SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

The cowboy new year

By Julie Carter

No, the calendar hasn’t flipped over to the actual New Year as in “next year.” For most people it just the fall season. But for the cowboy, fall is the beginning of a new year just like Monday is the beginning of a new week.

By the time November rolls around, most ranches in this part of the country have weaned their calves and/or shipped them off. They have had their one time pay day for a year’s hard work. One more year they have watched a cow buyer drive off down the dusty road in his big fancy car with his diamond pinky ring flashing in the sunlight. One more time they have let go a sigh of relief as the last cattle truck rolled over the cattle guard headed for feedlots and wheat pastures.

Yearling cattle operators have shipped the summer cattle and are looking to get the fall stockers received and tucked away in winter pastures.

Fall is when you get out all the jackets, down vests, wild rags and leggings. You make every effort to find the winter gloves, all of them, including the right and left one of each pair. It has been proven that while empty cardboard boxes multiply in captivity, winter gloves in matching pairs are an endangered species.

My first concession to the season is giving up my sandals for full-cover footwear. It usually doesn’t happen before I’ve been seen in public several times wearing a turtleneck sweater and the aforementioned sandals.

The horses start getting long hair and spend more time at the feed bunk. They have little interest in working, socializing or doing anything but soaking up the afternoon sun.

Fall is when you start breaking the two year old colts and hope they turn out gentle enough no one gets hurt. It is hard to maintain any cowboy athletic prowess with a bucking colt when you are dressed with enough layers to resemble the Michelin man.

Food changes from sandwiches and salads to pots of chili and a complete assortment of crock pot ready-to-eat cuisine options. Pumpkins are everywhere. Pumpkin cake and pumpkin bread are a favorite whether it is for the taste of cinnamon and clove or simply a good reason for the cream cheese frosting. While I happen to think pumpkin comes in a can, the real thing does look pretty sitting around next to Indian corn or bundled corn stocks.

It is not yet calving season and there is not yet any ice to break on the water tanks. The feed pickups stand by ready for work. But the season is too short to start any major fencing, pipelining or corral building. It is not that winter will be idle but winter has a specific set of jobs which mostly leave no time for special projects.

Fall is the time to review what has been accomplished during the year—you can’t get it back but you can always hope to improve on it. Ranching is like that. You always look forward to getting this year over with so you can start on the next one. Ranchers just get to start a little earlier with their New Year resolutions.

Happy New Year

© Julie Carter 2005


Season of change

by Larry Gabriel

A heavy frost on the windshield in the morning is one of the many signs that a season is about to end and another is about to begin.

South Dakota is known as the "land of infinite variety" at least in part because of our variety in weather. We get about as hot as Arizona and about as cold as Alaska.

It is said of our weather, "If you don't like the weather, just wait a day (some say an hour), and it will change."

I heard a speaker describe change in an insightful way. Change is inevitable, he explained. We really only have two choices. We can resist it and probably be consumed by it. Or, we can embrace it and try to mold it to our benefit. His message stuck with me.

My father gave similar advice when I became a rancher. "You must learn to work with nature and not against nature, if you want a successful ranch," he explained.

Droughts will come. Blizzards will come. Floods will come. A wide variety of changes will come. We must learn to live with them to be sustainable.

Adapting to change is not easy for everyone. Some seem to be natural born "agin'ers". They have no plan to solve the problem. They present no alternatives. They just don't like change and loudly protest it at every opportunity.

It makes no difference what the change is. Such people are in for a difficult life of lost struggles. Eventually they lose because change can't be stopped, whether it is natural or social.

As sure as fall is here, winter will follow. Some will hate it and suffer. Others will sell snowmobiles and smile.

As sure as new technology is here, farmers and ranchers will either adapt or be consumed by it.

As sure as the world market is here, we will adapt to it or be consumed by it.

There is no stopping change by ranting and railing. One might as well argue with the wind. A change must run its course. In due time it will be replaced by the next one.

There are valuable lessons in nature. If we learn anything at all from the world around us, it should be this: the flexible survive; the rigid do not. A tree that does not bend will break in the next big wind.

The season of change is here. We have a choice. We can resist and complain, or we can embrace it, adapt, and make it work to our benefit.

As many times as I have seen it, I still love the season of change.

It is a new adventure each time it arrives.

Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture

I welcome submissions for this feature of The Westerner.

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