Tag Archives: farming

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 | 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.

Ranch Wife Musings | Cow-Calling

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

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on April 3, 2024

The miracle of life is front and center during calving season. It is amazing to watch a heifer birth her first baby, looking in vague confusion at the squirming, slimy creature that made its sudden, un-asked-for appearance, and then, prompted by God-given instinct, begin to clean the baby off. The baby is up off the ground in a matter of minutes, his little legs wobbly and knock-kneed, and then he finds the life-giving udder and his little tail goes to wagging, just like a dog. What a sight to see.

The excitement of the first calf of the season is followed by weeks and weeks of chaos, confused young mother cows learning the ropes, babies everywhere, unmixing mixups, and the satisfaction of watching maternal older cows do everything on their own.

It isn’t just instinct that drives a cow, but a fascinating melding of instinct and education, and the first-time mamas are kept under pretty close watch for the first few days, and kept in the nearest pasture for the first month or so. These first-time mamas are prone to wandering off and leaving their calves, forgetting they have calves, forgetting which calf is theirs, forgetting where they left their calves, and can often be seen chasing helplessly after a sprightly baby, entirely unsure how to control the unruly child.

The second-time mamas are a little less helpless, instinct and education both more fully developed, but there still is a tendency towards some of those pitfalls of early motherhood. They are given a little more freedom than the first-timers, but are still able to be supervised. Eventually, cows figure out the concept of nursery groups, where one or three mothers are left in charge of a dozen or so babies, giving the other mothers a chance to go in to water or eat. I don’t know how they figure out shifts, but somehow they do, but early on they forget about the need for a babysitter and just wander off, until something jogs their bovine memories.

And nothing jogs the bovine memory like the sound of a calf bawling. Nothing reminds a mama cow of her maternal responsibility like the sound of the baby she forgot about or misplaced. Some calves are obliging, squealing like stuck pigs if you just look at them wrong, let alone if they are being sat on by a wiry rancher, but other calves are stoics, and won’t make a peep, which is inconvenient if you’re trying to identify them.

Thus, the necessity of the fine art of cow-calling. Although ranching is a lot of science, there are a number of things that definitely fall into the “art” category, and cow-calling is one of those things.

I remember being seated behind my now husband, bundled up against the cold, enjoying the view as we bounced around the hayfield on the ATV, looking for unmarked calves to ear tag and vaccinate. The ear tag given matches the one in the mother’s ear, so they can be easily paired up later on and a good inventory kept. The frozen hayfield wasn’t much fun to drive over, but I was having a dandy time, my arms wrapped snugly around my handsome not-quite-husband, and having been granted the official role of keeper of the vaccine gun and ear tagger. Without warning, an absolutely uncanny sound issued from my not-quite-husband’s lips. Seated as I was right behind him, arms wrapped around him as stated, I experienced the full force of this incredible and unearthly sound. It was truly awe-inspiring, unlike anything I had ever heard before.

And I burst out laughing.

I honestly thought the demonstration was for comic effect. Until I saw fifteen mother cows practically stand to attention, heads flying up from complacent grazing like they’d been stung by wasps, then leave their breakfast and take off in all different directions, whichever direction they thought they remembered having left their calves. For the record, they don’t always remember, the telltale sign being a mother cow walking around bawling until she stumbles across her baby, which is (almost) always right where she had left it.

Anyway, the cow-calling had the intended effect and the mother of the baby in question presented herself, the calf was identified, tagged and vaccinated, and we went on our merry way.

Such was my introduction to the fine art of cow-calling.

I have since had my education on this topic broadened and have learned that this useful skill can be employed not only to quickly identify an unmarked calf, but to mostly accurately separate the cows that have calved from those that have not, to bluff a cow into looking around for the purpose of reading her ear tag, or to keep a flighty cow from running off without her young baby. I’m sure there are other uses for it, but those are the main ones I have identified.

Calving season. By turns hilarious or heartbreaking. Life and death are often juxtaposed. It is the sweetness of new life and baby animals that know no fear, the enjoyment of watching them learn to play and take their first running steps in the wide open, crow-hopping on their spindly legs. It is incredible to see a cow looking for somewhere to calve, and twenty minutes later to find not only that she has had the calf but that it is up and nursing already. It is miracle after miracle after miracle.

But cow-calling still makes me laugh.

Ranch Wife Musings | March Madness

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

So I really don’t know what March Madness is, other than it has something to do with sports, I think. But March is a crazy month. The winter sleepiness is shaken off and everything wakes up. All at the same time. The garden, the cows, the weather, the schedule, the chickens, everything.

There are babies everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

A little cold snap over this last weekend accentuated that, with little baby calves and their irritable mamas stuffed in every corner of the yard, with all available indoor space occupied by doubles and triples, and cows with slightly older calves getting shuffled into sheltered corners of the yard to keep them out of the wind and driving snow.

So far there have been two sets of twins, and both extra babies were shuffled successfully onto two cows who had lost calves–Good saves, on both counts, and the two lost calves were just part of the percentage of unavoidable losses, rather than the rather staggering losses of last spring, due to a collision of weather and luck of the draw. Posey got to try being a nurse cow for a week with one of the extra twins, until a mother needing a calf turned up. Posey was not impressed. Some nurse cow. We’ll see how she does when she calves, I guess.

Seedlings are going nuts in the brightest window in the house, around 120 tomato seedlings, some herbs and greens, and of course my elderberry cuttings. Bread baking and some jelly making and some sewing projects and some continuing ed for my paramedic license and a dive into spring cleaning have kept the days full. They seem to end as quickly as they start. And yes, that is a seed starting mat under that bowl of dough! Another use for those handy things, especially when you keep the temps low in the house!

And then yesterday happened. Or rather, Yellow Cat happened yesterday. We knew she was ready to have kittens at any time, and I complacently assumed, this being her second litter, that she would be competent. Boy, was I wrong. I went down to do chores yesterday morning and found a pile of three kittens that appeared dead, in just about the worst place Yellow Cat could have had them. She was unconcerned. I honestly thought they were dead and rigored, and when I picked up the two that looked the most dead, they were unresponsive and stiff and cold to the touch. She didn’t appear to have really cleaned them, their fur was matted down, and I really mean it when I say they appeared dead, and I have seen plenty of dead animals to know what I’m talking about. This isn’t an “I’ve never had chicks before and one is stretched out luxuriously under the heat lamp and I think it is dead” situation. They looked dead. Very dead. One of the kittens, though, moved a little and made the tiniest sound. It looked pretty hopeless, but I can’t stand to walk away from something like that. I almost left the two most dead looking, but gathered all three up, stuffed them inside my vest and ran up to the house with them. In the back of my mind was the paramedic mantra, “They aren’t dead until they are warm and dead,” and after a mere few minutes under a heat lamp and on top of a (you guessed it) seed starting mat, they came alive.

Baby animals are incredibly resilient but also incredibly fragile, a strange dichotomy, and even as they warmed up I felt that it was probably futile, but I gave them a little milk replacer laced with corn syrup, enough to wet their dried mouths, and two of them did try sucking it off the cloth I was using. I finally rounded up Yellow Cat from down by the barn, who was sauntering around like she hadn’t a care in the world, and locked her up with them. Long story short, the three kittens all nursed, she had two more, and all five survived the night with their mother in the bathtub and are doing just fine. I am still pretty mad at that cat, though.

It is hard to believe that April is just around the corner. April, the first month of long days in the saddle pairing out the calving pasture, the first real month of springtime although snow is always a possibility. There is always something going on!