Working Cows

     We're up before dawn, and eat breakfast while we're waiting for enough light to gather the cattle.  It's day two of take up.  Steers were gathered and sent to market yesterday, heifers go today.
     Working cattle into a pen with family represents both the best and worst parts of farming. We are up early enough to appreciate the sun slanting through a gap in the mountains as it rises, lighting up fall-tinted trees like rows of  candles set out to celebrate the coming of day.  Haystacks and cattle both send luminous plumes of steam skyward in the chilly air, and the morning smells like ripe apples and pears and crisp leafy duff and woodsmoke.  
     Working cattle is also a time when I appreciate how much my little boys have matured into men.  They are experts at moving the stormy waves of cattle calmly through gates with only some whistles and a well placed four wheeler.  I have learned through the years where to stand to be helpful, but still my children insist on giving me directions.  "Move in closer Mom.  No, stand over there.  Wave your stick."  I tell them that I would make a great cattle dog, but the truth is that there is real joy in working with my boys-become-men who no longer need to be told what to do.  When did they become so knowledgeable and confident?
     As always, I am amazed by my husband's ability to stand in a gateway and direct cattle hither and yon with a gentle tap of his stick or a slight side-step to the right or left.  I once called him the Baryshnikov of the cattle ballet and he still dances as lightly with cows as he ever did.  The extra bonus is that my boys have both learned the same dance steps.  I am not brave enough to stand in a crowded pen full of side-kicking cows, but they step in unfazed and direct traffic until all the cows and calves are sorted through the various gates.
     But, cattle sorting also represents the dangerous side of farming. It involves zipping about on four-wheelers tilted sideways on dew covered hills as cattle are funneled to the gate.  I am aware that I do not know the number of times my children have rolled their four-wheelers because they occasionally let slip a story I haven't heard before about a spill or tumble.  This morning, Scott confidently spins some donuts in the field behind the cows as he waits for them to cross a mucky ditch.  I cover my eyes. I pray better that way.
    Stressful days have also included cattle breaking down fences, kicking or shitting on whoever is in the pen, or turning around in the middle of the chute until they are stuck and can't move in any direction. I remember a heifer who once got so stuck that we had to dismantle part of the fence to get her out.  Tempers rise and subside when things like this go wrong, but they always roll through as quickly as a fall shower and end quickly as things sort themselves out.
     This is my 28th year of working cattle.  This morning I realized that I've learned a few things over the years.  I'm not as afraid of cows as I used to be and that's helpful, because unlike sheep, you need to crowd them a bit to get them to move where you want them to go. Stand too far back and they'll make a break for it.  I've also learned that if you don't get them gathered on the first pass, it's not the end of the world. Chase cattle long enough, and they'll eventually go where you want them. I've learned that there will be some yelling but none of it should be taken personally.  Except maybe by the cows.  We want them to take it personally so they'll move on up the $%&* chute. Cattle don't respect the word "please."
     I have learned not to sweat the small stuff.  We lost a calf one year as we were unloading animals into the sale pens. That little jailbird roamed the county for over two months and I worried about him as he wandered. I figured he'd get hit by a car or hung in one of the fences he was crawling through and we'd never see him again. Several friends tried to capture him for us, but he was spooky and always escaped. Eventually, he joined a neighbor's herd and when the farmer gathered his cattle, he sorted the calf out and called us to come pick him up.
     Finally, I've learned that you can never predict how things will go.  I was sure  the cows would be hard to corral today.  After all we chased them around yesterday.  Why would they want to go through that again? But, I was wrong.  They sauntered in, complacent and compact. None jumped fences, hung themselves up in the chute or stepped on anyone. The only accident was a bright green fountain of poo that bubbled out from under a lifted tail right onto Joe's leg.  Here on the farm, we call that a pretty good day.

