Chokecherry time

The chokecherries were ready. As I stood there on a shelf of rock above the bottom of the canyon and looked around, I saw hundreds – maybe thousands – of twisted, almost ratty-looking branches hanging heavy under the weight of fruit.


These wild, canyonland chokecherries are always a surprise to me. Their shrubby forms grow in the most improbable places – some are anchored in bare inches of soil layered over solid rock, and some, many of the best it seems, have sprouted directly from fissures in the bare rock.

In the dry years, the bushes produce only a few berries each, and these are quickly consumed by birds and deer and other wildlife. In the good years, however, years like 2011, their prolifity is astonishing.

At first glance, the bushes look anything but promising. They live in a tough neighborhood where the yearly arctic winds constantly try to scour them from the canyon. Few grow to more than five feet in height, and their stubby branches are sparse but substantial. In the spring their foliage is a deep, radiant green, but by chokecherry time the leaves have lost much of their color and are quickly fading to brown.

Western chokecherries (Prunus virginiana demissa) shine in the late summer sun on the EJE ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

In a year like this one, the wonder of the tangled, unattractive mass of bushes is the sheer volume of fruit clustered on those spare, twisted branches. Each cluster contains a dozen or so fat little berries, each about the size of a pea, and so darkly purple as to be black. At first you spy one or two clusters, but then, in that lovely bit of prairie magic, you look just a bit more closely, and dozens, hundreds, thousands of fruit clusters snap sharply into view.

The chokecherries on the EJE Ranch are likely a western variety of the chokecherry native to North America, possibly Prunus virginiana demissa. Western chokecherries are adapted to a more arid climate than their eastern counterpart, the bushes generally smaller in stature, and tolerate colder winter conditions. Their fruit is distinctively darker, and according to many, more sweet.

The name chokecherry is derived from the tannic, highly astringent taste of the ripe fruit. As I stood there on my rock shelf and contemplated the chore of picking and preserving, I reached out and plucked a fat, ripe berry from the nearest cluster and popped it in my mouth. My taste buds erupted with delight. Astringent – yes – but so very sweet. Probably the sweetest chokecherry I’d ever tasted.

To work, then. The sun was well up in the afternoon sky and the day was pleasantly warm with a slight northwest breeze. The breeze was welcome, because chokecherry picking can be sweaty work. It can be a bit hazardous, too, as wild canyonland chokecherries grow where the footing is often treacherous and where rattlesnakes prefer to live, among the sharply fractured siltstone of an actively eroding prairie canyon. An hour’s worth of picking yielded two gallons of chokecherries, and during that hour I moved less than 10 feet from my starting place. Buckets filled, I called it a day. Besides, I’d have helpers in a couple of days, two young ladies from the big city of Omaha who were excited about visiting the ranch and looking forward to some “country” experiences.

When the weekend arrived my helpers were primed and ready for some chokecherry picking. Grace, my niece, had visited the ranch many times but had never picked chokecherries. Myah, Grace’s friend from Omaha, had never picked “…any berries or cherries or anything.” She hastened to add that while she lives in Omaha, she’s not “city.” She’s visited a farm in Iowa many times.

 Myah smiles in the midst of a chokecherry thicket last weekend on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

Being a bit more experienced, and with a bit less talking to do, I quickly filled my pail with dark, fat chokecherries. I climbed to the top of the canyon wall and found a good rock to perch on, then just watched the girls as they picked and gabbed away. They were clearly having fun and occasionally remembered to pick some fruit. As they moved back and forth among the uneven bushes I could hear their non-stop conversation, though I couldn’t make out any of the words. What do 11 year-old girls talk about, I wondered? None of my business, of course.

Grace (l) and Myah pick chokecherries last weekend on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

As I sat there in the warm sunshine and watched the girls and enjoyed the hint of breeze, my mind turned back to chokecherry picking when I was 11. I’d like to say it’s a great memory for me, but it’s not. I thought it was a crashing bore. Why not go to the store for jelly? But the memory is precious in another way – I was picking with my grandfather Wilbur, and neither of us knew how quickly the clock was ticking for him.

Tired, sweaty, covered in dust and leaves and cobwebs, the girls finally emerged from the canyon, pails brimming with chokecherries, faces glowing with big grins. Almost immediately Myah caught a small horned lizard and decided to take him home and make him a pet.

Together we harvested enough chokecherries to put up 32 pints of jelly, a not-inconsiderable accomplishment. The jelly is made and stored away now, and it’ll taste especially good on cold winter mornings – a taste of sweet, late-summer sunshine when the arctic winds are howling just outside the door.

But best of all, at least for me, will be the memory of precious time spent with two lovely young ladies as they enjoyed a chore that few youngsters get to experience these days.

River

Last year I was gathering a few cows that needed moving back north with the rest of the herd. I was working by myself on the four-wheeler. River was with me, though, so I wasn’t really by myself. Which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending…

The cows were bunched loosely in the northwest quarter of the pasture section, and I wanted to pen them in the corral down on the south side, so River and I got ‘em headed that way and enjoyed the day as we trailed along behind ‘em.

Soon enough we came to the drift fence and the cows ambled along toward the corral and started in through the west gate. They still had calves at their sides and were acting a little skittish. A half-dozen broke off at the gate and headed south and I quickly looked around for River. Nowhere to be found. Blast that dog! Probably off rolling in something dead, I thought. What’s the use of having a working dog if she’s never around when you need her?

I zipped around and steered the balky cows and calves back into the corral and got off the four-wheeler to shut the gate, satisfied with a job (the first part of it anyway) well done. It was then that I noticed River sitting there on the east side of the corral, guarding the open gate. The gate I remembered closing a few days before, and had (as usual) assumed to be still closed.

I smiled and shook my head. So much for the superiority of the highly developed brain. But hell, who needs to check the gates when you’ve got a fine working dog who knows more about what you’re doing than you do?

River helps move a bull on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

Once river caught on to her job, when her grown-up herding instincts overcame her puppy-like chasing instincts and she started figuring out what moving cattle was all about, she became a valuable asset to the operation. She wasn’t perfect by any means, and sometimes she’d get too excited or put herself out of position or let a bull buffalo her.

She was also prone to sticking her face into a porcupine from time to time, and never seemed to learn the lesson, which always seemed a remarkably human trait to me.

But mostly she was a good solid working dog, filled with enthusiasm and energy, and if you took the time to watch her work you could learn a few things about moving cows.

River plays with a new puppy last autumn on the EJE ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

River whelped nine pups earlier this year, her first litter, and handled her new job with ease. The fat little puppies grew like weeds and were soon up and about, learning how to use their new bodies and new senses and busy exploring their new world.

River died last Friday. She was only five years old, and as full of life and energy as on the first day she came home. Then she was gone in an instant, leaving a surprisingly painful hole in our lives.

Being ranching folks, we’re able to put her loss in a reasonable perspective. We miss her and our grief is profound and real, yet we live close enough to the cycle of life to know that her life and our shared experiences were far more important than her passing. We’ll all make a similar journey one day, a fact which gives life its incredible beauty and sweetness.

River is gone but her very existence added a special richness to my life. She’ll live on in my mind, and in my mind’s eye, she’ll always be sitting in that open gate, holding a pen full of cattle, seemingly saying, “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.”

