Calving season

March 28, 2009

I took my son out to see the calves last weekend.  I have always enjoyed springtime in Montana, but never more than now, when I have a two-year-old to experience it with.

What a gift it is to live and raise my son in a place where you can watch the cycle of life right before your eyes.  And I have the best tour guide! I challenge anyone to find someone more passionate and knowledgeable about ranching than my grandpa. 

I love to listen to him describe the calves lined up on a windy day in the pasture below his house, racing like children on the playground towards some imaginary finish line.  To my grandpa, these animals have personalities, souls, and they are deeply valuable, not just monetarily, but spiritually.      

It is difficult to misunderstand your place in the world in an agricultural setting.  I attain so much clarity just by watching plants and animals grow, and observing those who tend to them.  We are all a part of the food chain, both infinitely significant and insignificant at the same time. 

Anyone who claims a rancher views their cattle as simply a piece of meat has not spent much time on a ranch.  Ranchers understand completely the importance of caring for their animals, and the consequences of neglecting them. 

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans consumed 28.1 billion pounds of beef in 2007.  That same year, American ranchers contributed $36.1 billion to the American economy.  And despite recession, that number grew by nearly a billion dollars every year for the five preceding years. 

Those facts alone should encourage support of the cattle industry, particularly in these dark economic times.  But if you really want to understand ranching, you must go to a ranch. 

You must talk to someone like my grandpa; listen to him describe the miracle of a calf born in subzero temperatures, emerging steaming and triumphant on wobbly legs to explore the frozen world.

For me, my support of ranchers and ranching runs deep.  Every lesson that I’ve learned from my elders, my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, was derived from the wisdom they drew raising and selling cattle.  Quite simply, despite my citified self, ranching is who I am.

Everything and everyone that I love got their start in the Wild West, on the backs of the cattle and agricultural industries.  If you live here, your livelihood depends on the cowboys, cowgirls, and farmers who devote their lives to the industries they love. 

I have had the opportunity to work with a wide variety of scholars and thinkers, some of who believe as deeply as I do in the exact opposite perspective.  These are intelligent, conscientious people whose viewpoints were fashioned from a very different mold. 

Just as I spent time in their world, learning they aren’t really the boogiemen some in the rural West make them out to be, I encourage them to visit us during calving season.  Ranchers aren’t greedy land-barons, concerned only with profit from their animals. 

These are soulful, humble people who understand entirely that the cattle they tend provide for their families and are the foundation of their culture.  It is a weighty responsibility. 

One visit to a ranch during calving season, when ranchers battle cold, darkness, and sleeplessness to watch over their herds day and night, will prove to even the bitterest critic that these people care deeply for their animals.

This article first appeared in the Lewistown News-Argus and the Sidney (Mont.) Herald on March 28, 2009.