The Nevada Sale Barn

Still in use, thanks to LMA

The sale barn in Nevada*, Missouri, sits on nine acres on the east side of town, just a block off Highway 54. I took this picture of it when I was traveling with my sister last month.

I was curious about this little sale barn, so I searched online and found photos and a description of the property in the archives of a real estate company. It appeared to be vacant at the time the photos were taken. The floor plan of the barn is exactly what I would have guessed it to be. Every sale barn I've ever visited in the American Midwest has a similar layout. 

There's a small sale arena enclosed by a high fence. The arena is surrounded on three sides by stadium-style seats for buyers and onlookers. On the opposite side of the arena, facing the seats, there are two gates: one to bring livestock into the arena, and the other to take livestock out. Between the two gates, the auctioneers face the audience from a raised box.

I don't think any auctions are held in the Nevada sale barn anymore, but the yards are still used for livestock marketing.  The property is now owned by Mo-Kan Livestock Market Inc. of Butler, Missouri (a town about 30 miles north of Nevada.)  It is a receiving station for Mo-Kan, and cattle are accepted on Wednesdays from 10 AM to 6 PM. I read on the Mo-Kan website that Mo-Kan transports cattle from the station to their Thursday auction in Butler for a fee of $3/head.

Mo-Kan streams their cattle auctions and accepts bids over the internet. Of course, they also take bids from buyers who attend the sale in person, but the internet helps them offer the livestock to a wider market. The internet auctions are facilitated by LMA Auctions, an arm of the Livestock Marketing Association (LMA).

LMA has about 800 members like Mo-Kan, across the United States and Canada. The mission of LMA is stated on the homepage of the website: "We are committed to the support and protection of the local livestock auction markets. Auctions are a vital part of the livestock industry, serving producers and assuring a fair, competitive price through the auction method of selling."

If it weren't for LMA and internet auctions, the Nevada sale barn might be just another abandoned building.
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* The people of Nevada, MO, pronounce their town's name with a "long a;" that is, the second syllable rhymes with "way."

Hank and Jimmy

My brother's cattle dogs

Jimmy is a Border Collie. He's the younger of my brother's two cattle dogs. Both dogs are intensely attached to my brother, and they aren't friendly with strangers. They consider it their duty to protect their people --it's a characteristic of their breed.

I really felt honored when Jimmie let me pet him on the last day of my recent visit to my brother's ranch in Kansas. Hank, the older dog, would not make friends with me. When I took the photo below, Hank knew I was looking at him with my camera, so he carefully ignored me.

I think Hank is also a full-blooded Border Collie, but I could be wrong. A cow kicked Hank a few years ago and broke his leg. After several surgeries, his bad leg still bothers him. He can't run as fast or jump as well as he used to, but he still likes to help.

Hank and Jimmy love to go for an adventure. Here they are in the back of the truck. When my brother goes to the pastures to check his cows, they ride in the back of the 4-wheeler.

As soon as they enter the pasture, Jimmy jumps out and runs. Pretty soon, my brother asks Hank if he wants to run too, and he usually does. The dogs run in front of the 4-wheeler and smell all the important places along the trail. Many sites need pee from both dogs. They also check certain clumps of bushes for rabbits and deer every day. A good chase is remembered forever.

One evening while I was there, we found the neighbor's bull in the pasture with my brother's cows. The dogs saw him immediately and knew that he did not belong there. Here's Jimmy, heading the bull down the road to another pasture.

My brother commented that this bull seemed accustomed to being driven by dogs, because he didn't fight Jimmy much. Still, the bull didn't really want to leave the cows. My brother put the 4-wheeler between the bull and the dog a few times when the bull put down his head and charged at Jimmy. It made me nervous.

Here we go over the hill and across the pasture with the bull. When we got to the corner of the pasture, one of my brother's bulls spotted the stray and headed toward us. The situation could have turned ugly, but my brother got the gate open while the dogs held the red bull, and we got the red bull through the gate and into the corral before the black bull arrived. They bellowed fiercely, but two fences were separating them.

I admired and respected the nerve of the cattle dogs, and I said so to my brother. Oh, he said, things like that are what the dogs live for.

A ride around the pasture fences revealed no broken wires, so the stray bull's method of entry into my brother's pasture remained a mystery. We had seen him on the road earlier in the day. My brother speculated that the bull might have walked across or jumped across the cattle guard. (Some cattle learn to do that.) Or someone might have put him in the pasture to get him off the road. The poorly-kept fences around the bull's home pasture are teaching him to be "breechy" --that is, good at (and fond of) going over, under, around, and through fences.

Every pasture ride with the dogs ends with a race. My brother backs up to a little high spot so Hank can jump into the back of the 4-wheeler (he has the bad leg). Then Jimmie takes off like a greyhound, and my brother drives fast on the 4-wheeler behind him. Hank barks wildly with the excitement of chasing Jimmy, and Jimmy wins the race. Riding along is an exhilarating experience.

My brother says his dogs listen to everything he says and are always thinking about what he means. They don't always understand, but they always want to understand. They have large vocabularies and excellent memories. They love him, and he loves them. They love my sister-in-law too, but my brother is their favorite and, in their eyes, the esteemed leader of their pack.

I can't write about my brother's dogs without mentioning Sammi, his first cattle dog. She was a sweet, smart Australian Shepherd - Border Collie mix. She helped my brother train Hank, her successor. I showed my son this photo of Sammi's grave tonight, and I may have seen a tear in his eye. Sammi was dearly loved by my children, and she lives on forever in their memories of childhood visits to the ranch.

Wet and Dry

Flood and drought in the heartland

Mississippi River near Cairo, Illinois Bridge over the Ohio at Cairo, Illinois

The last week of July, I drove to southwestern Missouri to get together with my brother and sister at my sister's house. It was great to see them, and I also enjoyed the road trip.

I crossed the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois. It was obvious that the fields along the approaches to the bridge were planted very late due to the spring floods. On the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, I saw more evidence of flooded fields and late crops. Farms in the area were flooded last spring when the Corps of Engineers broke a levee on the Mississippi to ease the flooding in Cairo.

Most of the fields had young, broad-leafed plants growing in them. First, I thought that the little plants were probably soybeans. Then I wondered if they might be cotton, because southeast Missouri grows quite a bit of cotton. There are short-season cottons that will mature before frost, even when planted late. Whatever the crop, I'm glad some farmers in the river bottoms may get a harvest this year, despite all.
.