Food programs and out-of-control federal spending

With so much news regarding the national debt featured prominently in the major media of late, I thought it might be worth while to look at the debt – and it’s attendant federal spending – from a uniquely agricultural perspective.
Many – perhaps most of you – reading this blog are engaged in the production of food. This being the case, two aspects of federal spending are perhaps more immediate to you than to others.

The first is federal spending on direct or indirect aid to farmers and ranchers.

The second is federal spending on food programs – that is to say, the amount of federal money given to people to purchase food.

These things are immediate and important to us (I too am engaged in food production) because they bear on the huge problem of the burgeoning national debt and how it relates to each of us directly. The problem of the debt is self-evident and important (or should be) to all Americans. More on this in a moment.

As food producers, we make up somewhere between one and two percent of the population, so the immediacy with which we view federal spending on farm/ranch support is not shared with the other 98-99 percent of the population.

Since nearly all federal spending on food programs is channeled through the USDA, and is therefore nearly always described as “ag spending” and equated with money paid directly to farmers and ranchers, food programs are of immediate concern to us as well.

While we represent at most two percent of the population, food programs give federal cash directly to more than 50 million Americans, fully one-sixth or about 17 percent of the population. Federal spending on food programs is therefore understandably immediate and important to those folks, too.

Now let’s look at the numbers associated with the federal debt, and since they are so large, let’s put them in a context we should all be able to understand. First the huge numbers:

Annual income for the United States: $2.17 trillion ($2,170,000,000,000)
Annual spending for the United States: $$3.82 trillion ($3,820,000,000,000)
Annual NEW DEBT for the United States: $1.65 trillion ($1,650,000,000,000)
Existing debt for the United States: $14.271 trillion ($14,271,000,000,000)
U.S. budget cuts from debt ceiling legislation: $38.5 billion ($38,500,000,000)

To get a good feel for these numbers, simply cut off the last eight zeroes and think about them as the annual budget for your family.

Your annual income: $21,700
The amount of money you actually spent: $38,200
Debt you added to your credit card: $16,500
Previous unpaid balance on your credit card: $142,710
Spending you decided to cut to “fix” your indebtedness: $385

Just imagine the conversation with your credit card company. “I know I’ll owe you more than $150,000 at the end of the year – my total earnings for seven years – but good news! I’m not going to charge any movie rentals from now on, so instead of charging $16,500 this year, I’ll only charge $16,115! Of course I’ll never be able to make any actual payments on what I owe you, but, I’m sure my kids will make it good someday…”

In keeping with this theme, let’s say we tell our credit card company that we’re actually prepared to exercise even more spending restraint. In addition to no longer charging movie rentals, we will also no longer make our annual donation of $328 to the local school’s lunch program. Therefore, we’ll argue, instead of borrowing $16,500, we’ll only borrow $15,787. We’ll still not make any payments to the credit card company, nor will we plan to ever make such payments. Someone will take care of that in the future. In the mean time, we’ll have reduced (albeit by a tiny fraction) our rate of borrowing. That’s fair, isn’t it? We're doing a good thing, right?

Okay, let’s turn away from the imaginary family and back to the federal budget. Using the same “chop off the last eight zeroes” method for the moment, we see that completely eliminating the USDA from the federal budget will have even less impact on the federal budget than the “cuts” derived from the most recent round of debt ceiling legislation. Put the zeroes back, and you see that getting rid of the USDA entirely cuts only $328 billion from federal spending.

Cutting the USDA won’t fix the problem. But cutting the USDA, particularly if it were done suddenly, would almost certainly cause terrible problems for rich and poor alike.

Firstly, more than 66 percent of the USDA budget goes to providing food for the poor. Think about that for a moment. During budget talks, it's always trendy for major media talking heads to regurgitate numbers showing that "rich" farmers are receiving unneeded "welfare" dollars from the federal government. The truth, however, is that for every three dollars of ag spending, two go directly into the electronic accounts of the 17 percent of Americans who qualify for food assistance. Of the remaining dollar, only about 60 cents go to farmers. The remaining 40 cents goes largely to bureaucratic overhead and to research. With the possible exception of military spending, which is done on an entirely different scale, I'd argue that it is in ag spending where the taxpayer gets, by far, the best return on investment. Nowhere on the planet is food less expensive, nowhere on the planet are the "poor" so very, very wealthy.

But out of control spending is destroying the U.S. economy, and with it the future of our country. I can see no good reason not to remove farmers and ranchers from the federal teat. So long as private crop insurance is available and so long as the government does not continue to manipulate commodity markets (in order to keep food prices artificially low), farmers and ranchers can do just fine.

But it took more than half a century to get where we are regarding federal support of farming and ranching. The weaning process will take time.

It'll take time as well to wean the poor from food programs. A sudden end to those programs would be catastrophic. The poor would no longer be able to buy food – at least not with government funds. Some would have to sell off personal possessions to buy food. Some would have to budget and scrimp and save. Some would starve.

Since food is the most inexpensive thing we buy in this country, you might ask yourself why more expensive items can’t be eliminated first? As I see it, every other federal program should be on the table as well. If we all share the burden of giving up some of our treasured federal cash, the pain will be negligible. But the weaning process should be gradual and well planned.

A sudden end to farm payments would cause many farmers to fail. Fewer farmers would produce less food, and prices would soar. In fact, not only would prices soar, real food shortages would occur. Genuine food insecurity would begin, ushering in hoarding, riots, and all manner of disruption.

Agricultural research would come to a stop, and with it the ability to continue increasing yields and fighting pests and weeds.

It’s clear that abruptly “slashing” the USDA would have serious unintended consequences.

My point in this essay is neither to advocate “slashing” government programs nor to imply that government programs, including the USDA, are too important to be cut.

The point is that cuts have to be made to save both the economy and the country, but they have to be made over time and with a full understanding of the disruptions many of the cuts will make.

In truth, there are very few segments of society who cannot live without federal entitlement dollars. However, a great many segments have become dependent over time on these entitlement programs.

In my mind, the best thing for all of us – farmers and ranchers and food program recipients – is to become completely independent of, and no longer rely on, government entitlement programs.

This would be a fundamental change for all of us, and change is scary. But try to think about a system where you are completely in charge of your farm or your ranch or (in the case of those mired in the depths of the food programs) your life.

Is there really that much downside to no longer being under the thumb of faceless Washington bureaucrats or beholden to the whims of “transformational” politicians?

Food prices: home and abroad

Though food prices in the U.S. continue to trend higher, a report by the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) shows that Americans continue to spend a smaller percentage of their disposable income at the grocery store than ever, and have by far smaller food budgets than citizens of any other nation.

U.S. retail prices for all food rose 1.8 percent in 2009 and 0.8 percent in 2010, numbers which include prices for both “food away from home” (restaurant meals, etc.) and “food at home” (retail-purchased food prepared and consumed at home – traditional home meals).

Food away from home prices rose 3.5 percent in 2009 and 1.3 percent in 2010. Food at home prices rose 0.5 percent in 2009 and 0.3 percent in 2010. These numbers are at least partly influenced by consumer purchasing habits; as away from home costs increased, many consumers reduced their consumption of restaurant meals and increased consumption of home-prepared meals. As demand for restaurant meals fell, restaurateurs lowered prices to draw more customers to their establishments.

