to worry about Aunt Fran getting sunburned. Set the bales around the edges of a portable wood platform and you can dance the night away under the stars. After the wedding you can donate the bales to a local horse rescue. Romance and recycling in one fell swoop.
Fashion Wise
English: Wyatt Earp in the mid-1870s wearing a business suit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We hate for things to come down to appearance, but on some level, your image will affect your ability to gain clientele. How you look needs to match what you do. A person selling construction materials would look silly showing up at a site in high heels and a business suit. By the same token, your best attire for a board room meeting with a CEO and his lender is unquestionably something from Joseph A. Banks. If you clean houses for a living and you pull up in a car that has moss growing on the grill and remnants of last week’s lunch in the back seat, you might be throwing up a red flag as to your competence. If you are an interior designer for high end business offices but when you meet with your client you’re wearing snagged polyester pants and a tube top, their confidence is going to wane. You don’t have to have a lot of clothes, but a well cut business suit and shoes that gleam will tell your investment clients that you spend your money wisely and tastefully and you will do the same with theirs. We live in the west so embrace it. A skirt and jacket from Pine Country Cowgirl Boutique, accessorized with one of their fabulous handbags will help you present your professional best without looking stuffy and never underestimate the power of a great hair cut. A cut that suits you and has a clean, unfussy look tells people you put your money where it counts, and you count more than anything else in your business.
Bulldogging Baby
Baby Doll Combs, owned by steer wrestler and Rodeo Champion Willard Combs is thought to be the best Steer Wrestling horse, or “bulldogger” that ever rode the circuit. During her seven peak years of rodeo competition from 1953 to when she died in 1960 she earned over $400,000 in prize money, which in today’s dollars would amount to around $2,965,000. In 1957 Willard Combs won the Championship Steer Wrestling title on Baby Doll, and that year, the cowboys who took second, third, fourth and fifth in the standings were also riding Baby Doll. Famous Rodeo Cowboy, Bill Linderman said that Baby Doll knew bulldogging better than some of the cowboys who were riding her. When she died at a Kansas Rodeo in 1960 from a ruptured spleen, Willard Combs had her shipped back to his ranch in Oklahoma to be buried. Standing at the graveside, when she was laid to rest were many of the cowboys who had ridden her. Baby Doll was inducted into the PRCAHall of Fame in 1979 with their very first class of inductees and is remembered as one of the greatest Rodeo horses of all times.
Ready to Rodeo
Evergreen Rodeo Drill Team (Photo credit: oddharmonic)
We are ready to kick up our heels and spend some time getting immersed in our western roots. We’re looking forward to some breathtaking bull riding on Friday night, an event that is sponsored by Pine Country Feed. Bull riding is all about the thrill, which is right up our alley. There is nothing quite like the cool mountain air, stars in the sky, hang on until the buzzer goes evening that you can only find at the Evergreen Rodeo. Come early and stop by the Pine Country booth where you’ll find the sassy style you have come to expect from our store. The Evergreen Rodeo is the official beginning of the western summer, so put on your hat, pull on your boots and get your fist around a turkey leg – it’s rodeo time!
How ‘bout Them Cowgirls
George Strait, at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
She don’t need you and she don’t need me, She can do just fine on her own two feet
And she wants a man who wants her to be herself, And she’ll never change, don’t know how to hide
Her stubborn will or her fightin’ side, But you treat her right and she’ll love you like no one else
Yeah, how ‘bout them cowgirls.
George Strait
Cowgirls are really just women who have decided what they want and figured out how to get it, without pretense or politics. They have it over so many other women because they learned a long time ago that if we really want to win, there will be a whole lot of people walking with us across that finish line, because winning isn’t something you do alone but with a crowd of people who have run right alongside us from the first lap to the last. Join some of the greatest cowgirls in the world at the Evergreen Rodeo this weekend, and stop in at the Pine Country Feed booth to take home a little piece of cowgirl for yourself.
Kick up Your Heels
Weddings today are all about expressing the unique personalities of the Bride and Groom. The charming and unexpected detail can make your wedding a lasting memory, and if you’re getting married in the mountains you have endless ways to make the day truly yours. One of the great style elements that have emerged of late is the bride and her maids in cowboy boots. Cowboy boots have become an iconic fashion statement unto themselves, but added to a wedding gown they turn into a flirty, all American show stopper. The choices available are myriad, with something to suit every taste, and don’t overlook the comfort factor. You will spend a good part of the day on your feet and a great pair of cowboy boots will not only look sleek and sassy, but will give your aching feet the break they deserve. Getting married? Go West – it’s where all the fun happens!
Beat the Buzzer
Father’s Day weekend is legendary in Evergreen, Colorado; the weekend everything comes to a halt and residents become remnants of a bygone day, when there was nothing better than a night under the lights at the rodeo. Sit in the front row where you can feel the breath of the champion horses as they race past, carrying cowboys and cowgirls in their best show time regalia. We love the thrill of the ride, hoping the eight second clock will buzz before our cowboy flies into the air, wanting just one more bull rider to challenge the timer and beat the beast at his own game. It is the fun that reminds us we are Americans and we live in the west, where everything is a little wilder and a little more challenging and a lot more of what we love. Saddle up and wave your flag, you are about to enjoy a great chunk of Americana.
