I have really enjoyed writing the blog thus far. It’s my early morning meditation and time for reflection. I wake up around 4:30 almost every day, make a cup of coffee and sit in my office. My office is located in the old red ranch house. The wood house was built in 1891 and it’s a great place for thinking. I have an old desk that my great-grandfather, Maurice Finger, built when he was a young man. One wall is completely lined with books I have collected and read over the years. It’s my little piece of solitude before the sun rises and the real ranch work begins. I work on financials, check over e-mails, update the websites, do some social media and write blogs. Sitting here one day I realized that I have been writing the blog for almost a year now and have never really introduced myself to the readers. My mother often told me before she passed away that I could write a book about my life, though I haven’t been on this Earth that long. Here is a little insight to my life and how I got to where I am today. It will be a series of blogs that will be published when I see fit.

Some of you may already know this story and some of you may have been a part of it. I was raised on the ranch, about five miles South of D’Hanis. Growing up we actually didn’t have a name for the ranch. Some family members called it the “Poquito Dedo,” meaning the Little Finger. This was named after my grandmother’s maiden name, Finger. I will write another blog about the early history of our ranch dating back to 1846. The ranch consists of about 200 acres that my father owns to this day and another 200 acres that my cousins, the Henry’s, own. Back then dad also leased a lot of country as well for his cow/calf operation.

Growing up on the ranch was everything one might dream that it was, but there were also hard times. I vividly remember the land being cleared by big bulldozers in the late 1980’s. All of the ranch at that time was covered in brush and mesquites. My father planted the cleared land in Klein and Bermuda grass. He worked in the offshore oilfield at the time with a 7 day on, 7 day off rotation. Looking back I suppose he did it to finance his ranching dreams. He had come back to a ranch that was decrepit and in poor condition. He ran a herd of mixed cattle including Santa Gertrudis and Bramah F-1 (also known as Tiger Stripes). Mom took care of the ranch and three kids while Dad was working for seven day stretches at a time. There were long days sleeping on the floor board of the tractor while mom plowed fields and the rough ride 15 miles North of D’Hanis to the Maranao Ranch to check cattle. I helped to the best of my ability building barbed wire fences, picking up fire wood and basically anything I was asked to do. Dad had built a new brick house on the hilltop around 1984. The only room with an A/C window unit was the living room, thus there were many hot nights with just a fan and a wet towel to stay cool. We didn’t get central air until the late 1990’s. I think Dad literally sank every last penny he had into the ranch. I remember in the late 80’s there was a recession and commodities collapsed. Sinking cattle prices basically put my father out the cattle business. We still had a few head on the home place, but he gave up most of the leases at that time. I remember taking good cows to Union Commission or L&H Packing in San Antonio and you were lucky if you got $50 for her. It was a really bad time to be in the cattle business. My father had invested everything in the business and basically lost it all. I only wish I could go back 30 years and teach him a few of the things I have learned. We didn’t have a lot of land or much money. My parents were as frugal as they come. Most of the food we consumed was wild game including deer, pig, rabbits or fish. Mom made King Ranch rabbit and fried venison quite often. She had a beautiful garden and a flock of laying hens to supplement the family. We didn’t go to town much and only ate dinner at a restaurant a few times per year typically when it was someones birthday. Quite honestly there were hardly any restaurants to be found in our small rural communities. We didn’t waste anything, in fact during the market downturn in the late 80’s we woke up one cold winter morning to find our big, red Santa Gertrudis bull killed by a poacher next to the County Road. Dad was offshore working, so mom called her brother James to come help us field dress the bull. Needless to say we ate a lot of ground beef that week.

The ranch was an amazing place to grow up. We ran free and wild in the bottom land as we wished. Mom certainly didn’t have us on a leash. We built wooden forts and played until dark almost every day. No computers or cell phones. It was instilled in me from an early age to live a life of independence. My father and other adult figures in my life taught me a lot of skills. We learned to make jerky and sausages, weld steel with a good bead, build fence, break and train horses, work cattle on horseback, cut firewood and build a proper fire, how to hunt, kill and dress wild game, drive a truck at ten years old and so much more. These were essential life skills if you were going to live on a ranch. We learned what bit, stung or poked you. Which one’s were superficial or which ones might put you in the hospital. Other mentors included my great grandfather, Maurice Finger, and his brother Uncle Clemens. They gave us insight into a time long gone. Both were born in late 1890’s and early 1910’s. They told us stories of real cowboys and Indians, and we did our best as young kids to emulate them.

As I got older I admittedly drifted away and lost sight of the lessons I had learned in those early years. The relationship with my father deteriorated due to his bad habits and needless to say I wanted nothing to do with the ranch. I was specifically told, like many others that grew up on ranches, that there was no good living to be made ranching. I still helped when needed, but spent most of my time working on other ranches. I had the motivation to learn, grit and a good work ethic. My first real job was at the Rowe Ranch, working with Joe Wheeler. It was a fairly large ranch at that time encompassing several thousand acres. They had a herd of about 400 Black Angus cows that we tended to daily. In addition to that we flood irrigated some land and tended to all other facets of the ranch. I also worked for Kenneth Bendele and later the Guajillo Ranch. I helped day work cattle on the weekends all over South Texas. This included a lot of work on horseback chasing cattle through the brush country on my old horse named Paco. I would often pack up on the weekends and go to Acuna, Mexico with friends to do things that weren’t allowed in our country. I don’t think mom appreciated it, but she knew that she couldn’t stop me either. I was hard headed at that time and didn’t listen to anyone.

After graduating from high school I drifted away from home for about 6 years. I didn’t come back very often, but thought about the ranch a lot. After bouncing around for a while I landed at Texas A&M University in College Station studying Wildlife & Fisheries Sciences. It was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life. It taught me to really think for myself and critically about the world around me. I had the most amazing professors that were very influential in my life. During those years I was absorbing everything I could learn. I traveled with professors during the Fall and Summer breaks to conduct research in far away places like Costa Rica, Dominica, Ecuador and the Cayman Islands. I would also travel around a bit to other countries just soaking it all in when I had the money to afford it. Travelling deep in the Amazon I got to see places and cultures that few people lay their eyes upon. This time in my life was an awakening for me. I met Mandy, who is now my wife, our Senior year in Mammalogy class. Needless to say even though I was always broke, I was having the time of my life.

We graduated from Texas A&M in May of 2008 right when the recession was peaking and there wasn’t a job to be found. I did what anyone else would do, I moved back to the ranch and started breaking horses. I probably trained 40 horses that first Summer and Fall back at the ranch. It was fun, but wearing me thin physically. Training young colts and fillies is hard on your body. Sitting on horseback one day out in the pasture I received a call from a laboratory in Colorado that had a big contract in India with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This was the beginning on my life’s next chapter, which I will write about in the next blog “A phone call from India.”

In those early years I developed a passion for the land, livestock and people. I learned the ethics of a hard days work and a respect for a time almost forgotten. It gave me the grit and determination needed to succeed at whatever I dreamed of. Little did I realize that it was a prelude of what was to come later in life.