Tag Archives: cows

Ranch Wife Musings | Getting Heavy

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on Sep. 3, 2025

When you live and work on a cattle ranch, pregnancy and birth and mothering are just part of a way of life. Baby animals are nearly always underfoot, from the litter of kittens down in the barn to the pile of cowpuppies birthed in our mudroom, to the comical confusion of a handful of broody hens all trying to raise the same chick.

And of course, last but not least, there is the cowherd itself. At any given time, minus approximately 3 months in the spring, there are several hundred pregnant animals on the ranch relying on us for their wellbeing. Their prenatal care consists of ultrasounds and good feed, and their obstetrical care is based on age and risk factors. The heifer herd is watched vigilantly and with much anticipation in the days leading up to calving, while the older, maternal herd is allowed to calve on their own, unbothered and untouched unless absolutely needed, where instinct, nature, and nurture results in a wonderful success rate for live births and healthy babies. You get used to observing and remarking upon a cow’s mothering abilities, the state of her udder, and her maternal instincts. Pregnancy and birth are just a part of life on the ranch.

And it is fun, truly, to watch the cows put on a layer of winter fat over their round, pregnant bellies, as their due dates approach. A cow late in gestation is referred to as “heavy bred,” or, for short, “heavy.” So, you might observe a cow that has that giveaway waddle and maybe even a bit of an uncomfortable look on her bovine face, the cow with a spherical aspect if she is facing you head-on, and remark to yourself or your general audience, “Boy, she’s getting heavy.” 

I suppose everyone’s perspectives are shaped by what we know and what we see in our day-to-day lives, but I do recall being vaguely shocked when I first heard my husband refer to one of my expectant friends as “getting heavy.” This was a few years ago, and was one of those pivotal, eye-opening moments as to what sort of situation I’d married into.

It wasn’t long afterwards that I cornered the dear man and informed him in no uncertain terms that, if I ever was pregnant, if he ever had the absence of mind to refer to me as “heavy,” I wouldn’t be speaking to him for a very long time.

Yet another time, again keeping in mind that our perspectives are shaped by what we know, I was sitting in church next to my father-in-law, bless his heart, at a time when somehow just about every female at church between the ages of 20 and 40 was pregnant, and I heard that man mutter to himself not quietly enough, “Gosh, it’s like being at a bred heifer sale!” My eyes popped wide open and my jaw must have hit the floor. We had words.

So, let’s just say that by the time I found out this spring that I was pregnant, I wasn’t at all blindsided by the commentary I would be personally subject to, from not-vague-enough references to getting the calving shed ready or saving money on the ultrasound, or any other similar sort of comments that are accompanied by a provocative, irritating million-dollar grin from my husband and met with a narrow-eyed glare from me. So, I wasn’t blindsided.

Early on, though, I discovered what I refer to as “selective chivalry.” Pretty quickly I was grounded and not permitted on horseback anymore (a wise decision, I admit), and I found myself watched like a hawk, every move oh-so-chivalrously scrutinized, and hearing a warning or stern, “Laura…” if I did something that was deemed risky or “too much” for my “delicate condition,” as my father-in-law likes to say. He has a way with words. “Laura….” I can’t tell you how many times I heard my name uttered in that tone. “Laura…..”

However, if I was putzing along cautiously on a four-wheeler behind a bunch of cows, staying carefully on the flat and taking absolutely no risks, and the front of the herd got a wild hair and started running? Then I’d hear yelling and tune in to realize it was my name being hollered, very different from the cautionary “Laura…..”, and see some less-than-chivalrous flapping of arms way off to the side, that sent me zipping across the rock-strewn pasture like a skipped stone on a pond, to reach the front of the herd in time to turn them in, muttering to myself, “Sure, right, this feels WAY safer than being on horseback.”

Over the last few months, my husband has learned very personally and poignantly the reality of what happens when your best ranch hand gets pregnant, as tasks have been removed from my repertoire, one-by-one, starting with horseback work, and then close-quarters ground work with cattle, then certain vaccines, then all vaccines, and pour-on fly sprays and pesticides. Perhaps I resented or resisted the bubble wrap a little at the beginning, but I’m realizing it is actually kind of a nice gig, being the pregnant lady, poking cows into the chute for a couple hours (the only job remaining to me when we work cows), and then getting to eat snacks and call it a day. Not bad. Not bad at all.

But the more weeks roll by, the more I sympathize with that heavy-bred cow who has the telltale waddle and that bland, unimpressed, slightly-pained look on her face. “She’s getting heavy.” I feel it, deep in my cells.

