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Grandpa - Jack HoLman

My Grandpa Jack Holman was bor in January of 1913 in Fountain Green, Utah.  His parents were Mormon pioneers that crossed the plains in the late 1880 with their families when the wersterward movement was at its peak.  My greatgrandparents and grandparents were sheep hearders.  Grandpa Jack loved working outdoors and being a rancher.  He raised all five of his children in the Eastern Utah and Southern colorado Mountains hearding sheep.  They would spend their winters in town, but when the summer came they spent all summer in the rugged peaks and valleys of some of the most beautiful mountains in the United States. 

     "Soon after the ewes lambed out on the ranch, and the lambs grew to be about 3 weeks old, we docked and branded them and then took small bands of 150 or so to the foot hills.

     During the summer, we were permitted a total of 1200 adult sheep and their lambs on Forest Service lands. So during the latter part of May and into June, we’d drive the flock up to pasture in the foothills above the ranch, taking the ewes and lambs up in the small bands as soon the lambs grew big enough to travel to prepare them to be transported upto the mountain valleys near Lake City.

     It was about a 6 mile trip up to the foothill pasture from the ranch. And it was always on a Saturday when the drive took place. Funny, that’s the day when us kids (my brother, Melvin, and I) would be home from school and could take the sheep up... We did this on foot, driving the sheep slowly along for about 4-5 hours, followed later in the day by Dad, who would meet us up there in the pick up and bring us back down to the Ranch.

The first time I went up, the sheep herder went with us. That’s how we learned the way. But the sheep pretty much knew where to go in the foothills. The old ones would teach the new ones, and they would slowly move off in the right direction, urged on by the promise of greener grass. The only challenge here was keeping the little lambs moving along. They’d get tired and want to call it quits. We used to make rattles by taking a half gallon can with a handful of rocks inside, hammer the top together, drive a nail through to make hole, thread a piece of wire thru it, and had the perfect tool for tossing behind the sheep. That rattle sound would get them up and going.

As you can imagine, with the sheep spread out and grazing along the grassy hillsides, rattle snakes would get stirred up from time to time. One day, as we were driving the sheep along, there was this snake, laying there all coiled up shaking his rattle menacingly at us. Of course us kids just had to have those rattlers. Well, we found a couple rocks and then struck the snake on his head, then we stepped on his head to be safe and cut off our prized rattle.  Funny thing was we could buy rattle snake in a can then to eat, but we were having none of that snake but its rattles."