A Rancher's Optimism

My husband was pulling his hand through his tangled hair.  My children were imprisoning themselves in the panels--kind of playing, kind of not.  I was using pliers in lieu of a missing crescent wrench.  Even our dogs lackadaisically crashed down into a shady spot beneath our tractor.  With a tone of confusion, Wyatt muttered, “I thought this was going to be a weekend-long chore, but it feels like we’ve been doing this forever.” His optimism annoys me yet always gives this realist hope.

If it weren’t for his sunny outlook on our lives, we probably wouldn’t attempt much.  I wonder if all ranchers have that innate sense of confidence.  He dreams big and simplifies the manpower during the planning process.  These corrals were no small feat; though time-consuming, they weren’t difficult.  “They will just take time and money that we don’t have,” as we told everyone who asked about the unfinished project.

This is the third weekend working on the third leg of a four-phase, four-year project.  

The Back Story

When I was pregnant with our first baby, we were building the first corrals.  I clearly remember lifting panels and bragging about how strong I was several months into pregnancy-ha!  We spent every bit of our profit on the working facility: tub, alley, calf table, and squeeze chute.  We built two pens with continuous panels and old power poles.   

The next year, we bought the most ridiculous three-point attachment that passed as a post pounder.  With that baby now a toddler, we built our hand-me-down arena--myself and the toddler in the tractor and my husband blissfully ignorant of his risking life and limb to pound drill stem every 20 feet on a 100’ x 150’ arena.

This spring we are finally increasing the size of our working pens to accommodate a larger cow-calf and bred heifer herd.  Though the two new pens and an extended run up alley are nice, they wouldn’t be useful without gates!  

 
Perfecting a Project

Lifting the free side and swinging the gate 180 degrees to let Wyatt ratchet the clamp closed, I could see the sanguine shine wearing off of the project.  He looked at each gate and had me swing it the other way.  Looked at it another time.  Adjust.  Swing it back and look once more.  Readjust, PERFECT! Do it all again on the next gate.  Five more to go.  The monotony would wear on anyone, except the realist. Four more to go.

When the optimist dreams with his head in the clouds, the sky really is the limit.  The one I’m married to has planned out the most amazing arena for both working cattle and for his own and his kids’ rodeo futures.  Every gate swings the right way; every post is aligned with the panel’s joints; and the alley is the perfect width for sending bred cows or bulldogin’ steers through.  Three fourths of this plan is now the view out our back window, and I know there is more to do.  

As a realist, I know there is always more to do.  Nothing is ever done all the way, and like a marathon runner, I know these things take time and endurance.  I know it’s my job to support and remind optimists that jobs will get done in time, maybe it will take more time, but it will get done.  Or, maybe we can’t afford it now, but we will always make more money as long as we work and God provides.  My favorite joint effort as a realist is helping weigh out the negatives that he’s overlooked.  It takes a special attention to positive details for the optimist to justify buying a combine or haystacker “for the future” while the realist’s attention to detail is in possibly, just maybe spending that money elsewhere more effectively for the time being.  That's more realistic; I’m a realist.  Every ranch needs one of each, and these are the things an optimist needs to hear to become a perfectionist.

Knowing How to Help: As evidenced by corral building

I can’t feel my legs. I’m rubbing windblown dirt out of my eyebrows. My neck and cheeks are sunburned. My hair has mats in it, and my arms are all chaffed from my shirt... But I feel amazing! A rancher must love to work, sometimes alone and sometimes with others.  I looked forward to corral building all winter, knowing that it would be a few very long days with my husband, possibly in the warm sun, lifting and moving panels, and driving the tractor.  I knew sometimes my main job would be to “hold this,” and I knew some of our best laid plans might go awry.  What I didn’t know is that we would progress through all these levels of teamwork every step of the way.

Companionship

The first level of helping do anything is first knowing you aren’t welcome, aren’t capable, or aren’t needed to help.  My husband cut 30 drill stems to make 80-some 8 ft pipes to be our corral’s posts.  He found time to do this while I attended to other responsibilities like baby bedtime, making dinner, or just flat out working as a teacher.  Once I offered to do the cutting while he went to get the post pounder, and though I felt like I was met with a pat on the head, my husband reminded me that sometimes just my company is all he really wants.  As a family, we all made the 2 ½ hour round trip to pick up the post pounder.  For as many memories I have of working, I have another equal set of recollections sitting next to Wyatt while he worked.  If I’m a real go-getter, I will hand him a screwdriver or plug in an air compressor, but sometimes we sit in silence.  Other times, we discuss plans and do some figuring.

