I just finished watching all 8 hours of this show. It's 1 of those living history programs. It came out in May 2006. Here's their description of the show:
10,000 people applied to be on the show. A few of the people selected had previous horse riding skills. Robbie, the cowboy foreman, is a skilled rider along with other cattle/cowboy capabilities. There is a family that are the ranch owners. They include a husband/wife team & their 3 kids. 7 cowboys, 1 cook & 1 ranch manager. They spend 2 1/2 months on the ranch with the goal of being able to claim enough cattle to make the ranch financially viable. They would dress in period clothes and use period tools. No chain saws or electric drills.
The 2 groups, family & ranch hands, got separate, specialized training for 2 weeks. Then they are sent out to west Texas and the fun begins. The hard work, lack of refrigeration, heat, flies, food or lack of, unique attitudes, personal expectations and many other factors combine to make for very interesting personal challenges.
I'm intrigued by the interactions of each participant. Each person has a task to do but they are also held accountable to some degree. There is a ranch owner & a foreman. In no time the laborers feel that their efforts are not appreciated. Management sees the workers as a bunch of loafers. To say this caused conflict would be a huge understatement.
Towards the end each person is operating from a position of ultimate self interest. There is a lot of wheelin & dealin as people seek to get what they want. To try and explain all of the machinations that went on wouldn't do the show justice.
Here's a link to the show. Texas ranch house The wiki link We watched the DVD. I'm sure it's available online or at the library. I enjoyed it tremendously and always looked forward to our next episode. YMMV
10,000 people applied to be on the show. A few of the people selected had previous horse riding skills. Robbie, the cowboy foreman, is a skilled rider along with other cattle/cowboy capabilities. There is a family that are the ranch owners. They include a husband/wife team & their 3 kids. 7 cowboys, 1 cook & 1 ranch manager. They spend 2 1/2 months on the ranch with the goal of being able to claim enough cattle to make the ranch financially viable. They would dress in period clothes and use period tools. No chain saws or electric drills.
The 2 groups, family & ranch hands, got separate, specialized training for 2 weeks. Then they are sent out to west Texas and the fun begins. The hard work, lack of refrigeration, heat, flies, food or lack of, unique attitudes, personal expectations and many other factors combine to make for very interesting personal challenges.
I'm intrigued by the interactions of each participant. Each person has a task to do but they are also held accountable to some degree. There is a ranch owner & a foreman. In no time the laborers feel that their efforts are not appreciated. Management sees the workers as a bunch of loafers. To say this caused conflict would be a huge understatement.
Towards the end each person is operating from a position of ultimate self interest. There is a lot of wheelin & dealin as people seek to get what they want. To try and explain all of the machinations that went on wouldn't do the show justice.
Here's a link to the show. Texas ranch house The wiki link We watched the DVD. I'm sure it's available online or at the library. I enjoyed it tremendously and always looked forward to our next episode. YMMV
