The TEDx Blues

I’m in a happy place of late. It's the margin between Christmas and calving. A cold margin yes, but it has a rhythm and solitude I love.

I get to feed one load of hay per day to the heifers living a short drive away. Mark drives and opens and shuts the gate as we go in and out of the field. The only thing I have to do is feed the bales. It can be a mental and physical challenge on some mornings. I hate when the slice you’re trying to maneuver off the trailer breaks in the middle and you’re left with having to claw it away from the rest of the bale. Yesterday Mark came back to see what had happened to the flow of hay and found me in a heap, luckily not in tears, just laughing. I used to get mad, but after a decade or so of that, I finally figured out it didn’t help.

When we’re done, Mark drops me off at home before he goes back to headquarters to feed the older cows with Jesse and Milee. Today I said to him, “thanks for the workout!”

So I’m happy except for this nagging TEDx talk to prepare. Seth and Leah talked me into applying to speak at a locally organized event in Idaho Falls in March. I applied as an afterthought and ended up getting a space on the docket. Now the hard part.

I’ve written and rewritten the talk. And rewritten. It’s not done yet and progress is so slow as to be undetectable. I have a sign on my computer written by J. Heller that says it all: Every writer I know has trouble writing.

I wanted to write that meat is a nutrient dense health food. I wanted to write that well-managed cows can help with a host of environmental ills: climate change, floods, droughts, wildfires, desertification, etc. I wanted to write how ranchers love and respect their cows and that a happy life and pain free death for them is our ultimate goal. I wanted to say how private ranches are the buffer between town and wild spaces and that wildlife and cows can coexist quite comfortably. I wanted to write so many things. But the TEDx committee keeps telling me, “No, No, what’s your big idea?” Seems it can’t be all of these things. The audience can’t follow all those tracks. I need to develop one idea and figure out how to appeal to a theater full of city folks. Groan.

I know it's a great opportunity. Seth tells me it's not everyone that gets to face their fears! He also said he had endured years of 4-H and FFA speaking "opportunities" and didn't feel a bit sorry for me. I didn't know it would be this hard.

Even after I narrowed the scope it confounds me. How does one describe soil health to someone who lives in town? Or why desertification is a threat, and how good grazing might address that insidious intruder? Do they even care to learn about ruminants?

Just sayin, it’s nothing like a blog where I can skip around, go from one little mundane ranching episode to the next, and no one cares at all. The only person I need to please is my proofreader Mark and he’s easily satisfied. Once in a while he catches a misspelling. I like that kind of editor.

A Clean Slate

Our ranch is in a deep freeze. On the first day of 2019 we woke to a very stiff 10 degrees below zero. Everything creaks at that temperature, including me in my coveralls. On the feed truck I have to periodically pull the fingers of one hand inside my glove and make a fist to thaw them out. If the bales are compliant you can handle them with one hand using your body as a wedge to maneuver them off the truck bed.

The cows do fine in the cold as long as they get their ample daily ration of feed and a good drink of water. We put out lots of straw which provides energy and a dry place to lay. Feeding straw, which is readily available as a by-product of grain grown by our neighbors, is one “unfair advantage” we enjoy in our area. Ranchers in other regions will have a different advantage. The trick is to recognize yours and act on it.

I love the feel of a new year. I always go back through my diary and write down the significant events of the past year with the idea of generating a list of thoughts to strive for in the coming year. I stay away from anything resembling a resolution! Trouble is, my thoughts for a better new year look the same as last year, and the year before that: write more, move more, drink more water, eat less sugar, be a better wife, etc. They’re good goals, but I wish they would firmly entrench themselves in my psyche so that I could finally plan something a little more exciting.

We enjoyed our kids at home over the holidays. We fed cows before we opened gifts on Christmas day, which worked fine except that it got late and the prime rib was done before I’d even started the salad. The kids helped with other projects as well. We worked two days taking out some rogue trees below the house. Callie and Seth both ran a chainsaw and Anna and I hauled limbs. It was fun to work alongside my kids and the new view looks great. 

The kids are all back to their lives now, and it’s time to look down, regroup, and tackle those indoor jobs that lie in wait each year for the dead of winter.

One job we’ve been putting off is a thorough inventory of horse tack. I put a plastic cover on the dining table and hauled in all the leather head gear for horses. It’s quite a pile. I’m hoping it will inspire some quality couple-time, sorting and cleaning of an evening. Mark got a record player for Christmas and we might play some Johnny Overstreet, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline or Roger Miller to go with the project.

Christmas has its own charm, but it’s a cluttered, fattening, excessive time of year. It’s maneuvering around the Christmas tree and looking back at traditions and trotting out old family recipes no matter how heavy they are. I love the comforting nostalgia of Christmas. But the New Year - ahh – it’s about the future, and creating something wonderful out of the blank slate that is 2019.