Opinions

“Doing some figuring” has worked its way into our household lexicon.  If Next Summer Farm and Ranch ever had a motto, that would be it.  This time in particular, Wyatt figured all the dimensions for the corrals, figured the cost, figured the time frame, and my job… offer opinion.  Which way a gate should swing or how close or far apart to set an alley were planned ahead of time on notebook paper, but even when we were out working, we made decisions on the best way to stack the fifty pound panels and how to maneuver the tractor into awkward places.  

Parallel Play

Sometimes that tractor driving gets me flustered.  While my husband has made a living in and out of tractors, when we’re together, I’m usually the one in the tractor.  One might brush it off as the easier job because the operator is sitting in a cab, but think again!  I climbed in and out of the tractor twice for every post pounded!  Almost two hundred times of crawling in, setting the gears, pulling forward, pulling the break, hunching over climbing back out, walking around the tractor and pounder, and handing him an attachment.  Though the most repetitive and tiring, I like this type of helping because even though we are working together to accomplish a task, I get to do most of the work independently.  Getting micromanaged or feeling like I’m incapable breaks my spirit pretty darn quick.  I know what I can do and take pride in being more than just a farmer’s wife, watching from the windows.

Divide and Conquer

That Miss Independence mentality serves me well when my husband is busy working on one task, and I take it upon myself to start the next.  After I would hand-clean that 30lb attachment to our chest level, I’d retrieve a panel from as far as 50 ft away.  At first, I’d balance it on my back, shoulders and tailbone taking the weight while my arms laced through the rungs to hold it steady.  If I were closer, within 20 ft or so, I’d carry it upright, depending on my arms to lift the weight and drag what I couldn’t lift.  We had quite the trail in the dirt from back ends of panels being dragged around all day!  I’d get all of this done while he finished running the hydraulics on the post pounder.  While one would think hauling that panel would be easier together, it takes a measure of synergy to move it comfortably and not bang the bottom into shins or let it get top heavy and burdensome on arms and chests. Being the guy in the back is always awkward, waddling with the panel between legs. Sometimes it is just easier to do work alone at two separate tasks before coming together.

Teamwork

Once I’d get close enough to Wyatt with the panel, he would set back the pounder with about 4 different levers, grab the male end of the panel, hook it into the existing female end while I lifted the back side to make the hook up easier.  When either of us is stubborn, we try to set the panels alone and neither of us is as successful or move as quickly as when we work together.  After every hook up, we’d work together to sling the panel into place, slamming it against the post-- a little moment of completion.  

When we were young, I thought we’d do every chore in that symbiotic kind of way.  Every thing will go twice as fast! I thought.  How wrong I was.  There are some responsibilities that are best done alone because they don’t go any faster when there are two working at it.  Other tasks just need assertion and support.  The best kinds of chores are exponentially improved and hastened when we work together.  Those are the ones that I wait all winter to do and will gladly take a sunburn for!  The chance to work side by side in partnership with my husband reaffirms my love for him and for our responsibilities as a couple and as ranchers.

New Mamas

When our cows come home off of summer pasture, I always think they look incredible.  They have fuzzy winter coats and big round bellies.  They walk comfortably still for the last month of pregnancy.  Sounds like any pregnant woman, really.  Our society loves to see a big round belly, doting on a mother-to-be.

Glowing

One day we will go outside to check around, and all of a sudden, if we’re lucky, she will look up from her work with the same glow I’ve seen in women.  The aura of new-mom emanates from her and her calf on the ground.  This is the most beautiful moment in many women’s lives as well.  I think that’s why we take those first photos; those amazing pictures of newly made mothers, holding their babies the for the first time.  The exhaustion of labor has dissipated, and the weariness from pregnancy has melted away.  All that’s left is a beaming mother and her bundle of joy.  There’s a piece of me that is jealous our cows can experience this moment of bliss year after year!  So they, all mothers, --even four-legged ones-- begin their new babies’ lives looking healthy and happy.

…..Then the calf stands up; the woman awakens for a feeding…..

And life gets real!  It is a good thing that we are pregnant for so long, and that newborn joy is so strong because the hell that follows wouldn’t be worth it if not.  

