Garland (Garlie) Swain was born November 20, 1950, and joined Edna and Horace Swain and their older children, Vernon, Pam, Ron, and Julie on the Grubbing Hoe Ranch. When Garlie graduated from high school, he opted to stay on the ranch to help his mom, and the ranch is where his heart is. He married Rhonda Steele of Boulder, Wyoming, on February 14, 1970, and they have spent their married life on the ranch. They have four children who have been raised there: Earl Jamison (Jamie), William Ray (Bill), and the twins, Ty and Tiffany.
As Garlie was growing up on the Grubbing Hoe Ranch he was around Bill Woods, a great old cowboy and owner of the ranch. Doug Price and Bud Sommers, who are both in the WCHF, and Bill Woods were very influential in teaching him how to be a good cowboy. Garlie learned to drive a team to feed cows in the winter and did it for many years after he started doing most of the work on the ranch at age 18. Garlie enjoyed feeding with a team and working horses, and he could expertly handle a team. He would help take the cows to the mountains in the spring along with gathering and sorting them at the Drift Fence in the fall on the Green River Drift.
Garlie was one of many kids Rex Wardell, WCHF inductee, raised at cow camp on the desert and mountain for the Green River Drift for two years starting in 1966. He would stay at the cow camp on the desert and help scatter and gather the cattle numbering up to 4,000 head before trailing them to mountain pastures. While on the desert, they would brand the ranchers’ calves by gathering a bunch in a different place for each branding until the calves were branded. Garlie and the rest of the cowboys would hold the herd while Rex mothered the cows up and drug the calves to the branding crew, calling out whose brand to put on each calf. They would trail the cattle up to 100 miles from the desert to the mountain while staying at different camps and ranches along the way. When they got the cattle to the mountain range, they scattered the cattle into different areas for summer and fall grazing.
Before and after helping Rex, Garlie helped the family trail their cattle to summer range as the upper end ranchers trailed their own herds from the Mesa and surrounding allotments. In the fall, he would ride at the Drift Fence to sort and gather the cattle to take to the home ranch for winter feeding.
Once he graduated from high school, he worked full time on the Grubbing Hoe Ranch, so he was the primary rider along with his mother, Edna Swain. This is when Garlie learned from the old Drift ranchers how to sort pairs and yearlings out of a large herd with 24 different brands on the cattle and bring them out without scattering the herd and causing a wreck. He learned about how to hold the herd and help the rider bringing the critter out of the main herd. You had to watch the cutters’ eyes and their horses’ shoulders to see which one was being brought out of the main herd to be placed in the ranch’s cut. There could easily be 600 to a 1,000 head of cattle a day to sort through, depending on how the cattle drifted home from the mountains. Garlie is very calm with a horse and can cut pairs out of the herd with great skill. He taught this skill to his children and wife, who are accomplished with horses and cows.
“It was always a pleasure to watch Garlie and Rhonda work together at the sorting grounds, as they were very efficient and skilled as a team,” Albert Sommers recalls.
Garlie learned the trails on the mountain and how to move the cattle from the lower range to the upper range. He thoroughly enjoys cowboying. Often the family would camp for a few days, once they got their cattle to the mountain pasture. Garlie loved to go up and help the range rider on the Teepee-Tosi allotment move the cows to the high country and put them in the correct area for grazing up high or in the lower pasture.
Garlie was great help during fall backriding especially for obnoxious old bulls who did not want to come home and had to be tracked down. Jonita Sommers remembers, “One time he was helping me find one of our bulls that had not come home. We had heard from hunters that the bull was on Pinon Ridge, so Garlie, his wife Rhonda, Bob Beard, and I went to Pinon Ridge and rode all day looking for the bull. We tracked him but never found him, so Garlie and I went back the next day and rode Pinon Ridge and the river bottom but still no bull just tracks. We stopped at The Place to eat and a guy who had a house above The Place came in and said we had a few head of cattle by his house. Garlie said to me, ‘We are going to get them and haul them home because I don’t want your mother to think we have been skunked again.’ We got them and hauled them to the ranches where they belonged. The third day was a charm. The old bull was found and brought home. Persistence paid off. Another bull was still up Tosi Creek, so we got Snooks Moore to go with us and we tracked that bull through Tosi Basin to the base of Tosi Peak and down Clear Creek. It was near dark when we found the bull not too far from the Darwin Ranch’s horse pasture, so he put him in the pasture and rode back in the dark. We got Garlie’s bull home the next day.”
Rhonda said, “He was awesome at teaching, and encouraging…We respected his knowledge and work ethic, and all tried our best to follow his lead. There are too many memories to put here, but we all have them to recall when we get together.”
Oldest son Jamie said, “Dad taught us all about hard work, whether it was feeding with a team, riding, or working/chasing cows, but we could have fun doing it sometimes. As kids we all went feeding with team and sleigh. Some were frozen mornings but we had fun and he taught us how to harness and drive the team.”
Son Bill said, “I remember him telling me… horses know when you are mad and will react in kind. … I also learned the hard way you could only turn Tuck and Dan so sharp before you lost all the hay on the sled when feeding the cows in the winter and Dad had to waller the hay digger out to put it back on before you even started to feed.”
Ty remembers, “He taught me and Jamie to take the lead from a bunch of cows and get them strung out, but to never ever go off and leave the drag. We spent our time going back and forth checking the drag and maybe picking up another lead to get out of the way. I also recall when I was about 7 and we were gathering shippers, after moving cows on the mountain that morning, to go to Riverton Livestock Auction the next day. I was riding a good old gelding, Gringo, and learned the hard way to stay awake and watch cows, and about getting back on when I bit the dust. Gringo stumbled and I wasn’t paying enough attention and went off, with him clipping me under the chin with a horseshoe nail. With lots of blood on my white t-shirt, Dad asked if I was good to get back on and finish what we were doing, and I said yes. When we were done later that afternoon, I went to the clinic to get my chin stitched up.”
Daughter Tiffany recalls, “I remember dad and us dragging colts behind the work team and hay sled, breaking them to lead. It also helped the colts learn to not be afraid of things like the hay digger swinging around them dropping hay on the sled, and a couple of rambunctious kids. He always had his team taught to move forward with ‘Little bit’ and stop with ‘Whoa.’ Ty and I learned to be quiet so we didn’t disturb the team’s concentration on the work at hand.”
Garlie has cowboyed for 60+ years. Albert Sommers said “Garlie is a ‘Hand,’ good help a horseback. Simply put a damn good cowboy.”