It was before sunup this morning that I was out on the ranch doing my first morning chores. The frost hit hard with an icy coating over all of our meadows. I guess that’s it then”¦so much for the alfalfa component of our pastures. It will grow no more. It still has value and flavor”¦it is just done with life for the year. Our grass is a little hardier, and still green, and will creep along, slowly harvesting sweetness and nutrition from the balmy sun that finds its daily journey low in the sky.
It gives me pleasure to see the beeves harvesting deeply of the last of green, apparently with pleasure of their own. It will be hay feeding time in just 3-5 weeks, as that stored version of summer sunshine begins to win out nutritionally over the grass that slowly goes dormant from repeated frosts.
Our hay pile is larger than we’ve had for years. I think it is payback time for the slow nickel and dime depositing we’ve done to invest in the lives of tiny animals below the soil surface. They return our investment with interest in the form of sweetness in our hay that our beeves lust after when the weather turns frigid.
And the weather cooperated this year. It was idyllic harvesting those 700 tons of perfect pasture grass. We saw no rain over our windrows, and we were able to bale quickly, thus sealing quite elegantly the package of green in a 1 ton hay bale that you even have a hard time pressing a finger into.
The cycles of season caress the landscape with change. Rarely are they abrupt, and when they are it seems somehow timely. We may have a fall blizzard at any time, but although the transformation is sudden, the kids look out the windows with joy of a gift that fell through the night: a blanket of pure white. We’ll just shift gears a little earlier than planned, and happily fork hay to awaiting bovine tongues.
I enjoy this: the sharing of the seasons, the ever changing landscape with grateful cow and horse. If you remember, several months ago in one of our spring newsletters, I introduced you to a cowboy friend of mine I have known and worked on and off with for over 30 years. Dave Ellis and I always trade thoughts when we visit, and last week, after a meeting in town, we pulled up some chairs and swapped thoughts about the summer grazing ranges and how things worked. Dave shares with me a love for land and animal, and we can cut to the chase in conversation because we know where the other stands.
We talked of cowboys and cowgirls we’ve had ride with us, and how often, those days turn incredibly long as we tried to partner with the herd and learn the high range country with them. We both had known days where we would have to ride horseback long into the night to keep the herd directed and together, especially under that full moon where beeves have no problem with grazing all night, like the wild elk and bison do.
Moonlight rides did not happen very often, but even on any daytime day, the hours are long, with 16 hours in the saddle common. Then you still have to bed the cattle down, pull your horse gear, groom horses down, get them fed, and finally”¦last on the totem pole was you, starving. Fire up the stove by lantern light and try to throw together a dense meal that will give you staying power the next day. After cleaning up the camp kitchen (otherwise bears would clean it for you in the night—and they are bad kitchen help), you fall into bed. Alarms are set because there is never enough sleep to be had.
The routine burned some of the crew out. No wonder. But Dave and I agreed that those who prevailed were the ones who loved the critters; not only the horses and border collies, but the beeves themselves. I could tell that some of the cowboys got to know the cattle quite well, as eartag number was not the identifying name that the beeves earned. Instead, it was based on how they acted socially in the herd (or failed to connect socially). Cowboys wouldn’t call it love, but it was, in a sense.
Cowboy Patchin summed it up with a facebook post he penned on his July birthday and launched into cyberspace from a high and windswept ridge where he could reach a distant cell tower on the next mountain range:
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“Thanks ya’ll for the birthday wishes. I spent it up on the range with 150 of my closest friends.”
And that heart for the critters makes all the difference, both with the beeves and how they perform on our wild grasslands, and how the grasslands continue to thrive under our care.
When looking at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange futures prices the other day, it struck me that cattle fall into the commodity category. I have a hard time creating a mindset that would allow me to put our beeves on the same plane as corn or soybeans. Granted, they aren’t pets, but they are our charges, and we have been entrusted with the husbandry of them.
Husbandry is something etymologically tied to marriage, and that’s not inappropriate. There’s a rightness to the care and stewardship of them”¦seeing them to completion. It’s hard to see them go when they do, but they fulfill their destiny in bringing so much health and wellness to our family. It seems only right to share their goodness with all of you.
Thanks for being part of our husbandry.
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