But I’ll never tell my husband that. And he’d better not say it either. 

Ranch Wife Musings | The Need to be Needed

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, Photography

Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on May 21, 2025

The month of May goes by in a whirlwind of fun and hard work, and there is much rejoicing when the last cow calves and the last calf is branded. The nonstop chaos of calving and branding is followed by the shortest of lulls, before the summer settles into its routine. A thousand prayers for rain have been followed up by a thousand thanks, as we’ve emptied the rain gauge not of tenths or hundredths of an inch, but inches. Whole inches. Inches of slow rain that was actually able to soak into the ground where it will do the most good. We aren’t likely to get a hay crop this year, or not much of one, but we should be able to grow grass, and that is huge.

One season blends and blurs into the next, but it is this spring season that is the highlight for many. After months of winter solitude, branding season feels like a family reunion but without the drama, with all the hugs and handshakes, laughter and jokes, stories and community gossip, finding out all the goings on and the comings up, the graduations and babies and engagements and lives well-lived.

And it is in the chaos of spring work that the ranching community shines as exactly that – a community. We branded our main herd on Saturday, an endeavor that is humbling in its scope, humbling in how many people it takes to actually get the job done, humbling to see how many are willing to help in any way they can. Brandings are like that.

As I handed out hot coffee at our mid-morning break, I was able to study the faces, some smiling, some serious, and all the different walks of life they represent. There are the cowboy ranchers, the true-blue, western-through-and-through, how-my-grandpa-did-it type. There are the dirt bikes and four-wheelers, we-can-do-this-faster type. There are the button-front shirt and cowboy-hat-wearing crowd, and the sweatshirt and ballcap wearing crowd. There are the ones with spurs jingling on costly boots, and those wearing comfortable and well-worn tennis shoes. There are the tobacco chewing ones and the straighter-than-straight-laced ones. There are the beer drinkers and the tea totallers. The coffee drinkers and the water drinkers. There are the ones who know cows as well as they know their kids, and ones who know horses and ropes but cows, not so much. There are those who grew up doing this, and those who learned along the way, and those who simply show up for the work, for the fun and the challenge and the sense of community.

And with all the differences, all the variety, the work is seamless. The fellowship is sweet. And none of those categories matter to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re wrestling or roping, branding or cutting, vaccinating or watching the gate, everyone jumps in to get the work done. Although some who come do get help in return with their brandings or cow work, the only repayment many want is a good meal at the end – and we do a good meal, if I do say so myself – and the satisfaction of a job well done, stories swapped, laughs shared, and for them that is plenty. And they’d do it again in a heartbeat.

What is it about agriculture, ranching in particular, that invites this? Or creates this? What is it about ranch work that brings out the best in so many, and fosters an enthusiasm for someone else’s work? When I look at other sectors of society, I’m puzzled and even disenchanted. Even sectors of society where lip service is paid to the importance of community are lacking significantly in this department. I see organizations struggling to recruit involvement from more than the barest percentage of people, and their lack of community reflects this.

I think one factor, maybe the most important factor, is need. Genuine need. Acknowledged need. Ranching families know that they can’t do it alone. They don’t have the luxury to hand-pick those who agree with them or look just like them or never irritate or annoy. They need this neighbor and that neighbor, even the neighbor who might think differently about this issue or that issue, or the neighbor who does things differently, or the neighbor who occasionally pushes some buttons and grates on some nerves. And that neighbor needs them right back.

Could it be that we need to be needed? And we need to need others? It might be that simple.

Our culture tells us, all of us, that we’re good on our own, autonomy is the ultimate state, blaze your own trail, follow your own heart, chase your dreams with no thought to anyone else, and you don’t need anyone but yourself. And too many people have bought into this in one way or another. Connections become optional. Connections become a matter of convenience or personal preference.

Real, genuine need erases so many of those devastating societal luxuries, where connections are based on pet interests and shared hobbies, curating one’s community like a museum curator curating art. When we handpick our community, we tend to reap surface-level connections, clique-like interactions based on emotions and how well we slept and what we ate for breakfast.

But, when community is picked for you, by proximity and history and shared needs, something much deeper forms and something much more lasting is reaped, something that extends beyond brandings and cow work, something that forms the family-like structure of a resilient community.

We need to be needed. And we need to need others.

Ranch Wife Musings | A baby milk cow named Marigold

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, Pets/Domestic/Farm Animals

Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on March 26, 2025

“So, will your column be about a certain baby milk cow named Marigold?”

