Nature's Lessons

                   April is a promise that May is bound to keep –Hal Borland

The wind is blowing of course. It’s April. And it’s been cold, but I’m convinced that spring is finally here.

The change happened on Tuesday. It’s not just that the long johns come off, or the woodstove sits idle - it’s a change of mind set. It happens quickly, the first real warm day and my thoughts do their bi-annual flip flop to a new season. Suddenly all around us are spring chores clamoring to be noticed. All the ditches need burned before they will run water. The fences need attention. The pastures need harrowed, the calves branded, and everywhere spring cleanup beckons.

One of my favorite chores this time of year is working in the wooded areas cleaning up limbs and piling them to burn. How beautiful the trees look with the floor clean around them. We harvested firewood this winter in the same field where we were feeding cattle, in true multiple-use fashion. It will take more than one spring to clean up all the debris.  

And the grass is coming. Hesitantly at first, the leaves gearing up their solar panels for long days and warmer temperatures.

I am reminded of a line by my favorite nature writer, Hal Borland:

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.

Patience and persistence, two qualities we get to practice every day. Patience as we care for calves that won't turn into income for over a year. And persistence as we walk the same sandhills Mark’s great grandfather roamed a century ago.  

Looking Ahead

Anna and I traveled to Moscow this past week to visit the University of Idaho and see Seth. His girl “friends” put us up in their apartment and Casey made us supper one night. I can’t express how good it feels to a mother to know her child is surrounded by friends like that – supporting, challenging, ever encouraging.

We visited the Moscow Co-op which carries our meat, had supper at Mickey’s Gyros, and managed to hop on over to Spokane to get Seth a jacket for the FFA convention next week. We visited campus, stopping at a wonderful 2^nd story alcove overlooking the ivy covered mathematics lab. Seth came up with the name “solace room” to describe the area behind a curved wall - a comfy bench beckons young people to sit, gaze across campus and contemplate their future. We had breakfast at Bucer’s, a little coffee house downtown, with creaky floors and yummy quiche. There’s also a wonderful consignment store with tall ceilings and vintage duds where Anna found jeans and Seth a three piece suit for $36.00.  

One favorite evening we walked the paths of the arboretum, a fragrant collection of flora from around the world, ponds, even an old barn. It butts up against a golf course. “Mom have you ever seen a putting green?” The grass is an emerald turf, so tightly shorn it’s hard to believe it’s living plant material. I knelt to run my hand across its bristly texture. I’ve always known grass to be remarkable, but this was amazing!

And then there was the drive. Nine hours each way, with rain pelting us much of the time. The rolling dry farms of the Palouse, the forested ridges along the Clark Fork, the cattle nestled along the grasslands around Deer Lodge and Dillon, all make lustrous viewing. Anna made a playlist for me on her ipod and we whizzed along, her madly reading All Quiet on the Western Front for English, and me, lost in the theme from Forrest Gump or On Golden Pond.  Lots of time to reflect on a life of parenting, and giving thanks for my kids’ individuality - their inspiration, their positivism, the many lessons they teach me. 

Hungry for Spring

Spring "Service" Break

guest post by Seth Pratt

           Over the week of March 15, calving numbers peak at the ranch. University of Idaho’s spring break is the same time. With my family’s support, rather than going back home, I flew to Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, on an Alternative Service Break. These “ASB” trips send students all across the country to volunteer in communities.

Even now I am not entirely sure why Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, exists. The land there would naturally be under water for six weeks of the year. That water is now held back by the levees that run along the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Between these levees is an area sometimes referred to as the “bathtub.” When the levees broke during Katrina, this area was under thirty feet of water. Not quite half of the Plaquemines residents have returned since the hurricane; bare foundations of their homes are scattered across the parish. Experiencing the destruction was humbling for a rural Idahoan. At times I could almost see the homes, the running children, and even their haunting laughter.

One day, knowing it was a bold question, I asked Reverend Turner why people have insisted upon living here. He told me their lives are here, in memories, in the land, and in the people. He has seen two demolishing floods in his lifetime, which is few from his perspective. I’ve seen plugged irrigation pipes flood the neighbor’s yard; I felt naïve.

             Louisiana was a neat place to see, and impressive to experience. The best part of the trip though, had little to do with the bayou, gators, or seafood. Volunteering requires very little of a person, it strips you of all but very basic necessities. This leaves you free, in mind and spirit. In fact, during my time in Louisiana I felt an indefinable peace.

This essay is less about Louisiana, and more about what life is meant to be. Through giving of my time each day, I felt absolute fulfillment. In giving up possessions, I found myself needing nothing. In listening to others, I heard my own voice.

Now my mind is full of questions: Do we have to live in a certain place to experience happiness? Will these gnat bites go away? Why do we own so much stuff? Why don’t I focus on others every day? Where is the line between my own success and self-sacrifice? Can they go hand-in-hand, or is our definition of success superficial?

