Borgi puppies ready in time for Christmas

We have 8 Borgi puppies, mother is Border Collie, dad is Corgi. $150.00 w/o shots. Email me at chesser@pvtnetworks.net if you want more information or to claim one. There is one male and three females left.

New 'Chesser Casita Retreat'

Check out the 'casita' page for info on our new vacation rental. It turned out really cute.

Awesome Rain

We had such a beautiful, slow soaking rain yesterday. Couldn’t stay in the house afterwards, but had to get out on the 4 wheeler and see how much it had rained around. Everywhere from 2-3.4 inches and the creeks were running! It is awesome! Thank you, thank you, thank you God!!!! It was the kind of rain that will grow that hill grass that the cows and sheep love so much and is so nourishing! In a few weeks you won’t even be able to see the rocks on the hills, they’ll be covered with grass!!

Check out the rest of the pictures on our Facebook page.

"Borgi" puppies

Time has got away at Burnt Well Guest Ranch again, what with the 2^nd cattle drive (that was great) and guests before and after. Here are our eight ‘Borgi’ puppies that are for sale for $150.00. The mom is Biscuit, a full blood Border Collie, and the dad is Gravy, a registered Corgi. We usually have these puppies for sale at the World Championship Ranch Rodeo finals in Amarillo in November, but weren’t able to keep them apart this year during the earlier cycle. They are sweet little dogs! We will be going to Oklahoma City on June 9 and coming home on the 12, so can deliver any of these while en-route, Clovis, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, or anywhere in between. If interested give us a call at 575-347-2668.

View from Carlsbad Caverns

The beautiful vista from the parking lot of Carlsbad Caverns, even on a windy, hazy day. We took Steven, Isabelle (from Quebec) and Mary (from Chicago) there as a day trip and also to escape the high winds forecasted for Monday.

We hope all mothers had a happy Mother’s Day! Here are the results of a couple of young mothers living here at Burnt Well.

Biscuit, a full Border Collie, is the mother and Gravy, a registered Corgi, is the dad. We call them ‘Borgies”. They are such sweet and happy dogs. They’ll be 5 weeks old on Tuesday. This is Biscuit’s third litter of Borgi puppies and we have had very good reports from the new owners.

American Cowboy article

There is a paragraph about Burnt Well Guest Ranch in the American Cowboy June/July issue in “The Best Ranch Vacations of the West” article. It reads: Why go: In the few short years since opening in 2003, the Chesser family has built an intensely loyal clientele from all over the world. The Chesser’s literally open their home to guests--a maximum of ten at a time--with family-style meals served at their own dinner table. The relaxed conversations are always rich and intimate. The riding: Cattle drives are the specialty here. And when you saddle up to move the herd, it’s not just for show. This is a working ranch. You’ll likely get a chance to ride with other working cowboys on neighboring spreads. If you’re looking for the authentic cowboy experience, this is your place. by Mark Bedor, thanks Mark

Well, I got caught in another whirlwind and over two weeks have gone by! We had a great group for the cattle drive!! Great sports in spite of some very unfavorable circumstances out of our control! We took the puppies along, their 4 weeks old now. Here they are in their very own ‘puppy’ tent!

The weekend before the drive, the guys, Kim, Tye and Tim along with our other team members were in a ranch rodeo in Lovington. Here’s a picture of them in the grand entry. Lots going on, will hopefully add more before too much time goes by!

Blooming Yucca's

The Spanish Daggers (Yucca’s) are blooming everywhere! They’re so beautiful! Here’s a shot of some of the ones near the bunkhouse. You can see Gravy in the foreground sniffing out something? Oh, by the way, our Border Collie, Biscuit, has 8 “Borgi” (Border Collie/Corgi [Gravy’s the dad] mix) puppies born April 6! They’re still under the house, but when she brings them out, I’ll post a picture of them.

A Crazy Few Weeks!

Where did the time go! Lots going on! Since I last wrote, Patricia’s mom lost her husband to a very quick battle with Lymphoma. Our sympathies go out to her! The same week Tim Ballard (Kim’s ‘cattle drive’ right hand man and Tye’s best man at his wedding) and Alison Hammill got married. Alison is our kid’s friend that they met while working at Lost Valley Ranch in Colorado. Burnt Well was host to many of the Lost Valley staff that attended and were in the wedding.

