Meet my grandfather...Fredrick Schepens..100% Dutch...87 years old..lived his whole life in Montana...and the first time my aunt saw him she thought he looked exactly like John Wayne. I think he looked even more like him when he was younger....So my trip to Minnesota and Montana was a blast and I can't believe that its taken me this long to blog about it. I flew into Minneapolis at 5am and greeted my sister at the airport. We spent a couple days out in Wheaton(no not Wheaton IL), but small farm town way way west Minnesota. Had some good hang out time with my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Then we packed 5 large people into a small red Ford Focus and crossed the extremely long state of North Dakota to reach the great state of Montana.
I love Montana...its such a different world and I especially love knowing that my heritage comes from Montana and really not much has changed. I love the flat open plains, the wide open sky, the bellowing of cattle, the bumpy ride of a pick up truck, the hour long dusk, seeing the homesteads of my great grandparents, the slow pace of life...I just love it. There's the pasture out behind the house where all the retired racehorses live, theres the land where the cattle graze, and then there's the "country" where the old homesteads and farm land is....
Everytime we go to Montana my grandpa puts us to work. All the aunts, uncles, and cousins were there during this week so we had many tasks to complete...and these tasks are all so completely random. Like hitching up the horse trailer and hauling 12? foot long piping onto the pasture..unloading them and hooking them up. Picking up "sticks"(more like huge logs) that fell during the storms and creating huge piles. It took us all day and we didn't even make a dent in the fallen "sticks"...we did however, have scrapes and bruises to prove we did something. Then there's the annual branding of my grandpa's cows. So after we picked up a thousand sticks...we had to find and herd the cattle into the coral in order to return early the next morning and brand 23 calves. Mind you its now July so they are n
ot really all that calf-like anymore...we didn't get too many injuries...although my sister did jam her finger in the calf shoot and come to find out broke it in 4 places right behind the nail...fun times!
ot really all that calf-like anymore...we didn't get too many injuries...although my sister did jam her finger in the calf shoot and come to find out broke it in 4 places right behind the nail...fun times!So yeah..that was my vacay..working hard but having random fun. Here are some pics....
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