Some folks are just unable to be satisfied! We all know we are poor by the standards of America, we who live in the country and feed the others. We do our level best to take care of our sparse cash and live sorta hand to mouth. We can’t afford health insurance, fancy stuff or non-essentials unless we send our close relatives to town to work. The driving back and forth eats up the wages but the insurance is paid.
I want to be like the rich ranchers we see on TV, the big spread and fancy pens. I wish for a fine house with a patio swimming pool attached and white fences all around. But I could spit in one hand and wish in the other and see which one fills up the fastest! I can’t envy them because they didn’t make it on their own, and I am being judgmental here. They had cash from a source or inherited something.
Those of us who scratch out a meek little living - and we love our lifestyle- are doomed to learn to make do! I am pleased to express the fact that I and my family know how to make do! My living is almost as good as it gets in my chosen field of work. I can say most of my fields of work are pretty darn good. Some need better grass, some need better fences, but I like them all.
My dissatisfaction comes from the fact that I do not have a covered working set of pens and a covered medicine shack to work under when it is time to do spring and fall work. The drought finally broke and I am wading knee deep in mud from sunup to sundown to get the cattle worked. I am throwing down plywood to stand on around the chute and had to place some chocks under the chute to keep it in line.
We all look like mud men after half an hour of pushing the cows through, and then it is worse when we start on the calves. I have a bucket of water on the work bench for rinsing off my hands so I can give vaccinations and apply the dewormer. And, speaking of hands, mine are beat up and so chapped I can hardly use a fork!
We usually hire some help during this part of raising beef and we can’t keep them but one day. After that, they don’t show up again. Can’t say as I blame them, but sure makes it unhandy to work short-handed, too. I think this spring will add an extra day, maybe even two, to get us around to all the animals.
It is my opinion, and everyone has one, being happy with your work and doing your best is a great thing. I want to do what I do, that does not include working in mud, but we are so blessed by the Lord to live our lives like we do. Now I am about to allow us some more blessings.
I will give up the new tires on the hay truck, another high dollar bull, trip to Colorado to hunt, and other unimportant things, because we will build a covered working shed over the pens this summer! I don’t consider it a non-essential anymore.
Bill is a pen name used by the Gravette author of this weekly column.
Opinion, Pages 6 on 05/01/2013