By Bob Rowlands ~ Sheila’s nephew
I moved back to the ranch in the late 60s when I was 19 to live with Sheila and Wenonah. The ranch was still on the hill at that time and I helped with the day to day task of taking care of the ranch. I cleaned stalls on Sunday when the only ranch hand had a day off. I helped Sheila breeding where I was responsible for preparing the mares and stallions for live cover. With Bay Abi, Sheila would ride him bare back down the hill and tease the mares and if the time was right, I would hold the mare while Bay did his business. But we did time the breeding in the fields to miss the 8 AM school bus driving by!
In the spring when the mares were ready to foal we would bring them up the hill to the barn with the foaling stall where there was a window to watch the mares. In those days there were no monitors to let you know the mares were ready to foal. We each took turns staying up watching the mares and when they were ready, whoever was on watch would call Sheila if she wasn’t on duty. There may have been a half dozen foals total at that time, but the naming of the foals was just as big an ordeal as it is today, with a twist!
At some point, Wenonah had explored Numerology and had applied the technique to Bay Abi’s name and it worked out perfectly! A precedence had been set and so each spring we would all came up with what we thought were great names, but after checking the name with Wenonah’s numerological technique, they were rejected. That process continued until it became unmanageable!
