It's light by 5:00 here at the ranch, so that's when the day begins.  For those milking goats that is...  To produce the most milk, each goat needs to be milked every 12 hours.  So if we do chores at 5:00 in the evening at 5:00 in the morning we have to start milking.  It's nice and cool at that time and quite enjoyable.  However, with this new adaptation sleep deprivation is running rampant among the staff.  In the summer when it's stifling hot in the middle of the day it will be nice to get things done while it's cool in the early morning, but for now it's hard to adjust.

A week from tomorrow is the Annual Trail Ride taking place at the TX Ranch.  We have over 20 riders currently signed up and space is filling up fast, so if you are planning on attending RSVP immediately!  Here at the ranch we are excited about the upcoming ride.  I've been preparing the horse I plan to ride by riding her once a day at an increasingly longer distance each time.  When I rode the trail at the TX Ranch the day we evaluated it I had a lot of fun.  Being from Kansas almost everything is flat, but around here there are mountains.  That was the first time I had ridden in the mountains.  The view was phenomenal!  And it was exciting walking along the edge of a cliff and looking down at the valley below.  There's a lot of up and down and it's pretty rocky, but I would recommend it to every experienced rider.