Northern Farmer

Windier than the dickens today with occasional showers and ice showers. The temp is well above freezing as I write, in fact its forty five above but the ice pellets are hitting the window as I type. Tomorrow I should be able to finally hit the fields and they’re talking that by Thursday it should be in the mid eighties. So being that its going to be warm weather I decided to run to town late this afternoon and buy 75 more eartags for the new born calves. Plus being that I was at the fleet store I figured I’d better pick up one more straw cowboy hat for the hot weather to come. Kinda like that hat they sell there, plus like the low price. I had bought one a couple weeks ago there but decided that I need a Sunday best and a work hat also. My supposedly good hats from years ago kinda lost that nice look that’s so important to fashion conscience cow/calf raisers like me! The calves are starting to hit the ground here. Three were born today as it slowly starts and all are doing well! The youngest daughter was looking out the window before we headed to town this afternoon and saw a cow with some feet sticking out of here rear end, called me to take a gander and from our kitchen window I declared it to be a good looking labor and we’d check how it went when we got back from the fleet store. Well, we got back and the little black baldie heifer is sucking away out there in the blasting wind and ice pellets, happy as a lark! I tell you, it pays to have good cattle!

Now being that this might be the last evening for a bit that I can kinda relax around this place, its too windy to even attempt anything anywhere around here by the looks of it, I was reading in the free publication that I get called “Iowa Farmer Today” and came across a thing in the livestock section which by the way ain’t half bad. And the price is right. But I was taking a gander at a thing from Texas about the cattle rustling down that way and it sure sparked my interest, especially the part where this cattle rustler was talking about how he can load a big trailer full of cows in a half an hour from a pasture. Now I figured if it wasn’t for the prison sentence hanging over a guy’s head it would be good to team up with a gang like that for a few days and learn how they do that cause I sure can’t. Getting our cattle caught is an adventure in itself. And to just pull up to a place and load em up, well, these guys must be good! Now once ours are corraled its a different story, but to get em corraled is quite a feat! The way I figure it, once that rustler gets out on parole he’d have a good career holding livestock handling clinics all over cattle country. But maybe its the excitement of doing it sneeky that makes it more fun. Plus as I was reading, you go steal a computer or electrical junk and the hot price is pennies on the dollar, but you steal some cattle and the price is what they are worth on the market and a feller could make considerable money in a short amount of time. Luckily that problem is not much of an issue in these parts and I’m thankful for that!

I noticed on the way to town a while ago as I drove past one of our fences it looked like someone musta drove through one a ways from the road. No big deal, just another hour’s worth of work to do. Wonder who did it?? Last time old Tom found the license plate that the barb wire tore off the truck that smashed a fence of ours and the deputy was so happy about the only piece of evidence I had that the drunken truck driver was getting visited by the county deputy shortly after the crime scene investigation. Maybe if I have time I’ll head over to that area of fence tomorrow or shortly there after. To blame windy now!

This sure is the busy time of the year, but there will always be room for faith things. Faith the country way! Just the way I like it! In many ways its hard to focus on things like that now because of the workload, but once I start in the fields that’s when a person can think all day long on faith matters. Working out here I can see no other way than giving it all to the Lord! And when He’s in charge of the place things happen! I couldn’t even attempt to imagine what it would have been like in the multiple bad years of severe drought without faith that the Lord would see us through it all and we’d come out the other end in good shape. In fact I’m chomping at the bit I’m so excited about getting things back in order around here. The cow herd is smaller than it used to be, but there’s a silver lining with that! The gals that are left around here are the good ones, the survivors, the ones who could take the tough times and keep going, not the slackers that made a good show of it during the years of abundance and then couldn’t hold their own in the tough times. I asked the Lord for a durn good herd and one way or another that’s what I have now! And one must remember, the slackers were a drain on family money, and a feller put up with it, but now they’re gone and the steady cows are left. God is good! And He sees things in the big picture, something no human can really figure. The Lord loves a dirty faced beef cow man as much as He loves high tuned preacher that never gets his fingernails dirty. I think the Lord loves calving season too, watching them little things running doing the calf dance in the evenings. Well, He made them to do that stuff and a God like that is awesome!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.