Brad has a way of poking fun through the most innocent of questions. And he knew the answer a week ago, when Marigold was born. Of course the column would feature the newest addition to Laura’s dairy operation. Silly question.

Posey calved last Wednesday, producing the prettiest little Jersey x Brown Swiss heifer, all golden brown, and rosy pink wherever her skin shows through parted hair, like along her back or the little spot on her nose. Some calves are sort of knock-kneed when they’re born, or their proportions are just a tick off. Not Marigold. She has the sweetest, brown-rimmed doe eyes, the curliest eyelashes, the floppiest ears all pink inside, and the straightest, slenderest white legs with dainty little deer-like hooves. And she’s happy! So happy. She comes literally skipping into the shed when I’m milking in the morning, prancing around merrily until she decides to nap, quite the contrast to Posey’s calf last year, a big bull calf, who just wandered around headbutting everything and knocking stuff over. This delicate critter is rather captivating.

I’ve spent a shameless amount of time sitting down on the stoop of the shed, soaking in all the springtime pleasantness and the satisfaction of seeing that beautiful little baby milk cow skip around the corrals or curl up in a puddle of sunshine. The last 9 months were spent hoping that the sexed Jersey semen would do its job, and I am basking in the exceptional outcome. And she is perfect. For me, any baby cow is cute, even the funny looking ones or the less proportionate ones. But you know a calf is particularly cute when a seasoned rancher is willing to say so. I felt very gratified and validated when it took no coaxing to get such an admission from my husband or my father-in-law.

But it isn’t just about Marigold, as much joy as she brings me. It is about community. Connection. It is about generational relationships that I feel so blessed and fortunate and humbled to have married into. And those complex topics are represented by the simple existence of this little baby milk cow.

Her mother, Posey, was a gift to me from Brad a year and a half ago, purchased from dear friends and neighbors that Brad practically grew up with. She was born on their ranch, and her mother was their long-time nurse cow, raising who knows how many bum calves. This same neighbor’s brother, the dad of one of Brad’s best childhood friends, AI’ed Posey for me last year as a belated wedding present. What a gift!

We are not islands unto ourselves, as the saying goes. Our modern, industrialized, efficient, corporatized society creates the sense of islands, isolated groups and individuals seemingly disconnected from their neighbors. We’ve created a society where we rely most heavily on people we never will know, where person is separated from person by space and perspective and interests in ways that only deepen the sense of isolation. And technology, as much benefit as it brings, as much potential for good as it has, in many ways has driven this divide, as we are no longer forced to rely on those closest to us.

But peer into the inner workings of the agricultural community and you’ll see something very different. I’m continually amazed and blessed by the interconnectedness, and it begins within the four walls of each home. I rely on Brad. He relies on me. We rely on our families. They rely on us. We all rely on our neighbors. They in turn rely on us. And on it goes.

It is especially apparent going into branding season, where the all-hands-on-deck, neighbor-helping-neighbor work is accomplished to the benefit of the whole community, as everyone sees to it that everyone’s work gets done, but it shows up more subtly as well. As the stories fly, the community gets wonderfully smaller. The excellent cattle dog that you find out was out of So-and-so’s dog. The roping horse you’re told was trained by this person. The truck bought from that person. The chaps made by this person. The saddle crafted by that person. The branding stove made by So-and-so. The barn built by So-and-so. Adventures, mishaps, and memories shared across generations, binding family to family and neighbor to neighbor.

So, I look at my rosy-golden little calf and her mama and I see a distilled-down representation of community. I see the gift of a husband to his wife in Posey. I see the connection of friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor, in Marigold herself. I see family integration and affection represented by a nurse cow who generates no pasture bill and who raises whatever calf needs a mama, regardless of its brand, in a small way benefitting everyone.

Lots of thoughts prompted by a critter so tiny.

So, I will continue to shamelessly sit and watch the sweet interactions of a mama cow and her baby, listening to the noisy nursing sounds, watching that little white-splotched tail whip back and forth, watching the bony little head thump the shapely udder, watching the merry creature skipping around in play. And be thankful for the community I get to call my own.

Ranch Wife Musings | After the Cold Snap

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on Feb. 26, 2025

This melt-off and warmup is as good as it gets in February or early March, days full of sun and the sound of water running off everything. There is mud everywhere! Relief and contentment radiate from everything, from the mellow gaze of a cow chewing her cud, to the half-closed eyes of her baby nursing, or tucked away safely on a little island of solid ground, comfortable and lazy in the warming air, perfectly happy with the ready supply of milk and hay to bed down on. The chickens have again taken to the yard, happy to leave their coop, and the cats snooze in the sun on the piles of sweet-smelling hay, greeting me with pink-mouthed yawns and arched-back stretches, rather than yowls.