Hay trucks on Highway 60

NOAA image

As I drove west on Highway 60, I followed two trucks loaded with big hay bales for miles. They were probably going somewhere in the drought-stricken plains farther west, where people don't have enough grass to feed their livestock. If only their pastures could have some of the water that flooded the fields along the Mississippi this spring!

It was very dry north of Springfield, Missouri, where Charlotte (my sister) lives. My brother Dwight, who has a ranch southwest of Wichita, Kansas, says it is terribly dry there, too. He usually rents a couple of pastures to another fellow every summer, but when last winter and spring were so dry, he decided to sacrifice the extra income and keep all his summer pasture for his own cattle. He hasn't had to buy any hay yet.

Near Charlotte's house on the night that I arrived, a farmer was mowing the dried-up, stunted, mostly-dead corn plants in his field. A couple days later, he baled the stalks for cattle feed. The drought-stressed cornstalks may be high in nitrates, so the farmer will need to have the cornstalks tested so he doesn't accidentally poison his cattle. The cows won't think that cornstalk "hay" is very good, but they'll eat it if they're hungry enough. 

This longhorn cow still has grass in her pasture near Charlotte's house. It has become hay on the stem, but that's much better than no grass at all!

Droughts and floods are problems for all of us, not just for farmers. These disruptions impact grocery store prices, affecting everyone who buys food. Please, pray for rain for those farmers and ranchers who need it -- and sunshine for those who don't need rain!

Seen on the Roads

Large mammals of the Kentucky countryside

Deer season started last weekend in Kentucky -- that is, deer season with modern guns. (We also have bow-and-arrow season, crossbow season, muzzle-loading season, etc.)

As I drove to work before daylight on Saturday, I saw several pickup trucks parked along the roadside. The drivers, I assumed, were in their stands out in the woods, awaiting the dawn with high hopes that a deer might cross their gun sights.

When I got home that night, Dennis mentioned that he'd seen a Mennonite man in a red hunting vest, bicycling down the highway with his gun in a sling over his shoulder.

I had a similar story to relate. I had also met a Mennonite man in hunting garb, bicycling down the highway. He had a little wagon hitched to his bicycle and in the wagon, he had a dead doe. He appeared to be headed for the tagging station at Fairview.

I have no interest in hunting and I don't like venison, but I am thankful that some people do. We have so many deer here that they are a menace on the highways. Dennis and I have had three collisions with deer within Christian County and another deer accident in southern Illinois.

The Kentucky Farm Bureau Insurance Company has been running radio ads, urging motorists to be especially watchful for deer this month. It's mating season, so the deer are unusually active, and hormones have overpowered their brains.

I kept that warning in mind this week as I passed through areas where I frequently see deer. Last night, I drove through one of those areas about 11:00 p.m. Just after I crossed the river and passed the Mennonite cabinet shop, I caught a glimpse of movement in the ditch. "Deer!" I thought, as I stepped on the brake.

Then I saw white legs and wild eyes in my headlights. Several Holsteins bounded out of the ditch and onto the road in front of me. I came to a stop and wondered what I should do. The cattle probably belonged to the Mennonite cabinet maker, but all the lights were out at his house.

In my headlights, I saw at least a dozen Holsteins. When one fell onto the pavement as she lunged out of the ditch, I decided that I could not drive away. For the sake of the animals and the safety of other motorists, I had to try to waken the farmer.

I backed my car several hundred yards to the farmhouse and left it running with the lights on as I pounded on the door. In a couple of minutes, a light came on and a slightly-frazzled Mennonite man opened the door. He had pulled on his shirt and trousers to answer my knock.

I apologized for disturbing him, but he assured me that he was grateful for the warning. He said he'd telephone his brother because the cattle might be his brother's yearling heifers.

When I got back in my car and drove toward home again, there was not a Holstein in sight. Maybe they ran back to the pasture they came from, frightened by their experience in the greater world. Maybe the brother came out of his house and found his heifers waiting for him in his front yard.

Whatever the case, I went home with a clear conscience. I hope the farmers found their strays, and then got some rest during the remaining hours of the night.

Ranching in the Early 1900s

A look at cattle ranches of America's Great Plains, 100 years ago

The following paragraphs are quoted from the textbook, World Geographies: Second Book (p. 112-115) by Ralph S. Tarr and Frank M. McMurry, published in New York by the MacMillan Company in 1922.

MEANING AND EXTENT OF THE GREAT PLAINS

Passing westward from the fertile valley of the Red River of the North, one finds the farmhouses decreasing in number and the country becoming more and more arid until finally, in western North Dakota, there is very little farming without irrigation. At the same time, the plains gradually rise higher and higher, until, near the base of the Rocky Mountains, an elevation of fully a mile above the sea is reached. This arid plateau, extending from Canada to southwestern Texas is commonly known as the Great Plains...

...[M]ost of the arid region of the Great Plains is unsuited to farming. For this reason, there are comparatively few large cities, as you can see on the map. The entire western third of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, as well as the Great Plains farther west, are given over mainly to ranching.

This industry is carried on in much the same way throughout all parts of the arid West. In western North Dakota, for instance, there is little water except in the widely separated streams, and there are very few trees except along the stream banks. Since the ranchman must have both water and wood, he locates his house, sheds, and stockades, or corrals, within easy reach of these two things. If there is no neighbor within several miles it is all the better, for his cattle are then more certain to find abundant grass.

WHY FEW FENCES

Few fences are built, partly because most of the region is owned by the government, not by ranchmen. Very often they own only the land near the water; but this gives them control of the surrounding land, for it is of no use to anyone else if his cattle cannot reach the water. Another reason why fences are not common is that it is necessary for the cattle to roam far and wide in their search for food. The bunch grass upon which they feed is so scattered that they must walk a long distance each day to find enough to eat.

A single ranchman may own from ten to twenty thousand head of cattle, and yet they may all be allowed to wander upon public land, called "the range". Usually they keep within a distance of thirty miles of the ranch-house; but sometimes they stray one or two hundred miles away.

Twice a year there is a general collection, or round-up, of cattle,-- the first round-up occurring in May or June, and the other early in the fall. One object of the first is to brand the calves that have been born during the winter.

Since there are few fences, cattle belonging to ranches which are even a hundred miles apart become mixed during the winter; and those in a large herd may belong to a score of different ranchmen. Each cattle owner has a certain mark, or brand, in the form of a letter, a cross, a horseshoe, etc., which is burnt into the side of every calf.

A round-up, which lasts several weeks, is planned by a number of ranchmen together. A squad of perhaps twenty cowboys with a wagon and provisions, a large number of riding horses, or "ponies," and a cook, go in one direction; and other wagons, with similar "outfits," set out in other directions. Before separating in the morning, the members of a squad agree upon a certain camping place for the night, and they then scour the country to bring the cattle together, riding perhaps sixty or eighty miles during the day.