Food prices are forecast to continue to rise over the next 24 months however, with all food increasing 3-4 percent in 2011 and 2.5-3.5 percent in 2012. Food away from home prices are forecast to rise 3-4 percent this year and 2-3 percent next year, while food at home prices are forecast to jump 3.5-4.5 percent this year and 3-4 percent in 2012.

A table of food price index changes is available online at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/CPIFoodAndExpenditures/Data/cpiforecasts.htm

While food price increases are unwelcome, U.S. consumers spent only 9.4 percent of their disposable income on food last year, tying the record low percentage set in 2009. This figure is the lowest since 1929, the first year ERS began compiling annual food spending reports.

To put 9.4 percent of disposable income in historical perspective, Americans spent around a quarter of their income on food between 1929 and 1935 – ranging from 25.1 percent in 1933 to 23 percent in 1931 and 1932. Those numbers began to decline in 1936 and have generally trended down ever since, falling into the teens in 1936 and finally falling below 10 percent in 2000.

A table of food expenditures as a share of disposable income is available online at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/CPIFoodAndExpenditures/Data/Expenditures_tables/table7.htm

In comparing U.S. food expenditures to those of other nations, a slightly different number is used – “Food Share of all Expenditures.” These numbers are derived from World Bank data and describe the total percentage of per capita gross national income spent on food rather than percentage of per capita disposable income. The latest published figures are for 2008.

U.S. consumers spent by far the lowest percentage of gross income on food at 5.9 percent. Consumers in other “high income” countries spent as follows: 7.7 percent in Singapore, 8.5 percent in the U.K., 9.9 percent in Germany, 12.5 percent in France, 13.6 percent in Japan, 14.3 percent in the Czech Republic, and 14.5 percent in South Korea.

Percentages in “upper middle income” countries ranged from 14.1 percent in Hungary to 31.8 percent in Romania. For consumers in “lower middle” and “low” income countries, food expenditures ranged from 24.1 percent in Brazil to 41.9 percent in Indonesia.

Though consumers in other countries around the globe continue to pay higher food prices and spend a larger proportion of their gross income on food than U.S. consumers, the overall global food bill has been trending down. In 2002, the percentage of gross income spent on food averaged 12 percent in high income countries, 26.1 percent in upper middle income countries, and 36.6 percent in lower middle and low income countries. In 2008 those percentages had fallen to 11.5 percent in upper income countries (down 0.5 percent), 21.5 percent in upper middle income countries (down 4.6 percent), and 33.9 percent in lower middle to low income countries (down 2.7 percent).

A table of worldwide food expenditure patterns is available online at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/GlobalFoodMarkets/Data/FoodExpPatterns.xls

These numbers are remarkable but don’t, of course, tell the entire story. Global food cost data from 2008 to the present day is sketchy at best. Solid data analyses generally take 1-3 years to complete, so today’s real numbers are in some sense impossible to know. We can guess that the global economic downturn since 2008 has most likely increased food costs around the globe, though to precisely what extent it’s impossible to say just now. We also know that global food production numbers have been trending up in recent years as modern agricultural production techniques continue to trickle down into less industrialized, more agrarian societies.

The joker in the global food cost deck may well prove to be the health of the U.S. economy. If congress can find a way to get runaway spending under control, America’s economy will continue to drive the world economy. A healthy U.S. economy will ensure continued advances in agricultural production as ag sector profits in this country allow continued research, development and implementation of techniques and technologies to boost food production. Increased production will continue to trickle down to the poorest countries, easing hunger and raising the overall lot of humanity to unprecedented levels.

Failure of the U.S. economy may spell more than tough times for Americans. Without the driving force of a healthy U.S. economy, food production may begin to trend down both here and around the globe, perhaps raising the curtain on an unprecedented age of darkness.

Ag spending and the federal debt

With Congressional Republicans and Democrats locked in partisan battle over raising the country’s $14 Trillion debt ceiling, it’s worth taking a few moments to look at federal ag spending. Is USDA part of the problem? Can ag spending be trimmed? Or are the USDA and ag programs in general so vital to the national interest that they should be inviolable?
The debt ceiling isn’t causing the present economic crisis, it’s merely a symptom. The cause is Federal spending, which far exceeds Federal income, or revenue. Federal spending for 2011 will exceed $6 trillion. Federal revenue for 2011 will be $4.5 trillion. This leaves a $1.5 trillion deficit to be made good.

There are only two ways to make the deficit good – by cutting spending or by borrowing the money. In the past, Congress has almost always chosen to borrow. Though China and a few other countries have previously bought U.S. debt, there are few overseas takers these days for U.S. bonds. Today, in a complicated accounting scheme which would be unlawful for any but the Federal Government, the U.S. is borrowing from – itself.

The argument over raising the debt ceiling is actually an argument whether the government can write more I.O.U.’s to itself. This scheme is hardly sustainable, though most Republicans and Democrats favor it. At the bottom line, the only difference between the “plans” of each side is whether to make entirely cosmetic and temporary spending cuts.

Regardless of the outcome of this round of “crisis negotiations,” at some point the U.S. is going to have to quit spending more than it takes in in revenue. At that point, spending cuts will have to be made. Where the cuts will come from and the details of how the cuts will be managed are impossible to know at this time, however, the deeper the crisis is allowed to go before spending corrections are made, the more likely it becomes that the cuts will be imposed with little real planning. In such a situation, those affected by the cuts will be in for a rough ride.

In thinking about the best way to make spending cuts, let’s look at how the 2011 budget is being spent. These numbers aren’t precise, because no formal budget has been passed or implemented in two-and-a-half years. However, they are the best numbers available and are probably very close.

Of the $6 trillion spent in 2011, 16 percent went to defense, 14 percent to education, 18 percent to health care (primarily Medicare), 16 percent to pensions (primarily Social Security retirement), 11 percent to welfare, 5 percent to protection (Homeland Security, TSA, etc.), 5 percent to interest on the debt, 4 percent to transportation, and 2 percent to general government (which includes USDA).

The obvious question is where to do the cutting. I have my own ideas, but it might be better to begin with general ideas rather than specific examples.

When we look at any part of the budget, we need to keep in mind that it took time to get to the numbers we see today, and ideally, it should take time to roll the spending numbers back. The idea of “slashing” spending is attractive – massive across-the-board cuts would quickly solve the problem on the balance sheet. Immediate and drastic cuts would be hard on the people who have come to depend on government spending, though. And the list of those who would be adversely affected includes most Americans. Though not everyone receives welfare, nearly everyone depends on the government for things like defense, transportation infrastructure, police services, etc. Over the years we’ve all increasingly come to rely on government spending for the local education of our children and for supplemental retirement income and health care.

A good example of the complexity of cutting spending can be found in Federal agriculture spending, a topic of great interest to most who read The Business Farmer, but of little interest to the 99 percent of Americans who aren’t involved in agriculture.

