Mid-Winter Rant

When the Holidays are done, and grazing is left behind, we nestle into a quiet routine of feeding cows every morning. If the weather cooperates, we get to do a few other things besides ranching, like go to a movie or take a drive. We took the afternoon off yesterday and drove north towards the Tetons. We hoped the weather would lift, but it spit slush at us the whole way. Then of course we couldn't see the mountains. Plus the snow sculptures in Driggs were well past their beauty. Oh well, it was a diversion from ranch duties and we had a nice supper out.

I’m feeding one big load of hay per day to the young cows who are expecting their first or second calf. I call it my “feeding practice,” like a yoga or meditation “practice.” The bales can be challenging to get off the truck one slice at a time. One must keep calm, use your body intentionally and resist the urge to fight. I really love the work. Mark drives for me so it’s time together and I get fresh air and exercise. The best part is walking home from ranch headquarters when that first load is done. Mark and the rest of our crew finish up without me. As I walk along in the quiet, I see our home up ahead and feel a rush of pleasure at the day stretching out ahead of me, the lusciousness of winter with time to do indoor jobs. Spring can take her time, if you ask me.

The snow came and then the wind blew it into big drifts. Now it’s warmed up and everything is soft. You can tell what temperature it is outside just by the look of it. Warm-up means the colors deepen. Tree trunks are dark against a white winter sky. Grasses show golden as they poke through the snow. Calves in the pasture lot spread out across the field, chewing their cud and laying in the snow. Magpies and dark-eyed juncos flit about.

Winter also gives us time to read, follow the news, take some rat trails on the internet, listen to podcasts, etc. There’s some crazy stuff out there. I think as more and more people live detached from the natural world they start to go a little nuts.     

There’s a billboard on a highway close-by which features a forlorn looking dog, and in bold letters these words, “bring me inside.” Well, it depends on the breed of course, but a dog house filled with straw and positioned out of the wind suits our dogs just fine. It's really about feed, water and shelter. The billboard is communicating in sound bites, an infuriating habit we’ve become accustomed to. Where is nuance and the ability to think something through logically?

Because of my choices over time, my Facebook feed sends me a lot of stuff on regenerative agriculture which I appreciate. I also get the anti-meat stories. The Golden Globes banned meat from their pre-show dinner for the first time ever this year. Not that one meal would make a difference, they said, but to send a message about climate change. What they don't know is that this isn't about plant vs. animal foods. Both processes CYCLE carbon. Tell me how the food is produced, the soils, the biodiversity, the community it sustains, and then we can have the conversation about climate. The Golden Globe event, along with vegan dishes, served bottled water - from Iceland. But wait, in the spirit of climate consciousness, it was in glass bottles instead of single-use plastic like the company normally sells. And they’re going to reuse the red carpet this year. Did I say the world has gone crazy?

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Early January

Cycling local carbon

A 2020 Welcome

After we fed cows this morning, the snow started. It’s falling heavily now, and with it, the quiet that accompanies this familiar winter scene has enveloped the ranch. Now it looks like Christmas.

Any self-respecting ranch blog should mention a game we played over the holidays. It’s called The Game of Things. Each card is a prompt: “things that are bumpy,” “things you never told your parents,” “things you don’t want to find under the couch,” etc. Then everyone writes a secret response and we try to guess who wrote what. We laughed a lot. One prompt said, “things you don’t want to hear in the middle of the night.” Three of us answered, “the cows are out.” Interestingly it was from three women, one from each generation, Anita, me and Anna. Hmmmm.

I love the clean slate of a new year. What will 2020 hold? Last year, 2019, was a big year for our family. Seth got married, Anna got engaged and finished her master's degree, Callie’s restorative exercise business took off. Mark and I took on interests on and off the ranch. These years are precious – as is every year, but turning 60 in 2019 brought the passage of time into focus for me and I’m more stingy of how I spend it. Well, maybe stingy is a poor way to describe it. Let’s say I’m more “generous” to the efforts I value the most, and more “mindful” of the rest.  

Winter is the only chance we get to dig into our ranch finances. We’re trying to figure costs per cow right now. A large whiteboard leans against the piano in our living room with expense categories on the left and dollars on the right. The board stares at us as we linger over coffee in the morning. I’m very visual, and looking at the figures over a few days helps me grasp the total picture. Plus, these costs aren't straightforward. They take focused thinking to analyze.

We’ve been moving and sorting cows and calves, getting them set up for winter feeding. We fed our first load of hay on New Year’s Day. Of course we’d rather graze year round, but there’s something comforting about knowing feed for the herd comes from the stackyard for awhile. The chores don't change much from day to day until calving starts. Unless we get severe weather and Mark needs to push snow, this time of year gives us some mental bandwidth to consider other ranch parameters.  

Anna brought a friend to visit the ranch who was taking her Christmas break from the military. Taylor flies helicopters which sounds pretty exciting, but she thought a ranch stay might be an interesting interlude. After feeding three loads of hay one morning, the young women stopped by the corral to give Penny a pet. Penny was born prematurely and we had to help her stand and nurse for several weeks. She didn't have enough hair to keep her warm so she wore a second hand sweater. She's all grown up now with a calf of her own, but she’s still as gentle as can be. We call her “Old Pen.”

When we feed, Mark shows me cows that I’ve featured in my blog. I’ve forgotten them but he remembers each one. The one that calved early as a heifer over to the Pease place in 2013, number X14, stands out because she’s always in the lead and likes to scratch on the big bales on the truck as we enter the feed ground. V7 is a Hereford that I blogged about when Mark was tagging calves one spring. Apparently I engraved the tag on the wrong side because it’s backwards now. You can tell who she is, just get behind her!

The rhythm of a ranch goes on. Past the first snowfall and the last snowfall. Past Christmas festivities, and on into future planning. Cows that cycle through our herd bearing calves year after year and then aging out.  A brand new year reminds me of what Gary says about ranching, "it’s a good life if you don’t weaken.”

101 year old barn 

Taylor and "Old Pen"

Too funny