Ranch as it was
exceptionally well watered with two streams running through it), the
snow never lies long, not usually more than two or three days after a
fall; thus it is only during these short intervals the cattle require
to be fed, and in a measure sheltered. But this occurs again and
again during the winter, and the food necessary has to be provided
and grown during the summer months in the shape of Alfalfa (a
peculiar and productive American grass), hay, turnips, and rye.
Besides, as all the food the ranch workers require has to be produced
at home, there is thus plenty to do in the kitchen-garden, in growing
potatoes and other things. Then there is the poultry-yard. Geese,
ducks, and fowls are bred in large numbers, and require much
attention. Ranch-men naturally live well, for, besides meat and
poultry, there is the produce of the dairy, which, in all its
shapes--milk by the bucket, cream _ad libitum_, and butter in
abundance--they can revel in. I never was better fed than on the
Water Ranch.

The dairy work is very profitable. Either the cream is sent away and
sold to butter and cheese factories established for that purpose in
ranch localities, or such are manufactured at home, and sent to the
market-town for sale. But it will readily be conceived that milking
thirty to forty cows, and the dairy-work in all its shapes, gives
plenty of work.

I was convinced, after a little experience, that my two sons, alone,
could not do all necessary, and as it does not pay to hire labour in
the States (wages are so high), and as the cost of the Water Ranch
was more than I could afford to give in its entirety to my sons,
after my return to England I sold to two young gentlemen the
half-interest on the condition that they should at once go out and
work there. This they did, and there are thus now four partners with
equal interests in the Water Ranch, and working there together.

I think the reader can now, in a measure, appreciate what sort of
existence ranch-life is. Early to bed and early to rise, the latter
four a.m. in the summer, breakfast at seven, dinner at one, tea at
six; work of some kind or the other all day, but not as a rule _hard_
manual work; many interests, absence of care, good food and sound
sleep. It is a placid, if not a very intellectual existence; the
charms of society, the ameliorating influence of woman, are wanting,
but on the principle some hold, though unjustly, that "she" is at the
bottom of al