A labor of love
Don Coldsmith, Syndicated Columnist
Monday, September 15, 2008
A few years ago, I was recounting to a friend some misadventure with livestock and he asked me a question that really made me stop and think.
“Why do you do it?”
He went on to point out that I had responsibilities to take care of horses and cattle in all kinds of weather. Wet, dry, freezing and burning heat. Large animals can also step on your feet, crowd you into a fence, give you all sorts of problems. They sometimes sicken and die, with considerable financial loss. Even at best, the market is unpredictable and a year’s hard work may result in very little again.
I couldn’t very well explain to him and this made me wonder if I could explain it to myself. Ours has never been a very big operation. We raise no more than 20 calves in any year and we have other occupations, too. But the livestock business has always been important to us.
I recalled a remark of Baxter Black’s. He’d never seen a cowboy, he said, who was saving up money to buy into a hardware store. However, he knew a lot of cowboys who were working in a hardware store or some such job, trying to save up to get back in the cattle business. Now, why is this?
I tried to explain to my friend that it was for the exercise. Some people jog, or walk or run, play tennis or golf. But none of these really appeal to me. The runners and joggers who go past our place don’t appear to be having a great deal of fun. Golfers deserve special comment. There are a lot of golf jokes, which are really too easy. But something that’s done for the exercise? Golf involves riding in a cart to where you get out, whack a little ball a couple of hundred yards, ride to that spot and whack it again. Even the equipment used is carried by someone else or in the cart. Well, to each his own. It’s a way to get outdoors and to do gender things.
But back to my story — in the end, the exercise excuse for raising cattle and horses seemed pretty lame, even to me. So, why DO we do it? I still didn’t know.
About that time we were trying to upgrade the cow herd by artificial breeding. One of our daughters took the course at Kansas State University and came home to teach me. This involved frozen semen and a tank of liquid nitrogen and working out a routine suitable for our operation. Connie and I worked together on it and had a certain amount of success.
That particular summer, she had gone on to other occupations. I was using a schedule that coordinated the fertility cycles of the cows, but required intensive observation. Specifically, I’d watch the animals for a half hour at dawn and again at dusk for 10 consecutive days. It was hot weather, but both times were not at all unpleasant.
Each morning as I’d sit watching for activity, I’d notice an older man in a pickup truck with a bale spike in the back. He’d drive past on the road and we’d wave. He would go somewhere, pick up a single big bale of prairie hay on the spike and wave on his way back. I didn’t know who he was, where he was getting the hay or where he took it every morning.
One morning my cows were grazing near the road. Instead of driving the extra half mile to the pasture gate and back, I parked on the road and sat on the hood of the pickup. The old man drove past on schedule and we waved. But on his way back he stopped, parked behind me and came over to visit. We remarked on the beautiful morning and he made a couple of observations about my cattle.
Then he asked a question that wasn’t really a question: “Don’t you feel sorry for folks that live in town and don’t get to do things like this?”
THAT was it, I realized. We both were out there, doing jobs that we could have gotten somebody else to do. But then, we’d be missing out on the fun of it. We wouldn’t have the excuse to get out at dawn and enjoy the cool beauty of a summer sunrise. We do it because we love it. See you down the road.
Author and columnist Don Coldsmith lives in Emporia.