Life On A Ranch
It’s been a cool and fairly rainy September. It seems like September
is often just a continuation of a hot August, but this year it’s
actually felt like fall, and I have no complaints. I’ve been more than
happy to welcome cooler days and chilly nights.
Since Bill’s service on the 12th, Buck and I have both been struck by
how time continues to pass and, truly, waits for no one. While our
personal life seemed to be put on hold for a time, the rest of life
kept clipping right along, and our regularly scheduled obligations
piled themselves right up. The past couple of weeks, we’ve had no
choice but to jump back in and get to it.
The kids have stayed busy with sports. Cooper is already over halfway
through his last middle school football season. Their team seems to be
on the smaller side this year, and they face some challenges when they
meet teams whose boys have hit their growth spurts a little earlier
than they have, but they’re staying positive, working hard and it’s
fun to see them improving as they do.
Katelyn is having a great cross-country season and continues to run a
lil’ faster and a lil’ stronger every week. Watching her run has been
one of my favorite parts of watching our kids compete in athletics.
There's something incredible about seeing her push through challenging
courses, power through when she gets tired and being able to find
another gear when it looks like she shouldn’t have one left. Buck and
I are both inspired every time we watch her race.
In addition to running, she’s been tackling a lot of senior
milestones. This past week was filled with all things Homecoming,
including being on the court and going to the dance last night. Then
today, after being rained out on two previous attempts, our friend and
photographer, Charity, took her senior pictures. It was really fun to
take her to a few of her favorite places and capture this season of
her life. It literally seems like yesterday that we were taking Lucy’s
senior pictures, and now here we are doing it again. We’re planning to
check out a couple of colleges in the next month or so, and I won’t
tell you yet, but I think I have a pretty good idea where she’s going
to end up.
Buck, meanwhile, has been busy with fall planting, and we’re also
getting ready to wean calves this coming week.
Speaking of calves—but not the big, wean-able kind—we have a small
group of fall calvers, and two of them have been grazing in the
pasture outside our kitchen window. I really, really love having cows
by our house. I love watching them and “getting to know them,” while I
work in the kitchen or out in the yard.
We’d been anticipating those cows calving for a couple of weeks,
knowing they’d be dropping calves any day. Well, a few days ago, after
I got home from a brisk morning walk with my friend and neighbor
Emily, one of the cows had not one, but two calves—a red one and a
yellow one!
The cow really only loved the yellow one, and she didn’t need to raise
two anyway, so luckily we have a teacher friend we knew wanted a
bottle calf. I planned to meet her at the house after school, but when
I went out to the corral to get the calf, it was missing! The tiny
little stinker had slipped through the fence. Thankfully, Cooper
helped me find her, curled up in a little ball in the regrowth of the
alfalfa field. We helped her get a good drink before loading her up
in Tricia’s backseat with her very excited daughter, Layla.
Then, the very next day, another fall calver (not one of the cows by
the house) calved, too. And guess how many she had? Not one, but two!
Two sets of twins in two days! That mama cow loved both calves and
will have plenty of milk to raise them, although she was extra good at
keeping them hidden the first couple of days. One afternoon we found
ourselves in quite a kerfuffle (definition of kerfuffle in case you
need it= a commotion or fuss!) trying to find them. She never joined
our kerfuffle, of course, because she knew exactly where they were
hiding the whole time.
The new calves have brought a lot of joy to our lives this past week.
It’s kind of fun to have some fall calvers and a little fresh new life
in the fall instead of only in the spring. And I have to say, it’s
hard not to love September calving weather compared to March!
The other little life that has brought us a lot of joy this past month
is our puppy, Tink. She’s definitely interested in cows and will be
ready to learn to work before too long, but for now she’s incredibly
sweet and playful—without being so wild that she won’t settle down.
And to top it off, I think she’s brilliant. She has learned faster
than any puppy I can remember having, and that includes a lot of
working dogs we’ve had over the years.
Cooper and I recently tried to count them all up and eventually lost
track. In Bill’s life sketch that I shared last week, I mentioned that
he had a best dog, Duke. I don’t know if Buck would claim one dog as
his “best,” but I do know that when our dog Scooter died, it took
about a year before Buck stopped looking for him while he was working.
He was so used to having Scooter’s help and always knew he’d be right
where he needed him.
And, in case you haven’t been reading this column since the Scooter
years, he also survived a really awful wolf attack, something not a
lot of dogs ever have to experience!
I don’t know if Tink will go down in the history books as the best
one. I mean, she has a lot of competition for that title. But there is
something really special about her, and part of that is the timing of
when her bubbly-little-self showed up in our lives. She came right on
time.
So, that’s where we are as we kick off October —football, cross
country, senior-year milestones, planting, new calves and wean-able
calves, and one very entertaining little puppy mixed in. Life feels
full again, which I suppose is exactly what it’s supposed to do. For
now, we’ll try to keep up with it all and enjoy the good parts as they
come, right out here in Union County! -Chelsea
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