Flying Across The Frozen Manure

Few people are closer to the primordial life forces than the rancher: the farmer is close on his heels, but his life’s work is without the blood letting and occasional savagery of the rancher. The farmer in his slow idyllic life pursues his quest to feed tens of thousands with the fruit of his labors, while watching the ebb and flow of seasons and the gentle life forces interacting with soil, sun, and water. Once and awhile, the seasons and the weather act in concert to deceive the farmer and he can be destroyed, but that is the nature of this game we play called life.

This otherwise gentleness of the farmer and his trade is the foundation for civilization and allows for our citizens to avoid knowing the true sanguinary nature of the men who produce those steaks and roasts we purchase in sanitized cellophane. Not that I look down upon these men whose lives are so far removed from the everyday experience of regular people. I admire them and their skills; if it were not for greed, ambition, and vanity, I would still be among them.

In the winters of the early sixties, I was still just a boy; however, working alongside men and milking cows everyday begins to build a strength in character and body that will stay with you the rest of your life. In a few years, I would be tested in boxing, wrestling, and martial arts and my opponents would make remarks that grabbing a hold of me was like grabbing a buzz saw or a bear. They couldn’t understand the difference, after all they worked out on the weights and did all the strength building exercises and I did almost none of the customary work out programs: the truth is that all that stuff doesn’t compare to the strength needed to stack two thousand bales of hay in a day and working daily past the point of exhaustion until it just is a daily exercise.

It was a world of men, for there were few women who could feed three hundred head of cattle in three foot of snow by throwing bales off a bob sleigh; actually, I never saw one that could do the hard work of the cowboy. Sure the horseback work is fun and some women can actually throw a rope and many of them can ride well; but tell me what happens when it is time to rope a 1800 pound range bull with busted up rooten hooves or hooves that are too long and the only things that have spooked him in the past has been mountain lions and timber wolves.

That is cowboy work that takes more than a $600 hat and a $2500 saddle. You must first rope the bull and snub him to a tree while remembering that he may decide to run off with you and your horse if you don’t think ahead and he wont care if your horse is on his feet or being dragged. You must then put another rope around his shoulders and with two or three half hitches around his lungs. At this point you stand behind the bull and wrap the rope around your back, every time the bull exhales, you tighten the rope so that he can’t take in as much air has he just exhaled. Eventually, the bull begins to suffocate and collapses. Now you must tie the left front to the left hind and the right front to the right hind. Be quick and careful, for he can kick quicker than the eye can see and those sharp cloven hooves not only will slice you open like a dull ax, they will also break your arm like a chicken leg.

Once the bull is thrown and tied, the actual work can begin; now, you must carve away rotten portions of hoof and treat the infected areas with iodine or copper sulphate. If he needs shoes, pick out some that are fairly close and adjust them so that you can nail them on without hurting him. These are half shoes or oxen shoes, if a bull needs them all around, he will have eight nailed on when you are done. The usually have eight nail holes for #3 or #3.5 race horse nails, the wall is thin like a race hose, so it takes a steady hand and a sure eye. All this effort so that a bull wont get sore footed and sluggish about visiting all his lonely girl friends, everyone knows it is hard to work with sore feet.

If the bulls do their work, cows will start calving in January and February and continue into spring; however, nature’s seasons can be fickle and in the Far North, every variation in the weather pattern is multiplied exponentially. When the temperatures drop to forty below and your cows are calving, there is desperation in the air.

Cows are not the most intelligent animals; I think the early stock men saw the wisdom in having stupid cattle, for if they knew when they were being shipped to slaughter there would be a lot more revolts. Trust me, cattle revolts can be dangerous and down right revolting.

When it is 40 below, for some unfathonable reason some cows will wander off on their own to calve and if they get in trouble no one knows until it is too late: the best cows will suddenly reappear with a healthy calf before you knew she was missing. Sometimes, the calf will be eaten by coyotes as it is being born, something that would be impossible if the cow stayed within the protection of the herd. Occasionally, the calf will be in a bad position and require a cowboy to reposition the calf, often both the cow and calf can be saved by pushing the calf back-in and starting over. Once in a while, the cow will break her pelvis and if the calf isn’t adopted by another cow it will die. These are a few of the problems that are intensified when you are playing nurse maid and social services big brother to several hundred cows and the temperature drops to 40 below.

Once I was working with a Norwegian named Ray, he was an artist with an ax and didn’t seem to feel the cold like normal people: a good cowboy to work with when the temperature drops. I had just delivered a healthy smoke gray half Charlois calf from an Angus heifer, she had split her pelvis for the effort and had had the biscuit. I dried him with a burlap feed sack and managed to milk some colostrum from the cow into a couple of milk bottles I had under my shirt, before I sent her on to the meadows in the high country.

The calf was strong and wanted to live, but I needed a cow that would take him. There are some cows that don’t care and will let three or four calves suck, but there are no guarantees and a cow might just kick the calf’s brains out.

I carried the calf over to Ray, he had been trying to get a calf to stand and suck. He had warmed it up in the calving shed, but it was just too weak to survive and it died while Ray was holding it up under the old Hereford cow. He saw my calf and asked if he was an orphan. “He’s an orphan and he’s hungry,” I said.

“Get him over here, this old cow is leaking milk everywhere,” Ray said, with relief in his voice.

As soon as the little fellow reached up to a teat and tugged on it the cow sent him flying across the ice and frozen manure. It looked like this old cow wanted her calf and only her calf. Ray looked at me and said, “skin her calf”.

I looked at him in disbelief, “you want it case skinned?” (Like a fur bearing animal in a tube like shape)

“Hell no, skin it like you would a steer or a horse,” Ray didn’t have much patience and he was running out of it with me. I should be happy that he acknowledged my skinning abilities, but under similar circumstances, I might ask the same question again.

Ray picked up the gray calf and was holding it while I spent a few minutes to skin the dead Hereford calf. He told me to cut some holes in the hide under the neck, chest, and belly area of the hide. Then I held the calf while he put the hide over the gray calf and laced it on with sisal twine. This time, the calf walked up and started nursing without getting kicked through the goal post of life.

Ray kept an eye on the calf and cut away a little more of its disguise each day until the calf was accepted by the cow.

In this last presidential election, Barack Obama portrayed himself as an altruistic, post racial man who was going to heal the country’s wounds and bring the country together while leading us into a new era of prosperity. Slowly and deliberately, Obama has been exposing his true Socialist ideology and lack of love for the country that most Americans possess. Like the smoke gray calf, he was able to fool the electorate and reach up for the overflowing teat that is America: unlike the ranch, America and the international stage is completely different, the gray calf only had to enjoy life and grow up to be 600 to 800 pounds, a job he took on with delight for his short stay here on earth.

A President has much higher expectations placed on him. He may view he job as a Hedonist gray calf, thinking the job means play, eat, and drink, but the lack of integrity becomes obvious for a president, even more obvious when the lifestyle of the Hedonist is in sharp contrast to the current lifestyle of the public.

Yes America was fooled by the ruse; unfortunately, this mistake will last for four years. Although, America will be displaying its disgust in a few weeks with a complete repudiation of the Democrat Party and its sin of perpetuating the Myth of Obama on America. Like the gray calf in reverse, Obama is now about to feel that same rejection the gray calf felt as it flew across the ice and frozen manure.