By mid-February we knew it could be bad. The snow was too deep to be calving cows. It was too cold. Mark started piling snow and shoring up straw windbreaks for the cattle. It kept snowing. We started getting calves, just a few at first, but by the first of March we knew we were in trouble. We have an old barn with up to seven stalls. It’s a life saver, but we knew it wouldn’t handle the onslaught to come. We also knew we didn’t have the manpower we needed.
We entered a kind of vortex. Not enough sleep, body sore, worry. It made me question our business – all of it. How do you keep asking your kids to do more when they get their income elsewhere? Maybe where great grandpa settled isn’t fit for cows, even though we’ve gotten away with calving this time of year for 30 years. And while living it real time, we kept thinking about other ranchers in the same fix, plodding along, not looking up, no way to connect with others fighting the same war.
We brainstormed and called around for extra help. Anna and Leah offered to cover lunch and supper for the crew. Seth and Cole would handle nights, even though they both have daytime jobs at the computer. Seth talked to his boss and determined to be horseback by 1:00 pm every day to bring in all the cows that looked like they would calve within the next twelve hours. The chances were slim a calf would survive out in the field with these temperatures, this wind, and on deep snow. They needed to be in on a straw bed out of the wind.
The “technology lab” in the old barn, with a white board for communicating between shifts, was control central. Seth made a list by tag number each day - labor, delivery, sucked, location. I made a list of stalls with tag number, why they were there and whether they had sucked or not. A few calves would greet me every morning in various stages of warming up. Keeping them straight with their moms became a challenge.
The help came. Dave got the barn ready by repairing the gates. Rich, who worked here as a young man, agreed to come for 10 days, the window between his retirement and a Cancun vacation. John, Richie, Enzo and Maddie, drop ins with a hankering for a ranching experience, helped cover a few of the worst days, hauling straw and cleaning stalls. James came every morning to tend the barn and graft calves if needed. We used them all. We thank them all.
The worst is over, our relationships are intact. Our “farm intercom” text thread, which was an invaluable tool for sharing calving data, turned to lighter messages as we started to take a breath:
Has anyone seen the bull elk sleeping in the middle of the Frank Allen corner?
Just like to issue a brief reminder how much I appreciate all of you
What a humbling season. We are so fortunate to have great resources
We’ve got good systems and great people
Saw a killdeer!
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| A little sunshine for this one |
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| When the snow started to melt, this is no place for calves |
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| James and the barn calves |
