Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on April 23, 2025

I don’t know if there’s a better time of year on the ranch than the tail end of calving season, those first summerish days, when the mornings are still crisp and cool, and the warming earth is fragrant and greening up. The abundance of baby animal life, the springing up of flowers in the garden, the first wildflowers, the blossoming of the fruit trees, and the lilac bush heavy with dark purple buds are reminders of the order woven into this world. Spring always follows winter, summer always follows spring, and after a good calving season optimism runs high, especially when the cattle market is where it is at today. We are looking forward to some of the best of the year’s ranch work, the sorting and pairing out of the cows and calves, long days in the open air, the brandings, and getting bulls out.

But behind it is a glimmer of uncertainty. When a dry winter leads into a dry spring, when we watch spring storm system after spring storm system fail to materialize, and little shots of rain barely manage to wet the ground, when dams are bone dry and the window for growing grass gets narrower and narrower, it is easy for that optimism to take a back seat to negativity, or what some of us might simply call “being realistic.”

It is hard to watch as the grass springs up in the warm summer-like temps, but stops growing for lack of moisture. It leaves a little pit in your stomach to see the dust devils blow down in the stubble of the hayfield, and to feel the unyielding, cracking ground beneath each step. If the dry conditions continue, the grass will head out early and essentially be done, and no amount of rain can cause a finished blade of grass to finish growing.

Grasses grow and mature in different seasons, so even if we miss the window for the early spring grasses, we can still grow later season grasses, but those early rains are incredibly important for healthy summer pastures and growing enough for winter forage. Healthy summer pastures make for cattle that are well-summered, and well-summered cattle have better conception rates and lower rates of disease, and then handle the winter well. Cattle that are well-wintered, with good winter forage, handle calving well, and produce plenty of milk for their calves, who are vibrant and healthy. And on it goes.

What happens now has ripple effects long into the distance. A rancher worrying over a lack of rain now is never thinking just about right now, but about 2 or 12 months down the road.

It can be worrisome. It is easy to become discouraged or to feel helpless in the face of things over which we have no control. A spring without rain provides ample opportunity for our complaints, for bitterness or resentment to spring up, or for us to wallow in uncertainty and take it out on those closest to us. All those are unconstructive and even deconstructive reactions, over which we absolutely have control. We can choose to wallow, or we can look higher.

We may not have control over the rain, or over other situations in which we find ourselves. But there is Someone who does.

And so we pray for rain, trusting that He hears, and that He cares.  

We pray for the moisture needed to grow grass.

We pray for the ability to steward our livestock well, to give them what they need to thrive.

We pray for fruitfulness in our endeavors, to the glory of God.

We reflect on His faithfulness over the years and over the generations.

We acknowledge His ability to provide exactly what we need, with eternity in mind, even if it isn’t what we think we need, or what we want at this moment.

We acknowledge that what we perceive to be our needs can be extremely short-sighted, and that our Heavenly Father has purposes that are much higher than merely the health of the pasture grass or the conception rates on our heifers.

There will be hard years. There have been plenty of hard years before, plenty of uncertainty, plenty of downturns in the market and years the grasshoppers ate everything. We have no trouble remembering those things, and tend to have a harder time remembering the good years, the years of rain and plenty and full dams, or the surprising ways needs were met against all expectations.

A spring without rain is a reminder that nowhere have we been promised everything we hope for in life and, more importantly, all those details are actually in the loving and perfect care of the same Someone who orders the seasons and keeps the earth spinning on her axis, the same Someone that has brought rain in its season for millennia, and Who has promised that, ”While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

We can worry about the balance in our bank account, the food on our plates, the clothes on our backs, the cars we drive, the houses we inhabit – But our Heavenly Father knows what we need, and if He feeds the sparrows and clothes the fields, He also cares about our needs.

So, we pray for rain. And leave it safely in God’s hands.

Posey’s job description is “nurse cow.” Nurse cows, ideally, will take any calf offered to them without much of a fight, but Posey isn’t most cows. And frankly, that’s pretty idealistic – Most cows are maternal enough that they really do only want their own calf, and aren’t happy with freeloaders, but Posey, Posey, Posey, it’s your job.

