[title subtitle=”words: stoney stamper
images:courtesy april stamper”][/title]
I was born and raised on a Quarter Horse ranch in northeast Oklahoma. I was the fifth generation of ranchers on The Rocking S Ranch, which would later be known simply as Stamper Ranch. We showed a lot of horses, pigs, and even a few cattle through the years. We judged horses, livestock and gave speeches. We built fence for folks in town and delivered truckloads of feed for the old cattle farmers down the road who couldn’t haul it for themselves anymore. Few kids have been more involved in 4-H and FFA than my siblings and me. I admit that sometimes, I didn’t love it. As a child, it was a lot of hard work, a lot of long hours out feeding and washing and clipping and tending to sick animals, and I may not have gotten to go play as much as my friends. My dad is a soft hearted man, kind and gentle for the most part. But when it came to working with the animals, he was different. Inevitably, tempers flared, voices were raised, and feelings got hurt. It’s not as bad as it sounds. In the grand scheme of things, this was “family time,” and it was fun, in a weird way. There was this synergy we had. Even though emotions ran high, and tears sometimes fell, we still laughed, and we still made these amazing memories that we still laugh about today, some twenty-five years later.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize what a blessing it was to be able to grow up in the country surrounded by trees and hayfields and pastures full of horses and cows. To breathe in the cool, spring air and smell the fresh cut hay, and hear the bawling of a new pen of calves in the corner lot. But more than that, the time I spent with my family out there in the winter, in the rain, snow, and sleet, or the smoldering heat of an Oklahoma summer, was so much more. Those are the fondest memories of my life.
I spent eighteen wonderful years on that ranch. Then I used all that I had learned in 4-H and FFA and agriculture and was able to receive a full-ride scholarship to college. I spent the next four years engaging in extracurricular activities that would not have pleased my strict cowboy grandfather, not one bit, although at the end of my stint at school, I had something he never had. A college diploma. And then right out of college, I got a good job that made a decent salary, and the company put me on the road. For nearly fifteen years, I worked all over the United States and in Canada. I traveled nearly 300 days a year. I spent more time in an airport, a train station, a rental car, or in a hotel than I could count. At first, it was fun. The country boy goes to the city. I spent a good bit of time in New York, Detroit, Boston, Toronto, Montreal, and Chicago. Places that I never thought I’d find myself in. I knew every restaurant or bar that was the place to be. I was the life of the party, and I had gotten far away from my ranching roots.
Years later, April and I started dating. We fell in love quickly and decided that we wanted to be married. She had two daughters, Abby and Emma. And I wanted to be a part of their lives, but I couldn’t really do that very well being gone nine months out of the year. So we agreed that I’d take a job in Texas. We’d have to move, but we’d all be together. April and I felt it was important that we raise our children in the same kind of agricultural environment that we were raised in. But when we first moved to Texas our options were pretty limited. We lived in a small subdivision, and we didn’t have any land to keep livestock. So after a year or so, we found an older home that needed some work on a nice piece of land. It had a barn and an arena, and miles of old fencing that needed replacing. And we bought it. April could hardly control herself now that she had room to fill our newfound Valhalla with animals. But one of the first things we wanted to do was get the girls some show animals. The first year, we got them Boer goats. And with all due respect to Boer goats, they must be the dumbest animal that walks the face of this earth. We had to teach one of them to walk on its lead by pulling him with the lawnmower. No matter how hard we tried, he wouldn’t just do the most basic animalistic thing, which is to walk.
I did not enjoy showing goats. Nothing against goats, I just had never dealt with them, and they seemed to be nearly as hard-headed as I am. When we finished our show season, Emma won her class at county, and our goat showing days were over. The next year, we moved on to pigs. As soon as we got them home, my mind immediately went straight back to those days in my backyard with my dad and my sister. Dad yelling, my sister Shannon ticked off, pigs running everywhere. It was chaos.
While I was reminiscing about those old times, I was suddenly yanked back to reality by the screams of my teenage daughter. The baby pigs were loose and had scattered. Abby, my oldest, was wearing Carhartt overalls and rubber mud boots, clearly not the most conducive outfit to running sprints and chasing pigs, but she was doing her best. And right on cue, the dad came out in me, and I begin yelling and griping and barking orders.
The girls called out, “We’re trying!” They rolled their eyes and continued trying to get these wild animals back in their pen. We finally got all four of them back in the barn and almost to their pen when one of them made a break for it. He shot through a gap and ran for the large door. Abby saw where he was headed and took off. Just as she got to the door, within arm’s reach of the pig, her toe caught the water hose that was lying on the ground. Her feet were too far behind her, and I knew she was going to fall. Her mother and I watched in slow motion as she hit the ground, chest first and let out a sound like “ughhhhh.”
And at that moment, I forgot all about the pigs. I forgot about the one that was quite possibly running as fast as he could for the highway. Instead, I focused solely on laughing at Abby. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. She wasn’t hurt, of course. As a matter of fact, the pig that we were chasing had grown pretty curious as to what we were laughing at, so he came walking back up to us, and then right into his pen as if nothing had ever happened. It was chaos. Beautiful chaos. And April, Abby, Emma and I laughed the rest of the evening.
Twenty years from now, they probably won’t remember too much about these pigs. They probably won’t remember how they placed at the shows or how much money they won. But I can guarantee you this: they’ll never forget the time Abby face-planted while chasing that crazy Berkshire hog.
Stoney Stamper
is the author of the popular parenting blog, The Daddy Diaries. He and his wife April have three daughters: Abby, Emma and Gracee. Originally from northeast Oklahoma, the Stampers now live in Tyler, Texas. For your daily dose of The Daddy Diaries, visit Stoney on Facebook or on his website, thedaddydiaries.net.
