Cowboys and Canyonlands of Texas - A Hackberry Farm Photography Workshop

Waking up well before sunrise, I walk outside, and it’s cold out.  In early December, the weather is fickle in the southeast Texas Panhandle.  Most of the time, it’s seasonably pleasant here.  This year, however, a sharp cold front barreled in early in the week, dropping temperatures well below freezing.  Now, a stiff breeze blows from the north and drives the wind chills down into the teens.

The work continues, however.

On a ranch southwest of town, a family is out in the barn before sunrise, saddling up horses in the twilight in anticipation of some cow work that’s to come.  The participants of the Cowboys and Canyonlands photography workshop show up at sunrise, we exchange pleasantries with the family, and get to work.  

It’s quiet in the country.  In the distance, we hear the drone of a cotton stripper harvesting white, fluffy bolls from the freeze-killed stalks.  At the barn, a horse whinnies in anticipation of its coming.  Although there’s a slow pace at hand, the morning buzzes with the anticipation of what’s to come.

At this ranch, cow work is a family affair.  The kids (when old enough to do so), help out with the chores, and this morning, they join their dad - each on the back of a horse - in moving the cattle from one place to the next.

It’s cold out, and the wind bites at exposed skin, but the work is necessary. Soon, we head back to the barn where the horses are unsaddled and put away for the day.  After breakfast, the kids will start school, and Dad will head off to strip cotton.  We get to witness a slice of life in an otherwise busy day.

All week, we’ve been visiting ranch after ranch, documenting what real life is like in some of the last vestiges of the old way of cattle ranching.  There’s nothing overly fancy here:  simple compositions against simple landscapes with remarkable, hard-working people in between.

“Other states were carved or born, but Texas grew from hides and horns,” goes a line in the old poem by Berta Hart Nance.  It’s an eloquent line that tells so much of the tale of the Texas ethos with just a few carefully constructed words.

Texas did grow from hides and horns.  In the era succeeding the Civil War, the state was broke.  But it was rich in land and free-ranging cattle.  Therefore, enterprising cowboys gathered large herds of longhorn cattle, pushed them north to the railheads in Kansas and beyond, and started the arduous task of rebuilding a state’s economy.  Then, like today, the work is plodding yet purposeful.  Needed to feed a hungry nation and its appetite for high-quality beef.

Early in the week, we spent some time with a horse trainer as he went through the meticulous machinations of training a horse that’s got good cow sense.  When he’s finished with the horse,  it’ll compete in western-related equine events.  Sometimes these horses go straight to a ranch where they’re used as an available tool in which to gather cattle from enormous pastures.

On the next-to-last evening of the excursion, we head out to another local ranch. On this ranch is a husband and wife team.  It’s here that you see the work and effort that goes into training cow horses manifest itself.  You can see the quiet contemplation that goes on in an equine’s mind as it figures out the best way to accomplish a task.  The rider asks, the horse responds deftly.  There’s no yelling, or cohesion, or drama - only the quiet partnership of a horse and its rider and their aligned purpose of doing work.  

It’s a beautiful thing to behold.

ADDITIONAL IMAGES