We’re blessed, even in cold

It has been terribly cold out here on the rock pile and the wind has had its day too. We have been hooked up every hour of daylight fixing and repairing all the stuff that waited for cold weather to fall apart. I believe there are goblins that destroy good things when the weather is miserable and laugh when mankind has to get out and work to keep things going.

My close relative has breakfast on the table before daylight and the offspring get to headquarters to eat with me. We are out the door and loaded with wire, hammers and saddle pinchers in an old, cold truck when daylight breaks. The seat of the truck, supposed leather, creaks and groans as we slide in, and the starter sorta groans like it hates to move too. I can’t tell if I have my boots on or not because my feet are so dang cold. But, regardless, we hit the road to repair the well house in the south pasture.

Yes, I did some work on the little building during the summer, thought I had it in good shape andeven ran a new electric line to the building. We need this building to protect the pump that we have to use to water this end of the place. Naturally, the wind blew off part of the roof and knocked out a couple of the wall boards that had rotted.

We got the roof fi xed and I insisted on checking for other loose tin before descending. It is a gift of age that makes me save trips up and down the ladder. Sure enough, we had some tin loose on the north side and got them nailed back down. The ladder held while the youngest offspring stepped down and until I was on the rung next to the bottom. It then broke off at the leg - didn’t hurt me but made my heart beat pretty fast!

After nailing on some new boards, we drove down to the tank to check it out; the cows were all around it and it had about a foot of water in it. The ordeal made me almost want a desk job. We scurried back to the well house and checked the pump. Sure wanted to hear it kick on, but it didn’t.

We called the pump company and headed on to the hay pen to start putting out some bales for the old hides. We left the tractor there so we could get that done without having to go get one every time we wanted to hay. The oldest offspring hopped out and began to start the motor before we left. It would not crank, ran the battery down, should have been shot but I didn’t. It was still cold.

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, I love the occupation of being a beef raising family. I like where I live; and if you are also doing what I am doing for a living, you do too! I know this is gonna happen and the cold and the dead batteries, the blown off tin and the old tractors that won’t start. We do have a battery charger at the shop, we did get the tin nailed on and I hope to have the cash to pay the boys for repairing the pump. That is a blessing, and I am pretty high on looking at the blessing side of things.

Take care of your place and, for goodness sakes, count your blessings more than once a year on Turkey Day!

Bill is a pen name used by the Gravette author of this weekly column.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 12/04/2013