After an accident on their ranch in 2021, Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond wrote about how her husband, Ladd, drove himself to the hospital. "Have I mentioned cowboys don’t like to admit when they’re hurt?" she wrote at the time. Now, she is reflecting on Ladd's "rough summer" and wondering how much longer he can keep working like this. In a blog post, Ree admitted that these are her concerns, not his, as he would probably say, "It's what he does and it's part of life."
Ree, in contrast, wonders, "How much longer can you do this?"
Ladd is a cattle rancher who works on his family's ranch in Oklahoma, Drummond Land & Cattle Co. People previously reported that the Drummonds are among the largest land-owning families in the country. Ree has noticed the impact the physically demanding work has had on her husband.
In a blog post about her daughter's engagement, she wrote that she felt "a little better about things" when she saw Ladd "smiling and walking around and enjoying the celebration of his second child and the man she's gonna marry."
A couple of weeks ago, though, she was genuinely concerned about her husband.
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"A couple of weeks ago, after watching him limp inside, covered in dust and blood after a particularly long day, I actually said the words, 'I don't think we can do this anymore,'" she wrote.
While she might've been joking (sort of), she admits that she was also kind of serious about it.
She had multiple questions running through her mind: "How much harder can you work, how much longer can you do this, are you okay," she wondered.
Ree admitted that every summer can seem rough, so the challenges are not necessarily unusual, but they're not easy, either. "I think I say this every year, but the work, the early mornings, the unrelenting grind, the exhaustion…it has been a little much," she wrote.
Ladd and Caleb, who is Ree and Ladd's nephew, got into an accident on the ranch in 2021 when they were trying to put out a wildfire and their trucks collided. Initially, because Ladd "wanted the paramedics to focus on Caleb" and "because cowboys don’t like to admit when they’re hurt," Ladd declined medical attention, Ree wrote at the time.
Although he didn't have life-threatening injuries, when he later drove himself to the hospital, he realized he was hurt worse than he initially thought.
"Ladd (the guy I told you about who drove himself to the hospital?) broke his neck in two places — and evidently one of the two fractures was very close to being catastrophic," Ree wrote.
He had surgery and had to wear a neck brace afterward.
Ree's concerns about her husband's well-being are understandable given what happened in 2021 and the nature of the work he does. However, at the time of the 2021 accident, she wrote about how she has the strength to get through these kinds of challenges.
"Dealing with unexpected family happenings like this simply comes with the territory," she wrote at the time. "I guess if you’ve lived enough years as a wife, mother, sister, daughter, you’re going to develop the ability to power through crises without crumbling."
