Book Review: The Home Ranch

We finished this book yesterday. It's the third one we've read in the "Little Britches" series by Ralph Moody during our read-aloud time.  We are completely enthralled with this biographical series and plan to read them all!

This one covers the summer Ralph spent working for a rancher at the base of the Rocky Mountains. It's hard to imagine our 12 year old son going off to work cattle for 3 months with a bunch of cowboys, but that's what Little Britches did.

He was hired to do a man's work and was to receive a man's pay. Things didn't start off smoothly. He was trying too hard to prove he was worth his salt and ended up coming off as cocky and foolish. The boss, hoping to settle him down, sent him off with a crusty old cowboy to cut posts for fences. Between the two of them, they ended up lost for several days in the mountains and almost died. Those few days changed everything. Ralph realized, for the first time, just how he had been acting. You might say he grew up by almost dying. 

From that point on, he was humble enough to actually learn how to do his job with excellence. Combine that with his God-given talent with horses and he definitely earned his pay. But more importantly than that, he earned the respect of every hand on the ranch. It was a great lesson for our kids to see.

The story is filled with all kinds of exciting adventures and lots of life-threatening danger. And it's a good thing his mother didn't know about all the scrapes he got himself into. It was cute to read about him trying to write letters back home. He realized that most of the things he could write about, he couldn't write about because his mother would get on a horse herself and ride out to take him home where he would be "safe." As a mom, it is a hard thing to strike that balance in learning to allow our young men to be "wild at heart" without being foolish. So I understand the struggle Ralph's mom went through in deciding to allow him to work on the ranch.

Driving home from the store the other day, I saw Josh just coming back from working in a neighbor's yard. He had on his cowboy hat, boots, jeans and belt with the great big western buckle on it. Are boys are definitely wishing they could spend the summer on a cattle ranch at the base of the Rocky Mountains.

This is #20 in the 52 in 52 challenge.