What a difference a week can make!

It was one of those frigid mornings during that brutal cold snap, when just about everything gets cancelled except for ranching. Brad, covered in snow, burst into the mudroom with his arms full of a half-frozen calf. He had found it about a mile and a half from our house, and in sub-zero temperatures it doesn’t take long for a newborn calf to chill down and freeze. She wasn’t dead, but she sure wasn’t quite alive either. Her eyes were wide and staring, her little ribcage rose and fell hectically, and the occasional moo might have been a death moan.

The prognosis didn’t seem overly optimistic, but if you hand a ranch wife a sad little animal, she will try to fix it. The calf was a pretty little thing, dark brown with unique white markings on her face, white rimming her speckled pink nose, and white hairs on her ears so they looked frosted. The calf’s mama hadn’t even had a chance to clean her off before her hair froze, so she was a slippery little critter as soon as she started to thaw out. Her mouth was cold, which isn’t a good sign, but she still blinked and moved her eyes, which was hopeful. I turned that bathroom into a sauna and ran the water heater out of hot water, and little by little, her limbs loosened up. She began moving her ears, and trying to shake her head. Her mouth was still cold but her tongue had started to warm up, and a little corn syrup in her cheek helped, too.

And then, finally, after a couple of hours, she sucked my fingers. Now, that’s a great sign.

We gave her colostrum and graduated her to the calf warmer around lunchtime, where she stayed for the rest of the day and the night, and early the next morning when Brad did a heifer check he stuck her with her mom. When I was stomping around doing my chores, I poked my head into the shed. Mama cow stared at me rather defiantly, and behind her were four little knock-kneed legs. I waited, not sure it was the right calf, but the sweet brockle face peeked around mama’s hind legs. Her little ears, frosted with white hair, were perky. She took a couple hesitant steps, and then made a little baby frisk, all four legs coming off the ground in a clumsy expression of infant playfulness. It warmed the heart on a frigid day.

Another cow had lost her calf the day before, so I let my bottle calf get hungry (a powerful motivator), then tromped down to the calving shed with her. She walked with her head right next to my knees, the way a calf follows her mom. The poor little thing, now a month old, had been orphaned as soon as she was born, so she never got to nurse, but she always would suck my fingers, and she let me lead her nose over to the heifer’s udder. No coaxing was required. God’s design in these baby critters is so evident, in the beautiful instinct that He has instilled in them, and their incredible resilience in spite of their fragility. It was a treat to see her white-tipped tail whipping back and forth as she got that first real mama’s milk, and a week later it is a delight to see her content and satiated, wandering lazily over to nurse, her chapped nose healed up now that she is no longer licking it, and her recognition of me is quiet and friendly rather than desperate and heartbreaking. The brockle-faced calf is still doing well, and another dozen calves have joined them uneventfully. Life is good.

A cold snap brings a strange sort of survival mode to the ranch, alternating between having more to do than ever and having nothing to do because nothing can be done. Sometimes all that can or needs to be done is to put feed in front of animals and keep the water open, and wait for the weather to change or for something to go wrong. Because when things go wrong, they go wrong in catastrophic fashion. But, on the other side, those things that went right are sweeter than ever. I love going down to the nursery pens and just watching. Watching the springtime hubbub of mamas and babies, hearing the warm stillness punctuated with baby moos and cows talking back. The sloppy noises of hooves in mud. The sweet rustle of mouthfuls of hay. All the little suckling noises, or a bony calf head thumping an udder. Their mamas are so patient. I love watching as a nursing calf comes up for air and stands in a milk stupor with its tongue stuck out. It is sweet to watch brand new, first-time mamas learn to mother.

From the other side of a cold snap, it is amazing how much went so very right.

Ranch Wife Musings | The Best Life We Can Give Them

Posted on by under Uncategorized

Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on January 29, 2025

Calving season on the ranch is a period of stark contrasts, a time of seeing some of the best of the best of God’s Creation alongside some of the saddest of the saddest. On the one hand, we revel in seeing mother cows birth and nourish and protect their young with such incredible maternal instincts, showcasing the best of God’s design for them; we search the pastures for newborn calves tucked away safely like little Easter eggs in long grass and sheltered places, waiting while their mamas graze or go to water; we see the fascinating natural formation of nursery groups by the busy mamas, so all calves are watched and all mother cows are fed and watered. But there is also the too-frequent reminder that we live in a broken world, the effects of which trickle down to the creatures we steward as well. Calves are stillborn or die afterwards, weather events challenge the best of our efforts, calving complications end tragically, and Nature takes its toll indiscriminately and sometimes it feels randomly.

