One of the things I love is the quiet, calm, wordless world of handling our beautiful cattle. I experience this sometimes poking along with a bunch of cows strung out along a trail, taking their time as they slowly make their way from one part of the range to another. A munch here, a munch there, a swish of tail, a swing of a cow's long-horned head looking back to make sure her calf is still just a few animals behind and then moving on through the brush, across a creek, or side-hilling a slope beneath stair-stepped rims.
Our lives became more complicated when Mike took on the grazing management of 30,000 acres of Zumwalt Prairie Preserve a few years ago. I've learned a lot watching him consider the intersection of millennia of past tradition and mere decades of modern demands in this landscape.
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| Mike on the Zumwalt |
As a herder and a pastoralist for nearly all of his adult life, the care and tending of animals is in his blood. As a rangeland ecologist, he is deeply attentive to the relationships between plants, animals and their environment. And perhaps most importantly, he approaches this blending of culture and science as a precious and imperfect unfolding, the way-finding of story. What do we know? What do we see? What are we telling each other? Are we listening?
Going forward with the ranch sometimes feels like tiptoeing across a bog. You have to keep moving or you will sink into the muck, so you pick a set of hummocks and you go for it. Guessing how much force you need to leap from one mound to the next, trying to land as delicately as you can in case your perch proves too soft and you need to keep going, getting just enough purchase to launch again. A wobbly hopscotch through an unknown mire where you can see the solid ground you're aiming for on the other side. But who knows, will it really be as solid as you think?
As we juggle five or more grazing leases of our own every year, we must consider each property's needs and provisions; its owners, fences, waters, forages and logistics. Some with cabins and barns and corrals and water systems and roads to maintain. Some with nothing but a weak fence and difficult neighbors.
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| Trailing to fall pasture on the prairie |
I'm challenged to communicate how much it means to have quiet help in this work. Just the other day as Mike, Dave and I gathered and sorted some of our beautiful two-year old steers for harvesting, the fellowship of good help washed over me in a moment of joy and wonder. Every part, from bringing the steers off the hillside and through the gate onto the road, turning them into the corrals, sorting them on horseback and on foot, loading them into the trailers, was done quietly with a firm and gentle nature.
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| Dave builds a loop at branding time |
We were aware of the alternatives. We've all been part of loud, frantic scenes of barking dogs, yelling people, roaring four-wheelers, bellering cattle, charging horses. Ramming and jamming. Dogging 'em. Git 'er done.
If heaven is a transcendent intersection between the terrestrial world and the unknown, with the possibility of rebirth at the cusp of uncertainty and danger, it includes quiet moments of grace like these. A few souls, gathered together, doing as best they can for one another, reconciling life and death, being willing to change and knowing circumstances might not be this way tomorrow or next year or a million years from now.
And what can I say to Dave? Stepping up to help us as a day-rider, when once again his peaceful and competent approach aligns with ours like the rivulets of a stream joining together to flow gently over an obstacle in their path, and quietly carrying on. Just carrying on.
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| Andi tallies |
Mostly I just say, "Thanks Dave." And he nods and we go on with our work. But as time goes on I'm realizing that the beauty of this effort needs to be acknowledged with more words. And I try to remember each time we receive help in this way; whether it's one person or a group of people; whether gathering, trailing, branding or hauling; I try to remember to say what I mean, "Thank you for helping us. Thank you for being safe and for treating the animals with respect and care."
From Sara at Magpie Ranch, Home of Bunchgrass Beef
