PICABO, Idaho (AP)--It's a clear, cold morning when I pull into the lane of frozen mud at Picabo Livestock Co.'s headquarters, just off U.S. Highway 20.

Ranch hand Lonny Barg, with three cattle dogs at his heels, is leading three Belgian horses into the barn for a little babying. Two of the horses have a job ahead of them: hauling a hay-laden sleigh to feed a hundred heifers, pregnant with their first calves.

Of course, Lonny could do the daily task with a tractor. But the team-and-sleigh method has something of the ranch heritage he loves, and nothing of the flat tires and cranky equipment he deplores.

"My horses start every morning, no matter how cold it is," he says. "A good team is worth their weight in gold."

A decade ago, Picabo Livestock fed 600 head of cattle by team and sleigh (or wagon, when snow was scarce). But eventually the ranch began baling hay in bigger bales that required a tractor for loading. With the trouble of starting equipment behind them, ranch hands took to hauling most of the hay by tractor, as well.

But six days a week, Lonny still hitches two of the three Belgians to a load of hay for the hundred heifers.

"Just to kind of keep the heritage going," he says. "I'd never stop, if I had my choice."

The ranch bought 5-year-old Jill and 3-year-old Jack, the junior members of the Belgian team, a few weeks ago. As Lonny sees it, that commits the ranch to horse-powered hauling for another 20 years.

Each horse takes off one day in three. This morning, Jack and Jill will work, and 12-year-old Big Buddy (at 2,300 pounds he deserves the name) will rest. Still, Buddy gets the same grain-and-brushing treatment as the others, while the dogs whine at the door of the barn.

Lonny's wife, Kristi, and their sons Wacey, 12, and Baley, 10, emerge from the house with Duke--a Boston terrier sporting a red doggie jacket--while the horses are harnessed. It's a school holiday for the boys, so Kristi won't be bucking bales today.

For 13 years, the Bargs have worked for Bud and Nick Purdy's Picabo Livestock Co., tending animals with the K--K (say "K Bar K") brand. This is the only life the Barg sons have known.

The sleigh is parked on the other side of Highway 20, so we walk up the ranch lane, Lonny following Jack and Jill. On the lines between the horses hangs a leather heart, decorated with metal studs. (The heart is part of the regular gear. But I suspect that Lonny's colorful neckerchief is making an appearance for the camera's sake.)

If the boys were in school and the Bargs had no visitors, Kristi would pick up the newspaper from a roadside box before crossing the highway. She usually reads the news to her husband on the ride out to the cattle. But today, Duke enjoys her attention.

As Lonny hitches up the flat-bed sleigh, the Boston terrier gives up acting like one of the big dogs and submits to being wrapped in a tattered baby blanket. It's the blanket from Kristi's own childhood, and she brought home both of her boys in it.

Wacey and Kristi, cradling Duke, position themselves at the back of the sleigh, turning their backs to the wind. Baley joins his dad at the front, as Lonny starts the team with an admonition of "easy, easy." Photographer Ashley Smith and I opt for the frosty wooden planks at the sleigh's middle, and we both slip and exclaim when the sleigh starts with a jerk.

Lonny teases his visitors: "That was easy!"

Behind a team, he tells us, a ranch hand can spot wildlife and subtle weather developments that a tractor's rumble might erase. As if to illustrate his point, the three cattle dogs take off running after a coyote at a far fence line, but soon abandon the chase.

Jack and Jill lay back their ears and prance instead of walk--signs that Lonny interprets as nervousness over the conversation behind them. Usually he and his wife are silent on the daily ride to the haystack, he says.

According to Kristi, that's not exactly true.

"Some of our best talks are out here. No one bothers us," Kristi says.

I see what she means. From here, it appears there's little between the Timmerman Hills and the Pioneer Mountains but us and open sky.

At the haystack, Wacey and Baley pull down 80-pound bales with hay hooks, and their dad stacks the bales on the sleigh's flat bed. With 44 bales and the weight of the sleigh, the two Belgians pull about 2 tons a day. They could pull 5 or 6 tons comfortably, Lonny says.

Listening to far-off geese, we leave Haystack Field for The 115, a field named for its number of acres. For now, The 115, watered by Silver Creek, is home to the herd of heifers. The loaded sleigh has their attention as it approaches.

"The cows know what time it is," Wacey says.

Baley hops down to open The 115's double gate, struggling a little with a frozen peg. The big dogs jump off to burrow for mice in the snow. Despite this morning's sunshine, Duke begins to shiver in Kristi's arms.

There's a well-trampled line in the snow of The 115. Wacey takes the reins to drive the team down that line--normally his mother's task--while Lonny and his younger son untie each bale and drop chunks of hay off either side of the sleigh.

"Don't lose no strings," Lonny tells Baley.

Lonny could do the job faster by himself, Kristi says. But the boys love to help. When chickenpox kept Baley inside last year, it broke his heart.

Something of that sentiment must be inherited.

About the first of March, Kristi tells me, the heifers will be moved to fenced pasture near ranch headquarters until calving. From experience, she knows Lonny will be depressed as his daily trips with the team and sleigh come to an end for the season.

"He gets upset when he has to turn his horses out," she says.

Date: 3/24/05