The USDA budget is far less than one percent of the entire federal budget, at about $32.8 billion. Of this, only about 22 percent goes to farmers and ranchers as direct payments or crop insurance payments. A further 9 percent goes to conservation, with direct payments to many farmers and ranchers through various conservation programs. Yet 68 percent of the USDA budget goes to food welfare programs. So farmers and ranchers receive at most 31 cents of every Federal ag dollar, while “poor” people receive 68 cents of that dollar, which is less than 1 percent of Federal spending.

Unfortunately, a great many farmers and ranchers have come to depend on the USDA for survival. Without crop subsidies, insurance, and other Federal income, many farmers and ranchers would be unable to survive. If Federal ag spending were “slashed,” many farmers and ranchers would be out of business in short order. However, almost all farmers and ranchers would be able to adapt to cuts phased in over a number of years.

Farmers and ranchers make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population, yet they essentially provide all of the food consumed by the entire population. Therefore, an unintended consequence of precipitous cuts in Federal ag spending would very likely be food shortages – a crisis for which no one is prepared and which would probably be the biggest crisis ever faced by America.

The problem of reigning in Federal spending is complex, but the stakes are very high.

Perspective

As the sky lightens in the east, I’m sitting on soft, green buffalograss, leaning in comfort against a timeworn hump of siltstone. I’m nearly in the center of pasture we call the North Googie. The air is cool still and fragrant with the smell of prairie-July and cattle.

Around me I hear the quiet sound of heifer footfalls, the soft grinding of heifer chewing, the dim rumble of heifer rumination. The waning gibbous moon hangs fat and bright over my right shoulder, providing plenty of light to take in the scene. The heifers are grazing north-to-south, moving along the low ground at a steady pace, selectively grazing on tender new warm-season grasses like blue grama and buffalograss. As sunrise nears, morning twilight fills the air and the still somewhat shadowy animals gain substance, dim shapes becoming distinct and shaped like what they are – young cattle.

I’ve come to check cattle, but I’ve come early enough to enjoy the last cool of the night and to soak up the beauty of a summer sunrise. Wrapped in cool beauty and surrounded by natural wonder, my mind dashes down thought-filled brain corridors as each sensation prompts staccato flood of thoughts. The curse, perhaps, of the fifty year-old mind.

The young cattle grazing around me are in the midst of a remarkable transformation. They are nominally under the control and authority of the pair of Lowline Angus bulls grazing alongside. The bulls are doing their job – have done so in most cases – of providing genetic material to quicken heifer ova into fetal calves. At the same time, the heifers are growing wildly, turning sun- and water-fed grass into flesh and bone and sinew.

This mid-summer slice of the cycle of life is remarkable to me, but only because I pause to give it thought. Otherwise it is simply nature at work, and nature does her work whether I think about it or not. Although we spend lots of time and more than a little effort managing our ranching operation, nature is really in charge here, at least in charge of the important stuff.

The management stuff is vitally important to the continuation of our ranch and of our lifestyle. Without proper management, bills go unpaid, and the land title passes to someone else. In many ways, however, land ownership and ranch management are simply ideas, a set of artificial rules to guide us as we navigate civilization – an artificial civilization which exists, perhaps only ephemerally, alongside the real world.

I smile as the young cattle graze on by. Just as it’s important to manage the ranch to the best of our abilities, so also is it important to understand the reality of one’s place in nature.

My thoughts shoot down another passageway, one echoing with voices from the past. How many times, I wonder, have people paused here to enjoy midsummer coolness and the impending beauty of sunrise?

I have no way to know, of course. It seems a perfect pausing place, and I’d be unsurprised to find evidence of previous use. Yet the land is wide, with many possible paths, and people – compared to the vastness of the land – are few, even at their present six-billion-plus number.

I think about a letter I’ve recently discovered, penned by my great-grandmother Oda and addressed in 1970 to my grandparents. The letter describes, in two pages of sparse but detail-packed paragraphs, Oda’s marriage to Sam in Kentucky, their subsequent migration to a homestead in New Mexico, and ultimately, back to a farm in Adams County, Neb.

“(We) were married Apr. 20, 1904 at a lumber camp in Lee Co., Ky. Pastor was an old man who came on a mule across the Mts. from Owsley Co., Ky. Mamma had dinner soon as the ceremony was over. They had a square dance at he house that night. There was no work at the mill that day…

“In summer of 1909, Sam went to New Mexico & took up a homestead. He paid $550…we picked up bag & baggage & got to Estancia, New Mexico. The shack was very small, 10 x 16 ft. It was fun at first, but money ran out & first crop burned up – so dry. Sam went to Albuquerque to look for work. The children & I stayed on the claim, as the family had to stay 7 months of the year. We had 2 horses & a neighbor worked them while Sam was gone. Every week the children and I went 11 miles to Estancia to get groceries and mail. Sam would send me a little money. We proved the claim in Dec. 1909. Sam came back to prove up & we went back to Belen with him. Dale was born 5 days after we got back…

“Dale left us 28 Sept. 1915, and it was a sad time. He was at a cute age, 2 years, 9 months. In August 1917, Sam decided he wanted to visit his brother in Nebraska so he got a pass on the railroad. He rented a farm and went back to New Mexico and disposed of the household goods. We got to Nebraska 2 August 1917…

“The first year, we got hailed out, but Sam had good luck with hogs and with chickens. By this time, both girls had to go to high school. Mae worked for her board and came home on week ends. She taught school at 17, Wilma at 16. They took Normal training at Kennesaw, Neb.”

Oda lived to be 99 years old. Sam died in 1973 at 94. They were never very successful at farming, but farming isn’t the yardstick to gauge a successful life. How many Americans could do today what Sam and Oda did a century ago?

Yesterday is history, tomorrow’s a mystery, live in today. As the sun finally breaks over the southeastern horizon, the day comes alive and the temperature begins to rise, quickly chasing the coolness from the air. I have more cattle to check, not to mention windmills, water and mineral supplies, and fence integrity. I stand up and stretch, then walk back to my pickup to begin managing.

The smile on my face lingers, though. If the words of my forbears and my own experience have taught me anything, it’s to enjoy the good years and endure the hard years. So far, this has been a year to enjoy.

Love and the butterfly-to-be

As I trudged across the shortgrass prairie Tuesday morning, my heart was doing emotional flippity-flops, and I wondered why. Why was my throat tight? Why were unbidden tears stinging at the corners of my eyes? Why was I on the verge of blubbering like a girl?

The emotion wasn’t sadness, it was joy. I’d just had a remarkable hour of photography, taking pictures of a Monarch butterfly caterpillar feeding on common milkweed and of some of my young cattle grazing on rich native grass.

The caterpillar was beautiful, both in its present intricate and colorfully banded form and in its gorgeous potential adult form. The cattle were beautiful too, but probably only to a stockman. Strong and healthy, with rapidly growing calves at their sides, they were busy turning the prairie’s grassy bounty into milk for this year’s calves and into energy reserves for next year’s calves, even now present as fetal calves in nearly every recently-bred cow.

Still, I wondered, why this upwelling of emotion? The prairie ecosystem, the cattle – these are daily bread to me. I deeply appreciate them. I revel in their paradoxical simple complexity. I am never more at peace with the world than when I’m amongst my cattle out on the native prairie. But I’m seldom near tears at those times.