Sometimes the bitterness and sweetness come by turns, first one and then the other. Sometimes they are mixed, inseparable. Sometimes they mix in the strangest sort of tragicomedy called a bottle calf that sticks around for weeks and months.

Granted, calving season for us isn’t supposed to start until the end of February, although neighbors of ours are already in the thick of it, or even are wrapping up. But we had a few, shall we say, incidents last year perpetrated by a yearling bull that was supposed to be a steer and wasn’t, and some dozen or so yearling heifers that he apparently found very attractive and which were not intended to be breeding animals. One calf showed up right before Christmas, and a few more showed up over the next month, one of which was orphaned more or less immediately. Of course, I had just dried up the milk cow.

Bottle calves are supposed to be a nuisance. They’re supposed to be a hassle and, given the cost of a bag of powdered milk replacer, they are a financial nuisance, if nothing else. But clearly I’m not as wise and mature as other members of my family, because I’m afraid I don’t consider the three-times-daily feedings a nuisance, and really don’t object to calf bottles and pitchers for mixing the milk taking over the bathroom, or even the faint but persistent odor of soured milk. I don’t even mind trotting down in the dark to give Beckybell (my endearing husband named the calf after his mother-in-law – isn’t he charming?) her suppertime bottle. I’m afraid I don’t mind having my toes trampled by tiny hooves or my knees butted by the bony little head, or even the milky mess she somehow leaves all over my clothes. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy being mama cow. A few days ago, Beckybell managed to escape the nursery pen and was waiting for me and her evening bottle at the house when we got back from our walk. During the cold snap last week, her little ears froze, so she’s been wearing various ridiculous iterations of ear muffs to keep them from re-freezing, and I think we saved the ears.

But as much as I enjoy this critter and having close interactions with an animal that usually is only handled from a distance, it leaves a little sore pang in my heart. She is lacking her mama. God designed her to need her mama.

 As much bad press as ranchers get from climate activists, as much as the FDA and the CDC and whatever other three- and four-letter organizations there are that vilify cows as being a blight upon the earth and an alleged contributor to global warming (or is it global cooling, I can’t remember?), or as much as PETA has gone after ranchers for “cruel treatment” of livestock, there is so incredibly much that people in those organizations do not see. Good things. Wholesome things. The best things. As agriculture as an industry has increased in size, and as the number of people engaged in it has dwindled, people have lost their understanding, yet continue to pass judgements.

They don’t see the ranchers intently watching the weather ahead of a winter snow event, heading out on ATVs with sleet biting their faces to move 100 cows into a more sheltered pasture. They don’t see the heroic and futile efforts in sub-zero weather to save a calving cow. They don’t see the careful tending during a cold snap, keeping water open and food on the ground. They don’t see the desperate attempt to warm a nearly-frozen calf downed during a snowstorm. They don’t see the careful tending of a newborn calf and the new mother. They don’t feel the defeat when a young calf dies and the cow won’t leave its side. They don’t see the bleary-eyed rancher getting up every two hours to check heifers, and they don’t hear the pre-dawn phone call up to the house to ask his little wife to bundle up and come down to the calving shed to help turn a backward calf, since she has smaller hands. They don’t see the tears shed over a failed save or the teary-eyed laughter at a success. They don’t see the miracle of a calf taking its first steps with a sleep-deprived ranching couple looking on smiling, or chuckling as an overzealous mama cow knocks it over with her aggressive licking. They don’t see the ranch wife on the umpteenth feeding of a little white-faced bottle baby, tucking the calf in for the night, sorry in her heart that there isn’t a mama cow for the little orphan.

Because we care for the livestock that God has give us to steward. We hate seeing them suffer, we love seeing them thrive, and we do everything in our power to give them the best life we can give them. At no time is that more apparent than in that sweet moment when a newborn calf hits the ground, floppy eared and wet and sneezing up fluid, and mama cow turns and sees the little intruder. As she goes to work cleaning it off, instinct overriding her surprise, we watch in quiet awe, full of pleasant warmth on the coldest of days.