Feeding

We have a 7 year old blaze-faced cow that just.. looks.. terrible!  She should be one of our fanciest cows, but after delivery, she looks deflated.   What was the epitome of pregnancy below her now hangs on her like an old winter coat, all sad and worn out.  All the fluff is gone.  It doesn’t fit her anymore and looks burdensome.  She maneuvers around it, still struggling to stand with all her joints and bones feeling worn out and creaky.  As she makes it to her feet, she looks around to satisfy what I’m sure is a ravenous hunger based the production going into her giant milk bag.  However, before she can even lower her head, here comes baby.

He nudges up to her and starts sucking with an unabatement only babies have.  She always has more to give even when it looks like she wants to give up.  He jabs his nose up into her bag to get more milk; she barely notices.  Pure love?  Maybe. Pure fatigue? Definitely.  Yet she stands like a proud mama statue, stoic and humble at the same time, letting her calf nurse until his heart’s and tummy’s content.  Then the little ungrateful (insert favorite expletive) takes off like a bat out of hell, just a black streak across the field.  His tail is up and signaling that the race is on.  

And she will unconditionally follow.

Following

We have a corn field that must be a hundred yards across or more.  A calf was peacefully nestled away in some tall grass outside the fence.  The devoted mama stood and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Never braying to wake him, and as long as she couldn’t see immediate danger, she stood at the edge of the fence and waited.   I hobbled over the fence (in all of my postpartum grace) to push him back in the cornfield.  She didn’t like that at all!  She went to hooking and snorting, and he shot up, ran from fence line to fence line in less than a second while she was stumbling and fumbling to keep up, a mirror image of my own uncoordinated postpartum mama-attempts.   Then, that little you-know-what, well, he sneaked right under the next fence!  So she waited with the patience only a mother could have, but it is that sleep and sanity robbing kind of patience.  

Yet she wholeheartedly waited.

Forever

That kind of patience needs a new definition.  It is where you really forget all your preconceived ideas of motherhood and just be a mother.  We realize all things baby are cute.  They’re little, and those tiny bodies hold so much wonder.  We forgo sleep to stare at awe-inspiring faces and touch tiny hands.  How can God make something so amazing in such a small package?  Somehow, their beauty diminishes ours because I’ve never seen a beautiful postpartum animal.  The weariness and stress wreaks havoc on us!  Our younger bodies are gone. Our beautiful bellies (and other areas less concealed on cattle) are sagging, and weight is shifting.  Not to mention the sleep-deprivation!  Sunken eyes, sallow skin and hair, you can even see it on a cow’s hide, and not a moment to ourselves.  

But we endure.

We endure for love and obligation.  We can’t imagine life any other way even when it is awful.  As I watch calves populating our pasture, I realize some mamas haven’t been as lucky.  I’ve never had to deliver in 20 degree weather or had a coyote stalking us, and my heart goes out to mamas nurturing their babies long after the baby isn’t breathing.  So we take our midnight feedings and chasing after a runaway because we are mothers.  We give up our sleep and our bodies because we are mothers.  A fight to protect, a relentless control, an unconditional love, an absolute honor it is to be mothers.

 

Watch Out, that might getcha

March Chores

In the brisk March air, my kids and I decided to do the morning chores while my husband loaded out a hay customer.  A breeze came steadily from the north.  That is the cold kind that makes any chore more difficult.  With the sharp chill comes clear skies and air though, so we could vividly see the top of the loader of the small tractor a quarter mile down our driveway.  That tractor has been our bread and butter of the farm, keeping us ready for any dilemma that presents itself, as for us though, we were watering.

I looked down on my kids dressed just in the nines.  My son did indeed decided to wear a hat that I continued to put on for him after he kept taking it off. How he got it off while wearing mittens that I insisted upon is beyond me.  My daughter agreed to wear her water-proof muck boots and opted for a wildrag instead of a hat, but then only after feeling the cutting wind, asked for a hat too.

Being Prepared

I reminded her how she didn’t want a hat and that she wasn’t about to take her brother’s.  I gave her the whole spiel about being prepared for any circumstances and that she would have to be more responsible next time.   As a mother, I knew I should have been more prepared for… well March.  It looked beautiful, and I barely put on a coat myself.  So there we were, discussing the merits of planning for the weather and apologizing for my negligence, when she had a revelation.  She had her cheetah hat!  She’d remembered leaving it in the back of the farm ‘Hoe.  I opened the door like opening a treasure chest.  There was not just the cheetah hat but also another hat that belonged to the baby!  It was like the hat mobile!