Where to start - here.   How to start - slowly.   When to start - now.   What to start with - kindness. 

burned out home prior to demolition by volunteers

Driving through Grand Bayou

Looking for Spring

It must be spring - the bulls are picking fights with each other, there’s the tiniest hint of green across the pasture, and the birds are back. First were the red-winged blackbirds chortling in the willows. Then the killdeers scurrying about searching out nesting sites. Now it’s the meadowlarks spilling their melodies, and this afternoon Mark saw the first bluebird out in the sandhills. Even though we still get snowed on every few days, there’s an unmistakable mildness to the wind. 

Mark has been battling a nasty outbreak of scours in the new calves. Scours is the scourge of every rancher, the dreaded diarrhea that dehydrates and kills unattended calves in a few days or less. It hit just as the heaviest of calving days were behind us. Mark had only a moment to catch his breath from tagging a bunch of calves each morning, to the constant monitoring and doctoring he is doing now. He drenches the calves with a dowsing tube and in severe cases gives fluid intravenously. We’ve not had trouble like this in our memory. Weather is the biggest stressor; day after day of wind and cold and wet takes its toll. We hear it’s hitting herds all over the valley.   

We use every tool at our disposal. One weapon we use is our cell phones. Each morning Jesse and I feed the herd while Mark makes his rounds. We call back and forth discussing ones that might need help or specific feeding instructions. Texts are even better. If Mark is in a tight spot he doesn’t have to dig his phone out of his pocket. Today I sent him:

“V36 blue looks yuck”

 “R95 yellow has a tight bag” (meaning she hasn’t been sucked out, a sure sign her calf isn’t feeling well)

By 11:00 a.m. things were looking up, “coffee time?”

And his welcome reply, “yes.”

One generation of calves/ three generations of Pratts
Gary (yellow), Mark (blue), Seth (red)

Just a day old

Tim gets a Mom

It’s been terribly wet lately, and owning cattle not a career choice for any self-respecting man or woman. My leather gloves got soaked the other morning, and after a couple of days drying by the wood stove, they’re so stiff I can’t stand the thought of putting my hands back inside.

The corrals are soupy and the feedground sketchy. We sneak around with the feed trucks, avoid getting stuck for the most part, and give thanks to the sandy soil of this ranch.

We moved the calvy heifers to the field right in front of our house. My favorite part of our home is the picture windows in the living area - especially so when cattle or horses grace the scene.

We’ve been feeding Tim a bottle morning and night for almost a month. He was premature, one of a set of triplets. He was the only one that lived, and his mother died as well. I told Mark he was a “going concern,” as he clearly wanted to live. He sucked hard on the bottle we prepared and butted us for more as we worked in the barn. We had planned on grafting Tim on a mom that had lost her calf, but the opportunity didn’t arrive for several weeks. Then a big black cow lost a calf to pneumonia, or so Mark thought. Jesse skinned the dead calf and laid the skin over Tim to fool the cow into thinking it was her own baby by the familiar smell. This ruse usually works like a charm; I’ve never seen it fail - until Tim. The cow didn’t seem to have much milk or much interest in a reincarnated baby. She was irritated with our efforts and never took to Tim as planned. We began to wonder if she hadn’t fed the first calf either, which would of course, have led to an early death. Finally Mark told Jesse to turn her out. “She can work for Mcdonalds,” he said.

Then yesterday a calf was born breech and died. His mother licked and licked him, like a good mother should, but to no avail. Mark loaded the dead baby on his 4-wheeler and brought it to the barn. Jesse skinned the calf and again tied the skin on Tim. This time the subterfuge was successful. The mother cow immediately hummed to Tim - that motherly coo that is such a welcome sound to a cowman – and accepted him to her udder. Mark said, as he often does when the bonding is complete, “she is in love.” 

I turned the pair out of the barn this morning. Oh, what a happy couple! 

(tiny) Tim and his new Mama

Other photos from the herd:

Bonding time

It doesn't take them long to figure out what straw is for

Kindred Souls

I never knew my grandma Mimi well. I was very shy towards her – and everyone else. We lived next door, and when our house burned down in 1969 we moved in with her for the summer while we rebuilt our home. Even taking meals in the same kitchen, I never really forged a bond with her - until now that is.

Mimi loved to write. Her typewriter was always at hand, there on her big kitchen table. And piled around it were articles she was reading, notes to share with passersby, and topics to consider mulling in her weekly column in the local newspaper. Mimi wrote a book about her pioneer mother and most of all loved to write poetry. She wrote about simple homemaking chores, about a son (my dad) going off to WWII, about a favorite horse and the mountains along the skyline. She wrote about flood irrigating, meadowlarks, and chrysanthemums. She had a rich vocabulary and was interested in everything.

