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.
A Stitch in Time
In 1873, immigrants David Jacobs and Levi Strauss, combined their talents and resources and came up with a new phenomenon, called Waist Overhalls, more commonly known as jeans. From this first creation of denim thread and metal rivets, the single most popular clothing item in the history the world has taken shape, and variations are endless. Brilliant because of their durability and style, practical because they last forever and get the job done, jeans are synonymous with hard work and high fashion all at the same time. When women finally started wearing “trousers” in the forties and then “slacks” in the fifties, a proper pair of women’s jeans weren’t far behind. Cowgirl Tough Jeans have taken the jean world by storm, doing their well-fitting best to make women’s legs look longer, behinds firmer, and all with a sense of wild west chic. Pine Country Feed has the good sense to carry a product that goes so far in making women’s fashion about comfort, style and ease of care. Proud to carry the Cowgirl Tough brand, Pine Country is the place you’ll find a treasure around every corner.
The Joy of the Brew
Whether you prefer your coffee prepared by a sock of grounds thrown into a boiling tin pot over an open flame, or delicately encouraged to the height of flavor in a fine French press, it is an undeniable truth that coffee is the perfect blend of piping hot remedy and sheer spiritual experience. A cup of coffee, brewed to perfection with just the right amount of thick cream can serve as the only solution to a day that has run amuck, working its magic in sips of aromatic assurance, quieting even the most annoying voices in your head. Served after an enjoyable meal it will begin the evening with the grace and elegance of a string quartet, spreading its peaceful presence through body and mind like the music of a bygone era. Whatever the occasion, there is a coffee to make it richer, which is why Pine Country
Feed is looking forward to the introduction of its own private label, mountain roasted blend with great anticipation. A coffee blended with our deserving customers in mind. Just one more way we are letting you know that you matter to us and we want you to be blissfully happy.
Behold the Horse
Hollywood loves horses, in every form. They love the horse that can win a race, or the horse that stands by his man until the last shot is fired. They have given us talking horses, horses that fly, singing and dancing horses, carousel horses and horses that have broken our hearts. They are the favorite means of transportation in an entire genre of movies, and most of the favorite film stars of the forties, fifties and sixties ended up on a horse at one time or another. Horses are back in style on the silver screen with westerns making a come-back over the last fifteen years. Today’s westerns are more violent and the main characters never bathe, but one thing is consistent with the early western. The best friend of the cowboy, rancher, farmer, or settler is still the horse. The west simply wouldn’t have been settled without them. The four legged beasts are beautiful, noble, intelligent, usually gentle pictures of the soul of an era that was misbehaved, poorly planned and truly brutal. When everyone else was spitting, drinking too much, gun fighting in the streets, the horse brought a grace and sureness to America’s wild picture of the west that makes us love them. They are the spirit of what we wish we could be; strong, sleek, peaceful. And they do talk by the way – you just have to listen really carefully.
Missing the Wild
So we have recently found the choices for big cinema entertainment wanting, and we have finally put our finger on the problem. The movies tend to parade leading men across the screen who obviously spend a good portion of their time in the gym, not necessarily bad. But we are bothered by the fact that only a small handful of the real leaders could manage a ride on a horse. They simply wouldn’t look right astride one of the glorious equines of the Hollywood 40s and 50s and we can’t even imagine most of them being able to get on the horse without major injury. Cowboy movies, the real westerns that put the country west of the Mississippi on the map, needed men to be rugged, not fit necessarily, but tough, and since the horse has been removed as one of Hollywood’s main characters, that element of grit, of rock solid, take no prisoners, don’t make me pull my six shooter persona has faded to black. There have been a few westerns in the past decade that have proven that there are a few of those boys left, but too few to our liking. Somehow being able to download the secrets of the defense department before the guy in the suit walks into the room just doesn’t give off the same aura as a man who can control his horse with the reigns in his teeth, riding at the speed of locomotion, while he wields both of his guns with the accuracy of a sharpshooter. Imagine.