Each ranchman knows his own cattle by the brand they bear; and since the calves follow their mothers, there is no difficulty in telling what brand shall be placed on them. After branding the calves, each ranchman drives his cattle homeward to fend during the summer within a few dozen miles of their owner's house.

SECOND ROUND-UP AND WHAT FOLLOWS

The second large round-up is similar to the first, except that its object is to bring together the steers, or male cattle, and ship them away to market; it is therefore called the beef round-up. A ranchman who owns twenty thousand cattle may sell nearly half that number in a season. As the steers are collected, they are loaded upon trains and shipped to distant cities to be slaughtered.

Very often the cattle have found so little water and such poor pasturage, that they have failed to fatten properly, and must be fed for a time before being slaughtered. This may be done upon the irrigated fields near the rivers in the ranch country; or the cattle may be sent for this purpose to the farms farther east, as in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska.

LIFE OF THE RANCHMAN

The lives of ranchmen and cowboys are interesting and often exciting, most of each day being spent in the saddle. They are so far separated from other people that they must depend upon themselves far more than most people do. For instance, a ranchman must build his house, kill his beef and dress it, put up his ice, raise his vegetables, do his blacksmithing, find his fuel, and even keep school for his children if they are to receive an education. He affords a good example of the pioneer life which was so common in early days.

This passage is quoted from the textbook, World Geographies: Second Book (p. 112-115) by Ralph S. Tarr and Frank M. McMurry, published in New York by the MacMillan Company in 1922.

Livestock Brand Laws in Kentucky

The rancher's daughter is not impressed.

I drive by this pasture on my way to and from work. Five black bulls and several donkeys have been kept there through the winter.

This bull has been freeze-branded (see image at right), but I am not sure if the brand belongs to its current owner or a former owner. Many farmers here don't bother to brand their cattle.

The Commonwealth of Kentucky has a system for brand registration. You decide what you want the brand to look like, file the papers, and pay a small fee. For the next five years, the brand is yours to use on your livestock as proof of ownership, and then you need to re-register it.

Unfortunately, Kentucky doesn't have a system for brand inspection when branded animals are bought or sold. Thus, branding doesn't provide much protection against theft. A cattle rustler can steal branded cattle, transport them elsewhere, and sell them quite easily. Unless the buyer requests a brand release, the seller doesn't have to supply one. ("Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.")

Here in Kentucky, no brand inspector ever checks the brands of cattle at sale barns. No officer ever pulls over livestock trailers on the highways to ask the hauler for brand-release papers.

In many states, altering a livestock brand is a felony. It's curious that altering a brand in Kentucky is just a misdemeanor. The fine will not be more than $200 and the jail term will not be more than 6 months. Of course, an altered brand is likely to go undetected anyhow, since we don't have brand inspectors.

One thing that provides a little protection from cattle rustlers is that Kentucky farms are small. The population density is high here, compared to major livestock producing states of the Great Plains. There's a better chance that barking dogs or an alert neighbor might warn the farmer if a thief tried to load a trailer with cattle in the night.

My dad, a cattle rancher all his life, always said that brand registration without brand inspection was a law without teeth. I am sure he was right.

(Related fact: Kentucky ranks 8th in the nation in beef production.)

Oxen and Big Steers

What's an ox?

I read on Sarpy Sam's blog about some big steers, over 8 years old, that his dad rounded up when he bought the ranch. Sam said his dad had a hard time getting them in (in order to drive them to the train and send them to market.) I'm sure that the horses were a bit afraid of those big, wild steers!

The story of the big steers on the range reminded me of a couple of big Holstein steers we saw at the State Fair when I was a kid. I wasn't too big, so I may not remember right, but in my mind, those steers were at least six feet tall at the shoulder, and their heads were higher than that! The sign on their pen said they were 12 years old.

Those two steers surely weighed 2500 pounds each, or maybe more. That's a wild estimate, based on the weight of my dad's biggest Charolais bulls, years ago.

Last night, I happened upon this old-time photograph of four oxen hitched to a plow in eastern Kentucky. The oxen look like any ordinary cattle. I think they might be Shorthorns. (The photograph is part of the C. Frank Dunn collection which dates mainly from 1920 to 1940, with most photographs collected during 1928-1932.)

I began wondering exactly what distinguishes an ox from a big steer, and after some research today, I've learned the answer. It's training. Any cattle that are trained to work can be called oxen.

Many sources say an ox is a bull -- usually castrated, but not always. (A castrated bull is a steer.) Some make a distinction between a working steer (under 4 years old) and an ox (the same animal, over 4 years old.) Some sites emphasize that oxen can be either male or female.

Many of the covered wagons in U.S. history were pulled by oxen, and some of the oxen were cows. Cows were favored because they provided milk along the way. At the new home, a cattle herd could be started if your ox was a cow.

Oxen could live on grass or even sagebrush along the trail. Horses and mules were pickier about what they ate and couldn't be depended on to swim streams or pull through deep mud like oxen.

According to an interesting British website about working with oxen, workhorses have strength and speed, but they pull in spurts. Oxen, however, pull long, hard, and steady. Two oxen can replace a big workhorse and it will cost less to keep them . Before tractors, oxen were the preferred animal to move heavy loads or to pull out a large vehicle that had become mired (even train cars that had left the tracks!)

Check out the great old photo of a big team of oxen at the link in the previous paragraph. The ox in the front looks old and thin. Perhaps he was placed in front because that position required less work, or maybe he was just a good leader.

Many of the old British cattle breeds were used as oxen, and of course, the same is true of all the old European breeds, including the breeds of large, muscular cattle that have become popular with beef producers in the U.S. during my lifetime -- Charolais, Gelbvieh, Limousin, Simmental, and others.

Interesting searches:
Oxen as draft animals
Oxen associations

Article about Shovel Dot Ranch

Buell "kids" I grew up with at Rose, Nebraska

The Omaha World Herald Online has an interesting, though short, article about the Shovel Dot Ranch of southern Rock County, Nebraska and its owners, Larry and Homer Buell. Thank you, Carolyn Hall, for pointing out the article.

These guys are neighbor kids I knew in my childhood. The Buells attended a different little country school than we did, but we were all members of the Rose Scouts 4-H Club. The Shovel Dot Ranch had Hereford cattle, and the Hereford 4-H calves exhibited by the Buell kids were always some of the best at the KBR 4-H calf shows.

