WHY DID I HAVE TO BE THE RANCHER?

       

 Written June 2016     Delaying the start of his day and laying in bed on an early summer morning, I watched Doug staring up at the ceiling and mumbling,  “Where did this all start?  Why did I have to be the rancher?”  I had to giggle because ever since I met Doug he has told me that ranching was the only thing he ever wanted to do, for as long as he could remember.  “It began before you were born”, I replied.  “Someone had to do it, and the Lord said, ‘I’ll give it to Doug’.

    His question is a good one.  Why did he have to be the rancher?  Running a ranch may seem quite the romantic life…. rising early, working late into the evening.  Mornings are fresh and robust; evenings rosy and cool. The romance, however, is most felt in the hangover the rancher experiences at the end of the day, sitting on the back porch swing, not being able to move from that spot as he looks out over the fields and cattle. All summer Doug daydreams and longs for winter. “Winter”, says Doug, “is the best time of year.”  Yes, that time of year where the cattle can’t feed on grass, so the ranch man daily feeds hundreds of head in our subzero southeastern Idaho climate, often accompanied by blowing snow and rain. So restful. As Doug chops firewood several times a day and brings it in to fuel up the basement stove that heats our home, it’s a good time to remind him that this is his favorite time of year.

       But right now it’s summer. I watch my rancher spend the better part of his strength tending hundreds of acres of grass, hay and oats.  Watering: (moving pipe, fixing pipe, irrigating, digging and maintaining ditches, burying pipe in new trenches)  Haying: (swathing, raking, baling, moving, stacking)   After watching Doug do this our first summer together, I told Doug that he was quite the farmer.  “I am NOT a farmer,” he instructed.

 “ I’m a rancher.”

     Springtime….that time of refreshing, that growing promise of rebirth and renewal, that time of softening breezes and melting of snows and hard ground. This is when Doug begins his mornings staring up at the ceiling and giving off deep sighs.  I look at those eyes, fringed with blond lashes and two sprung pieces of hair from his brows and ask, “What you thinking about?”  Another deep sigh, “ I can feel it coming”, he replies.  Because spring is coming, and so is fencing  (miles of it, building and mending) and ditch culverts, and wheel lines, and ditch burning, and preparing fields, and planting fields, and spraying weeds, and clearing fallen trees on range land, and sorting and moving cattle after branding them.  And then there’s calving, beginning in late winter and on through March and April. Now there’s something romantic. To witness the miracle of new birth and tender care of mama’s tongue on wobbly – legged baby as it finds it’s way to her ready milk. Oh those sweet big brown trusting eyes! While I relish in wonderment, my ranch man becomes “Doc”. The “nursery” isn’t far: just outside our family room windows, back of the house.  A scope is handy to spy those mothers who like to hug the far fence line in preparation to calve. “This is the time of year when my brain becomes scrambled,” Doug explains, “ I’m just waiting to see what kind of wrecks we’re going to get into this year.”  I want to sooth and smooth Doug’s feathers, but I know that this crop of new calves is really where we expect to raise cash for living expenses.  Growing hundreds of “yearling” cattle essentially allows Doug to pay back our ranch expenses and loans.   So being “Doc” on this ranch means watching the calving progress with a hawk’s eye and taking care of business when the calf is not forthcoming.  Doc and mama get down to that business in the barn with the calf puller. The rancher really is a doctor.

     Now, on any ordinary day, any time of year, just as the rancher gets on his merry way with a task in mind, sure as shootin’ something will combine to prevent him from doing it.  Rain falls on his newly cut hay, bull’s break down the fence, the horses are seen running up the road to Grace, the pipe mover doesn’t show, the dog comes to the porch with a snout full of porcupine quills, the tire is flat and now you gotta run to town to fix it, there’s no water in the ditch and it’s time to use it, the battery in the truck is dead, grandma gets sick, or the swather breaks apart just as you begin to cut the first crop of hay.

      That is what happened this June, when Doug began cutting his first section of high and ready hay.  As he looked the swather over, he had a feeling its days had come to an end. The mournful sight of giant cracks and  broken pieces of metal lying in the field looked ready for the scrap yard. Four precious days were spent looking for another swather, or at least one that could be used for salvage parts.  In this time frame, a revelation slowly dawned in Doug.  The swathers he could afford were junk themselves; as revelations go, this was a bitter one.  He spent another day patiently and precisely drawing a pattern from a gaping hole in the broken down swather and took it to Soda Springs to have a metal piece cut.  Finally, with welder, grinder, some bolts and the specially cut piece of metal, Doug repaired and resurrected the old thing within 7 days time.  Cost for the repairs? Ninety-five dollars.

    The rancher can raise the dead…or at least get something up and running that appeared ready for the grave.

     The man who runs our ranch must have a keen eye on the financial purse, the cattle futures and the debt he must repay each year from his “revolving” loans.  For a business that doesn’t bring in a lot of profit, the cost of keeping it going is staggering, and frightening.  I have heard Doug sigh and whisper to the ceiling as he stares at it from his bed on one of those early “judgment day” mornings:  “I’m going to borrow close to half a million dollars.”

      This ain’t no virtual ranch. This is the real ranch.  For the rancher to come face to face with his responsibilities and obligations year after year, in high times or low, begs the question Doug asked the ceiling in the first place, “Why did I have to be the rancher?” 

      Well, I believe there are several possible answers: 1. You are stupid, 2. You are extremely smart, 3. You are insane, 4. You walk with God.  Of the four possible answers, I believe that 2,3,and 4 apply to my rancher.  Watching him these past six years since I married him, I have seen some real brilliance, also some real insanity, but most definitely I have been eye witness to the “daily walk” with God.  There exists on this ranch an utter dependence from a divine source, and a sensitive acknowledgment of blessings expected and received.  No man could have the courage to move his feet, anyway certainly not my man, in these daily propositions without first knowing that he is in partnership with God, our father. 

     Before I married Doug, I came face to face with the real ranch, the real man and the real prospects I would face. As I looked around at the beauty of the valley, and felt the peacefulness down deep in my bones, I had to wonder if it all measured up to the sacrifice required. I doubted it. But then I asked myself: “Isn’t everyone required to work steadily in this life?  Are we not all presented with challenges, no matter what we choose to work at for our daily bread? Is not each of us given the privilege to do as our desires dictate, and make a success as we call on help from our maker?  Cannot the “finger of God” touch and consecrate the effort and care of any person?

     Doug introduced me to that view of fields and mountains.  Then he built me a porch.  On that porch is a swing built for two where we sit in the summer evenings of cool and twilight.  He told me about people he has met from all over the world who have paid good money to come and experience a cowboy’s life for a week or two of refreshment.  I have since talked with some of those unfortunate people.  They may venture here for a prized glimpse, but I live here to see the “million dollar view” before my eyes every day.  Maybe it’s a view only a rancher can truly understand.  And his wife.