Plants for the Planet

It’s hot. And dry. But the heavy snows this winter and the rains this spring brought us grass and more grass. In the mountains, snowdrifts still send trickles of water through the quakies to the closest stream. And the wildflowers! They fill me up. It’s a good thing Mark focuses on the cattle when we travel the ranch because my eyes are on plants. I have to really concentrate when Mark expects me to drive the 4-wheeler and check fences.

The garden is bearing. I planted lots of carrots and beets to store for the winter. We’re doing our best to eat the thinnings (is that a word?). I’m stingy with water, and though I water the garden, things get dry around the house. I care more about seed heads and diversity for bugs and birds than looking neat and tidy. I call my yard a “wildscape.” If that’s not a word it should be. 

I’ve been having fun with my plant ID app. I take a photo in the mountains of a plant I can’t recognize and put it through the app when I get back in service. Then if I’m still uncertain, I type it into google and look around to make sure. I’ve learned a lot, mostly about what I don’t know. OK, it’s a ragwort, but there are all kinds of ragworts. Is this the native cinquefoil or the invasive, non-native cinquefoil? Is it hairy clematis or cotton grass? Look closely at the leaves to tell them apart. 

Plants don’t get near enough credit for the integral role they play in our world. They take the only readily available energy – the sun – and convert it to feed everything else. Plants from eons ago made the carbon stores that fuel our modern society. From consumer goods to transportation to shelter, we depend on the energy of fossil fuels. Plants hold the soil in place to slow wind and water erosion. They capture rainfall and snowmelt. They cycle carbon and feed microbes in the soil. Plants determine the makeup and health of whole civilizations. Most of us walk around clueless to this fantastic fact. 

And yes, plants are in trouble. From many directions - human development, fires/fire suppression, over grazing/under grazing, over tillage, climate change, invasive plants from foreign continents, and in general a simplification of the amazing complexity of species that rely on each other. 

Putting aside these challenges, which one has to do to find joy in life, tromping around in the diversity created over the millennia and marveling at how each plant has been named and catalogued by our own species, leaves me in awe.      

a favorite from the valley ranch, buckwheat

also from the valley ranch - veiny dock
we call them sand lilies

I'm going with wild garlic on this one, so delicate, just starting to open

brodea (cluster lily) and arnica

pretty sure this is hairy clematis, so unique!

prairie smoke, another fun one

Emma's World

No way around it, spring is stressful on a ranch. Most of us in our region had a rough calving season, and now we’re having to delay “turn-out,” the term for when the cows can be grazing grass full time. We’re to that stage now, putting herds together on the pastures to the east of the ranch and getting ready for the long walk to the mountains.

The irrigation water is all up and running, which followed a marathon effort to get the ditches ready. First they’re burned, trenched if needed, and then all the debris needs to be pitched out of the way. And then, as lovely as it is to have water on the land, the streams need constant tending.

Mark has been doctoring a few sick calves even though the weather has improved. I think sick cattle stress him most of all. He rarely loses one, but it takes lots of time and attention on his part.

He and a three man crew spent two days in the mountains pulling up fences that were flattened by snow. The moisture is heaven-sent, and poor fences in this case is a good problem to have, but it all takes time.

It’s discouraging to be in the middle of it, far too many tasks and too few hours in the day. I’m not complaining, well maybe I am. We wouldn’t trade places with anyone, it’s just that the tough days seem to come one after another.

I’ve decided Emma has it figured out. She’s two years old and the world is her oyster. I think that’s the phrase, and I’m not even sure what it means, but I think it fits. All around her is a wondrous world to explore. Her senses are in full-on alert. She crouches to observe an ant or to examine a cow pie for bugs. She can identify a bumble bee and a honeybee and was concerned when the rain showers chased the bees into hiding. “Where’d the honeybees go?” she said.

Every time a pheasant crows, she looks at you with excitement, “ahhhh, a pheasant!” She looks up every time she hears geese or an airplane and makes sure you notice them too.

She examines rocks and tiny sticks, flowers and leaves. She found the lamb’s ear plant in my front flower bed. She stroked the leaves with a child’s appreciation. “Oh, it’s so soft!”

That curiosity, that wonderment, is available to us all. I’m going to be like Emma.

Emma with the new puppy, Myrt

Passages

We’ve had our first branding. It’s a rite of spring for ranchers and means the production year is underway. The bunch we worked were those born during the worst of the cold weather. They looked great, and seeing them healthy and vigorous was good for the soul.