Larry is my age, and he was in the same grade as me. Homer (or "Skip", as we called him then) was a couple years older. An older brother, Roger, was about the same age as my older brother. Sadly, Roger was killed by lightning as a young man. Their sister Jan was the oldest, a few years older than my brother.

In the article, Homer mentions that solitude is a natural part of the lifestyle at a Sandhills ranch. He is right. Children who grow up on ranches learn to be self-reliant at both work and play. They know how to be alone. It is a useful skill.

I think the Buells own some of the pasture land (the old Haskins place) that my family used to own, south of the Calamus River in Loup County, where the sweet red plums grow.

Holstein Heifers

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... The Rural Life...

Holstein heifers

These adolescent girl cows (heifers!) are enjoying today's pleasant spring weather. Their owner, a Mennonite farmer, has a dairy herd.

Counting the Dead Ones

All In The Family... Life in the Nebraska Sandhills...

The phrase "count the dead ones" will be familiar to my sister and brother if they happen to read this post. My father always said he was "going out to count the dead ones" when he went to check the pregnant cows and newborn calves.

We had a lot of trouble with scours (neonatal diarrhea) in the calves, and in fact, my dad fought a particularly virulent strain of scours for years. Hence, at times my dad's black humor was close to the truth.

The University of Nebraska experts advised him that the scours germ or virus lived in the soil of the pasture that we generally used for calving, and so we began calving in another pasture. It helped, but scours was always a problem.

I read on Sarpy Sam's blog that he's doctoring calves for scours, and this brings back memories of the long plastic and aluminum "pill shooters" and "pill guns" that were used to put a large capsule of medicine (probably terramycin) straight into a calf's stomach. My dad kept them in the pickup at all times so he could take care of sick calves.

Someone (maybe a vet?) posted some advice anonymously on Sam's blog about how to cope with scours. It's good to see that some new preventive measures and treatments have been developed in the last 40 years.

I followed one of the links the anonymous poster gave to some information about the "Sandhills method". It seems that newborn calves have a period of extreme vulnerability to scours between 6 and 15 days of age. That's the time between the end of the colostrum in their mother's milk and the point that they have developed a bit of ability to resist disease.

Scours also become more of a problem as the calving season progresses. This is because of the accumulation of pathogens in the calving pasture, and because of older calves exposing newborns to the illness.

One main idea of the Sandhills method is to move cows with young calves out of the pasture where there are newborns, and to keep the calves segregated by age groups until they are old enough that they have developed some immunity to the scours germs.

The second main idea is to rotate pregnant cows through a series of pastures to help insure that pathogens don't build up in any particular place and to limit the exposure of newborns to a set of pathogens.

I noted in the anonymous poster's comment that there are also rehydration products to give sick calves nowadays. That makes sense.

Why are developments like this important to ranchers? The opening paragraph of the paper "Preventing Neonatal Calf Diarrhea with the Sandhills Calving System" answers that question very well.

Diarrhea remains an important cause of illness and death of young beef calves. The economic effects of calf scours can be profound. Some beef cattle herds annually experience death rates of 5 to 10 percent or greater, sometimes with up to 100 percent of calves being ill. Economic costs of the disease include loss of performance, mortality, and the expense of medication and labor to treat sick calves. In addition, herd owners and their employees often become disheartened after investing long hours to treat scouring calves during an already exhausting calving season. (Source)

The cost can be physical too. Sometime in the early 1960's, my father was injured by a belligerent cow while he was attempting to medicate her sick calf. She mashed him against the pickup with her head. I don't know what exactly happened to his leg. It wasn't broken but it was apparently kind of crushed and almost broken.

Mama picked us up from school that day on the way to the doctor with Daddy lying down in the back seat. It would have required surgery to break the bone and a cast to set it, and my dad couldn't afford to be down that long during calving. He limped with that weakened leg for the rest of his life.



Update: Sarpy Sam says the Sandhill method isn't practical for him because it would take too much fence. He says he'll just turn his pregnant cows into a 2000 acre pasture (over 3 square miles!) and let them behave naturally. Mother cows who are about to give birth usually seek out an isolated spot anyway and keep their calf separated for a while. I can see that this would work.

Of course, some people don't have 2000 acre pastures. They don't even have 2000 acres. In Kentucky, 2000 acres might be half a dozen farms or more. When you have only 200 to 400 acres, maybe the idea of rotating your cattle through a series of small pastures for calving isn't so impractical.

I see quite a few people here who rotate their cattle through a series of small pastures for grazing. Often the perimeter of a pasture has a conventional barb-wire fence, and the divisions inside are just electric fences.

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Mid-March in the Kentucky Countryside

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... The Rural Life...

Isaac and I had a nice walk late this afternoon, down a narrow and somewhat winding road near our home. It's about .8 mile from the beginning of the road to the point that it changes from gravel to blacktop. The round trip is 1.6 miles with a couple big hills to increase the heart rate.

The road is so narrow that two vehicles cannot meet on it. When that rare event does occur, one has to either back up or wait in a pasture gateway along the road until the other vehicle passes.

We didn't meet any vehicles at all while we were walking. It was very quiet and pleasant, walking along through the trees and beside the pastures and fields.

Our neighbor has his Beefalo cattle in some of the pastures along the way. The buffalo ancestry of his bull is quite obvious.

The fields haven't been touched yet, but I'm sure the farmers are preparing their machinery and ordering the seed.

Coming back up the last hill, we heard a bird calling close beside the road. Isaac spotted him in a thicket when he moved. It was an eastern towhee (also called a rufous-sided towhee.) I have seen them in our yard infrequently, but often enough that I recognize them.

After listening to some recordings of the towhee's calls on the internet this evening, I realize that he was making the "towhee" sound that the bird is named for. You can read more about the eastern towhee and hear its call on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website (Real Player needed) or on the Wild Bird Watching website (mp3 player needed).

The weather here has been so nice lately for walking -- cool, but not cold. This is the second time that Isaac and I have walked down this road this week. We can walk up and down the hill from our house to the highway three times and have about the same distance, but a change of scenery always makes walking more interesting.

Eastern towhee, National Park Service photo

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March

The Southern Buffalo

North America's native cattle

USDA photo by Jack Dykinga

This seems to be Bovine Day on the blog, so I will post a link to an interesting article about North America's native wild cow, the buffalo: "Bison herd a link to Texas' history". (Note: When I checked this link on 4/3/11, it was extinct. The article may be purchased from the Dallas Morning News.)

The article tells the story of a small herd of southern buffalo that were rescued from certain extinction by Charles Goodnight, a Texas rancher of fame and legend, and his wife Mary Ann Goodnight. Descendants of the herd are now the official Texas Bison Herd.