As I hiked along my mind kept turning back to two things; the beauty of the caterpillar and the rough licking one of my young cows gave the bottom of my hiking boot as I lay in the grass snapping pictures. Those two disparate experiences seemed to be at the heart of the emotion I was feeling.

On the one hand, I’m pleased that my cows are quiet animals, accustomed to low-stress handling and to seeing me afoot on the prairie. As herding prey animals, their instinct is to flee any possible threat. The fact that they don’t dash away in panic when I approach seems to validate my efforts at low-stress handling and of the husbandry I provide them. You can click on the images for a larger view.

Cattle graze within a few feet of the photographer Tuesday morning on a ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

An inquisitive calf approaches the photographer Tuesday morning on a ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

But it was more than that on Tuesday. The cow that licked the sole of my hiking boot, for instance, is a first-calf heifer. Last summer I spent a lot of time afoot amongst her and her heifer group. As curious young cattle, they would always eventually approach and crowd around me, particularly if I stayed very still. One heifer, braver (or perhaps stupider) than the rest, would nearly always sniff at me and then lick me with her rough tongue. On Tuesday, she exhibited the same behavior, despite the passage of a year’s time and despite having a calf to care for and protect.

There’s behavioral continuity there, and that feels good to me. Does the cow “remember” me? Well, perhaps at some level. But she’s still only a cow, and so far as we know, the bovine brain operates very differently than the human model. The emotion I feel is almost certainly not reciprocated by the cow. This I know, yet that knowledge does nothing to dampen my emotional response. It might, in fact, enhance that response.

At this point, you may be wondering if I’m certifiably nuts. If so, you may be right.

Half an hour earlier I’d clambered through a four-wire fence to snap some pictures of common milkweed, a plant that had come up as a topic in, of all places, a facebook conversation last week.

Common milkweed is common in the ditches and in recently reclaimed grasslands, but not in native prairie. I spied this milkweed in a ditch alongside a county road that cuts through the prairie I was hiking, and facebook conversation in mind, decided I’d better grab some images while I had the opportunity.

Considered by many to be a weed, common milkweed is nonetheless showy and attractive. The plants I was photographing were partially obscured by tall, headed, western wheatgrass, so I moved along the ditch to where a single plant was growing right at the edge of the road grader cut. As I sat down on the sun-warmed, gravely incline of the ditch to steady the camera, I saw a flash of color adorning one of the pinkish flower petals. “Monarch caterpillar,” I thought immediately. Not exactly rocket science, of course, as Monarchs are known to feed only on milkweed and the caterpillars are prettily and distinctively marked.

A Monarch caterpillar feeds on common milkweed Tuesday morning along a county road south of Kimball, Neb.

I moved closer, set my camera to the “super-macro” setting, and began to take pictures. The caterpillar, intent on feeding, seemed not to care about my proximity or the intrusion of a giant, shiny camera lens.

Colorful? Breathtaking?

At one point I paused to peer closely at the inch-and-a-half bug, and was immediately captivated by its beauty. The bright yellow stripes, I knew, were a warning sign to potential predators. “I taste terrible!” Still, the brightly striped insect, perched on a pinkish, star-shaped flower and seen against the vibrant green of the plant’s foliage was breathtaking.

That’s when the flipity-flopping started.

Is it possible to love a butterfly-to-be? I think it must be.

How fortunate I am, I thought, to not only be able to see and experience nature’s beauty on a daily basis, but to be able to take the time to enjoy it, think about it, and in some small way, share it.

My thoughts turned to my great-grandmother, Maude Evertson, who so often told me of her love for the prairie, and her contention that most of it should never have been plowed and farmed. I couldn’t help but wonder whether she’d ever beheld the beauty of a Monarch caterpillar. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. I thought about the wonders she must have beheld back when the prairie was essentially undisturbed, when there were no county roads nor REA lines and fences were few and far between. When Indians still occasionally trotted across the landscape on short, colorful horses.

Maude Holloway and her mother, Louisa Quick Holloway, beside their "soddy" in Frontier County, Neb., about 1895.

I thought about other people across the length and breadth of our nation, the 99 percent who have never set foot on a farm or ranch. Do they find beauty in their daily lives? Do their hearts occasionally lurch from the sheer joy of experience? I hope so. Oh, I hope so.

The bureaucrats who cried wolf

When I was a youngster…

(Oh, rats! I remember promising myself that when I got old, I would never, never utter that phrase. Sigh.)

Nevertheless, when I was a youngster way back in the 1960’s, I was fascinated by tornadoes. And quite concerned about them as well.

I think I was concerned because every thunderstorm seemed to bring on adult speculation about whether a tornado was be in the offing. The stronger the storm, it seemed, the closer many adults edged toward tornado panic. They usually tried to hide their fear and worry, but it was there for all the world – including the “younguns” – to see.

Fortunately, there was a severe weather alerting system in place. I didn’t know it at the time, but the system was fairly new. Weather alerts were issued for specific areas and localities. They were issued by regional National Weather Service meteorologists, via teletype, to local law enforcement agencies and the media. Upon receipt of an alert, law enforcement and other emergency service providers would put their response plan into action, and the media – radio and television of course – would broadcast the alert.

There were basically four alert levels. A Thunderstorm Watch meant that conditions were right for the formation of thunderstorms. A Thunderstorm Warning meant that a thunderstorm was present in the area. A Tornado Watch meant that conditions were right for a tornado to form. A Tornado Warning meant that a tornado had actually formed and was near by.

When a Thunderstorm Watch was issued, it was basically a reminder that a thunderstorm might pop up at some point, so you should keep an eye on the sky while you went about your daily business.

A Thunderstorm Warning reminded you that there was a thunderstorm present or nearby. Thunderstorms, as the language of the warning stated, can produce high winds, hail, and lightning. Though never explicitly spelled out, the message was clear. Take a close look at what the storm is doing and act accordingly. Maybe you should get yourself and your tractor out of the field. Maybe you should head your horse for the barn. Or get off the lake or the golf course or get your kids out of the swimming pool. On the other hand, perhaps the storm was passing safely clear and you could continue with whatever activity you were engaged in, keeping a close eye on the weather just in case.

A Tornado Watch meant that the weather in the area – usually including energetic thunderstorms – was conducive to tornado formation. In general, you were supposed to pay a little closer attention to the weather during a tornado watch, and be aware of the increased chance of a tornado forming.

The Tornado Warning, however, was a different kettle of fish. A Tornado Warning meant that a tornado had actually formed and been verified by a reliable observer. It was considered to be a real emergency, and with tornadoes being both unpredictable and destructive, it meant that you should take shelter immediately. In the basement. Or lacking a basement, in the strongest interior room of your house, preferably one without windows. If you lived in a mobile home, you could climb in the bathtub (which were all made of cast iron back in the day) and drag a mattress over the top of the tub. Or you could find a ditch to hunker down in.

I remember spending long, frightened minutes in dank, musty basements while tornadoes flailed about “somewhere nearby.” The experience was always too frightening to be an adventure.

But that was then.