I’ve been promoted to grandma and cook. The only real work I did was vaccinating while Anna nursed Lou. I’ve been known to have a kind of warrior attitude when it comes to working cattle. Not in aggressiveness with the animals, more in wanting it done just right and needing to be in the middle of the action. With our kids living on the ranch, there’s less reason for me to step into the fray. I’m sure they didn’t miss me a lick.

I fixed chili and tended Lou, which turned out to be plenty of work when he was unhappy during the last hour of meal prep. I put him in the high chair and gave him green beans, raspberries and chili beans to keep him occupied. It kinda worked.

We gathered the pairs at Gary and Anita’s and worked them right behind their house. Sadly, Gary kept harrowing and Anita stayed inside with a bum hip. That was a first as well, not having them with us.

A couple of boys who worked here in the past, and are now grown-up men with families, arrived with their wives and kids to have some fun working their horses, honing their roping skills, and letting the kids play in the dirt. Other friends show up every year, and we rely on their know-how after years of contribution. Alan comes all the way from Boise. He’s castrated enough calves to win a Pratt Ranch award; if we had one he'd be the first recipient. One young man, here for the first time, carefully vaccinated each calf with grown-up care.

Branding is an activity, like many other once-a-year events, that marks time. Memories are made. I remember as a young mother, leaving my branding job to the rest of the crew and taking refuge in grandma’s house to nurse Anna when she was a baby. Bonnie was to hang a dishtowel on the porch when Anna woke up. What fun it was to see the towel and anticipate the joy of seeing my baby. I remember the lace curtains softening the bright spring sunshine and the muffled sound of cows and calves calling to one another. I felt so blessed to have my baby close by, and to be able to step in and out of both worlds, mothering and ranching, with ease. That’s the gift of an on-site grandma and I’m happy to take on that role now.

I still like ranch work and am finding plenty to do, but to be honest, I’m tired. I’m not through with long days, but this new turn is welcome.

On my way home from taking lunch to the crew, there was a new calf still wet from birth, circling his mama and finding the udder in that first act of life. The cows are like their owners, busy with the cycles of life. We can only accept and bow to the passage of time, be grateful in our role and play our part the best we can.           

Aww Lou . . . .

Seth spoofing with someone's reject vacuum they dumped in our pasture!

canal clean up of an evening
another rite of spring

Calving - Spring 2023

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: 

 Heifers are straight up basking in the sun. Somebody get them a mai tai

 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!

A little sunshine for this one

When the snow started to melt, this is no place for calves

James and the barn calves 

X14 Yellow

When Anna was born on March 9th, thirty years ago, it was a year like this one. It was severely cold and the snow was deep and hard. In preparation for calving in the home pastures, we had to make trenches in the snow for the cattle. Mark did that again this year.

He was still teaching back then and was doing an evening check on the heifers when Anna was a week past due. We had agreed that if I needed him, I would turn the yard light on at our home a quarter mile away. He was making his rounds, just about to ride back through the cattle, when he looked back towards home. He saw the light shining and hurried back. 

Anna was born twenty minutes after we arrived at the hospital. I remember leaning against the car door in the parking lot, bracing against a contraction and wondering why this was happening so fast. All turned out well and I recall thinking, “I can’t help with the calves anymore. I have my own new life to tend.”

Leah is pregnant now, as she was almost two years ago with Emma. This being pregnant during calving season feels very familiar. We were laughing about it this morning in the feed truck. It’s tempting to make comparisons (there’s actually a lot of them) between pregnant cows and pregnant women, but if you’re a man DON’T SAY IT. We, the mothers, might bring up something amusing about waddling cows, contractions, birth fluids, etc. but you can’t. Too real.

Yesterday I helped Mark with a newborn calf that hadn’t sucked as it was getting dark and colder by the minute. The baby would probably have figured it out, but just in case, we brought the pair in to the barn. The cow was a sweetheart. She stood quietly in the alleyway while Seth crouched at her side, guiding the calf to the teat. Since there was plenty of milk, Seth stole a little from another quarter to keep in the fridge in case another calf needed a boost. The first milk, colostrum, affords immunity to calves before they have their own disease resistance and is critical in the first couple hours after birth.

Mark told me she was a blog cow - he does that from time to time, remembering them much better than I. She’s X14 yellow, a black brocle. She was the first heifer to calve in 2013, the year I wrote about her. She surprised us one morning with a little look-alike calf at her side. We hadn’t brought the herd to headquarters yet, so the baby walked along following mama back to the ranch.

Mark found the old blog post and requested "then and now" photos. He said Seth told him the cow had personality extraordinaire. Wish they were all like her.

2023

2013 - dang, that bare ground looks nice!