Through the years, some of the buffalo in this herd have been cross-bred with cattle and have picked up some cattle genes. Others in the herd are still 100% buffalo. The genetically pure animals are a particularly important gene pool for the buffalo species because they carry some bison genetic markers that are rare or non-existent in other herds.

From the article, a comparison of the southern buffalo:

Characteristics : North American bison males may reach a length of 10 1/2 to 12 feet, while females may be 8 to 10 feet long. Weight ranges from 1,800 to 2,000 pounds for males and 700 to 900 pounds for females. Southern bison are generally smaller than northern bison and lighter in color. Some bulls may reach 6 feet at the top of their hump. Both males and females have short black horns curving upward then inward with narrow tips.

The eastern buffalo has been extinct since 1825. It too was a smaller animal than the Plains buffalo. Neither the southern nor the eastern buffalo were true subspecies. However, there were obviously regional differences in size and coloration.

TAXONOMIC NOTES Two subspecies are recognized: the plains bison (B. b. bison) was once widespread from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, and from the Canadian prairies to northeastern Mexico; the larger, darker and warier wood bison (B. b. athabascae) lived farther west, extending northward as far as the Northwest Territories and possibly as far west as the Bering Sea coast of Alaska. Two other races were listed at one time but no longer are considered valid, and are extinct in any case. They were the pale-colored mountain bison (haningtoni) of Colorado, and the eastern bison (pennsylvanicus) of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, which was almost black with a grizzled face and smaller hump. There are large numbers of plains x wood bison hybrids in Yellowstone (U.S.) and Wood Buffalo (Canada) national parks and elsewhere. The only remaining pureblooded wood bison are found in sanctuaries in the Northwest Territories and Alberta. (Source: "Bovids", an informational page from Safari Club International.)

I found the following quote about buffalo on a page titled, "Old Mobeetie Texas Association: Red River War.

The southern buffalo were long and tall and slabside. They were like the Texas cattle in build while the northern buffalo were more like the Hereford. They were probably the same specie, but the northern bison had longer, blacker, and better wool. The southern buffalo’s wool turned yellow in the fall. (Attributed to J. Wright Mooar, Buffalo Hunter)

Here is another comment on the various appearances of American buffalo from someone who lived much closer to the age of the buffalo than we do:

Had the bison remained for a few more centuries in undisturbed possession of his range, and with liberty to roam at will over the North American continent, it is almost certain that several distinctly recognizable varieties would have been produced. The buffalo of the hot regions in the extreme south would have become a short-haired animal like the gaur of India and the African buffalo. The individuals inhabiting the extreme north, in the vicinity of Great Slave Lake, for example, would have developed still longer hair, and taken on more of the dense hairyness of the musk ox. In the "wood" or "mountain buffalo" we already have a distinct foreshadowing of the changes which would have taken place in the individuals which made their permanent residence upon rugged mountains. (Source: The Extermination of the American Bison, by William Temple Hornaday (1854-1937), published in 1889 by the Government Printing Office in Washington D.C.)

In an article titled, "The West: Buffalo Hunting on the Great Plains: Promoting One Society While Supplanting Another" by historian and lecturer Keith Miller, three major causes are cited for the final near-extinction of buffalo on the American continent in the late 1800's. First, a very efficient process had been developed for tanning the hides. Second, gun technology improved during and after the Civil War, so the rifles used by buffalo hunters were more accurate and more powerful than ever before. Third, the railroads made it possible to ship massive quantities of buffalo hides.

In the period 1872-1874 the bison hunts in the southern plains peaked, for example, with a buffalo death toll of 4,374,000. To that level of killing by white hunters must be added the 1,215,000 bison taken by Indians on the southern plains.

Such an horrendous slaughter had prompted the action of Congress. First, in 1872, that legislative body voted for a measure to limit buffalo hunting, and then, in 1874, passed a much more restrictive bill. But, to no avail, because President Ulysses S. Grant declined to sign either proposed law. So, the killing continued unabated. With this result--by 1875 the southern buffalo herds ceased to exist.

Source: "The West: Buffalo Hunting on the Great Plains: Promoting One Society While Supplanting Another" by Keith Miller

Cattle Breeds in the U.K.

Native cattle of the British Isles

A Highland cow (Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

For my readers who are interested in such things, here are some interesting facts about cattle in the U.K. The following figures show the predominant cattle breeds in the U.K. currently and the number of registered cattle in each breed.

Beef Breeds:
687,382 -- Limousin
332,098 -- Charolais
222,290 -- Aberdeen Angus
221,670 -- Simmental
186,730 --Belgian Blue
307,387 -- Other breeds

Dairy Breeds:
579,617 -- Holstein Friesian or Holstein Friesian crosses

Source: "Limousin is UK's Largest Numerical Cattle Breed" by staff, published March 10, 2007 on Trumpline Stackyard.

I suppose that the registration of every animal is part of their program to eradicate Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), more commonly known as mad cow disease.

The article where I found these statistics quotes the president of the British Limousin association. He says that the Limousin are "easy care, added value cattle" and that the "flexibility and predictability of Limousin cattle is providing a marked and demonstrable premium" for farmers. He almost sounds like a politician.

In the list above, the only truly native UK breed is Aberdeen Angus, a black cattle from Scotland that is also a popular U.S. cattle breed.

Limousin and Charolais cattle are of French origin. Simmentals are from the Simme valley of Switzerland. The breed is the result of crossing the native cattle of the area with larger cattle from Germany.

Belgian Blues were developed in Belgium, but their bloodlines go back to a cross of Shorthorns (of the British Isles) and Friesian cattle.

I decided to compile a list of some of the UK's other native cattle breeds that didn't make the popularity list. Here it is, and each link should open a new window with images of that cattle breed.

