by Bill Byrne | Mar 4, 2017 | Uncategorized
Crystal Creek Ranch Appreciates you…
What’s our main goal at Crystal Creek Ranch? It’s for you and your family and friends to enjoy the beauty of nature and each other’s company! We want everyone who leaves CCR to do so refreshed in some small (or large) way, either in body or spirit and hopefully both. That’s why we’re here…
To help accomplish this, we continue to put a picture frame around God’s beauty in the Ozarks. With miles of pure clean water in our streams and springs, woods, nature trails, fields and animals, the ranch offers all this and more.
We provide outside activities with our pedal karts, horseshoe pits, barnyard playgrounds, feed sack slide, lake with fishing, paddleboats, lots of small animals to feed and interact with, as well as miles of walking trails and creeks to explore. Our air conditioned cabins and houses contain many games to play as well as beautiful views of nature. All of this we do with very limited numbers of guests, so you never feel crowded and can enjoy the beauty and find the peace of solitude.
Whether you are a paying guest, or staying as part of our outreach program, our wish is the same…refresh, enjoy your time of recreation, to relax , rejuvenate & reconnect.
Our plans for 2017? First and foremost is to increase the number of guests who come to the ranch. If you stayed with us last year, thank you, and we hope you will return again in 2017.
Our SpiritHorse Therapeutic Riding Program continues to do great things for children. We are thankful for all the volunteers who make this program successful.
This spring we are hosting our Farm Adventure Field Trips to area schools, as well as Farm & Vo-Ag Days in conjunction with other agencies in the area. We continue to offer “free” mini vacations to families facing difficult times in the areas of pediatric cancer, children diseases, and counseling. We invite you to partner with us if you wish by sponsoring a family’s stay with a $250 donation. We are a non profit 501 C-3, so all donations are tax deductible. And remember, when you stay with us as a paying guest, part of your cost helps keep our Outreach Programs going. Thanks!
Once again, Thank you, and may 2017 be a hopeful year for us all.
Crystal Creek Crew
by Bill Byrne | Feb 13, 2017 | Uncategorized
We finally finished with about 3 miles of high tensile electric wire around many of our fields. Fencing on the ranch has always been a challenge because of the 2+ miles of creeks that we have to work around and over. When they periodically flood we need to fix all back up, so the trick has been to try and make this as easy as possible. Also, our hills, hollers, and woods make it hard to find the cows, so we have been using the fencing to take a lot of these out of their reach. Successful? Time and mother nature will tell!
by Bill Byrne | Jan 30, 2017 | Uncategorized
Bette and I just spent 2 days at the hospital in Springfield as she was checked out for heart problems. Ending results were that she has an abnormal heart pumping with a weakness that should repair itself in a month or so [cause basically unknown]. Good news is that there were no problems in arterys or valves, so all is ending well. Such visits do help us all to look at what we do on a daily basis, our hopes, and what we really hold as important in our lives. As such they can have a very positive effect, and also help us empathize and appreciate the problems others are having. The technology available today in the health field is amazing, but the most important resources hospitals have are the people working there, and the helpful, hopeful attitudes that all of them demonstrate on a daily basis. Thank you to all!
by Bill Byrne | Jan 20, 2017 | Uncategorized
Cows, rain, and some thawing ground….add them altogether and you get some pretty mushy places. I almost got stuck a number of times yesterday [even in 4 wheel drive] on our “regular” roads where 100’s of cows feet had made a real mess of them. Feels like Springtime, though I think we might just have a little Winter left!
by Bill Byrne | Jan 10, 2017 | Uncategorized
Four below one day, and 60 degrees and windy three days later! We’re looking forward to rain since it has been so dry the last couple of months. Will get out and work on fencing today, and repairing a hay wagon for feeding the cows. We recently doubled the size of our herd, so using a lot more hay this year.
by Bill Byrne | Jan 9, 2017 | Uncategorized
They are predicting a possibility of ice and freezing rain, which is some of the most challenging weather we can deal with, both personally and from the standpoint of our animals and ranching. I’ll check our kerosene, battery, and lamp supply, as well as put our tractor under roof to get so we can even open the doors on the cab. One thing I have learned the hard way is to have the barn doors open so we can access our hay. In the past I’ve had to chip and dig in ice, a hard job on 16 foot wide sliding doors. Oh well, embrace all we get as an experience worth having! It does help us to appreciate the “normal”.
