Welcome to the Ranch!

November on the ranch.

Autumn is a beautiful time of year.  Some leaves are changing color.  Some evergreens are bearing bright red berries.  The air is crisp and cool.  The wind reminds you to put on a sweater.  Autumn is a great season to enjoy the outdoors.  The months of September, October, and November mark a busy time of year as well as several holidays.

My father’s favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.  Families come together to celebrate the many blessings that God has bestowed on us.  It is a holiday without the pressures of Christmas.  You don’t have to worry about buying and giving gifts.  You only have to cook and eat delicious foods prepared with loving hands.

Thanksgiving is also time of reflection.  A chance to reflect on your year and remember how blessed you are.  In the spirit of this holiday, I want to share with you some of the things that we are thankful for at Cross Creek Cattle Company.

• We are thankful for our loving and close-knit family.
• We are blessed to have so many good friends.
• We love being able to enjoy healthy,  delicious meat on our dinner table whether from our grass fed herd or from the wild boars and deer that wander in the woods.
• We are thankful to have good horses on which to ride and survey the beautiful scenery around the ranch regardless of the season.
• We have been blessed with fat cows and green grass.
• We are very thankful that health has been restored to the ranch manager after his accident.
• We are lucky to have a substantial store of hay ready to supply our animals with needed food no matter how hard the winter gets.
• We are thankful to have made it through the drought and to have finally received the much-needed rainfall.
• We are grateful that we can live our lifestyle in the 21st century.
• Last but not least, we are grateful for our customers who help support our family-owned and operated ranch.

From everyone at Cross Creek Cattle Company, we wish everyone a very “Happy Thanksgiving!”  May God continue to bless each and every one of us.

One of the rites of passage in a young man’s life in Texas, and other parts of the country, is killing his first deer.  My son, Clayton, began hunting with his PawPaw with binoculars.  He was in kindergarten at the time.  He would dress up in camoflague and get up extremely early in the morning.  Together PawPaw and Clayton would sit as still as possible and wait for the chance to see one of the most beautiful of all forest animals.

After many years of “patience” practice, Clayton proved himself capable of sitting still.  When he was 10-years old, he was allowed to hunt on Cross Creek Cattle Company.  He killed his first buck.  It was a nice-sized spike.

Every hunting season since then, Clayton has proudly supplied venison for his family.  This year on his first day of hunting, Clayton brought home a big deer.  It is a eight-point buck.  It was a good-sized buck.

We do not have the trophy deer that draw hunters to South Texas.  White-tailed deer thrive in our woods.  Their population is continually increasing each year.  I have seen more bucks this year in the pastures, roadsides, and woods than any other time of my life.  It is nice to see them thriving as they are an important part of our eco-system.

Our family enjoys eating venison in a variety of ways.  We smoke the hams.  We make pan and link sausage.  We fry the backstrap and tenders like chicken-fried steak.  We pound out strips of the shoulder and grill with jalapenos, bacon, and cream cheese.  We almost eat venison year round.

Clayton takes great pride, as he should, in providing wild game for his family.  We count on him every year to help feed our big family.  It is one of the ways that enables us to strive for self-sufficiency.  We try to live off the land as much as possible.  As this hunting season is concerned, Clayton brought home the venison.

In a typical year, we try to not put out bales of hay until after the Thanksgiving holiday.  This is a personal goal of Cross Creek Cattle Company.  With good rain throughout the summer months, our pastures can supply grasses for our cattle until then.  Unfortunately this year we had drought conditions.  For months we had no rainfall.

We prayed for fat cows and green grass, and we were blessed accordingly.  Some of our less fortunate neighbors were having to put out hay during the summer.  It was incredible.  Just yesterday, I was driving in the northern part of our county.  I was amazed at how bad all the pastures looked.  They had their herds on completely bare and brown pastures.  You have no choice as a rancher, but to give hay in this situation.

As the grass season comes to an end and autumn is in full swing, we stop rotating our pastures.  Instead, we open all the interior gates and allow the cattle to forge for themselves.  They can find the best grasses on their own.  They have that innate ability.

Now as winter time approaches, we are preparing to put out hay a few weeks early.  My dad is disappointed, but considering the year we have had I think we are doing well.  In fact we are doing better than most in our area.  The way I look at it, we made it to November.