Big Deal
Halloween is the day to make contact with you inner ghoul – the side of you that would prefer to be mysterious, and hide behind a mask of intrigue. We have to take our hats off to Martha Stewart who has perfected the art of ghostly retreat, greeting the holiday in the most elaborate way possible. Martha’s life isn’t a possibility in the real world, where you have to function within a budget, and your staff consists of your husband and your cat, but Martha forces us to look at life differently. She insists that we celebrate the everyday, that we go the extra trouble, that we make life a celebration, and she is never more Martha than on Halloween. Martha Stewart understands that there are times when the most important thing you can do is enjoy the art of living and she shows us just how to do it with style. We can take a lesson from Martha, who has become wealthy teaching people how to properly fold a bed sheet. Sometimes, despite the mayhem around us, life is very simply and exquisitely about the fun.
Cowboy Forever
If you’re beside yourself trying to decide what to be for Halloween, worry no more. Be a cowboy, in a long duster and hat with boots and spurs, and it might be helpful if you could pack a six shooter. It is said that houses that have been converted from barns to houses are often haunted by cowboys of the early west. They are never mean or scary; they just kind of reside in the barn/house harmlessly watching over the place. People who lived in one such house said that they often heard spurs jangling on the hardwood floor, and there was a distinct smell of horses and hay and well worn tack in the kitchen. One woman, awake in the early hours of the morning, saw one of the duster clad apparitions walking down the hallway between her living room and dining room and as he passed he looked her way and tipped his hat then vanished through the back door. It’s good to know that true to form, the cowboy, even a ghost of a cowboy, is friendly and polite even when he is haunting a house. Have a great Halloween weekend!
I’m Your Huckleberry
The condition of today’s world leaves reasonable people asking one question. Where is Wyatt Earp when you need him? Where is the guy in the black cowboy hat, and the long black denim duster that catches on the gun at his hip – the guy who was willing to fight for a decent way of life in a west that refused to be tamed? What happened to the man with the badge who didn’t stop until the job was done, didn’t care how long the ride, never asked if there was someone who could take his place? Things were easier in Wyatt’s day for the man who wanted to stand for right. You had to know how to shoot, a good horse was a must, and if you expected to live long a good buddy who could also shoot proved helpful, and of course you had to be brave. What you didn’t have to be was politically correct, college educated, connected to the people at the top, or certified in your field of expertise. You were respected for what you had done, not what you had trained to do, and if you put your foot in your mouth from time to time, nobody noticed, or at least they didn’t say anything, because you were Wyatt Earp for heaven’s sake! Where does this leave us? We must be brave, put on our dusters and whistle for our trusted steed. It’s time to fight for a decent way of life in a west that still isn’t tamed. Wyatt would be proud.
Not So Wild West
Academy award winning actor, Henry Fonda, awarded the sixth “Greatest Male Film Star of All Time” by the American Film Institute, played a variety of roles, in films that are considered classics, worth seeing again, like Jezebel, Twelve Angry Men, Grapes of Wrath and Mr. Roberts. He was a classic actor, always underplaying his role, but owning the screen nonetheless. So when the American Western became the film genre that everyone wanted, Henry Fonda found a way to make it work. In some ways he wasn’t believable as a cowboy. His features were a bit too refined and his voice had a compelling gentle timbre that didn’t ring true in the old west. Still, he pulled off some of his greatest roles in the saddle in The Tin Star, How the West Was Won, Fort Apache and Warlock, carving out for himself a place as the rational cowboy, the one who thought before he pulled his gun, and perhaps that is what movie goers came to love best about him. He brought civility to the dusty streets of Hollywood’s Wild West, and a bit of un-fussy refinement, and that was refreshing. He wasn’t one of those actors who seemed to be born with a Stetson on their head, but when he decided to wear one, it fit.
Cowboy Love
We have often wondered what it is about the legendary American cowboy that is so appealing to the world of 2011. They were people covered with calluses and basically held together by dirt, they rarely had money, many of them drank too much, they smelled of sweat both human and equine, they thought of spitting as a conventional past time and guns were their favorite accessory, and yet we love them and sometimes wish we were one of them. It is something about their grit, their willingness to keep going when the herd has run amuck, their quiet way of owning the room, their “not afraid of hard work, get it done” attitude that we think of as American fable. We want them to win, to get the girl, to love their horse, to kill the bad guy – and we want to believe that they do it all with the best of intentions and a heart of gold, because they belong to the roots of who we are. They are fully American and totally bigger than life and that makes them the center of our dreams and the thing we love to believe in. Just a bunch of guys who wrestled cows and rode the range and we can’t get enough of them.