Sunday Blessings3

Today's Sunday blessing is a poem I wrote:

I gave You my sin
You handed back love
Your grace fell upon me
as soft as a dove

You took all the things
that I had done wrong
and gave me Your love
as sweet as a song

Nothing I gave You
made You turn away
from the love that You promised
from the cross that day.

I gave You nothing
but a promise to try
You gave me forgiveness
with arms open wide

Reflections On Love, Wisdom and the Pre-frontal Cortex

My oldest child just married a beautiful young woman and I'm so grateful that he's found someone he loves and someone who also loves him. She makes him happy.

I'll never forget my first sight of Justin.  When the nurses placed him in my arms, he looked so wise. He cocked his little round head sideways as if he was already thinking deep thoughts. Turns out what he was thinking was that he wanted to sleep.  So he did.  He slept for so long that the nurses were worried that he wouldn't wake up.  They made us rub him with wet washcloths and jiggle him.  He ignored everything and slept until he was hungry. We were worried and a bit frantic, but he knew what he was doing. He was preparing us for his teen years.

His childhood plays through my head like a movie.  I see him crouched at the edge of the garden in his boots pulling up weeds and sometimes a vegetable.  Holding up the first fish he caught.  Pulling a stubborn calf along. Opening some Christmas presents.  Always opening our hearts a little more to love.

Children take us where we never thought we would go.  They give us the very deepest joys but they also teach us about the darker parts of ourselves. With my firstborn, I discovered that I wasn't as patient a person as I had once thought, and the addition of a second child to our family cemented that knowledge.  I discovered that I was more selfish than I wanted to be and more easily frustrated than I had ever realized. On the day that my boys dropped their plastic soldiers into the toilet and flushed them, I discovered my temper.

But, I also discovered that the kind of love that I give my children is the one that sits deepest in my soul. It doesn't require reciprocation.  I'm pretty certain that I love my children more than they can ever love me. That's the nature of the parent child relationship.   And it's a good thing that it works that way, because sweet toddlers grow into complex teenagers.

Teen aged boys lack a fully functioning pre-frontal cortex and Justin was no exception. He ran experiments with hairspray, a lighter and his newly acquired arm hair in the back of the school bus.  He piloted a truck over the edge of a mountain.  He played mailbox baseball.  There are rumors that he rode a shopping cart down a mountain.

He met Lisa in those pre-frontal cortex days and she loved him anyway. She's warm and kind and funny. She understands his deepest parts. He asked her to marry him.

Twenty five years ago, I held a tiny baby in my arms and wondered if he was as wise as he looked.  It turns out, he is.

