Pink Perspect-acles

I write most of these posts in my head, riding the four wheeler behind whatever bunch of cows we're moving that day.  The thoughts usually hang there for a long time, being "edited" while I do the dishes or fold laundry or drive to town.  Sometimes I get as far as a "draft" here on Blogger and let it sit for days. Sometimes I dump the post because it's too much of something...self-righteous, long, boring, political, personal.  Or I simply lose interest in that thought and move on to something different.  

Like football.  

Or "lime JELL-O with tuna" recipes. (Was that not the stuff nightmares are made of, or WHAT?!)

Today I'm going to drag my little soapbox out, though, shakily climb up, and speak bravely for a few minutes while the coffee's still powering the neurons in my brain.  

Brace yourself.

Recently, it was indicated that I grew up with a "rosy experience" in ranching that may be a bit unrealistic about today's real life agri-business.  

You can imagine I chewed on THAT for quite a while on the four wheeler.  

And not in anger, either.  (Although at first there was a little personal indignation...)

I hadn't ever really considered that having a good attitude about living on a ranch would be thought of as unrealistic! 

You see, I grew up on a little ranch across the county in the 1970's and 80's; perhaps the hardest time to be in agriculture since the 1930's.  We didn't have hired men; it was our family and the neighbors who helped with the big jobs like branding and shipping.  There weren't the brilliant labor saving tools like hydraulic bale beds or cake feeders that worked with levers from inside the pickup like we have now.  For example, to load cake, we had to shovel it on to an auger that dropped it in the pickup box; to feed it, we then shoveled it out of the pickup box to the cows.  Financially, agriculture was in a crash with producers that had borrowed too much money from credit lenders that went under, prices for the products (cows and grain, cotton, etc.) tanked, inflation was insane throughout the country.  It was a desperate time.  

My dad finally left the ranch for many weeks out of the year driving a cattle truck to make enough money for us to survive without selling all our cattle.  Mom, Gramps and us kids took care of the cows and held things together as well as we could while he was gone. 

This is the condensed version, of course.

It wasn't "rosy" by any stretch of the imagination. 

 

Interestingly, though, I grew up loving the ranching lifestyle.

 

My Dad and Mom never expressed resentment over having to get up to check heifers at night during calving, feed the cows during those incredible blizzards of 1977-78 with minimal resources (and every other winter), check water and fix fence on crazy hot days.  They certainly worried, paced as the lightening crackled over the dry prairie in the summer, prayed as they tried to get through snow drifts or gumbo mud, agonized over the red in the ledger, and discussed tough times with the neighbors.  I know there was despair, depression, awfulness that wasn't made evident to us kids at the time, but they never once cussed or blamed the ranch for any of their struggles. 

What we DID get from them was delight every spring over the baby calves and mama cows. (Both my parents chuckled over those babies.) We got to keep the bum calves we managed to save and raise them as our own cows, experiencing the joys, heartbreak, and hard decisions of "management".  We each got our own brand for our animals. (My folks gave me the OC brand when I was three. It's almost like another set of initials, it's that personal.) We got to be part of the crew at branding and other exciting events! (It wasn't "work" for us kids.  The neighbors came!  Stories were told over the breakfast table...BETTER stories were told at the corral or in the pasture.)  We helped feed the crews, trying like everything to make sure they ate too much good food, hospitality being a point of pride.  The same kind of pride that came from seeing the calves we'd worked so hard over all summer weighing up nicely in the fall when we shipped them.  (I know they weren't huge, but they were always healthy.) 

It wasn't rosy by conventional terms.  But it was real.  And my folks, grandparents, and neighbors gave us a good attitude toward the work we had to do, the hope that the next year would be better (or just as good), and an appreciation for the lifestyle and people doing it.  

It's certainly not the life for everyone. 

I know that. 

It's scary and hard, very uncertain, physically demanding to the point of breaking.  But if it's the life for you, then you'll see the good things in it.  I think that's why I see the personality in the cows and don't mind feeding or working them in the crazy Montana weather.  I like that my kids look at what we're doing and say to friends that come to visit, "We're raising your hamburger!"  I love being able to work with my family and neighbors at something that really does matter. I admire and respect the people who passed that down to us, and want to make them proud, too. 

 

Just because it's hard, doesn't mean it's not good. 

Other people make their living doing hard things, too.  (MOST people make their living doing hard things, truth be known.)  

It's not a weakness to have a sense of humor and hope about what you do, to find little things to appreciate while you're doing it.  It doesn't make you less serious about your life's work to laugh about it once in a while, or delight in certain aspects of it.  There's no shame in being thrilled that your heifer is bred.  It's okay to cry happy tears over the last truckload of grain finally in the bin. It may even be healthy to go fishing once in a while, so you're refreshed and ready to go round and round in the tractor for another 10 days or fix 5 miles of fence.  

(These are revolutionary words and I should probably end the diatribe before I get all crazy and start talking about inviting neighbors over for a fiesta once a year in May...)  

Maybe I was raised with (and still maintain) a rosy ranching experience.  

Maybe not everyone in this business was.

And that's okay.

We all get to choose our own way of thinking, our own approach to life's challenges.  

I guess mine is tinted pink.