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Hello, I don’t care much for fireworks. I don’t know if I ever really did. Seems like a lot of money to put up in smoke. And besides that, living just a couple miles out of town makes it a lot worse. You see, most cities, especially if it is dry, outlaw fireworks within the city limits. That makes a lot of sense. If you live in that city and don’t want your house burnt down. I can sympathize with that. But if you live just outside the city limits, it’s not a real good idea. We live a couple miles beyond the firewall. And it isn’t handy to...
Hello, Lynn is my brother in law. He’s getting a little long in the tooth and has been down in the dumps a little lately. That got me thinking about some of the things we’ve done together over the years. Some I can write about. Some I had better wait. I’m not sure about that statute of limitations-thing. Years ago we were looking at a barn a guy had for sale. It had to be moved. They also had a house for sale. Now this house was a big thing. And pretty new. It was huge. With a big rock fireplace and rock wall down the middle. Kind of a split-le...
Hello, We started cutting hay over the weekend. I believe we are the first ones in the field again this year. I just do it to upset Russ, one of my neighbors. The forecast is for rain later in the week. Most ranchers are going to wait until this weather “event” is past. I figure if it rains, it won’t hurt the hay. We need to rake it before we bale anyway. And when I feed in the winter, the cows eat what I put out, whether it has been rained on or not. I’ve often said that North Dakota has only two seasons. “Feeding hay season”, and “making hay...
Hello, I suppose you’ve learned over the years that I like kids and horses. I grew up in a family that liked kids and horses. We would trim horses up and go to the races in Kenmare, or the Fourth of July parade in Berthold. We went to play days in Stanley or Blaisdell. You learned to saddle up and check cows after school and to leave a horse tied up during calving. You learned that you had chores to do in the morning and in the evening. And you had chores to do tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. You learned to pull your toes b...
Hello, We branded a few days ago. Branding is one of the jobs that you kind of dread, but you kind of love. The two hardest parts of a branding bee are preparing food, and lining up the day. It begins with lining up a crew. You need several people. But not too many. And not too few. I don’t know which is worse. First off you need cowboys and cowgirls that can gather the herd and get them in the working pens. You need people that can read a cow or calf’s mind, know when to push them, and know when to ease them along. When you get them cor...
Hello, I learned many decades ago to never complain about the rain. And we’ve had our fair share of it lately. Rains for a day or two. Then dries for a day. Then rain again. Now for Memorial Day weekend it is more of the same. Writing this on Friday morning. Didn’t rain yesterday. Half inch last night and raining good this morning. Forecast is dry tomorrow. Then rain Sunday and Monday. I suppose we’ve had two to three inches past couple weeks. My son in South Dakota has had over 4 the last week. This, my friends, will make a hay crop. Grandpa u...
Hello, A lot of ranchers have gone to May calving. Calf your cows out on green grass. Like the deer and the antelope do. It will be fun they said. You won’t have to fight through the mud and the snow. It will be fun they said. Your calves won’t get scours. You won’t have wet, cold calves in the house. It will be fun they said. Last week on Tuesday it was 82 above. It was hot and windy. On Saturday it was in the low thirties and a blizzard. You couldn’t see a quarter of a mile. Cows and baby calves were bunched up along the tree rows and bel...
Hello, Shirley and I attended our oldest granddaughter’s high school graduation this past weekend. I don’t feel old enough to have a granddaughter that will be going off to college next fall. I’m sure many of you have had, or will have, that same feeling. Harding County is always about the kids. I’ve told you that before. From the local newspaper to the county fair. The kids come first. And that is the way it should be. The graduation ceremony was wonderful. Carrol Comes was the keynote speaker. She was injured in a horse wreck last spring...
Hello, Happy seis de Mayo! Seis de Mayo is the day after Cinco de Mayo. Not many people celebrate it, but I do. It is one day closer to the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale. Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. They don’t celebrate it much in Mexico. It’s a minor holiday. But here in the states, it gives you an opportunity to drink margaritas and eat heartburn food. Last year we branded on Cinco de Mayo. This year it snowed all day and by evening the ground was white. This morning, on seis de Mayo, it is 32 with a wind chill of 28. Snow is in the for...
Hello, Do you ever think about boards? There are a lot of boards. Oh, not the 2x4 or 2x6 boards. But like the barber board, the hairdresser board, the board of animal health…the list can go on forever. I didn’t realize how many boards there are until I was in the legislature. I remember Claude getting mad at me about the barber board. Claude was our hometown barber in Watford City. The barbershop was, and still is in many communities, the center of the world. You could argue politics or the best breed of cattle. You could lambaste the city cou...
Hello, We have cows. We have some good cows. We have some bad cows. Everyone that has cows has some good cows and some bad cows. Everyone wishes they had all good cows. Many ranchers strive to improve their herds to have not only all good cows, but all great cows. Our red roan cow is not a good cow. She is not even a bad cow. She is a terrible cow. She has a bad bag. She is wild. She always has a roan calf that the buyers cut back because it is small, narrow, and off color. So you wonder, why would you keep an awful cow for 12 years? It’s Evan...
Hello, We haven’t had it too bad. In fact, since we started calving, it’s been exceptionally nice. If you remember last year, April was a cold son of a gun. We were checking cows at night and grabbing any new ones and keeping them in the tack room overnight. Then in the morning, trying to get them to mother up. If you attended any cattle sales since last fall, you saw a lot of calves that had their ears froze off. And they were the lucky ones. But if you go a few miles south, it has been a trying and often times deadly spring. South Dakota and...