Beginning several years ago, the rules changed. Now the National Weather Service only issues Tornado Warnings. At least in my neck of the woods. Every time there’s a thunderstorm, I get a television announcement and a reverse-911 call, saying, “The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for Kimball County. At (time, say 6:15), National Weather Service Doppler Radar identified a thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado at (location) moving (direction and speed).” There’s always a long spiel about taking precautions and an expiration time for the warning. The alerts are usually repeated every 10-15 minutes.

In my opinion, this is pretty much useless information. Worse, it’s taken all the power from the phrase Tornado Warning. People hear the phrase all the time now, pretty much whenever there are dark clouds in the sky. Human nature being what it is, tornado warning now means “dark clouds.”

Perhaps the bureaucrats who designed the “new” alert system never heard the fable of the boy who cried wolf. More likely, they are pre-defending themselves against criticism should there ever actually be a tornado.

In some sense, we’re fortunate that tornadoes developing here in the tri-state region rarely exceed F-0 or F-1 power, producing winds from about 70-112 mph. Though still quite dangerous, they generally lack the destructive force of tornadoes formed at lower elevations.

At any rate, and again, in my opinion, Big Brother has failed in his self-appointed task to protect us (first himself, then us) from everything.

So we’re on our own. Which isn’t an entirely bad thing. We still have powerful minds and good analytical skills at our disposal, and we can all do our own tornado-potential analysis with each and every storm. There’s some very good information on tornadoes available on the internet (a lot of garbage, too, so read carefully). We can all prepare ourselves and use our own initiative to protect ourselves. Just like everyone did back in the old days.

Joplin

My brother Andy Evertson has been an Omaha Firefighter since the early 1990’s. In addition to fighting fires, he is a paramedic. As a highly skilled emergency responder, he is on the roster of Omaha Rapid Response, an organization which sends volunteer emergency workers to disaster areas.
 Andy just returned home from Joplin, Mo., where Omaha Rapid Response spent three days assisting victims of the May 23 tornado. The following is his e-mail report to friends and family, edited only for print style.

Near St. John’s Mercy Hospital in Joplin, Mo., an American flag hangs where the May 23 tornado left it, in the shattered limbs of a tree, surrounded by destruction. Surrounded also by incredible human spirit. Click on the picture for a larger image.

I went to Joplin, Mo. this weekend with a local volunteer group, Omaha Rapid Response. I'm at a loss for words as to what to say about it. We stayed at a local church and were given names and addresses of people that needed help going through their houses for personal belongings before the bulldozers plowed everything under. Mere words cannot describe what we saw. This was 3 weeks after the actual tornado and there had been considerable cleanup. It was still almost incomprehensible to the human eye. I'm still having trouble trying to reconcile the damage. It is as troubling as anything I have ever seen.

Most people had been through their houses several times already and I got the sense most were ready to move on. The ones I spoke with were mostly upbeat and incredibly stoic. I did not detect a sense of resignation, but rather a feeling that they would not be defined by this single event. Many just wanted to talk, and to a person they were grateful to be alive and acknowledged the role that God must have played in their survival.

Very few of these houses have basements due to the high water table. Most of these folks were at home when it hit. I asked over and over where they went (for shelter). They went into hallways, small closets, bathrooms, and in some cases just clung to the ground. Their houses were removed from around them save the spaces where most of them hid. We ate at a diner where the waitress said she and her husband were sleeping in their second-floor apartment and did not realize what was happening until it was upon on them. She said they laid on the floor while everything around them disappeared and they watched their car fly by. She was from Bosnia and had lived in Joplin just over a year. She said she grew up in war and had never seen anything like this. Still, she said she loved Joplin, except for the weather.

St. John’s Mercy Hospital, Joplin, Mo. The large structure on the left is the now-condemned hospital building, which was actually twisted on it’s foundation. On the right, in the parking lot, is the functioning MASH-type tent hospital which is presently being used. Click on the picture for a larger image.

The infamous hospital shown so prominently on the news was apparently rotated several inches on its foundation. It has since been fenced off; pending demolition I suppose. In a parking lot across the street they have established a new "tent" hospital with surgical suites, a functioning emergency room, and 60-plus inpatient beds. Ironically, there is another hospital only blocks away which was unscathed by the storm.

Almost as remarkable are the parts of Joplin not hit that seem oblivious to what has happened. We arrived in town around 1 a.m. and I breathed a sigh of relief because the damage did not seem to be near as bad as I thought it would be. I figured the news reports had been greatly exaggerated. Then we came across the path of destruction and passed into a world of disbelief. The maddening randomness is as hard to comprehend as the damage itself.

To be sure, it destroyed everything in its path. It is a clichéd saying after any disaster, but the mind cannot comprehend how more – many more – people were not killed. I have spent a good portion of this morning looking at aerial photos of Joplin before the tornado to try and decipher what I actually saw there. My response to this point is a very strong desire to vomit.

At this point, I frankly don't know what to say, but feel I should say something. If there is something to take away I suppose it is the resiliency of the human spirit. Like the ant pile that has been kicked in, the people go about the business of reconstructing their lives, most of them grateful that things weren't worse. I went there to help and was afraid at times that they were going to have to take time out their efforts to comfort me. The response appears to have been overwhelming. We were going to go down much sooner but they were so inundated with volunteers that it was becoming problematic.

The relief efforts we dealt with were mostly church based and were run very very well. Apparently in the south, the disaster response of churches has become a cottage industry, particularly with the Baptists. The church we stayed in had 100 beds set up and had a constant stream of volunteers filing through. They fed everybody 3 times a day through donations and still managed to have a church service on Sunday. They carried a full inventory of donated supplies and had them stacked from floor to ceiling yet were organized enough to get the right stuff to the right folks. They had truckloads of bottled water and Gatorade. They had feeding stations throughout the area, many in structures damaged by the tornado. They had health clinics where volunteers could get tetanus shots due to all the nails and other hazards. Four-wheelers regularly came down every street with water, Gatorade, and even ice cream. This was a very impressive logistical endeavor.

The federal government would do well to take some lessons. I will say local first responders did an incredible job and the first FEMA folks also did a good job not only of searching for bodies but of marking the streets and addresses. All street signs were gone after the storm and neighborhoods were virtually unrecognizable. The MASH-type hospital set up in the parking lot was up and running within 24 hours.

I heard about the Joplin tornado on the radio. I didn’t give it a lot of thought, other than to think that, thankfully, loss of life was comparatively small, given the reported destructiveness of the storm. That was about it. I’m a busy fellow, and spend most of my waking hours concerned with and working on my own projects. I’m quite egocentric, to say the least. Which is why I’m thankful to people like my brother, who not only selflessly serve others, but who have the skill to share their keen observations and insight in verbal and written form. Thanks, Brother, for snapping me out of self for a few moments.

More than wildflowers

“I like it,” said Omaha middle schooler Makayla Lieb when asked what she thought about the native shortgrass prairie and wide-open spaces of the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

Makayla had made the long trek out from the big city with friends Faith and grace Evertson, who also live in Omaha. Grace and Faith’s Dad Andy, an Omaha Firefighter, grew up on the EJE. He brought his kids and their friend out to experience the beauty of the shortgrass prairie in spring.