Upstairs and Downstairs
At Pine Country Feed we are particular about the brands we carry. We are proud to stock Purina, Mazuri, Manna Pro and Kent to help keep your equine companion healthy and well nourished. We carry small pet feeds like Evo, Active Care, Red Flannel and Pinnacle to name only a few, and it doesn’t stop there. Our wild bird products include suet, black oil sunflower, nyjer and hummingbird oil as well as some adorable, functional birdhouses and feeders for your yard. We talk a lot about our cowgirl boutique because we love to bring you the best and brightest in western wear and home décor, and the same goes for the feed store. Only best for the best people we know – our fabulous customers!
Day to Remember
Memorial Day Commemoration 2008 (Photo credit: davidyuweb)
We call this day Memorial Day because we are meant to remember the people in our lives who have been lost to death. We deem remembering so important, in fact, that we have set aside a whole day, for thinking of the people in our lives who have crossed the threshold into eternity. The day seems to be spent, often with family and friends, cooking outdoors, sharing some pre-summer sun, perhaps working in the yard. All of those things are worth doing and we wish everyone safety and fun in their endeavors, but we wish everyone something else. If on this day you have a lost someone you are thinking of, we hope that your thoughts will be filled with joy, with memories of all they meant to you, with laughter for all the funny times that life throws our way, with tears for the days you wish you could talk to them just one more time, with contentment for knowing that you have loved someone enough to carry them in your heart always. Pine Country Feed wishes you a happy and memorable Memorial Day!
Be Adorned
Many years ago I was given this one piece of advice that has carried me for years. Very simply, “it’s all in the accessories”. Think about it, it will change your life. It’s Monday morning and you’ve got a meeting, so you pull the black jeans, your boots and a long sleeved grey tee with a v-neck out of the closet. It all looks painfully like what you wore last Monday to the same meeting, except for the tee, last week it was light blue with rounded scoop neck. Thankfully you’re not quite done. Start with a belt, the one with the rhinestone and red coral inlay and the pounded pewter buckle. For earrings you’ll wear the antique silver with red coral beading and for a necklace you’ll do the heavy silver chain with dangling baubles and red coral pieces. Grab your suede fringed jacket and you’re good to go, anywhere. When you meet your husband and his new client for dinner tonight, you’ll switch your boots for heels, the jacket for your boiled wool blazer and your necklace for the red and silver silk scarf that wraps around twice and still has room for a knot. The jeans are great, the tee is one of your favorites, but it’s all the other stuff, the bling, the pizzazz that really gets it done, and brilliantly you have enough of that to wear something different everyday for months.
Then there is This
Warm weather is the call of the day – the time when faces turn to the sun and hearts to the carefree days of late spring. Coffee on the porch in the early morning, a mid afternoon venture through the back pasture astride the mare that always knows just how you feel, the first taste of quiet, breezy evenings when the sun seems reluctant to sink behind the hills. We are determined this year to experience the moments instead of the seasons, to relish the whispers and cling to the reminders that life is a fleeting fancy that should be treasured for its possibilities. We are blessed with the wealth of family and friends and the joy of today and we wish all of you the wonder and warmth of the late, sweet spring.
By Any Other Color
An old Cream of Wheat box, circa 1919 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We spend a lot of time in the kitchen – cooking, eating, doing dishes, drinking coffee, eating again – and it needs to be a place we feel called to, a room that tells us we are home. Sometimes we get so busy thinking of the kitchen as a “utility” room that we forget to make it work aesthetically. On the flip side, a kitchen that suffers from décor overload can make us feel disorganized and stressed. The kitchen does have to support the work that goes on there, but it should also be pleasing to the eye. Martha Stewart who simply refuses to work in a kitchen that is anything less than beautiful , suggests an investment in small appliances, bake ware and utensils that are not only functional, but that are pleasing to the eye. A mixer can beat the egg whites into a meringue just as well when it is lime green as opposed to something the color of Cream of Wheat. Have some fun, add some color, or go the other way and take every drop of color out. A totally white, or a silver and black palette can be stunning. Your kitchen works hard and it is screaming for drama, something that says to the world, “the food cooked in this room may change your life”. Make your kitchen a place you want to be after dinner is done and the dishwasher is running. And while you’re there, put your feet up. You work hard too.
