Spring 2020

March. What a beautiful time of year this is. The sun is regaining its strength, causing snow to melt, puddles to form, and freckles to emerge on pale faces. We have all the adventure of winter, with the threat of blizzards and cold spells, but with the added challenges of ice underfoot and seemingly constant wind.

What a time to be alive.

Just as autumn is a relief from the heat and holds the promise of easier winter labour, spring brings relief from the cold and the promise of getting out of the house more.

That’s not to say we haven’t been getting out of the house. If there is one thing that I can never seem to learn about this life, it’s that there is always something that needs doing.

Like fencing.

In January.

Remember that teeny, tiny, minuscule bit of fencing that we didn’t quite finish last year?

Well now the fencing is for real, 100%, totally finished, because we went back to it in January and finally got it done.

It was a stretch of shallow slough that was overgrown with a dense patch of willows. First of all, we took the tractor and mower in and spent an entire day clearing out the willows. I don’t think Dad thought it was going to take that long just to clear a path, but I knew. I packed a lunch (for all of us - I’m not a jerk). Dad picked away at the resilient willows with the tractor while Mom and I kept a lookout for any stray branches that might threaten to catch on any of the tractor’s hoses. He’d push some trees back, then hook on to the mower and mow a while. Then unhook and push some more. Then mow. Then push. It was tedious work, and getting dark by the time we felt there was an adequate trail pushed through.

Since the slough is in such a sharp ravine-like setting, the tractor ended up having to pull the truck out of there. I wondered how we’d get back out the next day, when we were just bringing the truck to build the fence. I shared this thought with Dad, but all he said was, “Yep, that wouldn’t be good to get stuck down there.” That’s the sort of thing he says when he thinks he is above getting stuck.

He always thinks he is above getting stuck.

Anyway, the next day was warm again, so we packed up and headed out to the site. Mom and I were nervous about getting stuck, but Dad remained quite aloof, so we forged ahead. Getting in was easy, as it's downhill. All we had to do was follow our old tracks to get down, though even that was precarious, as we'd gotten stuck yesterday doing as much (of course, Dad didn't get stuck; Mom did). It took us a good part of the day to put up that couple hundred feet of fence. First, we strung five barbed wires across and got them tight. That didn't take long, but we're all a bit rusty on our fencing skills, and our bulky winter clothes kept getting caught in the barbs. I like to wear short-sleeved shirts when fencing; maybe the barbs sting a little more, but at least I don't get caught up in wire. I get terribly enraged when I get caught up in barbed wire. I see see red and get instantly too impatient to disentangle myself, so I just pull away, leaving bits of clothes behind. That's a little fun fact about me. I also have been called a cat-whisperer, because I will take the time to sit still and patiently tame cats down. That's just to give you an idea of the spectrum of patience that I run on, so you don't think I'm a psycho. Or at least so you think I'm a cat-whispering psycho. Anyway, after the wires were strung, we decided to attempt sinking in a couple of metal T-posts. T-posts are eight-foot-long, metal, T-shaped posts. You may have gathered some of that from the name 'metal T-posts', but you may still be picturing the wrong thing. T-posts are T-shaped in the same way that ordinary, round fence posts could be called O-posts for being O-shaped. I hope that clears it up. This is not really important to the story in any way, but I just want you to be well informed. So, we set up to drive the first one in, not knowing what to expect. We would be driving it through solid ice, then through frozen mud, and that was only if we were lucky enough not to hit any rocks. To drive a post, we had to back the truck up to one so Dad and I could stand on the tailgate. A post-maul hammer wouldn't work very well on the thin, unsteady T-posts, so we use a hollow pipe that's closed on one end, fit it over the T-post, slide it up, and slam it down. Our first post didn't bode well for the whole operation. It drove down about a foot, then stopped. We weren't sure if it hit the frozen mud, or a rock, but it wasn't going any farther and it certainly wasn't coming out.

We considered giving up. We considered coming back in the spring and just using hip-waders to sink in more posts. But Dad not only hates giving up, he hates going in water (not 'hates' like I hate peppers and celery. Like, he can't swim; he's a danger to himself)(P.S. I hate peppers and celery and am a child, so please exclude them from dishes that you prepare for me). So we tried again. The next bar we managed to sink a little more than the first, and this gave us hope. We moved on to the next, sinking it right down to the correct height! We could hardly believe it, but the bars all went in after that, firmly sunk into the solid ground beneath the mud level! We even went back to the first two to see if our hearts just weren't in it for them, and one of them sunk to the correct level as well. “Darn,” said Dad. “We should have come with ten more posts! They're actually driving in!” This was pretty wishful thinking, as he and I were both out of breath from the ones we already drove. That's because our once-impressive muscles are not so impressive after a winter's hibernation. But they'll come back in the summer, so maybe it was just winter migration. That would make sense, as my bicep seems to have travelled down to a floppy position on the underside of my arm. Anyway, that is how we finally officially finished the fencing in January 2020. Oh, and it behooves me to tell you that Dad was above getting stuck, because we made it out of there. Even he was worried, though, because we drove back and forth along the bottom for quite a while, trying different spots to climb the steep hill, before we finally got out.