City girls cool off in a stock tank June 4 during the fourth annual Wildflower Week celebration on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb. From left: Faith Evertson, Makayla Lieb, Grace Evertson, Andy Evertson, all of Omaha. Click on the picture for a larger image.

In addition to participating in the wildflower event, Andy gave the girls a comprehensive tour of the ranch and of Kimball -- including the swimming pool and Dairy Queen. Old hat for his kids, but I believe Makayla was enchanted.

Three friends from Omaha pause along a canyon wall June 4 during The fourth annual Wildflower Week celebration on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb. From left: Makayla Lieb, Faith Evertson, Grace Evertson. Click on the picture for a larger image.

The Omahan’s trip coincided with the fourth annual Kimball Wildflower Week celebration, hosted by the ranch as part of Nebraska’s state-wide Wildflower Week Celebration.

Saturday was actually a make-up event, following the rain-out on the event’s previously scheduled day, May 28.

While May 28 was cold and soggy, June 4 was just about perfect. The sky was deep and blue and clear, with hardly a cloud to be seen. A south breeze was just enough to be cooling without being bothersome. The temperature topped out in the mid-70’s.

And following a couple weeks of much needed spring rainfall, the prairie was vibrantly green and flush with colorful wildflowers.

A group of wildflower enthusiasts move along a canyon trail June 4 during the fourth annual Wildflower Week celebration on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb. Toward the back of the group is an avid reptile hunter and his trusty assistant. Click on the picture for a larger image.

Turnout for the event was a bit smaller than in recent years, due mainly to the last-minute postponement of last week’s event. From my perspective, however, the number of participants is far less important than the fact that I can share the beauty with those who don’t get to see it every day.

One participant, five year-old Aaron Gilming of rural Bushnell, Neb., came prepared to “catch a lizard.” Arriving at the ranch, he climbed down from his father’s pickup with a clear plastic reptile case. Though he didn’t manage to find a lizard, he did capture a great plains toad, which clearly pushed his day onto the success side of the ledger.

In addition to sharing the natural beauty of the ranch with everyone who attended, I was also able to talk a bit about what we do on the ranch. Though by no means comprehensive, my talk was aimed at pointing out the differences between the reality of ranching and the more commonly held ideas most people have about where their hamburger comes from.

I kept my remarks brief and too the point, though, and let the prairie and the peacefully grazing cattle tell their own story.

The smiles I saw, the joy of discovery and delight in the beauty all around – these things pushed the day on the success side of my ledger. I can’t wait to do it again next year. Stay tuned to this space for details of the 2012 – and FIFTH annual – edition of Wildflower Week on the EJE Ranch.

Wet Wildflowers

The rain started to fall about 9:30 p.m. last Friday, and I wondered whether our annual Wildflower Week event would be affected. Probably not, I decided. The forecast was for clearing skies overnight and partly cloudy skies in the morn, with highs expected in the 60’s and only a slight chance of thunderstorms.

The forecast was a bit off. In fact it rained most of the night and when I rolled out of the sheets at 5 a.m. it was raining hard.

I wasn’t bothered by the rain. In fact, I was happy about it. South of Kimball, where our ranch is located, is the driest part of the Panhandle. We rely on spring rains to make the grass grow so that our cattle can harvest the green bounty and turn it into a valuable commodity. Let it rain!

But the Wildflower event had been planned and publicized for months, and there was a long list of attendees who would have to be notified of the rainout and reschedule. Fortunately, I’d planned for this. I sent out texts and e-mails, posted a rescheduled event (for Saturday, June 4) on Facebook, and made a few phone calls.

I wasn’t sure whether everyone would get the word in time, though, so I headed out to the site at 7 a.m. to catch those who might show up despite the weather. None did.

While I was there, I decided to scout the area and get in a bit of exercise. Hiking in the rain doesn’t bother me at all; I learned a long time ago that I won’t melt.

I set off down a grassy swale covered in rank cool season grasses. Within a few feet my feet and legs were soaked to the knees from walking through the tall, wet green stuff. The rain kept pelting down, bringing the horizon close and adding a vibrancy to the colors of bountiful grasses and forbs. As I moved along, I began to pick out brilliant wildflowers. Yellows, reds, blues, purples, whites. Indian paintbrush. Hoary puccoon. Star Lily. Hood’s phlox. Western wallflower. Penstemon. Prairie buckbean. Nuttall’s violet. Milk vetch. Wild parsley.

As I hiked I pushed along hard to drive up my heart rate. Soon the ol’ ticker was thumping along at about 160 and I was breathing good and hard. Sweat began to run, adding a water and salt burden to my drizzle-soaked clothing, and nicely balancing the heat of exercise with damp coolness. Though I was breathing hard, the great draughts of humid air went in and out of my lungs with ease. A few of my previously injured joints and tendons complained as I strode along, but those are aches and pains I’m accustomed to dealing with.

I scrambled down a familiar canyon path and picked my way along the rocky, sandy bottom. Here the walls of the canyon are forested with chokecherry, wild rose and skunkbush sumac. The chokecherry was beginning to bloom, with great white clouds of perfumed flowers floating among deep green leaves. Rose buds were swelling, as were the sumac buds, ready to burst open and join in spring’s wild dance of prolifity. As I brushed against the sumac it’s pungent aroma filled the air and followed me along, an invisible but welcome companion. Only weeks ago this canyon was drab, brown and sere. Today it had completely changed it’s appearance to vibrant, dripping color. A chameleon landscape.



A colorful horned lizard, washed free of dust by the rain, gleams brightly under overcast and raining skies last Saturday on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

 On a grassy tuft of soil near the bottom I spied a surprisingly colorful horned lizard. Washed free of dust by the rain, it’s brightly colored, pebbly skin gleamed brightly in the muted light. Cold and sluggish, it let me take a few pictures. I kicked up a cottontail, then another. They dashed madly from rock to rock, thicket to thicket. I rounded a corner and beheld a mule deer doe and two tiny fawns, perched halfway up the eastern wall of the canyon. The trio looked at me for long moments, then turned and picked their way daintily up and out of the canyon. I turned another corner and a pair of Swainson’s hawks leapt into flight from a high nesting ledge.

Out of the side branch and into the main branch of the canyon, the walking was easier, with established grama and buffalograss to tread upon and less exposed rock and sand. On either side of me the canyon walls, wet from the rain, showed off unusually colorful sedimentary strata. Where erosion had undercut harder rock, mats of prickly pear flourished atop ledges, grasping roots hanging in the air underneath.

After several miles of a great looping route, up and down hills and past windmills and skirting good, tight fences, I returned to my truck. Standing there in cool-down mode, I drank in the beauty of the scene and felt once again the deep, abiding good fortune I’ve been blessed with.

As my heart slowed and breathing moderated, my phone rang. The caller, from Pinedale, Wyo., was checking to see if the wildflower event was still on. I told her about the rain, as well as the makeup day on June 4. She was glad she’d called, and happy about the makeup day. So was I.

In some sense I wished we could have held the event in the rain, to give folks the chance to experience a different, though slightly uncomfortable, view of nature’s beauty. A few, I was sure, would have come, but most wouldn’t have, and the idea is to share the spring shortgrass prairie ecosystem with as many as possible.