The Scoop on Poop

     Mountain women don't have conversations like those of city women.  You'd probably never catch a city woman discussing the kind of poop she sees when she's walking.  Yet, that's exactly the conversation that Lori and I had this morning on our walk.  And, it's not the first time.   It's not that we're grossed out by it or even too focused on it to be considered healthy.  It's just that we come across it all the time and we can tell so much about the wildlife in the area by taking a minute to examine what we're seeing.
     The first time I realized this, I wasn't with Lori.  I was trail riding with some friends.  We were deep in the woods on a narrow  trail that paralleled a ridge top when I spotted it.  "Robin, what kind of poop is that?"  I asked.
     He didn't look at me like I was crazy.  He pulled his horse up beside mine and said, "It's bear poop. Bear poop looks like human poop."
    He was right.  It did look like a wayward hillbilly had squatted on the path.  "Oh," I said.  "I wish I had a way to get it out of here and take it home with me.  We're talking about scat in class right now and that's a great example."
     Robin climbed off of his horse.  "I've got a little paper bag in my saddle bags," he said.  "We'll just put it in there and you can take it to your classroom."
     He scooped up the poop with a leaf and popped it in the bag.  Later in my classroom, we dissected it and determined that the bear had been feasting on grubs and poke berries.
     Three years later, I was glad I knew what bear poop looks like.  It was early summer and Lori and Caroline and I were hiking a portion of the Shenandoah Mountain Trail.  The trail started out wide and friendly. The sun was shining, but the further we got, the narrower and more closed in the trail became. Soon we had climbed high enough to be walking through a cloud which just made everything feel spooky.  Of course that's when we spotted it. A pile of fresh poop deposited right in front of us, and I knew what it was.  "That's bear poop," I pointed out.
     Lori looked around.  "Geez, we can't see anything much in this mess and if it's a momma bear she could be close by.  In fact her cub could be on one side of the trail and we might be between her and it and we wouldn't even be able to see her.  That could make her mad...."  Lori didn't need to finish. We turned around and high tailed it out of there.  We didn't stop to dissect the pile to see what the bear had been eating.  It didn't really matter as long as it wasn't going to be us.
     Since then, I've become pretty interested in animal scat.  Each morning, when Lori and I walk, we stop at any little pile (other than deer pellets which are everywhere) and try to figure out what's been there before us and what it was eating.  Here's some of what I've learned.
     Coyote poop looks like dog poop, but it's often full of hair or wool since coyotes feast on rabbits, fawns and lambs.  Raccoon poop is small and kind of looks like tootsie rolls, but it's usually full of seeds of some sort.  We've seen bear scat twice more and both times it had berry seeds and bug wings in it. Rabbit poop is pelleted and light brown because they eat a lot of bark.  Sometimes we find a pile we can't identify, but I'm not interested in walking around with a handful of poo, so we leave it alone.  I do however, try to remember if it was a plop, pellet or tube and then look it up on this website: What Pooped Here?    I'd really like to find some toad scat and some owl pellets which are not poop but regurgitated bones and fur.
    So, next time you're out for a country walk, look down. You might discover what's walked the path in front of you.

   

Sunday Blessings2

   There's nothing sweeter than gathering around the table to share a meal with family and friends. At those times I'm always so aware of God's great blessings to me, my family and all of us who live in a place where we have food, shelter and the freedom to pray and worship as God leads us. I love the times when we bow our heads together, hold hands and thank God for the blessings he gives us each day.

    With that in mind, I thought I would share some of my favorite table blessings.

• (I learned this one at Sunday School when I was very young)

Thank You for the world so sweet,
thank You for the food we eat,
thank You for the birds that sing,
Thank you, Lord, for everything.

• (We sang the next four at Camp Hanover when I was a camper and a lifeguard there.)

Evening has come, the board is spread
Thanks be to God, who gives us bread
Praise God for bread.
( I can still hear the sound of the whole dining hall singing this as my group, which was always late, was pulling itself across the lake on the raft.)

Oh, the Lord's been good to me
and so I thank the Lord
for giving me the things I need,
the sun and the rain and the apple-seed
the Lord's been good to me.
(We always thought this one was guaranteed to bring rain)

For health, and strength and daily bread,
we give Thee thanks Oh Lord.
(This one was sung as a round)

We thank thee Lord, for this amazing day
For the leafy, green leaf spirit of trees
for the true blue dream of the sky
for everything that is natural,
that is infinite
that is Yes, Lord, Yes Lord,
Yes!  Yes!
(My friend Doug Walker taught us this one and I can still picture him leading it)

• (I like this one because it reminds me that God has a sense of humor)

Rub a dub dub
Thanks for the grub
Yea God!

• (My son Scott learned this one when he was really young, but he always mixed up the last words in the first two lines.  I'm writing it the way he always said it)

God is good,
God is great,
and we thank Him for our food.
By His hands, we all are fed
Thank You, Lord, for daily bread.

• (and finally, my Daddy's prayer...)

Bless  this food to our use
and us to thy service,
and Please Lord, save this nation unto Yourself. (and then my mama always adds..."and Please Lord bless all those who suffer.")  In Jesus' name we pray...Amen.

GOING AROUND IN CIRCLES

    After two months of rainy weather, the air is clear and the farmers are circling their fields.  They have been moaning the lack of hay weather all summer.  Not anymore. When I walked this morning, the green smell of new-cut hay hung over every field I passed, and swathes of hay raked in tidy rows outlined them like patterns stitched onto a grassy quilt.

