Sorting

Today was one of the hardest days of the year for me.
It's one of many because as the writer of the Momastery blog, Glennon Melton, explains, there are some people who are just "much-y".  We feel happy too "much-y", we feel worry too "much-y", we feel sadness too "much-y".
I think it's wiring.

Other hard days include:
Sending my kids to school in August. (I only had them for 3 months! I want more time!)
The last day it's humanely possible to fly fish in the year.
Any day I have to go to the dentist.
Most holidays. (Oh, the PRESSURE...)
And the day we sort bred heifers for sale.

Today we sorted bred heifers, choosing which ones to sell and which ones to keep to calve out in March.

Someone else is going to calve 60 of our girls this spring and the thought of it nearly puts me down.

I KNOW we can't keep them all! I know this. We don't have the time, man-power or resources (feed and pasture) to calve and keep them. And cows are worth so much this fall....selling the bred heifers at these prices is fiscally brilliant.

But....
it's not just THIS year that the sort and sale affects.
As we go through these girls and cut numbers "bye" or "catch", I see ten years of ranching in each of them.
Ten years of production.
Ten years of calvings, brandings, vaccinatings, shippings, winter feedings.
In farming, it's year to year.  You don't plant this year?  You can plant next year. It's a short term decision.
In ranching, with cows, each sale or retention essentially affects 10 years. Theoretically, each of these heifers could produce calves for 10 years.  Probably there would be 80 percent of them that would do so, with good management of bulls and nutrition.

So as I stand at the gate, watching the "bye" girls trot past, I see 10 years in each of them.
I always, always, ALWAYS fear we're cutting too deep.
One year that Langs Fork Inc. decided to sell extra bred heifers in order to save resources during a bad winter (smart!), I ended up crying while pleading with my father-in-law not to sell so many.
I was worried that in a few years our numbers would be too low, and besides, they were beautiful heifers. Beautiful young cows!
The truth of the matter is that our numbers could have been too low due to death loss because there wasn't enough feed for all the cows. Or to the loss of calves because we couldn't keep up with the babies in the storms that would have died to exposure.
It was absolutely the right thing to do.
I cried for two days, in the shower, sad at the sale of those heifers.

Now I know that it's just my weakness.
I almost can't bear to part with bred heifers.
There's so much hope with each of these girls! I can't stand the thought that someone else will calve them out in March!
Sentimentality is a rotten trait for anyone in ranching to have, and I know this to the core.  I appreciate there are men who make these decisions that I just need to show up in the corral to implement, because I'm not to be trusted with the bred heifers.
I'd keep them all.

(In fact, I was seriously contemplating using the money from my two steer calves this fall to buy 007's bred heifer calf because I've been watching her heifers for years...they're always nice and they're always bred when we preg test.  But she was one of the keepers so that's good.  We'll use the money for a new couch, instead.)

I'm comforted by the fact that Daisy's heifer, Violet, will be here this spring and is due to have a bull calf! Along with 007 (Jane Bond), Daisy produces good heifers and I'm excited for Violet's calf in March.