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.