During that time, also, Kim got 15 horses shod for the upcoming cattle drives and Patricia and Sarah (our neighbor/friend) started painting the ‘casita’. We’re enjoying guests this week from Oklahoma and have a new helper on the ranch, Marty, from the Chicago area. He hit the ground running, working on some native landscaping around the ‘casita’.

Spring Break guests

We just completed two weeks of two amazing and delightful families each of those weeks. Thank you to the Mathison’s and Boyce’s for sharing your sweet, healthy families with us! You make what we do here at Burnt Well Guest Ranch feel FAR from work! We have two weeks before Tim & Alison’s wedding, lots of guests staying here for that wedding, regular ranch guests then gearing up for the first cattle drive and a busy May. During these two weeks we hope to get some painting done on the ‘casita’ and maybe begin some of the finishing work! I’ll be glad to get to the furnishing of it so I can uncover my treadmill and empty out the storage shed, both of which are buried under and packed with stuff for the ‘casita’!

Thirsty cows!!

We had a close call this week with our cattle on the Kerr Ranch that we lease from the city of Roswell. The man that lives on that place called Wednesday night to tell us that the cows were out of water. He had noticed that they were hanging around his house for a while, and when he investigated found them with nothing to drink. When we called the city to see what was going on, they said that they were having issues with a reservoir and had turned off all the pumps. It had been over a week. Up until now, they have been really good to let us know about even the smallest of water issues, so Kim wasn’t too worried when he hadn’t been down there to check the water in several days. The city assured us they would get water back in the troughs ASAP. When Kim and the guests went down there to drive the cattle back to the water, he found them in drastically poor condition and looking over the fence longing to go somewhere else to find water. But thankfully all the cows were accounted for, alive and provided plenty of water to drink. The next morning Kim took a load of feed to them to hopefully give them a boost to overcome the slump they were in. He found them in much better shape and again all accounted for. Just a reminder not to take too much for granted. At least it has been cool and not the heat of the summer!

Coyote at the house

One morning earlier this week Patricia looked out the bedroom window and there was a coyote standing on the other side of the yard fence next to the stock tank looking at the house and the cats! They are getting thick! Hence our drastically decreased sheep numbers in comparison to just a few years ago!

We were mentioned in "Southwest meetingsg + events" publication

When I picked up the mail yesterday, there was a “Southwest meetings + events” publication with a couple paragraph on Burnt Well in the “Hey Dude” article, written by Christine Bailey, beginning on page 33. Here’s what was said,

‘Most of the ranches in the Southwest are small and accommodate groups of four to 30. Burnt Well Guest Ranch, which can host up to 10 guests at a time, is a working cattle and sheep ranch on more than 15,000 acres an hour outside of Roswell, New Mexico.

“It’s unique but strenuous,” says Patricia Chesser, who owns Burnt Well with her husband Kim. Most of their guests are looking for this type of ranching experience and Burnt Well delivers. In addition to ranch activities like horseback riding and cattle branding, Burnt Well offers several week-long cattle drives each year. On the drive, guests spend three to four days on horseback as they herd cattle 20 to 30 miles from one range to another.’

Cold days then warm days!

We had yet another snow earlier this week, giving us a total snow fall this winter of over 2 feet! That’s a lot for us! It was quickly followed by warm sunny days, so it didn’t stay around for long.

Kim took 19 yearling heifers to the sale on Monday after leaving them on hay fields, down near Carlsbad, for the winter. He quickly brought them home after these days started warming up and the alfalfa started growing, which can bloat the cattle overnight and be deadly! We did lose one before we could get them off, but got the rest home, sorted out the ones we wanted to keep for replacement cows and sold the remainder for a good price. He also bought 5 bred cows to replace some dry cows he sold a few weeks ago.

Waking up after a gray winter

Well, here at Burnt Well we’ve had our third sunny day in a row!! A very welcome sight after our gray, cold, wet winter, which is very uncharacteristic for New Mexico winters. The warmer days are making us ready to dive back into the completion of the ‘casita’ project, which entails finishing out the inside from plumbing, electrical, to insulation, etc. We are eagerly anticipating the beautiful desert wildflowers that this unusually wet winter should provide, which are a rare treat for us to enjoy! And we are gearing up for our spring guests and the two big spring cattle drives, the Bonney Drive, which has filled up, and the Kerr Drive, which still has some availability.