Fencing aside, most of the winter has been dedicated to tending the cattle. We have a pretty sweet system here for feeding, so we only have to start the tractor twice a week. Some of our home quarters are sectioned off into smaller paddocks, which allows us to feed the calves a day's worth in each section. Every morning we just have to call them into the yard, feed them their ration of grain, and open the gates so they can wander out to the day's feed. The cow herd doesn't need such careful tending, since the wizened old girls know how go out and scrounge for feed a lot better. We just dump out how ever many day's worth of feed they'll need and let them go about their business. The cows don't require a lot of maintenance, but nowadays they need even less! We baled up a couple hundred hay bales on one piece of land, wrapped them with half the normal amount of twine, then cut the twine off this fall. Now, the cows have been moved out that way to eat at their leisure (and ours) for the month of March. We just have to call them through a gate every once in a while to move them to a fresh paddock full of bales, but we still have to check on them every few days, especially after the latest find... Dad and I were driving through the cow herd just the other day, appreciating how content the cows looked, when we rounded a corner and seen the tell-tale lump of black at a distant, flattened bale. It was, we were certain, a dead cow; we even witnessed a coyote fleeing the scene. As we drove closer, however, we could see she was moving; kicking out, it seemed. So cows do this thing. If they lay in some sort of pothole or depression just right (or just wrong), they can get over-centered and will be unable to get up. Kind of like a beetle on its back, but their legs aren't pointed straight up. Often what happens in this case is they are suffocated by fluids that run into their lungs, but in the case of poor heifer 61F, she was propped with her head uphill, which had saved her. I doubt she felt very fortunate about that, though, because the coyotes had come for her. We were pretty horrified to think about how stressed the poor thing must have been in her predicament, but the coyotes hadn't done a lot of damage apart from the stress. They had ripped quite a lot of hair out and scratched up her rump, but she apparently flailed enough to keep them from getting a good mouthful. We didn't have high hopes for the poor thing, but as she was still kicking, we had to give her a chance. Dad grabbed a back leg, and I a front, and we managed to get her rolled over the lump. She was laying upright, then, but took a few moments to get her bearings before she stood. When she did stand, it was pretty shaky, which is probably a good thing for us, because a bovine with nothing to lose (which would fairly describe this heifer) doesn't generally mind taking you down with her. Dad figured she definitely had that look in her eyes; when he tells the story, he maintains that she would have killed us if she could have walked properly. He says so with a sort of wise and reverential tone that reminds us all to be more cautious of cattle. And yet, I can't help but take note that this same man laughs at me when I avoid a certain 64D cow, even though I have irrefutable, empirical evidence of her craziness. That biscuit of a cow came out of a herd twice in her young life to come after me, unprovoked. But when I say I don't like the way she looks at me, Dad just scoffs. Anyway... We thought for sure she'd just fall again, or wander off to lay somewhere else and die, but as we drove through the herd, we watched her regain some coordination and stumble along to keep up with the other cows. It would seem she has survived the hole and the coyotes. But she is still at risk. The Achilles heel of bovine are their lungs. When a bovine is exposed to stress (weather, predator, sickness), it's often their lungs that will do them in. We came home and talked to a vet ('cuz that's the kind of responsible ranchers we are – also, we had no medications with us), and he recommended an antibiotic and a painkiller; the first to help her fight pneumonia, and the second because she's had a really rough day, and she deserves it. So, we packed up some drugs and a couple of different methods of administering them, and back we went. Then we couldn't find the darn thing. The paddock they happen to be in has quite a lot of bushes, but since nothing has leaves, we can see through them all. This saved us (and by us, I mean me) having to walk through them all, but we still had to drive circles around them to make sure we were seeing right through. After nearly an hour of circling all the treed areas, we still hadn't found her. We had gone right to the back of the paddock and were preparing to look at every cow number to search for her, when I finally spotted her. She was just barely visible, hunkered down in a patch of cattails. Those tricky beeves, always in the last place you look.

