The Ranch: A place to grow.

G.A.M.E.

The Green Arnold Maurer Estate was a 2,000+ acre ranch that was home to 60 head of cattle, 200 sheep, 300 goats, roughly 30 peacocks, a dozen chickens and guinea, 3 horses, and a llama.

This place had been a haven for my family for nearly three years, since 2013, a place we could call our home when we had no where else to go. I loved and loathed this ranch, particularly the man who owned it. He was a difficult man to love, burdened by layers of hurt and trauma that had to be peeled back to reveal how truly amazing he could be.

He was a Good, honest, and God-fearing man. Paul Maurer was a well-known figure in our town, recognized not only by the locals but also by people from neighboring areas.

Before we came to live on the ranch, we met Paul through a mutual friend about a year prior. He would occasionally lend his land out for people to use his shooting range, but you had to know him and he had to like you. My husband and I headed out with some friends to test out their new guns. When we got to the ranch, we ran into a grumpy old guy who called out for us to swing by and say hi when we were done so we could hang out for a bit.

It wasn’t too long before we noticed a strange old man walking over to us, and just so happened to stop by to chat with us. He looked like a drifter with his tattered clothes and goofy suspenders. He strolled along with a cane and had about five bags of different sizes slung over his shoulders, packed with all sorts of stuff he found while wandering around the ranch.

This man was proudly named Cranky Franky. (However, as we would discover later on, Frank was not his real name.) I believe Franky overheard some of us talking about cooking on the grill out by the range because, at some point, he wandered away and came back with tin foil and butter. You can’t cook anything without butter! He bid us farewell and went on his way again.

After a long, boring night—for me, anyway — we ate and made our way over to Paul for his visit before we left for the night. He brought us over by the fire, offered some beer and smokes, and chatted about anything and everything that he could think of. We didn’t see Paul or Cranky Franky again until I had my son in 2013.

Our journey to the Ranch begins here.

Well, it just so happened that my husband and I went through quite a big rough patch after our son’s birth. To make a very long story short, we wound up with no income and no place to call home. We sat and prayed and prayed until my husband had a thought. “Maybe we could call Paul?” He had quite a few rentals and random trailers around the ranch. So we did that very thing, we called him up and explained our situation, and that man didn’t even waste a second. “Come on over I’m up at 5 AM.”

That was it. Paul set us up in what he could, an old broken-down air-stream with 0 amenities. No water, no electricity, just a room. It was pretty beaten up by the previous tenants. I did what I could to make it livable, but at the time, it seemed downright impossible. Essentially, we were off the grid until he brought over an extension cord to provide some form of electricity. We had to switch between light, AC, Heat, or whatever we needed it for. It was…interesting, to say the least.
We had very little and worked for our stay on the ranch. Paul provided us with frozen meals and the occasional week’s supply of Mcdoubles and spicy McChickens, which were only handed out when we wanted a fresher meal.

After I got approved for food assistance, we kept the food we could get in the fridge over by the barn. Just so you are aware, this refrigerator was outside of the barn, in the elements—we’re talking 100+ degree weather on the regular. This baby was faithful, though.I have no idea how old it was or how it functioned so well, especially with the extension cord lying in the dirt. It was exposed to all sorts of things, especially since all the animals in the area were free-range. It held some kind of magic to it, I’ll tell you that much, or what my husband would say: “It’s Paul’s faith in the lord that everything will work just right.” Just one of many quirky things we had to live with that no one would believe.

This is part 1 of our many adventures on the Ranch… Just the beginning.
To be continued!

Paul with our boy. <3

In memory of P.J. Maurer, a kind and loving man who has been laid to rest since 2017.