Best Experienced Together
There is something about horses and kids that make for a great marriage. It is like the story of the gorilla who loved the kitten, the mammoth being, meekly deferring to the tiny one, the one that could be swept away with one aggressive snort. Yet they stand together, nose to nose, one in deference to the other, because the horse, in its four legged splendor seems to understand that this smaller than average two legged creature is precious in some way, a treasure of some kind, and their keeping is a tremendous responsibility. It is the gentle and wise heart of the horse and innocent nature of the child that makes the mixture ideal, even magical. See them together and you will feel a smile spread across your lips, a lift of happiness in your step. Their gift is the perfect combination of generosity and delight and they are meant to be together.
Practically Fabulous
The cowboy hat, though in large part, a fashion statement was originally developed and designed with the working cowboy, or ranch hand in mind. When the west was being settled there were any number of hat designs in use, bowlers being the most popular. The first cowboy has as we know it today was designed and manufactured in 1865 by John Batterson Stetson. He called his hat “Boss of the Plains” and it became the identifying accessory for the man of the American west. It had a wide brim, front and back to 
protect the eyes and the neck from sun and rain. They were made with four inch crowns to provide insulation from both heat and cold, they were light weight and waterproof. The hats were known for their rugged durability, standing up to any kind of punishment and they came to be a status symbol, an investment as it were to the working cow hand, and a fashion standard for men in the east. Early on the name Stetson became synonymous with the cowboy hat but even after the surge of the west its fame grew. In 1912 the battleship USS Maine was raised from Havana Harbor where it had sunk in 1898. A Stetson hat was recovered from the wreckage and after it was cleaned of debris, mud, and plant growth it proved to be undamaged and still waterproof.
Butternut Squash, Apple and Sage Soup
Nothing says fall like a pot of soup on the stove, and soup made with the best of autumn’s ingredients says it even louder. This recipe puts it all together with ease and a dash of pizzazz.
Place 2 butternut squash (about 4 pounds), halved and seeded, in a 425˚ oven. Sprinkle with 8-10 chopped sage leaves and salt and pepper, dot with 2 tablespoons butter and roast for 1 hour. After cooling the squash scrape out the flesh and set aside.
In a large sauce pot heat 2 tablespoons olive oil and sauté one small chopped onion until tender. Add squash, 4 cups chicken stock, 1 cup apple cider, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 3 dashes Worcestershire sauce, pinch nutmeg and ⅛ teaspoon red pepper flakes. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for 30 minutes.
Puree cooked mixture in the pot with an immersion blender, or if you don’t have one, use a regular blender then return to the pot. Reheat the soup and season with salt and pepper to taste, then just before serving stir in ½ cup heavy cream. Top individual servings with peeled, diced apple, or a dollop of sour cream.
This recipe serves 8 as a side dish with grilled German sausage over sautéed green cabbage and sliced red peppers. Delicious comfort!
The Win
Whether you are a fan of Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos or not, Sunday’s game taught a life and business lesson that is worth learning, again. There is no way to place a value on true leadership. It comes from vision and passion, and a commitment to the success of the team, and it cannot be measured in experience, in safe decisions, or in salary. It can only be measured in the inspiration it creates. When Tim Tebow came onto the field against San Diego he did so much more than quarterback the game. He made an entire city excited again about watching their team, and convinced a team of football players and coaches that they can win, even if they claim to be “rebuilding”. And the interesting thing is the fact that all of that happened and the Broncos didn’t even win, they will the next time, and we know this how? Because winning comes from a winning attitude, and for the second half of Sunday’s game that winning attitude filled a stadium, a locker room, a press box, and homes all over Colorado. San Diego won the game, but the Denver had all the joy!
Pumpkin Up
The cool mornings and frosty nights are calling to your inner pumpkin. It is time to bake, so do it proudly and use the very healthy, rich and creamy pumpkin whenever you can.