My father-in-law insists cows recognize their calves by smell, and the science behind grafting a bum calf on a cow that lost her calf is that after a few days of nursing her milk, the calf will smell like her own. The same principle should apply to Posey, but I pointed out to my father-in-law that it couldn’t be this cut and dry. Posey, last summer, would only ever let her adopted calf nurse if her own calf was nursing, so clearly there was some recognition there that went beyond smell. And this year, with two extra babies on her, she always knows which calf is Marigold. Marigold gets extra loving and grooming that the other two never get, and even though Posey has settled down and is content with all three, the two grafts never get the extra attention. Pretty fascinating.

However, even with the lack of maternal affection, the char and the black are doing well. It took a couple weeks of persistence, of separating all three calves from Posey and letting them nurse as a group twice a day and supervising Posey while she fed them, for things to settle into a routine, but it worked, and all parties are thriving and enjoying pasture freedom. The little black angus calf always nurses off the back, which are the largest quarters, and she is stout!

But it sure is satisfying to sit and watch those little tails whip back and forth.

The end of winter comes as a relief. I love the change in seasons, and each one is dear to me for different reasons, but winter does get long, even mild winters like we had this year. I start craving the sight of greenness, and blooming things, and the frolicking of happy baby animals, and long walks in the sunshine, and actually breaking a sweat. So spring comes as a relief.

Back in November, I planted nearly 100 tulip and daffodil bulbs in my perennial garden, in front of the lilac bush. I cheered them on, over the last month or so, hoping and praying that they’d survive, since they had been a little hoodwinked by the warm weather into coming up a little extra early. I covered them with frost cloth on a number of nights, and warily checked them the following days, always glad to see minimal to no frost damage in spite of temps in the 20s. The first daffodil bloomed a few days ago, and the first tulips bloomed Easter Sunday. So worth the wait, and the work!

The plum and crabapple trees are blooming, the asparagus and strawberries have poked up through the soil, the lilac is heavy with dark buds, and the first pasques and bluebells are lurking on the hillsides in sunny places. Spring is well on her way.

After a few weeks of moderate turmoil, Posey and her three calves are thriving. The calves make the cutest little multicolored threesome, lazing around or playing together, napping while Posey grazes nearby. When the calves are close to the barn, I often find my cat, Spicy, curled up with them, enjoying their warmth.

It is a sweetness I just can’t get enough of.

So on the one hand, I feel very spoiled. Not only do I have a husband who loves me, but he actually tolerates my love of milk cows and my huge garden and the chickens and the projects overflowing the kitchen. I get to mosey down to the barn after having coffee with him, milk what I want from my cow, and then have breakfast with her and her babies.

I do feel spoiled. But then there are the days when I am reminded of how much hard work it is. Wonderful work. Oftentimes enjoyable work. Sometimes miserable work. Work I wouldn’t trade. Hard work. It isn’t all sweet, slow mornings and a pint of warm milk.

So when there are mornings that I can leisurely have breakfast in the barn with my cows and my cats, I will, and I will savor them, because not every day is like this.

I’d say I’m back in the milk business, but that really isn’t quite accurate. Posey is, and I steal a little here and there. After a somewhat tumultuous couple of weeks shuffling bum calves around, during which time she has fed four different calves and for 36 hours fed all four (she wasn’t impressed), we have her little family established and Marigold now has competition that isn’t me.

I have to say, I love standing down there watching three happy little tails whip back and forth, and their fuzzy little heads get wet from nursing, and their little bellies turn round and tight like little drums. They come up for air, standing there with their tongues stuck out before going back for more, and finally waffle off to sleep. They sure aren’t malnourished.

And I do occasionally snag some of that wonderful, rich, creamy milk. The perks of having a nurse cow.

I had to wait 9 months for this, hoping the sexed Jersey semen would do its job. And yes, it did. Posey had her little heifer yesterday morning.

A friend of ours AI’ed Posey for me last year, and did it for free as a belated wedding present. I couldn’t be happier! What a lovely gift.

Not sure if I’ve ever seen a cuter calf, and that little heart on her forehead just melts my little heart. I have fallen in love with Marigold!