Snow Herding

The snow got deep enough, or rather the wind got deep enough, that we had to bring the cows part way down from the mountains. Even with the county snow plows running we had to chain up all four tires to get out.

We were able to get the horse trailer to the herd, but then needed to take an alternate route trailing home, so we left the trailer and ventured forth with the pickup and three horses. We got the herd gathered and put them on the road in a bone-numbing wind. Coveralls and headgear, covered with a slicker to cut the wind, were the only reason we made it. Still we were thoroughly chilled by the time we made it to the overnight field.

Mark and I stayed in a cabin close by, actually a warming hut on our grazing co-op’s land, built and maintained by the Sno-Riders, a local snowmachining group. It's a great example of multiple use, we use it during the grazing season, they use it during the winter.

Someone said something about a romantic interlude, well . . . not exactly. We arrived late in the evening, got a fire going in the woodstove, and had hot soup Mark’s mom had sent. The cabin is clean except for dead flies all over the carpet; oh for a vacuum! It got dark soon, so we kept our boot liners on and tried to ignore them. Then as the cabin got warm, more flies came to life and started falling out of the window seal. Between the drone of flies hitting the windows, the whine of the wind through the stove, having to stoke the fire and then being cooked to death when it got going, it was a long night. We got up once and killed a few hundred flies, but they just kept coming so we went back to bed.  

The next day dawned perfect. Homemade breakfast burritos in tin foil and warmed over coffee, sunshine, a brilliant royal blue sky - and no wind! Mark rode lead and I brought up the tail end on Anna, our grey mare, but Kate did most of the work flying through snow drifts keeping the cows going. Our ride took us through stands of quakies, a monochromatic world of black and white trunks making shadows on the snow - and miles of sagebrush. Moving dry cows (no more calves) is always a pleasure. We were warm and it was dead quiet, just the rustle of hooves through the snow.

The cows made it to Brush Creek in good time. Hopefully we can stay until Thanksgiving, but more snow is in the forecast so they may be on our doorstep before the holiday. 

Lessons on Handling

Bud Williams teaches ranchers to take responsibility for how cattle behave during handling. “Were they doing it before you got there?” he likes to ask. It’s pleasant to take credit when they behave well. It's not so nice to think it’s your fault when things fall apart.

Bud has spent his lifetime handling cattle, dogs, even reindeer and elk, and makes great effort to share what he’s learned with ranchers.  Integral to his training is using your position, rather than fear or force to achieve the desired movement from the animals.  Pressuring from the side instead of from behind, working with the animal’s natural instincts, and using release from pressure to train animals are all hallmarks of Bud’s teachings.

We had plenty of opportunity to hone our handling skills this week while processing calves and the yearling heifers. The heifers are checked to make sure they’re pregnant and given vaccine and a parasiticide. They’ll spend early winter on the Fort Hall Bottoms along Ross Fork, a warm creek that provides open water for drinking all winter. It’s a beautiful spot, wild and secluded. The landlord is retired but we used his well designed working facility to treat the heifers. On a dry hill surrounded by cedars, the corrals are spare but functional, and have features I like even better than ours at home. Using a flag I could load the heifers from the holding pen into the chute from outside the pen – slick! I told Mark even an old woman could do this. And I plan on being that old woman someday. 

Mark, Gary and Jesse are a joy to work with. They’re cut of the same cloth, patient and methodical. Their quiet conversation and fluid movements keep the cattle calm. Back and forth, one after another, the cattle wait their turn, moving into the empty spot ahead of them with little angst.

After the heifers, it took two days to vaccinate and weigh the calves. We finished up just as the November full moon was rising.

Now it’s snowing and blowing, and though we feel good the youngsters are tended, we’re concerned about the mature cows still at 6,000+ foot elevation. We hope Mother Nature is gentle with us. 

 a good design makes it easy

waiting her turn

Weaning on a Wire

Someone said, “The last of the old is always better than the first of the new.” I think they were talking about weaning calves on a wire instead of in a corral.

We have always separated the cows and calves and immediately trucked the calves home to stay in the corral until they are completely weaned. Trouble is, they walk around and around the pens, bawling. They not only miss mom, they have to change from range life to eating hay out of a manger and drinking from a trough, often in dusty conditions. It works okay, but we always want to do better. It’s stressful to the calves and the owners alike. 

This is our second year weaning on a wire, which means you put the cows on one side of an electric fence and the calves on the other. They're free to almost touch noses and communicate with each other, but no nursing allowed. In five days the calves are ready to go home to be turned out on green pastures.

Unfortunately, we can’t request the cows just walk away from their calves. It’s not like parent orientation at Boise State University, “Say your goodbyes - students go right and parents go left!” Instead, we flow the herd towards a gate, letting the cows outside and turning the calves back into the mob. Cows naturally like to change fields, so the flow usually goes well for the most part.

