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.’