Pine Country Pizzazz
It’s time the make getting dressed in the morning one of the best parts of your day. The moment has come when throwing your closet doors open should be done with anticipation, with a pounding heart, knowing that what you wear today will make everything go a bit smoother and you will walk into each demanding situation with that, “I know I look good” edge. Pine Country Feed has filled its more than inviting upstairs with clothes that will make you not “that woman who always looks nice”, but rather “that woman who looks so fabulous in everything she wears”. Get your cowgirl style on with boots and belts, skirts and shirts, jackets, vests, and of course that staple of every real wardrobe – jeans, from Cowgirl Tuff, Ranch Royalty, and Tasha Polizzi. Long on style and blessed with creative genius, the Pine Country closet is brimming with just what you need to go from “getting through it”, to totally owning the day!
Colorado Moms Matter
If you’re getting ready for mother’s day, and you certainly should be by now, plan for mom’s day like she has done for you so many times in your life. Make it all about her with breakfast in bed, time on the deck to read a book or thumb through those magazines that are stacking up by the sofa, the DVD player with the old black and white movie that always makes her cry, her favorite dessert on a China plate, and a gift that is truly just for her. The jewelry, belts, bags and watches at Pine Country Feed are not something you’d buy off a wall at a department store. They are individual works of art so that you can choose the one for mom that says you know who she is and you’re proud of her, the one that tells her you realize that every woman has her own personal style and you think hers is pretty great. Mom deserves the best, the thoughtfulness of a family who thinks she hung the moon. Pine Country Feed wants to wish every mom a day of true delights and perfect joy!
Cast Iron Eggs
When you need to put together a healthful meal and your kitchen time is limited, turn to your cast iron skillet. This recipe for a crispy, cheesy egg dish is a modification of a Martha Stewart recipe and is easy, quick and fabulous!
Melt two tablespoons butter in a cast iron skillet on your stove top, add one cup of sliced mushrooms and cook until tender and dark brown. Crack eight to ten eggs on top of the melted butter and mushrooms. They will be crowded and the uncooked whites will overlap as though they are running together. Sprinkle with garlic salt and course ground pepper and allow the eggs to cook undisturbed for about four minutes. Cut two ripe tomatoes into thin slices and lay overlapping on top of the eggs. Allow the eggs to cook for three more minutes on the stove top. Finally, sprinkle with one cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese. Place the skillet into a 350 degree oven and let bake for six minutes. Serve by scooping out onto plates with a large spoon – no slicing.
Serve with warm biscuits, butter and jam, or hot cornbread with butter and honey. Add some fruit and you’ll have a meal fit for a king or even a cowboy!
Cowboy Stampede
Out on the range, when there’s nothing to answer but the call of the wild, and the only clock you have is shining overhead, things seem to make sense. The little things start to matter more and all the other stuff kind of gets lost in the dust. Taking stock of what we care about, what makes us say “this was worth it” has a lot to do with why we own Pine Country Feed. We care about giving people what they came for, meeting needs and alleviating frustrations, helping people create a life in a place they love, and giving them the service they deserve in the midst of a world where nobody has the time. We love living in the mountains, we love the smell of horses and worn leather gloves, and we love our customers, people who have made the choice to put in the work to have what some people couldn’t begin to imagine. Thank you for letting us be a part of your lives and thank you more for being part of ours!
Progress?
Stagecoach in Boulder parade (Photo credit: Jerry W. Lewis)
What were we thinking when we went from the Stage Coach as a main means of mass transportation to the “bigger than the state of Delaware” bus. Buses have gotten so big they have to put an accordion fold in the middle of some of them just to be able to get around a corner. Their size alone seems to give them a sense of entitlement, like ownership of the road, both their lane and yours, comes from the fact that they could run you into a ditch without even feeling it and the amount of fuel they use is heart breaking. In the era of the Stage Coach, the passenger traveled with three, at the most four other people, and most of them wore hats, so you didn’t have their dandruff falling on your shoulder if they dozed off on the trip, and a lot of them were carrying guns, so the fear of hijacking was pretty much alleviated. An occasional hold up, wheel break, or washed out bridge was inevitable, but it just made the trip fodder for the next letter home. The cost of fuel was minimal, water and feed, and during your trip you usually got to stop for a cup of coffee at a ramshackle but cozy place where they were glad to see you and happy to do what they could to make the rest of your journey a pleasant one. If you didn’t mind having your bones rattled and being covered with dust, the Stage Coach was a very civilized way of getting from here to there – not fast, but fuel efficient and these days that is the name of the game.
Organic Chicken Feed
Ranch Way Organic Feed
- Poultry and his nutrition (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
has come to Pine Country. Pine Country Feed is proud to announce that we have become a Ranch Way Feed dealer which means we are carrying the Ranch Way Organic Chicken Feed. The Ranch Way feeds are certified to be grown without chemicals or pesticides, on land that has been organic for at least three years. The end result is a product that will give you healthier chickens, unfettered by harmful substances that are not only harmful to the chickens but to the people who eat their eggs. Organic Chicken Feed, means healthier chickens, means better, healthier eggs, and it all starts for you at Pine Country Feed. What kind of feed are your chickens eating? It makes a huge difference. What do you want to know about feeding your chickens? We’re all ears.