This year we got about two-thirds of the cows out and then they started balking at the gate, thinking there was electricity flowing through the gap. We foolishly kept trying to force them into it, and then finally fell back to a gate in the corner. When that didn’t work we went to plan “C,” putting the rest of the herd into an already grazed field and letting the cows back through in one direction and the calves another. Finally, with tired cowboys, and tired horses, we re-rode the cows, gathering up the calves that had gotten past us, then headed for the ridge top where the horsetrailers waited.

Weaning on a wire requires good fresh feed on both sides of the fence, an easy drink on the calf side, and a solid hot fence. Even though our cattle are trained to electric fences, there were a dozen calves that crawled through.

We checked the herd daily, and were relieved to see the calves spread out on the meadow, the creek close by. They continued to be bright and healthy. Yes, they still walked and bawled, but mom was not far away and they stayed full on good feed.

On day five we trailed the calves up over two ridges and into the trucking corrals. They filed on the trucks quickly; only one truck had to be unloaded at home after dark.

I took Grandma Bonnie to see the calves yesterday. She doesn’t drive anymore and I knew she would love to see the calf crop. They looked happy, sunning themselves in the afternoon light, chewing their cuds. After a challenging week, seeing them content is a satisfying feeling – a year’s work in review.

quiet again

An FFA Opportunity

We just returned from a week-long getaway to Indianapolis, Indiana, to attend the National FFA Convention. At the culmination of the event the new officers were announced. Seth was named Western Region Vice President! It’s a huge honor and commitment, giving a year of service to the FFA and agriculture advocacy across the nation. He is one of six officers, the others hailing from New Mexico, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, and Georgia.

With over 500,000 FFA members, Seth’s most important job will be as a role model to high school kids, giving leadership seminars and urging them to think big and believe in themselves. He'll also meet with agriculture industry folks, being the “spirit and face” of FFA. 

Callie flew in from Manhattan, and Anna flew in from Boise as part of her state FFA officer team. I had to pinch myself to realize it all came together. We stayed downtown at convention central, so were available early or late, whenever our busy kids had a spare moment. One evening was pure magic as we sat over dinner listening to Seth recount his recent trip to Brazil. He had waited to tell us about it until we were all together. Another afternoon we gathered in Seth’s hotel room and heard about Callie’s latest dance performance, rich in detail and vulnerability. Another night we walked the streets after dark, ducking into a chocolate/coffee shop for more deep conversation. We so enjoy our kids.

It’s a great experience to walk the streets of downtown Indy during FFA convention. In their trademark blue corduroy jackets, they crowd every hotel lobby, mob the mall, and line the skywalks to and from each convention venue, all 50,000 of them! The kids like to call “heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy” to each other as they pass in the escalators and hallways. Even from our 3rd floor hotel room we could hear waves of greeting as they crossed the street below.

The waitress at the local burger joint “Steak n Shake,” and the manager of our hotel, both enthusiastically praised the impressive kids that descend on the city in October of each year. To be excited about youth, now that’s noteworthy!

We stayed an extra day to be part of parent orientation. After breakfast with the officer team, Seth was whisked away by FFA staff. Then Anna left to catch her flight back to Boise. That left Callie and Mark and I. We walked around the now deserted city, no more blue jackets and excited faces, then took a bus across town to see more of Indy. Callie found us a great bookstore with $2.00 used books, perfect for reading on the airplane. They also had magazines for 50 cents. We bought one called Ode - for Intelligent Optimists. After a week of being with the most optimistic youth (or adult) organization in the world, it was very fitting. Mark read it all the way home. 

Anna, Seth, and friend Casey

Retreat with the Sheep

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in her 1955 book, Gift from the Sea, retreats to the beach for two weeks, living simply, in a shore cottage with open-air windows and bare walls, to write and contemplate her busy life as a wife and mother. Since I first read the book (and my grandma's notes in the margin), I have romanticized the notion of taking off by myself. To find out if I was any fun to be with. To look at hours ahead and know there was only me to fill them. To write, to read. When I turned 50 two years ago, and then when our last kid left home in August, it became uppermost in my mind. I finally made it happen last week when I headed to Idaho's famous Sun Valley resort community to the Trailing of the Sheep festival.

On the first day I attended a writer’s workshop, Women Writing and Living the West. I got to meet some of my favorite women authors, and heard stories from ranch women just like me who are brave enough to stand in a crowd and share those stories.

I went hiking/walking all three days, once into the Sawtooths under perfect skies. One morning my hike was in the forest adjacent to the city, so close in fact, that within in a minute or two of returning, I ordered a perfect mocha at the local coffee house. How “Sun Valleyesque” is that? 