• Ayrshire - a dairy cattle breed from the County of Ayr in Scotland.
• Chillingham - One of the old breeds of white cattle. This one is a wild native cow from Northumberland, small with upright horns and red ears. A very rare breed, with only about 100 animals left.
• Devon - a cattle breed from the Devonshire, England area, once used as draft animals as well as for dairy and beef.
• Guernsey and Jersey - dairy cattle breeds from the channel islands, Guernsey and Jersey
• Hereford - a breed of red cattle that originated in western England and Wales. Once used as draft animals. Has been a popular beef breed in the U.S. for many years.
• Highland - a hardy, shaggy, long-horned native breed from the highlands of Scotland. There were once two strains of this breed (Kyloe and Highlander), but in modern times they are all known as Highland cattle.
• Shorthorn - an old breed mentioned in recorded history as early as the 1500's, probably descended from a short-horned ox known to be in England in the days of the Roman Empire
• Lincoln Red - probably brought to the British Isles by the Vikings.
• English Longhorn - Brindle cattle with long horns, once used as draft animals.
• British White - An old breed of white cattle with "dark points" that can trace its history back 800 years; originally from the wild white cattle of Great Britain.
• White Park - Another old breed of white cattle, smaller with larger horns, that can trace its history back to the Druids of pre-Christian Ireland. The White Park breed also has a long history in England, Scotland and Wales.
• Dexter and Kerry - descended from the Celtic black cattle of the highlands of southern Ireland.
• Galloway and Belted Galloway - a old breed descended from the long-haired black cattle of the Galloway region of the Scottish lowlands.
• Welsh Black - an old breed of horned black cattle from Wales, used for meat and milk.
• There may be other breeds as well. These are just what I came up with fairly quickly.



Chillingham Cattle (Image from The Graphics Fairy)

Spring Blizzards of the Sandhills Remembered

All In The Family... Another Trip Down Memory Lane... Life in the Nebraska Sandhills...

The reports of snowstorms on the northern side of this big weather front reminded me of spring blizzards during my childhood in northern Nebraska. In every blizzard, my parents worked terribly hard caring for the cattle, but in a spring blizzard, there were the newborn calves to worry about, too.

I remember waking one snowy morning and realizing that school must have been cancelled because my mom had let me sleep so late. When I stumbled into the bathroom, my mom was bent over the bathtub, rubbing the limbs of a nearly-frozen newborn calf, trying to revive his circulation and his will to live.

Bringing calves into the house was a desperate measure, of course, but every effort had to be made because the calves were the income of our family.

I remember calves that thawed out, had a little warm milk poured into them and recovered enough to clatter around on their hard little hooves. My mom had some baby gates to keep a calf corralled in the back hallway until he was returned to his mother. I remember Mama putting newspapers on the floor, but I imagine there were some messes to clean up.

Hopefully the mother cow still remembered and claimed her little calf after he had disappeared for a few hours. If she didn't, she had to be brought into the barn and persuaded by various means to let the calf nurse, and eventually she would probably accept him as her own again. (Cows aren't too bright.)

Meanwhile the blizzard raged on and my parents tried to get hay to all the cattle and see about their water as well as watch over the pregnant cows and the newborns. With luck, maybe the tractor started as it should, and no mechanical pieces jammed or snapped and no snowdrifts impeded their work.

The blizzard took its toll on the people who were exposed to it as well as the animals. Of course they bundled up as warmly as possible, but the stress of the cold temperatures and the wind were exhausting, as was the effort of wading through snow all day and trying to work with cold-numbed hands.

They checked the cows again before they went to bed and they got up in the night and checked them again. If help was needed by a cow or calf, they did whatever was necessary in the cold darkness, and with little sleep, they began these gruelling efforts again the next morning.

And there were times when tremendous effort was made but the blizzard still claimed the lives of some little calves.

These are the reasons that I worried about the ranchers today when March roared in with a frigid blast of snow and wind.



Note: This was originally part of another post, but I made an editorial decision that it should be separated.

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Bull Stories

Breechy bovine

Sarpy Sam (Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere) has posted a great story about a bull that got its head stuck in a hay feeder. The tale is amusing and it's a good example of the real-life, everyday adventures of the cattle rancher. I think you'll enjoy it, even if you're not experienced with farm animals.

Bulls are always a trial and tribulation in the rancher's life. They make a lot of noise and dig holes and they can be belligerant. Naturally enough, they want to be with any nearby cows that are in heat, and some bulls will even go through a fence to get there.

In fact, the only time I ever heard my father use the word "bastard" was in connection with a bull that went through a fence.

It was a hot, still day in the middle of summer and we were in the hayfield. Something on the self-propelled windrower had broken. My dad was trying to repair it but wasn't having much success. He had been lying under the windrower for quite a while, down by the swamp where the air was especially steamy. Occasionally he emerged, covered with grease and hay chaff, to mop the sweat from his eyes.

Suddenly, my brother zoomed up in one of the pickup trucks. He jumped out and reported to my dad that one of the bulls had gone through the fence and was in with the neighbor's cattle.

Overcome with heat and frustration, my father spoke grimly. "That breechy bastard," he said, with deadly emphasis. (The word "breechy" to a rancher means "eager to go through any breech", that is, always looking for a weak place in the fence.)

Coming from my father, those were strong words indeed, because he didn't talk like that. I had never heard him say such a word. It was almost frightening to see my dad brought to this extreme.

Let me explain. Your bull in the neighbor's pasture can cause trouble between you and the neighbor. My dad was honor-bound to get that bull away from the neighbor's cows immediately, even if it meant that no more hay was made that day. In addition, my dad was afraid that this expensive bull might have been cut badly, when he went through the barbed wire fence. Also, it might be fighting with the neighbor's bulls, and it could have injured itself or another bull. All of this on that hot afternoon brought my dad to the point of using strong language.

My dad kept good fences, but when a large, strong, testosterone-charged animal makes an assault, it stretches every wire, strains every staple, and tests every repair.

Packs of Cows

Life in Christian County, Kentucky...

I talked to my elderly neighbor on the telephone this afternoon. For Isaac's Eagle Scout project, the Boy Scouts will be cleaning the old cemetery where her grandparents are buried. The first workday will be next Saturday, and we were talking about where the Scouts might camp that night.

Ms. M. explained that it wouldn't be a good idea for them to camp on her farm. She's seen so many copperhead snakes there over the years that she's afraid someone might get bit, and her son who lives on the place says that the cows have started to run in packs. She doesn't know if they would attack anyone or not, but she doesn't want to take a chance.

When I hung up, I told Dennis that Ms. M. had cows on the farm now and that they were running in packs. He gave me a funny look and commented that usually groups of cows were called "herds", not "packs."

Later in the evening, I went over to Ms. M.'s house to get a package she had for me, and she wanted to talk some more about the Scouts' camp-out. She said it made her mad that the wildlife people had ever released those cows here -- and finally, I understood.

It's not cows that are running in packs on her farm. It's cowts! Coyotes, that is. (I'm relieved!)

Actually, Ms. M. was pronouncing the word as I do (kī'ōt') but with the accent of this area. I just wasn't listening carefully!

