Home on the Range with Bunchgrass Beef: September 2020

It's Raining

I heard it from the kitchen this morning when I was up making coffee in the dark and I opened a window and stuck my hand out to be sure. A few months ago the sun would have been up hours ago. We have passed the equinox. Our days are shrinking while our nights grow longer. We feel it in our bones.

Fall range, smoke approaching

Earlier this month the cows and calves made their last move on the prairie, from summer to fall pasture. I didn't even spend one day helping trail. I never even went one time all summer to see them. It makes me feel strange and disconnected from my world. I have spent most of my time since March indoors, in a virtual world, assisting hundreds of very small businesses to try to keep going, to pay their bills, to juggle their own versions of family, health, finances. This is the face of the pandemic in rural, where nearly half of people working have created a business to employ themselves. Like us, many have both businesses and jobs. It just happens that my job is helping businesses and nonprofits in a three county region. The hardest day so far was when a business owner on the other end of the phone told me I was kind. After she hung up, I cried.

Summer pond

I'm going backwards in this story. Starting now in the time of harvest, of the ending of life for our beautiful steers. The flurry of communication, arranging a freezer trailer, mobile harvest services, the local meat processor, customers and invoicing. All leading to delivery day and the culmination of a year's work to raise healthy meat and feed people. I'm tired this morning. But I know in a few days I will see the faces of people who buy our steers, I will hear their lovely voices and their words of encouragement and appreciation. And they will help carry us forward so we can leave behind some of this uncertainty and toil with a renewed connection to others, people we rarely see and hardly know who remind us we are more alike than we are different.

Black bull in reinforced corral

Summer had its challenges, in particular the renegade behavior of certain steers and bulls. We've not really had this problem before and I hope it will be a long time before we do again. It started in June in the canyon when one of our big steers decided he didn't want to wait in the corral for his trailer ride to summer pasture near the Wallowa Mountains. The corrals are tall, but that didn't stop him from trying and his weight made short order of the top two rails, creating a nice hole for all the other steers to follow. He did this twice. The second time after we made repairs, which were then followed with serious corral rebuilding (not on the schedule of course). Then it was the bulls out in the valley. They were so docile and manageable when we brought them home to await their trip to the cow herd out on the prairie. That was before they got wind of some neighbor's heifers a half mile away. Three escapes and three corral/fence repairs later, we were exhausted and they were contained and soon with their own cows on the summer range. All was well for about a month, until someone brought cattle onto the neighboring range and our bulls went awol. More wrangling and putting back in the right place ensued, until one day we got a call, "I roped your bull and have him in my trailer and I'll be at your house in twenty minutes." Black bull came home and was sold shortly thereafter. He had been busy. Whew, everyone behaved after that.

Cows and calves arrive on the prairie

Trailing out of the canyon in June went smoothly. It takes us three days on horseback. One cow calved the day before we started on the trail. She and her tiny calf made it up into the breaks, but then the calf petered out so we had to leave them behind in the timber. Two weeks later, she showed up in our herd after finding her way on her own. Good cow.

Good help from neighbors and friends in May

Branding is a traditional gathering time where friends and neighbors pitch in to help. On big ranches that means lots of people, horses, kids, dogs, food and storytelling. On little ranches like ours, it's a smaller more intimate group, and this year with Covid-19, we kept it even smaller. It was kind of wierd, with changes like an outdoor handwashing station, not having people go in the house without a mask, no hugs or handshakes and distancing when possible.

Handy for washing up

There were still plenty of fun and familiar moments. Like kids getting in on the action, and meeting new babies for the first time.

Little Kit with his dad Jordan

Boys with ropes

We are so thankful to have help from this kind, loving, respectful, capable, and accepting group.

Before branding, Mike and I spent a couple days in the canyon gathering cattle and getting everything ready. I cherish these times when it is just the two of us, riding together, mostly agreeing and sometimes disagreeing on how to get the job done. You never know exactly where the cattle will be, scattered in little groups in the rugged terrain. The days heat up quickly, it's hard to get them to move if the sun is too high. After wintering together, it's a mixed herd with cows and calves, yearlings, and two-year olds. The younger cattle are like teenagers, goofy, impulsive, and athletic, deciding to cavort off in the wrong direction. While the calves tire more easily and a few of the old cows will try to sneak off the trail and hide in a shady draw.

Climbing up off the river bar

Sara trailing through Division Creek

So that's where we left spring behind and launched into a summer that brought us to autumn. What a lot of changes we've seen since then. At a time when the stress levels of people are high, and our emotional reserves are low, I'm thankful we can be with animals who live their lives at a slower pace. They experience their own challenges of daily life, finding their place within their social structures, navigating the terrain, staying vigilant of predators, finding resources of food and water during a time of climate change. But these challenges feel less complicated, and more manageable without the anxiety wrought by polarized and unhelpful media and politics. And I remember the voice of my old dear friend describing the effort and uncertainty of giving birth, "Ride the waves," she said. And I feel myself facing a wave, being lifted, and carried down the other side.