On Sunday the culminating event is the parade, where thousands of onlookers line the short main street in Ketchum to witness the ancient art of herding sheep. First are dancers and musicians representing Peru and the Basque region of Spain, whose sheep raising cultures spawned the local industry. Next are a couple of horse-drawn sheep wagons. Then a dull roar rises from the crowd, and folks step into the street, craning their necks as the sheep come into view. The 1500 head flood by, the local priest at their lead, striding out in his black cloak.

From the perspective of a rangeland cattle rancher who appreciates the efforts of the solitary herder and his band of sheep in the mountains, this is genius. My hat is off to the sheep industry and the ranchers who had the foresight to turn conflict, sheep trailing to lower elevation pastures through a trophy home community, into a celebration!

As for my personal retreat, there were no great insights; Mark recognized me when I got home. I am emboldened enough to believe I can keep carving on my life through daily practice. I do feel a bit of "grace," as Lindbergh would say, that life is precious - even and especially when experienced alone.

 A day hike

stars of the parade

Fencing at Brush Creek

I fired up the wood stove tonight to warm up from a damp day of fencing in the hills.  

The neighbor’s cows had discovered a weak spot in our fence, so we took up the 4-wheeler, a roll of barbed wire, staples, bulldogs (fencing pliers), a shovel and tamping bar, and some extra posts to repair the fence in the Brush Creek field.

Kate and I went around the strays and headed them out the gate while Mark started replacing posts.

Fencing is satisfying work. Start with quality materials, dig the post holes deep and tamp them solid at the bottom. The last step, attaching wire to the posts with u-shaped staples, requires restraint. Only the novice buries the staple into the wood. Experience teaches one to leave a small air gap so that the wire can be snugged up later, as time and snow sag the once-tight line. When a fence is complete and well maintained, it's a source of pride to a rancher.

It reminds me of when Grandma Bonnie talks of being proud of her whites hanging on the clothesline. Her tools are timeless - bleach and sunshine - and the results are kitchen drawers lined with snow white tablecloths and dishtowels. I have always envied them.  

October is fine fencing weather. We ranchers have the hills to ourselves post-camping season and pre-hunting season. The grasses are a soft buttery yellow, heavy with seedheads. The quakies are golden, the sagebrush is in bloom, and all seems quiet, patiently awaiting the change of season. It is so beautiful as to break your heart.  

We stopped for a lunch of chicken salad sandwiches and pumpkin bread - with coffee of course. It was breezy, so we found a sidehill with giant sagebrush to block the wind.

I told Mark there was much to blog about on this day. I could talk about fencing and how technology hasn't changed the world of ranching very much in the last 50 years. Barbed wire and cedar posts still fit the bill. Or, I could blog about end-of-season plants, and how the leaves of the river birch dot the beaver ponds with color.  Or how a cow’s layer of fat acquired over the summer helps her ward off winter storms. I might talk about husbands and wives working together or how setting posts is like raising children, get a good start and the rest follows.

Blogging for the past year has been a real joy. It helps me to sift the lovely vignette out of the common every day, and with that done, I have renewed tolerance and gratitude for this life we lead.         

       

Denver and Back

We flew a quick trip to Denver this week. Mark is out of flying practice and forgot to leave his pocket knife in the car before going through security! It reminded us of the LA Laker game we attended in 2010 where, spying the security in place at the door, Mark stashed his knife in a potted plant at the stadium. Yes, it was still there after the game. I ask you, what good is a man without a pocket knife? My Dad always carried one and it’s very handy, from opening Christmas packages, to cutting baling twine, to scraping dried manure from your jeans. 

We visited a few Whole Foods stores in Denver that sell our co-op's meat. One meat cutter took us behind the counter and sliced fresh samples of roast he had just taken out of the smoker. Oh, perfection!  It’s always fun to see our beef lined up in the meat case, ready for families to take home and make a terrific meal. 

We also visited a lot in Sterling where we have yearlings on feed. The cattle were doing well and looked content. The owner drove us around the lot. A curious feature were the dozens of bison on feed. They looked as docile as any hereford.

We returned to perfect weather. Anna and I helped Mark load a two-ton truck with firewood this afternoon. Mark tossed the split silver leaf maple on the bed and Anna and I stacked. They bantered back and forth, Anna telling college tales. With all of Mark’s other work, I have to wonder why he takes on more, but the resource is there, and harvesting and selling is in his nature. Our efforts didn't make much of a dent in the large pile constructed last winter.

   

As Anna and Mark finished the load, I walked through the woods sidestepping Mark’s irrigation water. A few leaves are starting to turn and I fancy these trees as regal as any in a New England hardwood forest. For the old timers and the un-fit, keeping families warm is a dignified end.