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October's Second Friday

Memories of the KBR 4-H Calf Show and Sale in Bassett, Nebraska

When I was growing up, the KBR 4-H Feeder Calf Show and Sale was always held in Bassett, Nebraska, on the second Friday of October. "KBR" was an abbreviation for "Keya Paha - Brown - Rock", three counties in northern Nebraska served by a single County Extension office.

The "stocker-feeders" we exhibited were spring calves. By October, the calves typically weighed 300 to 450 lbs. After the show, they were sold at auction. Most of the buyers were farmers from the Corn Belt whose kids were in 4-H or FHA. As "Baby Beef" projects, the calves gained another 400 to 600 pounds and were exhibited at county and state fairs, Ak-Sar-Ben, the Chicago Livestock Exposition, and other cattle shows, before becoming beefsteak.

I would love to go back in time and enjoy the spectacle of the KBR 4-H calf show again. On show day, every parking place around the salebarn was occupied, and even the road ditches were full of pickups and stock trailers.

Inside the showbarn, each 4-H club had its own area with a sign overhead to identify it. (Our club was the "Rose Scouts".) Most of the 4-Her's were dressed in their western best -- white shirts, blue jeans, and cowboy boots.

A hundred or more calves were tied and made comfortable in beds of straw along both sides of several long dividers . Most of the calves were Black Angus and Herefords, but there were also a few Shorthorns, Red Angus, and Galloways. Very few cross-breeds were shown, until the late 1960's when some ranchers began to use Charolais bulls.

Many of the families had a "show box"--a wooden chest to store all the brushes, hair products, clippers, etc., for grooming their calves. Often, the ranch name and cattle brand was painted on the box. The boxes were placed along the walkway behind the calves to keep the straw in place and to serve as handy seats.

A few kids might shampoo their calves when they arrived at the barn on show day, but the calves who came from our ranch had been brushed daily for a couple months and washed several times in the previous week. My dad had made our calves look even better by smoothing out any rough spots and shaggy hairs with the hair clippers.

As show time approached, everyone brushed their calves so they would look their best. A bit of hair conditioner might be applied, or some hair spray. The hooves were painted with shoe polish, and the long tail hairs were combed smooth and gently fluffed.

When our class was announced on the loudspeaker, we led our calves to the arena and paraded them in front of the judge. I remember this as a very nervous time. I hoped my 4-H cap wouldn't slide off. I hoped my calf wouldn't get spooked and try to run away, and if he did, I hoped I'd be able to control him. I hoped the calf would stand squarely when I prodded his feet with my show stick. I hoped when the judge put his hands on my calf, it wouldn't shy away.

The kids in the Rose Scouts 4-H Club were fortunate. Some of the best Hereford and Angus cattle in the area were raised in southern Rock County, and we had the pick of our parents' herds for show calves. My brother, sister, and I had more than our fair share of champion calves, I suppose. My dad's "Diamond Lazy H" brand is visible on the side of the show-winner I'm exhibiting in the photo at left.

Usually, we showed our calves in an outdoor arena, but in two of my ten 4-H years, the second Friday of October brought a snowstorm. The judging had to be held inside the barn with the doors tightly shut. We coped willingly with the cramped quarters, because a Rocky Mountain wind was whistling outside and the snowflakes were flying like a million arrows.

When it snowed on October's second Friday, the calves didn't sell as well. The farmers from Iowa and Eastern Nebraska listened to the weather forecast and stayed home! But when the weather was nice, the top calves at the show usually brought over a dollar a pound -- enough to show a nice profit in the record book that the 4-Her kept for each calf.

As each 4-H member left the sale-ring with his calf, he was handed a silver dollar by one of the sale-barn employees. I don't know who supplied the silver dollars. The last few years that I exhibited, the bank couldn't get bags of silver dollars anymore, so we were given a dollar bill instead -- not exactly a substitute!

I don't think the KBR calf show is held anymore, due to the gradual depopulation of the Sandhills . The 4-H kids probably take their calves to the county fairs instead.

This morning, I looked at the forecast for my old hometown in Nebraska, and a hard freeze is predicted for the next two nights. "Mostly clear. Breezy. Lows in the mid 20s. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph." Brrrr. But at least, it's not supposed to snow up there tomorrow!

Memories of Arabia, Nebraska

Traveling Highway 20 in Cherry County, Nebraska

Cherry County, Nebraska is outlined in black.
An arrow indicates the approximate location of Arabia.

Note: This is another of those long posts that Isaac is always warning me about. He says that people hate to read them. Sorry. I have to write them anyway!

When I was a child, we traveled Highway 20 in and through Cherry County, Nebraska, fairly often. Usually we were going to Valentine to the salebarn or to a tractor dealer, or we were driving across Cherry County on our way to visit my grandma and aunt at Gordon.

To this day, Highway 20 is the main road across northern Nebraska from Sioux City on the east to Harrison on the west. Several years ago, I drove Highway 20 from Gordon to O'Neill with much nostalgia. The miles flew by!

The miles didn't go so quickly when I was a child. It was roughly a hundred long, boring miles from one end of Cherry County to the other, and Valentine was the halfway point. A few tiny cowtowns lay along the way, but the scenery was mostly Sandhills pastures with occasional barbed wire fences, windmills and cattle.

The merchants of Valentine deserve credit for trying to encourage weary travelers like myself. All through Cherry County along Highway 20, they posted red, heart-shaped road signs at two mile intervals. Each sign told the remaining distance to Valentine. The name of the sign's sponsor was posted on a small rectangular sign below the heart.

Going to Valentine, I could read the signs to see how much distance remained, and driving away from Valentine, I could turn around backwards and read the signs to see how far we had traveled away from Valentine. It was a bit of entertainment on a long road.

One of the landmarks along the way between Johnstown and Valentine was the Arabia Ranch. The Arabia Ranch was named for the Arabia railroad station that stood along the CNW train tracks, a mile or two across the meadow from the ranch headquarters.

The Arabia Ranch headquarters looked like a little village. There was a large house where the ranch owner lived with his family. A short distance away, a dozen or more small houses and bunkhouses were occupied by the hired men and their families.

In the 1950's-early 1960's, Johnny Drayton and his family lived in the big house. Johnny Drayton ran Angus cattle on the Arabia Ranch, and when he sold his herd in the 1960's, my dad bought a couple pens of cows at the auction. Those cows was known as "Drayton cows" for as long as they were in my dad's herd. The cattle in my brother's herd still carry some of the genes of the Drayton cows. But I digress.

A bit to the west of the ranch buildings, a small reddish brown building stood by the railroad tracks. That was the Arabia railroad station. The train didn't stop at Arabia unless it was notified to do so, and the station hadn't been staffed for a long time (if it ever had been).

