by Julie Carter
There are some constants in life you can count on and in
ranching it’s no different right up to and including the promise of “death and
taxes.”
Water problems always top the list when you are discussing
the certainties of what can and will go wrong. With livestock, water is a
sacred necessity. The first thing you can count on is when you have water
troubles, the weather will not be pleasant in any way.
The heat of June is when cattle shade up around the water hole
just waiting for the next drink. You can mark the days with broken water lines,
wells that “go down”, and pumps that quit. The same applies for a cold
miserable January day. General philosophy is that if your storage tank is full
your pump will last 30 years. If you
ever let it get below half way mark, you may as well plan the next days for
pulling a well and hauling water.
The day that you have a meeting to get to, a funeral to
attend or a date with your banker in town, guaranteed, you will end up with a
job that includes calf pullers. That last check on the heifers on your way off
the ranch is your undoing.
In your Sunday best you will slip and slide around in the
corral to get the wild wench (heifer) captured enough to pull the calf. The
bonus to follow is bodily adornment of manure, amniotic fluid and a little
blood for color.
By the time you have wallered the slimy calf around to save
his life so his wild-eyed mother doesn’t step on him and then wallered him a
little more to get him to stand up and suck his mama, your appearance is not
fit for polite company. This is more often than not in the same miserable cold
weather you had to pull the well in yesterday.
For the ranch wife there are some constants that can and do
include the aforementioned and some that are unique to her gender. In the
remote quiet life of ranching, if she stays in her jammies without brushing her
hair past 8 a.m., it’s a guaranteed invitation for the feed salesman to happen
by or a hunter to arrive asking permission to hunt.
If for some unknown reason she decides to drive the kids to
the bus in her nightie, it’s a 90-to-1 odds deal that she will break down and
have to catch a ride home with the neighbor. It’s pretty hard to look ole
neighbor Fred in the eye anytime after that.
For the wife, most of her dilemmas occur either because of
her husband or when he is on the other side of the state buying
something—cattle, horses or equipment. It is then she will find the milk cow has milk
fever and the pickup he left her has flat and the jack and four-way tire wrench
went with him. By the time he gets home, invitations to his lynching have been
printed and mailed out.
Horses that come in every morning for feed and water will
not be seen all day if you so much as whisper the words, “We need to catch a
horse tomorrow.” The same science applies for the day you intend to rope or
windmill; the wind will blow with a gusto seen only accompanied by hurricane
ratings.
There is no end to the list that defines the “romance” of
ranch life, but most wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
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