Cold weather is good to wake a feller in the mornings, or anytime, I suppose. If at midnight you open the door and step out into the world, the cold will bring you to your senses!
Until the winter solstice gets here, I have to go out to do chores in the dark. And then the days don’t lengthen fast enough for me.
Cold and dark, two things I certainly don’t enjoy working in, but you and I know that I don’t have to go out that early, just a habit of rising early and starting. The habit is surely there but the urge to see if everything is working and breathing is even stronger. A calf that looks good at five in the evening can be on death’s doorstep at five the next morning in this awfulcold.
The older I get - and I am getting older - the more I am indebted to the livestock to take care of them. I realize what they mean to us as a family, and I don’t mean that I didn’t when I was young; it is just a little different now. Youngmen are in a hurry to look at the stock and move on to the next chore. Us older ones would rather look longer and finer, inching across the faces and peering deep into the eyes of each bovine.
I can walk into the midst of the old cows and they don’t care if I touch their backs and talk to them while they graze. Their calves learn young that I am OK to be around and they depend on their mammies to stay between them and me anyway. But they don’t bound off like jack rabbits. I can detect problems early and easily in that bunch.
The heifers, ones for replacements, are full of energy and cut didos while I check them. They snort and bounce around like pups but they don’t run to the ends of the pasture. The bred heifers are more settled and watch me pretty close but they continue grazing or eating cubes.
Now, the steers are all stupid. They live on welfare, have no intention of working at all, never had a hungry day in their lives and act like their hides areblack leather jackets and they have tats on their hips instead of brands! They can bow their necks, beller and blow just like a gang of bad boys in a city, and they do it all the time. By the time they weigh 850 pounds, they are mean machines and you gotta watch them close.
I quit raising my own bulls several years ago because of the attitudes of yearlings. You are required to spend lots of time repairing, separating, hoping and praying while raising a pen of bulls. I sure will rescue a calf from the knife if he is just outstanding, but I try to sell those real fast.
It is my opinion, and everyone has one, a feller who can enjoy his work even in the cold and dark as much as old cattlemen do must be in the right profession. We are certainly blessed above all others, breathe in clean air and the aromas of the earth, eat of the soil and watch God’s creatures close at hand. I believe, as does my close relative, that God chooses the ones to keep watch over the cattle and, somewhere, some sheep!
Keep Jesus in your thoughts and actions, especially this Christmas season!
Bill is the pen name used by the Gravette author of this weekly column.
Opinion, Pages 6 on 12/15/2010