Our methods of drug administration were thus: a medi-dart bow and arrow or a couple of good old fashioned ropes. The dart can work well if you have a herd bunched up tight and only need to administer twenty mils or less, which is one dart-full. After that arrow with a needle smacks them once, they're usually pretty wise about staying the heck away from you, good intentions or not, and it really can't be shot farther than several feet. Besides that, the herd was scattered and this heifer already had her guard up against predators. Even sneaking one shot in would be lucky, and she would need five. When it comes down to it, the ropes really can't be shot farther than a dozen feet or so, either (at least not with the operators in question). With both methods, a sneaky approach is essential; with the ropes, though, if we're successful just once, we can still complete the job. When we finally found the heifer lurking in the cattails, Dad's weapon of choice was a rope. He walked with his sneakiest feet down to the cattails, as close as he could get until the heifer started looking like she'd get up... slowly started swinging the rope... swish, swish, swish... he let it sail. You'd think I was setting up for a beautiful success story there, but I was not. Unfortunately, the rope caught in the cattails, and the heifer chose not to put her nose into it when she got up to move away. She did, however catch the loop loosely on her ears and walk away with it. Short of actually catching the heifer, this was one of the better results. She moved off quietly and was walking back to some of the herd, so we hadn't spooked her (Dad has very experienced, non-spooking, sneaky feet), and the rope that she was dragging was sitting right in one of her eyes, so she would have a blind side that Dad could once again use his sneaky feet to the advantage of. We slowly trailed her, with the truck, back up towards where some of the herd was condensed in a clearing. When she got up to some friends, she'd stop for a moment, still wary, but feeling safer with more cows around. Dad and I set up for a sneak attack as she found some cows to visit with. Dad got onto the tailgate of the truck, and I switched into the drivers seat. I drove past the heifer nonchalantly, trying to make it look like I was just out for a nice afternoon drive past through the cows, minding my own business. It's an art form; it's okay if you don't understand. As I drive past, the heifer hopefully looks at me with her good eye and thinks “Phew, I thought they were here to make my really truly awful day even worse, but that lady is driving right past me very nonchalantly.” Unfortunately, this is not quite what happened. I distracted her slightly, but not enough that she didn't hear Dad's approach (maximum sneaky-foot capacity is not to be reached in snowy terrain), so she turned and looked at Dad, then moved off again. She found some more friends to exchange niceties with nearby, so we stayed set up for the sneak attack and tried it again. Once again, the heifer turned to look at Dad, but this time, she just sort of stood there as though bemused by his swinging of the rope. Once again, Dad missed. No cattails to blame this time. Maybe he was accounting for the wind and got thrown off by the fact that there was none. Nice young 61F didn't seem to be getting all that bothered by all the bother, though. She walked off to another couple of cows and turned to look at us. The way she turned made the loop around her ears widen. It slid down her face a couple of inches. “Ooooh! If she would just back up a few slow steps, then put her nose in...” Dad said. As if it ever works that way. But still, we waited with baited breath, willing the heifer to do just that. And against all odds! All laws of Murphy! All preconceived notion of bovine ensnarement that we had! She put her nose through the loop!! And there was great rejoicing. We were thinking we'd have to push her into a bush to tie her off to a tree, but when we drove over the rope on a hilltop where there was less snow, it gripped enough to hold her in place. With the other rope, Dad caught a hind leg and we managed to pull her down and stretch her out. I held her leg back, keeping her down, while Dad gave her the needles. In a short time, we had the ropes off, the drug bag packed up, and the heifer was toddling off, probably thinking that she'd be better off to lay with her head downhill the next time she got stuck in a hole.