Pumpkin Cupcakes
Mix together 4 slightly beaten eggs, ¾ cup vegetable oil, 2 cups sugar and 1-15oz can pumpkin. Combine with a mixture of 1 ¾ cup flour, ¼ cup corn starch, 4 teaspoons pumpkin spice, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda and ¾ teaspoon salt. Beat just until well blended, fill lined muffin cups two thirds full and bake for 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven. The center of the cakes should bounce back to the touch when they are done.
Allow the cupcakes to cool for 30 minutes at least then frost with a combination of 8oz softened cream cheese, 3 tablespoons softened butter, 2 teaspoons vanilla and 4 cups powdered sugar. After frosting refrigerate lightly covered cupcakes until you are ready to serve.
A hot cup of coffee and a pumpkin cupcake and you’ll be fortified for days. If you feel weak after 24 hours, eat another cupcake!
Dying Words
When Anna Sewell wrote her novel, Black Beauty, it was an immediate hit, selling 50 million copies, making it one of the best-selling novels of all time. It is the story of a horse, told by a horse and it threads a heartwarming and adventuresome tale of life in 1877 England from the viewpoint of the four legged laborers that kept civilization moving in those days. The book, besides being an intriguing read, addresses the humane, or inhumane as it were, treatment of animals, and specifically horses in that time. Horses were for work and the heroin of the story, Black Beauty, struggles through many different owners and works more than her share until one day she lands in the hands and heart of someone who truly loves her for the remarkable creature she is. Sewell’s story, though a fiction, stirred a new commitment to the proper treatment of animals and put horses in a place of dignity that many had not recognized before. By giving Beauty human qualities and a relatable, tender personality Sewell succeeded in carving out a place in our lives for these noble, intelligent beings that pays them the homage they deserve. It is notable that Anna Sewell wrote this book as she was dying, and just five months after its publication she passed, making Black Beauty her first and last novel and her legacy.
Friday Morning Club
It was a day that comes only once in a while when the sun is just warm enough to remind you of summer, but the air has that perfect chill of the new autumn. She cradled her mug, hot to the touch, sipping her heavily creamed dark roast as she sat quietly watching the pair in field. The porch was just high enough to allow her to see over the slight ridge into the meadow that sparkled with the new day, where the two of them stood serenely sniffing the warmth and snorting at each other. Once they noticed her, their demeanor changed, just slightly, they stepped closer to the fence and looked her way as if beckoning her to come and play. She knew she could never be the kind of friend they were to one another, but she loved that they included her just the same. It was a kind of respect, one strong creature to another, giving the nod of approval, allowing room for one more heart. They nibbled the grass while she drank her coffee, all three of them pleased that they could share these morning moments together.
Misfit Marilyn
Marilyn Monroe has been hailed as an American Icon and all time greatest sex symbol, and did over the course of her career play many roles suited to a beautifully, confused blonde in search of a man. She spent much of her time in movies frustrated by her “type-cast” opportunities, always looking for the role that would make her a “serious actor”. Hollywood loved to dress her in high heels, chiffon and red lipstick, which is why it is 
interesting that when she finally appeared in a movie that asked more of her than the presentation of a pretty face, she performed almost entirely in a pair of jeans. In 1960 Monroe starred in The Misfits, a screen adaptation of her then husband Arthur Miller’s play. The movie didn’t do well at the box office, since American movie goers are very often poor at accepting our stars in a role that isn’t what we’ve come to expect. It was the last movie Monroe ever made, her health waning, and her broken heart somehow irreparable, she gave herself to this final effort in a way she had never dared before. Later, by several years, critics took a new look at The Misfits and declared it possibly Monroe’s best work, certainly her most honest. No chiffon or red lipstick, just jeans and boots – unpretentious, real-life clothing for a “serious actor”.