Hello, This past week was a harbinger of spring. Big word I know, but needed here. We had warm, breezy days. We had a night thundershower that woke me in the night and freshened the air up. I swear it made the grass start to green up in a matter of hours. As I write this, they are talking of rain or snow, beginning in a day or two. It’s springtime in the Dakotas. Nearly everyone is in the middle of calving, so I’m hoping it’s a warm, gentle rain. I know most of you that have followed my columns over the years, don’t realize that I am really...
Hello, I have one of the smartest dumb dogs in the West. Tyke. I’ve told you about him. He will chase cows. In fact he will chase them for miles, even if you don’t want him to. It’s hard to sneak up on a calving cow because Tyke runs alongside you and barks constantly. But he is faithful to me. Always happy to see me, even after a severe scolding for doing something wrong. And he never misses a ride to town in the pickup. He, like a good rope horse, is bar broke. He can sit in that pickup for hours and be plumb happy. But this morning I was t...
Hello, If you are in any agriculture business, you have been engrossed following the devastation from the storm 10 days ago. From south central North Dakota, on through South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri, the losses have been devastating. The worst has to be in Nebraska. Dams broke, bridges washed out, roads wiped out, fences gone, stored grains lost, and to me, the livestock losses had to be devastating. So far, I think they say three people lost their lives in the floods. Heartbreaking. I was thinking about those people yesterday. We...
Hello, I apologize profusely! I missed my St. Patrick’s Day column last week. And if you are, as I, married to a Murphy that is a mortal sin. We all have that one friend that tells us jokes whenever you meet. I have a friend that tells Little Johnny jokes. You know them. The teacher asked little Johnny… Most of them can’t be printed in this fine family newspaper. But he did tell me one the other day that I can adapt to an Irish story. Little Johnny Mulligan was sitting on the stoop eating a chocolate bar. Father O’Leary passed by and stopped...
Hello, This has been a trying week. I have trying weeks fairly often. Especially when the weather is bad. I try to do things right, but struggle. It started with a water tank. When you have frost-free tanks, tanks that require only ground heat to remain open, the weather a week ago was a true test. I found out that frost-free tanks are NOT frost-free when the wind chill is –60 for a couple days and nothing is venturing up on the hill to the tank to drink. When the weather straightened out and warmed up to zero, I checked the tank. I had a w...
Hello, February was not nice. After a mild start to winter, this past month the proverbial “stuff” hit the fan. Coldest on record. Wind blows every day. This past weekend we had wind chills to minus 60! Minus 60! Hay piles that looked like you could never feed it all are dwindling down. You can pick those old cows out that you decided to keep “one more year.” And to me, March is the cruelest month. One bright spot is Shirley. She is home this winter and is always happy to help with chores. When you are sitting in the cab of a tractor with the h...
Hello, Remember the controversy just before Christmas? About a song. The song “Baby It’s Cold Outside”. People were complaining it was sexist. I didn’t care. It is my favorite Christmas song. Although you don’t hear a lot of it in church or when people are out caroling. Or maybe I’ve just missed it. Anyway, baby it’s cold outside. And it looks like it is going to stay cold well into calving season. You would think after seventy years, I would have learned to calve later. I’ve told you about my fencing ability. You just try to keep bulls in a...
Hello, Corb Lund has a song titled “You’ve got to have cows around”, or something along that line. It tells of how you’ve got to have cows around and how that interferes with everything else. They get out or have problems at the most inopportune times. I’ve got good neighbors. Always have. There is a saying that “good fences make good neighbors.” My neighbors know that I am not a great fencer. I would have to improve to be a good fencer. Truth be told, I’d rather ride than fence. But my neighbors pretty much accept me for what I am. Winter is...
Hello, It’s cold. But it’s been colder. I’m willing to bet that you won’t find a farmer or rancher who would hesitate to tell you that this cold spell is nothing like the ones we’ve weathered in the past. But we dang sure got spoiled by the winter so far. And those forty below wind chills seem colder because of those nice days. I’m taking off for a cattle sale for a couple days and I dang sure hope Shirley doesn’t freeze her face while doing chores. Now, I know many of you watch the news. And I also know that many of you don’t watch the news. I...
Hello, Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I will say that the halftime show at this Year’s Super Bowl was the worst I have ever seen. And that is an accomplishment that is hard to achieve. And that is all I’m going to say about that. As I said before, I didn’t have a dog in the fight, so I didn’t care much about the outcome of the game. My main concern yesterday was a mouse. Yes, a mouse. I had been to a bull sale in Nebraska with a friend. I went along to assist on the drive home, since it would be a long day and night deal. I didn’t bu...
Good Morning, To a rancher, this is a great time of year. The mailbox is filled with catalogs for bull sales. You know how your mailbox fills up around Christmas with catalogs from every place you ever dropped a dollar, or in the spring as the ground starts to thaw a little, the seed catalogs come out with the garden supplies. Well, this time of year is like that for a rancher. You peruse papers to see what the sales are averaging across the nation. You compare the breed averages and market statistics. It takes some calculation to see what...
Hello, If you watch the news every day, you begin to think that the world is becoming more and more hateful. You don’t see much good news. It seems that “love thy neighbor” has pretty much gone out the window. If we disagree with someone, it becomes personal. That is too bad. But sometimes, adversity can bring out the best of this wonderful world. A fire. A tornado. A flood. A hurricane. Natural disasters seem to bring people together. There are often memes on social media with the line, “Why do I live where the weather hurts my face?!...
Hello, I always wanted to be a cowboy. And for a time, I thought maybe I had made it. I was riding saddle broncs, albeit poorly, roping a bit, riding on roundups and chasing cows through the willows. I was breaking a colt to ride once in awhile and could do a c-section on a cow tied to a tree. I had spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle (actually that is an old song) as I go riding merrily along (that’s the rest of the song, hum it, you’ll like it). But back to my story. Whenever you think you are good at something, or maybe one of the best, you...