With ears and fingers appropriately covered, the three of us were ready to water the cows.  I’ve been working on teaching them which knob starts the well and that the wire of the electric fence is “hot.”  I figure if they have fingers to turn knobs and legs to walk into fences, it is never too early to teach them about it all.  My daughter and I moved the soft hose into a wide arc so that the water would run through it and not build up pressure in a kink.  Then I reminded her that the soft hose needed to be clipped into the hard hose or the water would come spraying out.  She clipped it in with a kind of zeal I’ve never had for doing chores, especially ones where my wet fingers might stick to frozen metal.  Finally, I showed her again how to tie a square knot around the hose in order to keep the hard hose connected to the soft hose on the ground, go over the wall of the tank and stay submerged.  To add to the confusion for her, as if all this weren’t enough to make her little brain explode, I showed her that if I left a tail on the square knot, it would be easy to untie it when we were done watering and that would in turn get us done sooner to go see dad in the tractor.  

She finally pressed “start” and the air filled the hose.  I reminded her that we stay back from the control panel, the well’s spout and the hose itself just in case something could go wrong.  The water finally came on, and if I could have had some suspense-building music playing, I might have seen what was about to happen.  The pressure being strong enough plus the hard hose being angled just enough divided by the slack in the knot equaled a geyser right here in Hoyt!  

Problem-Solving

She shrunk in surprise or fear or both, so I had to remind her that the water needed to be contained or we would get stuck in a whole lot of mud.  We went together to reign in the hard hose, pull the slip knot on the baling twine, and get the water flowing back in the tank.  Her boots kept her feet dry in the puddle, her hat kept her hair dry in the shower of well water, and the clips and knots saved us from a much bigger mess.  Every little piece of the equation was perfect for us to be prepared for the mishap.  They’re bound to happen, they just are.  No matter how many times we, as in I, plan ahead and try to ensure smooth operations, the best thing we can do is prepare for the mishaps.  My husband’s favorite saying is, “The best plan is no plan” which grates against all my organizational skills, but its meaning coming to fruition is more about problem solving for the sticky situations that you can’t and don’t plan on happening and still finding a way to be successful in spite of them.

Once all the spraying was over, the hose was drained, the knob returned to neutral, and both kids’ muddy boots were back in the vehicle, we went to see dad who was none the wiser.  The client drove off, the loader was returned to the ground, and cows were watered.  Even a mundane chore like watering presents its own mishaps to which a formulaic plan does little more than make the resolution just a little easier to solve, but my husband was none the wiser.

Bacon

It spits, pops, smokes up the place, and yet nothing beats the smell of bacon!  The comfort that hearty perfume brings when walking into the house is beyond compare. Even the sound of it snapping and sizzling in the pan is difficult to articulate the satisfaction it brings.  Then by the time you eat it, oh my goodness! Food of the gods. It might not be good for us, but the taste is good for our souls!  

I particularly like this bacon better than the rest because it is the first time we’ve had home-raised pork.  We’ve had beef, chicken, and eggs on our plates ever since I met my husband, and I’ve had to figure out how to make BB-ridden pheasant and gamey antelope tasty as well.  Now pork finally gets to take its rightful place next to the other ranch-raised foods.

I should be clear though, we don’t do it all.  We aren’t in the time position to raise this many animals; we have too many babies of our own.  Chicken comes from my husband’s grandma, pork came from the neighbor to the south, and even veggies come from our neighbor to the east… that’s about all the neighbors we have though.  It really does take a village--a village for which I am thankful because we certainly haven’t been able to find the time or energy to do many of these things on our own.  However, even the things we don’t grow or raise on our own are still used as resourcefully as possible.  Back to bacon.  

Images are from Christmas cookies, not bacon.

Just prior to sitting down to write, and with fingers still greasy, now slathering out words and letters, I used that original bacon grease from the night before to hand-season a cast iron pan in which I would make homemade bread.  The grit of the porous pan underneath my fingertips, and the smell of that bacon grease made me feel like I was doing something good for my family and myself. It allowed my entertainment for the day to be in baking bread, teaching little ones to crack eggs, stir gently, knead it down, and then patiently wait together.  It all reminded me that even though the bacon might not be good for our health, at least not for our cholesterol level, it is good for our hearts because it brings us together to make something with our hands and from our own resourcefulness.