Beside the little building, there was a large set of cattle pens and loading chutes. They bore witness to early days when ranchers drove their cattle to Arabia and kept them in pens until the train arrived. Then the cattle were loaded into boxcars to go to market at the Sioux City or Omaha Stockyards. The rancher might get on the train too, to make sure the cattle received proper care along the way and to see what price they would bring.

I remember that the paint was peeling on the railroad facilities at Arabia. Cattle shipment had been the main function of the Arabia train stop, and those days were drawing to a close by the 1950's. Most ranchers were sending their cattle to local salebarns in semi-trucks rather than to distant markets in railroad cars.

Along Highway 20 in the area of the Arabia Ranch, there were several large signs made of two boards nailed to two fence posts. The top board said "Thro No," and the bottom board said "Cigarettes." The message reflected the fear of prairie fire that every Sandhill rancher shares. A smouldering butt can ignite dry prairie grasses! I don't know why they left off the "w", and I'm not sure if the signs were placed by a rancher or by a cattlemen's association.

When I drove across Cherry County on Highway 20 several years ago, the heart-shaped Valentine signs were gone, and so were the cryptic warnings to careless smokers. The Arabia Ranch is still there, but its village is much smaller than it was in the mid-1900's. The little Arabia railroad station and its stockyards have been torn down, and even the railroad has been completely removed.

Now, the Cowboy Trail follows the railbed of the old Chicago and Northwestern Railroad alongside Highway 20. The 18-mile section from the Arabia Ranch to Valentine is open for hiking. Many of the things I've written of here are just ghosts along its way.

Highway 20 followed the railroad's route across northern Cherry County.
Until I was 6, we lived 10 miles south of Johnstown (north of Lakeland).

Credit:
Map images in this post were made from an 1895 map of Nebraska I found in a list of maps at the NeGenWeg Project.

Related post:
More about Arabia, Nebraska

Cattle Drive Chow

All In The Family... Another Trip Down Memory Lane... Life in The Nebraska Sandhills...

I recently read a little item about "Cattle-drive Chow"on the Denver Post website, and I immediately thought about my mother's wooden picnic box and the cattle drive chow she served from the tailgate of our pickup truck.

In late May each year, after the last snowstorm had done its worst and the grass had started to grow again, it was time to move the cattle to summer pasture south of the Calamus River in Loup County. This was an all-day cattle drive, and we usually had several such drives in the spring and again in the fall when the cattle came home.

From our ranch (The Diamond Lazy H), we drove the cattle south through several of the neighbor's pastures, and then followed small roads that led cross-country to the bridge over the Calamus near the south headquarters of the Shovel Dot Ranch. In all, it was about 15 miles.

Early in the morning, the men started off with a herd of cattle. Usually we had three riders. My dad had a palomino horse named Tex. My brother and the hired man rode Spade and Keeno, the tall sorrels.

I remember riding along once on Beauty, the little Shetland mare. I had to fight her all day to keep her from running wildly into the herd of cattle to spook them. If you've ever ridden a headstrong, incorrigible little Shetland, you can imagine what a brat she was; otherwise, it's probably beyond your comprehension.

Anyway, my usual part in a cattle drive was helping my mother get lunch there. (I never said I was a cowgirl. I just said that I grew up on a cattle ranch!)

The cattle went willingly once they got the idea that they were moving to fresh pasture. They followed each other peacefully southward down the sandy little two-track roads. A rider went in front to keep the cattle headed in the right direction at the few crossroads, but mostly it was just a day of keeping the cattle moving steadily. An uneventful cattle drive was a good cattle drive.

Meanwhile, my mother was having a crazy morning. She got up early and gave everyone a good breakfast. Then she went to the pasture to help the men round up the cattle and start off.

When they were on their way, she came back home, got the breakfast dishes off the table and fixed a cattle-drive lunch. Usually, she made beef stew or beef and noodles and homemade rolls. There would be side dishes like jello salad, macaroni and cheese, or green beans, carrot and celery sticks, possibly some canned fruit or canned shoestring potatoes, and cake or cookies for dessert.

Mama had a wooden picnic box that my dad had made. It was about 2 feet long and about 15 inches high and wide, and its lid slid off. We packed all the dishes, glasses, napkins, silverware, a tablecloth, and any canned goods and condiments in it.

Then my mom wrapped all the hot dishes in newspapers and bath towels and packed them into cardboard boxes. Cold dishes were packed the same way. Last, we fixed a big Igloo cooler of ice water. Then we loaded everything in the pickup and off we went with Mama driving and the horse trailer in tow .

When we caught up with the cattle drive, we followed along behind the horses until we came to a place where the road was fenced on both sides. There the cattle were contained, and since they were hungry, they grazed the roadsides while we ate lunch.

Everyone was hungry! My mom spread the tablecloth on the tailgate of the pickup, set out the food, and after blessing, we all enjoyed a hearty hot lunch in the sunshine of a spring day. I remember those meals as always delicious.

After lunch, perishable leftovers were discarded, dirty dishes were scraped to be washed later, and everything was packed back up. We followed the herd for the rest of the afternoon with the pickup and trailer until we finally crossed the river and reached the pasture. Then we loaded the horses into the trailer and the people into the pickup as the sun set.

When we got home, Mama fixed supper for us and dealt with the picnic box and the dirty dishes from lunch. She made us girls help, of course, but I realize now that cattle drives must have been a long hard day for her.

To my mother, it was another day on the ranch, doing the work of the season. She was a full partner in making the ranch successful and her work as a ranch wife was vitally important for my family.

The photo below was taken in August of 1995. Mama is playing ball with the grandkids. She passed away on June 14, 1997, nine years ago yesterday.



Related:

Photos of a cattle drive near Eli, Nebraska, posted by "Soapweed". Here's another set of photos of cattle going to summer pasture. I visit the Rancher's Net Forums every now and then, just to look at Soapweed's beautiful photos of Sandhill ranch life. They remind me so much of where I grew up that sometimes they make me homesick.

An interesting thing about Soapweed is that he was a neighbor to Lloyd and Eileen Morton of Eli, Nebraska, and rented pasture from them for many years (and now rents from their son, I believe.) Lloyd and Eileen introduced my parents to each other back in 1944 when my mom was a schoolteacher at Eli and my dad was a young cowboy from Moon Lake, south of Johnstown. In May of 1945, they stood up with my parents at their wedding.

Soapweed is about my age, so he wasn't born yet in 1944-45. I know all this from exchanging a few e-mails with him, and I'm mentioning it here for my family members who will be interested.

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