Ranch Wife Musings | When the Irons Cool

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, Writing

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on May 29, 2024

It is an exhilarating feeling, riding out in the cool of the morning with husband and family and neighbors, hearing a chorus familiar voices sing out gently in friendly conversation, the soft plodding of the horses’ hooves on soft earth, the occasional metallic ringing as a shod hoof strikes stone, watching the rolling hills fall away, the row of pickups and trailers get smaller behind us, seeing the cow herd stretched out over the entirety of a pasture. It is an exhilarating feeling, as we get further and further onto the prairie or into the breaks, and one by one, or two by two, riders are left behind until the herd is more or less encircled, and the gather begins.

It is an exhilarating feeling, to be behind a growing, moving, shifting bunch of cows, a bunch that gets joined to another, and another, until the whole herd is gathered, encircled by five or thirty horses and riders. The lowing of the cattle intensifies as they mill around, looking for their calves, and eventually the cattle trickle away from the pressure of the riders. The branding pens get nearer and nearer, and the net is pulled tighter and tighter. Instead of riders every 50 or 100 yards, it is riders every 50 or 100 feet, then every 5 or 10 feet, and then shoulder to shoulder for the last push to pen the herd.

The cattle bawl at a fever pitch, like the deafening hum of a riled-up hornet nest, as mamas and babies are sorted and separated, the calves penned for branding, and cows released back to pasture. The perturbed mothers stand at the fence bawling for the calves, the calves bawl back, and the branding stove roars to life. Soon it is an ordered chaos of activity, as each member of a branding crew is assigned a role or finds a role, and the branding settles into a rhythm, like a well-oiled machine, a rhythm of ropers and wrestlers and branders, the soft hiss of ropes dancing, the smell of smoke and burnt hair, the clank as irons are drawn out of the fire, and the crackle of red-hot iron on hide. Glints and flickers of flame, clouds of shifting smoke, dust and flinging mud. Laughter and shouts and snippets of conversation punctuate the noise, and the steady rhythm is occasionally interrupted by the sudden leaping to action of half a dozen wrestlers when a calf puts up a stiff fight. And bit by bit, little by little, but faster than you’d think, the roping pens empty, the deafening bawling of the cows dies away as they head out briskly to pasture with their calves at their sides, without so much as a backward glance. With a suddenness of quiet that is jarring yet a relief, the branding stove is shut off. In the hours that follow the rush of the work, a meal is enjoyed and stories are shared and reminiscences are savored.

There is something bittersweet about the last big branding of the season, the last time the stove roars to life, the last time it cools. Ranching, for much of the year, is a pretty solitary profession. Families hunker down in the wintertime keeping animals fed and watered, and take to the pastures in the summertime with the odd jobs that are the summer routine. Fall work throws neighbors together in small groups here and there before calves are weaned and sold, but it is nothing like the community reunion of branding season. For a solid month, branding follows branding and neighbor helps neighbor, in a celebratory frenzy of work and camaraderie.

It is when the irons cool that there is really time to reflect on that, that partnership with one another for the grand and gritty task ahead, in partnerships that go back decades and generations. No one is keeping a score card, no one is counting hours helped here or there, but everyone is pitching in because there is work to do and that is what a true community does.

This is a foreign concept to many modern-day Americans. We no longer live where we work, or work where we live, to give a nod to the author Wendell Berry. We have separated work from life, and we have lost the vitality of community that results from living where we work in close proximity to others who also live where they work.

No matter how the American culture has shifted in favor of convenience and economy and minimizing human inputs and nickeling and diming every transaction, ranching is still done the old way. And the old way requires people. Flesh and blood people. People who are willing to show up with what skill they have or the willingness to learn a new one. To give of their time without keeping a record of how or whether it was returned to them, and with this spirit the work all somehow gets done.

We aren’t made to live in isolation. We are made to need one another and to be needed, and the ranching life gives a taste of this. Even in my relatively short time as a rancher’s wife, I look forward to seeing the familiar faces, working shoulder to shoulder with family and neighbors, each week of the season sprinkled with these all-hands-on-deck, all-day events. It is the one time of year when the community is reminded in a real and tangible way of how much we need each other. We aren’t doing this alone.  

The branding stove has been put away and the persistent smell of smoke and burnt hide no longer sticks to our clothing. It is a relief to have calving and branding over with for the season, and for summer work and rhythms to be settling into place. We’ll bump into neighbors over fences or at the county fair or other gatherings. But the energy and shared experiences of branding season will leave their impressions long after the irons have cooled.