She also liked to write fiction. The other day I ran across a letter she had written in 1938. She had submitted some stories to a critic in New York City and had apparently received a rejection letter with some suggestions to improve her writing. She told him his letter was “one of the most soul satisfying things I ever received.” She told him that she didn’t care about money, that writing was what she did for fun, but that “just as other women like to play bridge hard and win the prize, I’d like to be able to sell stories.” She said writing was her life’s work and her life’s ambition.

Reading her letter, I felt I could reach out my hand to clasp hers; that I might round the corner and see her setting there at her table and we would share a cup of coffee and talk about writing! She would understand why I feel driven to record my simple rural life. We would visit about the ideas and images that churn in our minds, quieted only when the effort is made to record that imagery. She and I were molded from the same Idaho clay. We share a love of the land, the sagebrush and mountains, our families, and a passion to get it all down on paper.

Seventy three years have passed since she wrote and sent that letter on its way to New York City. Her life went by quickly, just as mine is doing now. It was uncanny to read her age in the letter, 51, my age today. She speaks to me through the frayed layers of time. Your stories matter. The chores will wait. Time is short.   

Mimi's house today
built in 1887 - brick crafted on site of native clay

The Pratt Calving Barn

We woke to a fresh blanket of snow on the ground today. I’m glad Anna is home to help feed . . . the cows await.

I cleaned stalls in the calving barn yesterday. It was early morning and the sun shone through the slats in the rough-cut lumber walls. Each cow/calf pair that comes to the barn gets a fresh stall with a bale of straw spread throughout. They are, what we call “kicked out,” as soon as possible, and the stall raked clean, a shovel full of lime sprinkled over the dirt to prevent the spread of disease.

The old barn is nothing if not functional. As you step in, to your right is the “warm room,” or as the sign on the door reads, “technology lab,” where a wall heater warms cold calves. Inside is a sink with hot running water, a recliner that no one ever reclines in, and recycled kitchen cupboards containing an assortment of veterinarian supplies. The floor is littered with carpet scraps to help a wobbly calf stand up. Against one wall stands an old refrigerator, the kind with a lever handle.

 A whiteboard hangs near the door where we can leave messages to one another. On a note dated October 2008, Seth wrote, No matter how hard and continuous the work, find time each day to appreciate your lifestyle and the good in the world. I hate to erase that one. There is a heading in the upper left hand corner of the whiteboard entitled “big teats” for recording identification numbers of cows with unwieldy udders. The best laugh was the spring when we had two young guys working for us; T.J. wrote, “Brad’s girlfriend” underneath the heading.  

To the left is the straw room, where bales of golden straw and leafy, fragrant alfalfa are stacked against the wall. This room housed both a batch of kittens and a nest of baby rabbits in the past. On the bare wood walls are two crude oil paintings, one of Mark’s grandfather and one of his Mexican helper, Esteban. Both figures don cowboy hats, and grandpa Eldro a bright red neckerchief. No one has ever been able to measure up to the work ethic of Esteban. He lived in the barn for a while back in its glory days.

Down the center is an alleyway with stalls along each side. On the left are the box stalls with an upper and a lower door. Along the right are the open air board stalls. When Mark was young he painted and numbered the stalls and the colors remain vibrant. At the end is a homemade chute for restraining individual cows.  We use it to put chains on the legs of a calf that needs pulled, the traction to assist the birth process, or when a calf requires suckling, that patient persuasion to nurse.  

From the ceiling hangs a neon sign that reads “Lucky on Tap,” its plug dangling. And on the back wall is a large framed poster of a horned bull, with the words, “Hereford, The Proud Breed with the White Face” across the bottom. We've always been partial to the red white-faced beauties.  

All along the length of the alleyway are hanging light bulbs, each with its own switch - mood lighting if you will. It’s quiet and peaceful in the barn. Anyone who spends time here learns quickly to speak in hushed tones to keep the cattle calm.    

The calving barn is where we taught our kids about life and death. They’ve witnessed caesareans, mourned the ones we lost, bedded stalls, and bottle fed orphans. When they were little we would tell them to stay out of the way in the warm room while we were bringing in a cow. They remember peeking out the window in the door as she walked by, and then playing quietly while we worked.

I wonder at all the animals saved in this barn.  Calves hiding out from a blizzard, ones with a leg back, tangled twins, some that were too big or backwards, others that just needed a helping hand to get started. It's also a classroom for the people that work here - employees, visitors, and especially the kids that grew up here.  Lessons on how to milk out a teat, how to suckle a calf, how to apply just enough torque to help a calf be born.  Lessons on bovine anatomy, animal behavior, and probably most especially, on sticking with dirty jobs until they’re done. Be quiet. Pay attention. Clean up after yourself. Their relevance rings true.