     Years ago, my husband's father was a custom hay-baler.  Every summer he cut, tedded, raked and baled over 20,000 square bales and stacked them in airy barns all over the county.  My Own Farmer grew up riding on the hay wagons with friends and loves to point out the various places he bumped across the acres tossing or stacking.  When we were first married we continued the tradition, and I loved riding the wagon with him as it lurched over the furrowed ground. Even on the hottest days, there was a cool breeze generated by the slow forward motion and with two of us working, the pace of stacking was manageable, leaving breath for talking and flirting. 

     Swallows love hay weather, as well.  Every pass of the tractor stirs up heat-struck insects, creating an aerial feast for the acrobatic birds.  With the steady ka-chunk, chunk of the baling arm pushing hay into tight squares, and the wide arcs and swirls of the hungry birds, I often felt that I was inside a symphony.  The music was the tractor, the notes were the birds.

     Baling also provided work and a summer income for the county boys.  Stand on the steps of any general store in the evening and you would see them converging for a cold bottle of pop and a pack of nabs.  The sweat-grimed boys would sit in the cool evening air trading stories of wagons tipping when they rolled into groundhog holes, dusty hay lofts that were often hotter than one hundred degrees, and how many bales they had put up in a day.  Baling gave boys bragging rights.

     It’s different now.  Round balers changed our culture.  Hay baling is no longer a social event because one man can mow, ted, rake and bale his own fields with minimal help.  Even the hay bales can be stacked on wagons and moved to the barns without the touch of a single human hand. 

     I am often enlisted to help with the hay, but now I am relegated to driving a tractor and raking windrows.  I do not like machinery and I drive scared.  I have good reason for my fears.  I have managed to tangle a hay rake into a fence which took two men and some wire pliers to undo.  Twice, I have made turns so tight that the rake tongue cut too close to the tractor and caught on the wheel, riding it up until it was in danger of knocking me out of my seat.  That took two men and another tractor to fix.  I have overlooked groundhog holes and dropped into them so hard that the fillings in my teeth jangled for a week. I fear losing a wheel every time.  I am stupid about the clutch, using it instead of the brakes when headed downhill.

      I have female friends who are not machinery-impaired.  They love talking about the endless circling and the things they notice as they go around.  One friend told me the other day that she saw five deer, two eagles, a fox and a grouse in just one day.  I wouldn’t know.  I am always so focused on the clattering rake riding behind me that I never look around. Just yesterday, I stole a quick glance at the woods beyond the fence and was startled out of my reverie by the sound of the rake scraping a fence post.  Rakes are like that.  Let them out of your sight for a minute and they wander into trouble. 

     My Own Farmer once told me that riding a tractor was as good as taking a vacation.  He finds peace in the steady pace of the work.  I am happy for him.  Today, he is out in the front field baling while Scott rakes.  I hope they are enjoying it.  I know I am.  

