Cattle drive a Bickleton mainstay

A cattle drive -- the old-fashioned, horseback kind -- brought traffic to a halt in Bickleton on Friday afternoon. In Bickleton terms, that means five or six cars had to wait while a herd of cows moseyed around them down Market Street. "There's not much traffic to stop," said Bob Harvey, an auto mechanic who organizes family members and friends in the annual cattle drive through the heart of this unincorporated Klickitat County community of 90 residents. Harvey, 45, and more than a dozen volunteers meet every October to help area cattle rancher Mat Spalding move his cows from summer pastures to his barns for pregnancy checking, calf rearing and winter feeding. In exchange, Spalding allows them to hunt deer on his land. The easiest and quickest way is to drive them by horseback right through the center of town. Loading them into a truck would take too much time. "It takes longer to corral them up and then haul them," said Spalding, 56. Justin Harvey, Bob's 17-year-old nephew, added: "And it's fun."...read more