Silver Lining
“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow you have to put up with the rain.” Dolly Parton
Rough Riders
Before Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United State he was Colonel Theodore Roosevelt of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, better known as the Rough Riders. It was 1898 and this band of 1250 men was comprised of cowboys, Indians and a few elite athletes from the East. The point was to recruit men who could ride a horse and shoot at the same time and were in a physical condition that would enable them to tackle the rough terrains and the long hours that were required of the make shift army. The Rough Riders served the country, entirely under the direction of Roosevelt and his cohort, Leonard Wood, in an effort to aid Cuba in their fight for independence from Spain. The regimen fought their first battle in Cuba on June 22nd, 1898 and by the end of the first week in July of that same year, they had defeated Spain and the war was over. After 137 days of service from enlistment to discharge, the Rough Riders were disbanded, their mission accomplished. They did it all with little training, complete on foot or on horseback, and without any real funding. It was all grit, determination, a sense of purpose, and as was Teddy Roosevelt’s reputation, the adventure of the thing counted for a lot.
Cowboy Strong
What is it about us that makes us love a cowboy? Maybe it’s because we think the truth is important, and pretention a waste of energy. There is something right about the man who gets up in the morning knowing that his day will be full and his exhaustion at the end of it complete, that the people he cares about are counting on him to work the land and move the cattle despite the elements. We like that he doesn’t try to impress us with his money or his education, because our opinion doesn’t really matter to him. His goal is to look himself in the mirror every evening and know that he left everything he had on the range, and tomorrow he will get up and do it again, because it is just what he does. Not to impress anyone, but because he wants to do it. He cares about the land and the livestock and treating both of them with respect. And when the sky grows dark and the ranch rests quietly he’ll sleep in his bed, knowing he did it right for another day, and every callous was worth it.
Behold the Horse
Hollywood loves horses, in every form. They love the horse that can win a race, or the horse that stands by his man until the last shot is fired. They have given us talking horses, horses that fly, singing and dancing horses, carousel horses and horses that have broken our hearts. They are the favorite means of transportation in an entire genre of movies, and most of the favorite film stars of the forties, fifties and sixties ended up on a horse at one time or another. Horses are back in style on the silver screen with westerns making a come-back over the last fifteen years. Today’s westerns are more violent and the main characters never bathe, but one thing is consistent with the early western. The best friend of the cowboy, rancher, farmer, or settler is still the horse. The west simply wouldn’t have been settled without them. The four legged beasts are beautiful, noble, intelligent, usually gentle pictures of the soul of an era that was misbehaved, poorly planned and truly brutal. When everyone else was spitting, drinking too much, gun fighting in the streets, the horse brought a grace and sureness to America’s wild picture of the west that makes us love them. They are the spirit of what we wish we could be; strong, sleek, peaceful. And they do talk by the way – you just have to listen really carefully.
Six Shooter to Go
So in a world of peril and hidden dangers you have to ask yourself who you would want protecting your town in a time of need. Many of us would tend towards the Andy Taylor kind of Sheriff, no gun, just a great big smile and a warm heart, while others would want James Garner, simply because he was stunning in a cowboy hat. For dealing with a rougher element, you couldn’t beat Marshall Matt Dillon and nobody would argue about Kirk Douglas as Wyatt Earp and his handsome brothers Morgan and Virgil in Tombstone. I have to think though that in a real pickle we’d all go for Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider, coming out of the mountains on his bleached steed, wearing a long coat and a hat that sat on his head like a monument. He came to town, made friends with the miners, kicked the riff raff to the curb, and took out the bad guys without ever breathing hard – all seven of them in one afternoon. Then he mounted his pale horse, settled his hat firmly on his head, and road back up into the hills like a superhero, only without the cape or the tights. Now that’s a sheriff.
Timing is Everything
“The greatest man I never knew, lived just down the hall. Everyday we said hello, but never touched at all. He was in his paper, and I was in my room. How was I to know he thought I hung the moon.” Reba McEntire
In the fleeting moments we call life there are a few things that we don’t get to do over. One of them is our children. We are never given the chance to go back and give those hugs we missed, and we won’t be given the chance to “re-listen” to the heartbreaking story about their day and actually try to understand. That day we should have told them how smart they are, not coming back, and the “I love you” before they left the house this morning is lost for good. The things in life that really matter can be counted on one hand, and they come along one time. If you’re going to be really good at something, make it parenting.