Emma is almost 2

Crunch Time, or not

We drive through Anna and Cole’s yard every morning to feed the young cows expecting their first or second calf. On occasion Anna takes my place, leaving baby Lou inside with Cole who works from home. One morning she came out with a warm loaf of Cole’s sourdough bread. We tore off chunks on the way home, just like you’re supposed to do with a crusty sourdough loaf! Most mornings we just drive by the little house with a grateful heart for the special souls that live there. 

One morning Anna was tending their border collies and stopped at the pickup to say hi. I quizzed her: “What’s different about the birds this morning?” She passed the test when she said, “They’re blackbirds!” 

“Right, red-wing blackbirds!" I said. “They’re back in town, and about two weeks early.” 

I love these precious winter days. I could do this for a couple more months and be happy. It’s a real change of pace from the rest of the year. We linger in the dark over coffee in the morning. I take time to read from my stack of books, guilt free. It’s the only time of year we watch movies. I came home last night from a rare evening out and found Mark asleep in bed listening to a podcast. He got the stitching started on a leather wallet he tooled last winter and we have brunch scheduled with friends on Saturday. This will all feel foreign in about three weeks when calving starts and the production year gets underway. 

It’s also tax time, budgeting time, goal-setting time, and that annual window when all types of agriculture meetings are held. Mark and I both got the chance to visit the Idaho State Capital this winter. We’ve been involved in various gatherings to address soil and water conservation, range health, beef industry challenges, and the marketing of our product(s) which may one day include that enticing concept, ecosystem services. Turns out we’ve got support from a wide variety of individuals, agencies, and other environmentally conscious groups that all agree ranching should endure if we want to protect open, natural landscapes. It’s a refreshing change from the “us against them” mentality that took up so much space twenty years ago, and that still defines the public domain. 

Pressures continue to come at us from many angles, but having allies feels wonderful. To take part in these conversations makes us feel very blessed. And when we return home, or disconnect from a zoom meeting, we get to hug a grandkid or discuss the future with our children, and feel doubly so.

so pretty this morning!

Searching for Hallelujah

Mark and I go to the heifers every day first thing. We drive through Anna and Cole’s yard to get to the cattle. Yesterday I had to be gone so Anna bundled up baby Lou and came out to help Mark. She flaked off the hay and Lou fell asleep in Mark’s arms as he was driving. I’ve had this picture in my head for a while now and it’s a “pinch me” affair to grasp that it’s real.

It was minus 11 degrees this morning. I’m not complaining, ranchers east of us have it much worse. It’s hard enough to keep water troughs open and equipment operating at these temperatures, but 40-50 degrees below zero? Mark has taken to reading the weather forecast out loud to me. It’s understandable, the ranch lives and dies by nature's whims. 

To add to the difficulties, the water trough at the steer calves went dry. This is an emergency because after they eat they head for a drink. Cattle panic without water and pile and shove against each other when competing at the trough. Seems counterintuitive in this frigid weather, but a good drink is critical for keeping the cattle healthy under weather stress of any kind. Seth got them watered at another source and it took all day to get the trough up and going again. Mark came in at dusk very relieved.

Large numbers of elk are hanging around the neighborhood. A long line went past us as we were feeding in below zero temperatures. There were maybe 150 head, and as they walked past single file and headed for the river toward the rising sun, each animal had a swirl of steam emanating from them. They are majestic animals and we love seeing them, but there’s too many and seeing them grow dependent on agriculture lands is disturbing. They can ruin haystacks and graze out stockpiled feed saved for grazing cattle. We talked to an officer with Idaho Fish and Game and he said it's not that they don’t have feed in the mountains, it’s just easier pickings down in the valley. A rancher who lives in the foothills thinks the snowmachiners are pushing the herds down out of the high country. Another disturbing thought.

My holiday feels a little subdued this year. I love the lights, the evergreen wreaths on every door, and I enjoy playing piano from my old easy holiday books worn with time. But frankly, life is too serious to be jolly for any extended period of time! The holiday makes one think of people we’ve lost and brings the passage of time close in. There is much grief and brokenness in the world.

But, oh the gratitude that overwhelms us every day. The natural world is breathtaking in her winter coat. Our grandkids keep us laughing and what a joy they are. Emma wants to listen to the little record player we get out this time of year. Frequently she wants a “diffwnt” song than the one that’s playing. She and Freya dance side by side to the music. And Lou just smiles at everyone and everything.

From me, and from Mark who suggested the title to this essay, we wish you peace and calm. A warm bed, enough food, a friendly conversation. And perhaps the most precious gift of all, faith in the future.