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The day before the storm was spent lining up the proverbial ducks.
The vehicle was fueled, extended cords were coiled and suspended, and a windbreak was installed to protect the cows from the wind. The tractor block heater was hooked up and double checked again. Bales of hay and straw were moved for easier access and some were strategically placed to block the wind and prevent drift.
The next morning, the conditions were just as the weather forecast predicted. After the children crouched down to watch cartoons, they headed for the cow.
At the family’s feed yard, her phone rang, but she barely opened the text. After college, she joined her family’s cattle feeding business with her father and this day was a long day in her yard. The drift was very deep and covered the pipe pen fence. Miles of bunks had to be dug out and a path to the water had to be made. She was tired to the bone.
The message sent to her was a post from a Denver television station. She saw video footage of her back turning to the wind in a cow yard and her face and body caked in snow.Her comments were what she expected and she scrolled I knew I shouldn’t.
“These ranchers should be ashamed of themselves for not taking care of these poor cows.”
“If this doesn’t prove that ranchers hate animals, I don’t know.”
“The poor babies are so cold! They should be in the barn!
She sighed and started typing her comment. Snow on cows’ backs shows that their body heat is being used and not escaping. A snow-covered back equals a warm cow. It may or may not be safe, feasible, or impossible to put hundreds of cows in a barn and keep them from getting sick at great expense or in a crowded environment. I have. She stopped, remembered that there were no keyboard warriors out there interested in the truth, put her phone at her side, and made another trip to the coffee pot.
A sheriff’s pickup truck arrives at his house and he opens the door as the young sheriff arrives in the snow. A cow truck was running off the road and they wanted him to help.
Within minutes, he and his sons were rolling out of the yard with trailers, pens and chutes to reload the cattle and pull the rig out of the ditch.
The rancher quietly and quickly unloaded the cow into the corral, deftly returned it to the chute, loaded it onto a waiting trailer, and headed for its destination. The sheriff, a former ranch kid, said the farming community needed work like this, donating children’s Christmas toys, monitoring vicious activity on light travel back roads, and the warm handmade quilts he used. I knew I could expect to wrap up cold and scared kids after a car accident.
Not far from there, my wife’s phone rang, letting her know that her husband had finally returned home. Because of their proximity to the interstate and his ability to operate a tractor, it was he who often called travelers when they were stranded. I was pulling it out.
He took the stranger behind him and stomped his boots through the door. A stranded traveler can’t go any further with road closures and there are no hotels along this part of eastern Colorado. While I was waiting for dinner, I asked if I would like to decorate the sugar cookies with them.
Agriculture is an industry with a lot of good people. Aside from a few bad players, the ag community works hard to manage land and shares. They run multi-million dollar businesses and may wear dirty shirts, but they are economists, managers, scientists, veterinarians, nutritionists, soil scientists, political lobbyists, philanthropists. I have to.
Often they do all the work before lunch. Agriculture can rely on consumers to be experts in their field and to be custodians of livestock, open spaces, wild places, habitats, communities and environments. After all, it’s all in the work of the day.
— Rachel Gabel writes about farming and rural issues. She is Associate Editor of She The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agricultural publication.
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