Cattle may have their moments of klutziness, but the horses that we trust our lives with don't always look so graceful, either. This fall, we had some early snow that all melted then refroze, making much of the ground one big rink. When we moved cows home for weaning in December, there hadn't been much snow to cover this up, so there were a lot of slippery zones to watch out for. We saddled up a couple of horses in the yard, then just needed to open a few gates before riding out to the cows. Dad chose to take Bill, as his easy-going nature is a lot safer in such conditions than Barb's is, and it's a good thing he did. I led my horse around the big patch of ice in the yard. I knew how slick it was, and I didn't want to put my horse in danger when there was a perfectly good path around it. Dad had a different philosophy. His thought was that he'd rather have Bill figure out what ice was when he wasn't on his back. He figured he'd just lead him across, let him learn what slippery feels like, and figure out how to deal with it. Well, Bill certainly did learn a lot, I'd say. He made it most of the way across the sheer ice with minor foot slippage, but when he was about ten feet from the end, all four feet started to experience slippage in rapid disorder. All forward motion ceased as Bill's legs took it in close turn to shoot out from under him. Scrapescrapescrapescrapescrape! And then the frantic leg action stiffened. Scraaaaaaaaaape... For a few scary moments, it looked as though the big moose-sized horse was going to go fully spread eagle like the animated Bambi, as his feet, which he seemed to have locked in fear, slid slowly outwards from his body. Bill put his nose to the ice, wide eyed, but apparently thinking quickly. Dad and I watched helplessly, having little confidence in this particular horse's ability to think quickly. He proved us wrong. With one last, mighty skitter, Bill got his long legs back underneath himself, and this time let them slide the other way, inwards, inwards, and then folded them in, laying gently down on the ice. He looked around and seemed as surprised as we were, but then flattened out in an attempt to roll, as if to say, “Yeah, I meant to do that. Just wanted a good roll. Just felt a bit itchy. Nothing to see here.” Dad stopped his roll, as his saddle was still on poor Bill, then kept him still as we tried to figure out what to do. We had to see if he could get up on his own, so Dad gave a gentle pull on Bill's bridle. Bill heaved his front legs out from under himself, and obligingly gave it a go. It was disastrous. He'd tried to push off with his back legs, and both sets of legs flew out from under him, landing him on his side with a whump! Being how he flailed in his attempt, it was clear that he would smash his own head on the ice if we weren't careful, so Dad steadied him again and kept him from trying to get up. We considered our options. We could possibly spread some hay or straw around him, so that he'd have a bit of a grip. Maybe salt the ice. Use the tractor to lift him. Take his tack off and leave him lay until the ice melts a bit. Leave him there until spring thaw... In the end, we decided that Dad would try to hold his head from flinging into the ice, and I would use my rope to hook my horse to his and give him a pull. It wasn't pretty, and it involved more ice-skittering, but we got Bill onto some better ground and he was able to get up safely. Bill got up and stood quietly. He heaved a nice big sigh and licked his lips. He was calm to ride as we brought the cows home. But when Bill feels himself slipping, he quickly tucks his legs under himself. Sometimes, Dad's on to something with his uncouth methods, but in light of recent events, he might feel a little more sympathetic towards Bill. Dad recently took a bit of a fall himself on some sheer ice. He didn't have a saddle, but he was wearing formal clothes and heading across a parking lot for a wedding banquet. Unfortunately, I wasn't there to witness the spill in person, but I hear his legs shot out from him pretty fast. I imagine he made the same sort of whump that Bill did. He's fine, so it's okay to laugh at him. Dad always accuses me of having laughed at him when he stumbled (he says he fell; he didn't fall) out of a tractor back when he had a broken leg. I think he must have heard my gasp of concern and just been mistaken, because I certainly didn't laugh at the time. I always make sure he's alright first, then I replay the incident in my head for a while and get the giggles. Not just giggles, actually: I cry. And I don't just replay it for a little while: it crops up every now and then in my memories and immobilizes me with the cry-laughing. There's just something about Dad – he's always so upright and coordinated; I get a kick out of him falling. Like the time he left the tractor door open and his dog went to jump out, getting a leg caught in the grate of the steps. We were both outside of the tractor when we heard the desperate yelping and jumped into action, but it was Dad who tripped and fell to his knees, then flailed in the snow as he hurried to get up and save his dog. Or when he was riding Barb and tried to pick something up off the ground. Down, down, down, he reached... then Barb skittered sideways, leaving Dad in a heap on the ground.

Though it's usually just the slapstick things that give me such amusement, a recent bit of Dad Dialogue has been cracking me up... It occurred when we were cutting meat a while ago; we had fattened a cow over summer and were chopping her up to make some delightful frying sausage and summer sausage. We had had help for the cutting of the meat, but for the grinding, mixing, and stuffing, Mom, Dad, and I had to put in some long hours in the meat room. Tempers were... well, they were not that amused in general. Dad asked for a chunk of butcher's paper to use for something, and Mom ripped a new piece off the roll. “Why would you grab a new piece when there's all those pieces sitting right over there?” Dad grumbled, “This stuff doesn't-” He stopped himself short and I know, I just know he was going to say that it didn't grow on trees. I was so ready to correct him and say that, actually, paper kind of does grow on trees, but I didn't want to risk it in that particular political climate. I kept my thoughts to myself at the time, but I've been harbouring that quip for a while.

The time was right to tell these short happenings about Dad; recently, he made me stick my face down by a culvert and shine a light through to look for skunks. The look on his face told me that he made me do it just to see the look on my face, so these are his just desserts.

Well, now you can consider yourselves caught up on spring at the ranch. We're building up to have a busy year, so maybe the next time you hear from me will be when the fall snows fly... Don't worry, though; I'll keep track of any spills my dad takes.