I breath deeper at the HCC Ranch in Montana than I do anywhere else. My heart muscles burn when I breathe that deep and my ribcage bones tend to crack because they haven’t been that stretched in a long time. I feel the air go all the way into my belly when I come to HCC.

You might remember Mark and Kaitlyn’s engagement session on this cattle ranch last summer, and they invited us back up to Montana to join them for branding in April. Branding is a big day when the calves are big enough to be branded and friends and family come to help with the proceedings/festivities. The calves need to be driven in, separated, roped, and branded, and if you’ve ever seen a rodeo, my friends, this is the real deal. Separating, roping, and wrestling calves is a job and an art around this country, and it’s incredible to watch.

So during the course of three days, Jeff and I drove our first tractors (I have only driven small ones in Idaho – not the big farm ones), rode in a real life cattle drive (no joke), and wrestled our first calves to the ground (I definitely landed in a giant cow pie). Folks, these calves weighed more than I did, so I literally had to sit on them with my entire body weight to keep them down – they look so little from far away…

 We love this place so much that we brought our Contax 645 with us to branding, and documented the ranch via medium format film. Beware – the following beautiful images may cause you to move to Montana and become a hard core cowboy. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Hugs,

Erin