GENERALLY IMPORTANT

     In a place where not one box store exists and no grocery stores offer food or cleaning products, I am grateful for the small general stores that still dot the landscape.  Each valley sports at least one and locals know that there is more to them than meets the eye.
     My first introduction to the friendly service offered by our general stores came shortly after moving to Highland from the city.  I was accustomed to banks that had drive-through windows and late hours but our little bank hadn't acquired such a window. I discovered that it didn't matter when I began shopping at the H and H Cash Store, which was just a short walk from where I lived.  The owner offered credit.  I could walk in, pick up a few things I needed, and then ask Gaye or one of her sons to "just put it on the list."  At the end of the month or whenever I felt like it, I paid off my bill and they scratched my name out of the little notebook that they kept.
     Then one weekend, a friend asked me to travel over the mountains with her.  I didn't have a dime in my pockets and the banks were closed.  After pondering my dilemma for a few moments, I walked up the street to the H and H Cash.  "Gaye, have you ever considered letting someone have a little money on credit?"  I asked.
     She looked up from the sweatshirt she was stitching designs into (you could buy one of her handmade designs for just $8.00) and peered at me over her glasses.  Her blue eyes twinkled.  "How much do you need?" she asked.
     "Oh, I think ten dollars would do," I replied.
      Without another word, she opened the cash drawer, drew out a ten and handed it over.  Then she wrote my name in her little book.  "I know you're good for it," she said.
     That was my first introduction to the hidden charms of general stores.  I later discovered that H and H was also the place to drop off your dry cleaning, which would be picked up by a truck from over the mountains and returned clean and crisp a week later.  H and H Cash was a treasure cave of supplies.  The interior smelled of apples, onions and shoe leather.   If they didn't have what you needed hidden somewhere in one of the dark corners, then they would order it for you. They even carried topographic maps of the area.
      When I married My Farmer, I moved one valley east and discovered Ralston's Grocery.  Anna Lou also allowed credit and as an added bonus, the post office was located behind the south wall.  There was a little window with bars and lots of cute metal mail boxes.  Ralston's was the center of the Highland News Network.  I used to jokingly tell people that I first discovered I was pregnant when I heard it being discussed while picking up my mail.
     The store changed hands, becoming Stonewall Grocery, and the post office was forced by the government to move to new digs dedicated solely to sorting and stuffing.  But, Patsy and Linda, recognizing that there was still an unmet need began allowing people to leave messages for each other on their back counter. Not too long ago, a fellow offered a telescope for sale on Facebook.  I offered to buy it and he left it at Stonewall Grocery for me to pick up.  When he dropped it off, he exchanged it for an envelope I'd left for him with payment. You can't do that at the local Walmart.
    Stonewall Grocery is also a great place to pick up supper.  They offer Wonder Roast chickens for overworked housewives and they are so popular that you have to call ahead in the morning and reserve one for supper that night.  I have friends two valleys over, who will make a special trip just so they can enjoy the juicy goodness of a Wonder Roast.  Stonewall also has a deli and makes sandwiches, homemade brownies and fresh baked banana bread.  They even give up precious shelf space for a satellite of our local library so you can check out a book to read while you eat.
     Other general stores in the area meet different needs.  There are pizzas at one, chicken tenders at another and taco salads at a third.  If I want oysters for Christmas, I can order them from the Country Convenience in Blue Grass.  If I'm craving homemade bread, cookies or pies, Mountain Oasis bakes on Tuesdays and Fridays.They also sell outdoor wood furnaces and guns. If I want some of the best sharp cheddar cheese on the East Coast, then a stop at the little store in Headwaters is necessary.  Headwaters also offers really inexpensive bottles of water.  I asked about this and the owner said, "Well, people come here and they are thirsty.  There's no where else to get water, so it's a service I offer."  None of this is advertised.  Small businesses have a tiny profit margin and can't afford it.  But, word of mouth is enough.  You just have to live here long enough to find it all.
     Now some of the little stores are closing.  Our population is shrinking and there aren't enough people to spread the money around, although our swelling summer population helps.  The general store in Mill Gap will soon lock its doors.  They were the last outpost for a cold coke if you were travelling west over the mountains. Hightown lost its general store when the owner, Jacob Hevener, got too old to work there.  They used to offer Woolrich clothes and Red Wing shoes.  H and H Cash closed its doors three years ago.  I guess I won't be getting money on credit anymore.
     I recently discovered that every time I use a credit card, it costs the store where I use it two to three percent of the sale.  In addition, if my card awards points, the store pays for that, too.  Doesn't seem like much unless your bottom line is tiny anyway.  So, I have made it my mission to shop locally for everything I can buy and to pay cash for all of it.  One day when small stores have been forced out of business, we will miss them.  Not just for their convenience, but for the rich life they brought to our mountains and valleys.  For the friendly greetings, the community support and the ways they made our lives a little easier.  I hope that day never comes.