If you’re interested, come out and see for yourself on Saturday, June 4. It’s an all-day event, beginning at 7 a.m. and ending sometime after sunset. You needn’t stay all day; come anytime and stay as long as you like. For details go to ‘Kimball Wildflower Week Makeup’ on Facebook.

For the Fallen

Last week I wrote about enjoying the “bonus years” I’ve had since surviving an aircraft crash more than a quarter century ago. This week I’ll write about, and hope you’ll think about, those who never got a second chance – never got to enjoy the gravy.

Though congress made it a three-day weekend in 1971, Memorial Day is nevertheless still formally a day to remember those who fell in the service of our country, and specifically those who fell during time of war.

Since the Vietnam War, service in the U.S. military has been a volunteer affair. For more than 35 years now, those who have served have had to make the decision on their own, and then have had to voluntarily jump through a bunch of tough hoops to even be allowed to wear the uniform. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. There are good and valid reasons to field either a conscript or a volunteer force. One thing the volunteer force seems to have done, however, is to distance most Americans from their military.

Perhaps this is why so many folks think of Memorial Day in terms of time off from work, rather than as an opportunity to honor and think about the sacrifice of the relatively few for the overwhelmingly many.

For those who served and survived, though, Memorial Day is much more than a holiday. For many of us, it is a time of reflection, a time to brush cobwebs away from painful memories and to think about and honor our fallen comrades.

As I write these words I think of two men in particular, the first and last men I served with who were killed in combat. The memories I have of their last hours and moments, of the nature of their deaths, are sharp and wrenching. I don’t like to think of those times, because they are shot through with a heavy dose of survivor’s guilt. Yet I must remember, I must think of those awful moments, for I must honor the lives and the sacrifice of those men. Neither was larger than life, neither a movie poster hero. Yet both fought to the very last breath, demonstrating a kind of courage which is remarkable and at the same time impossible to describe. To gain a visceral understanding of the ultimate sacrifice, unfortunately, you simply have to be there.

No one joins the U.S. Military with the intent to die in battle. In fact, the military go to great lengths to weed out the applicants who have a death wish. They are simply too selfish and too immature to be reliable, to be a team player, to guard the backs of their comrades.

No, those of us who make the rigorous cut expect and plan to survive. We know the risks, we can each of us calculate the odds. The odds, in the aggregate, are in our favor. But the risk is real, as each of us knows full well.

Regardless of the risk, each of us have determined that our country, the grand, wonderful idea of these United States of America, is worth the possibilities that the risk entails. We go into harms way as a service to our country and to our fellow citizens. Most of us survive. Some of us do not. The fallen are the real reason we celebrate Memorial Day. If you get the chance, perhaps you can take a few moments to reflect on the heroic nature of the sacrifices others have made so that you might enjoy the manifold blessings of life in America.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) “For the Fallen”

Kimball Wildflower Week

Nebraska Wildflower Week is May 27 through June 5. The Kimball Community Arboretum and EJE Ranch are hosting Kimball Wildflower Week on May 28 at the EJE south of Kimball, Neb. Everyone is invited and we'd love to see you there. Below is the text from a press release about the event.

May 28 Near Kimball. “Kimball Wildflower Week.” Visit us on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=175460332498168 Morning yoga (followed by bird hike) at 7 a.m. Morning wildflower hike at 10 a.m. Bring a sack lunch and drink if you want to stay for lunch or visit one of Kimball's restaurants. Afternoon wildflower hike at 2 p.m. Campfire hot dogs and s'mores at 6 p.m. (bring a drink and something to share). Evening wildflower/sunset hike at 7:30 p.m. (sunset 8:18 p.m.). Come and enjoy the wonder of Nebraska's shortgrass prairie ecosystem. This event is free but there is a suggested donation of $5 per adult. Donations go to the Kimball Community Arboretum. Site use donated by EJE Ranch. Make-up day in case of inclement weather will be Saturday, June 4, with the same slate of events. Directions: From the Kimball stoplight (Hwy 71/30) drive 3 miles south, then 3 miles west on CR 28. Turn right on CR 35 and drive 1.2 miles north (crossing over I-80) and follow the signs. Or just follow the purple line on the google map (link below), which begins at the Kimball stoplight and ends at the site! GPS coordinates: N 41° 12.734’ W 103° 42.533’


http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=212224935832059816278.00049b86cc1ca59509b58&z=13 Contact: Shaun Evertson, 308-241-0878/shaunevertson@charter.net

Calves at play

As I’ve said before, spring is a nice time of the year. It can be harsh at times, but it is the season of renewal and the countryside abounds with new life of all kinds; grasses and forbs, buds and leaves on trees and shrubs, new baby livestock and new baby wildlife. And there’s baseball.

In 1990 the renowned columnist and commentator George F. Will published a book titled “Men at Work, the Craft of Baseball.” While you may or may not like Will and his conservative politics, he’s a fine writer and “Men at Work” is perhaps the best baseball book written in the last 50 years.

The thesis of Will’s book is that while it’s true that baseball at the professional level is a boy’s game played by men, the men who get paid for playing the game approach their craft as professional craftsmen. Will writes in great detail about the work ethic and professionalism of four people who were active in the game during the late 1980’s: Oakland Manager Tony La Russa, L.A. pitcher Orel Hersheiser, San Diego slugger Tony Gwynn, and Baltimore’s modern Iron Man Cal Ripkin, Jr. If you’re a fan of the game, you might give ‘Men at Work” a try. It’s a good read.

But this piece is more about calves than baseball. I only mention Will’s book because while we were fixing fence the other day, my hired man and I paused to watch a group of calves at play. As I watched the calves and thought about our fencing labor, I thought, “here we have men at work and calves at play.”

A first-calf heifer and her new baby soak up the warm morning sunshine last week on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb. Click on the image for a larger view.

It’s fun to watch calves go from nearly-helpless newborn to playful, nearly-independent creature in only a few days. When they’re first born, they’re not yet strong or coordinated enough to travel far so mama sticks pretty close. Over the next few days, as the calves fill up on rich milk, they get stronger and more coordinated. Mama needs plenty of food to keep her milk production up, so she parks her calf in a reasonably safe area and grazes ever farther from her baby. Often the calves are cleverly hidden in shallow depressions or in thick brush, where they seem to instinctively know to remain quiet and still until mama returns.

After a few days, cow and calf rejoin the herd. Then the magic happens. The calves check each other out, like school kids on the playground. They’re tentative at first, almost as if they’re shy. But before long they become pals and spend more time together than with their mamas.

Filled with energy, on fine days they begin exploring their surroundings and learning what their new body is capable of. They prance and hop and jump around, butt heads a bit and get into shoving matches, curiously examine grass and fences and weeds and the stray scraps of paper and plastic that blow through the pasture.

Before long they learn that they can run like the wind. A group of eight or ten calves will suddenly take off at full speed, on who knows what signal, and tear off across the prairie, dashing in big, sweeping loops wherever their fancy takes them.

Watching their antics, it’s hard not to think that they are having fun, and it’s easy to equate their behavior with the play of children. They’re not children, of course, they’re young cattle. But they’re still playing, still finding some level of enjoyment in their fresh new lives and in their fresh, new bodies.

Watching the calves at play is part of the reason many of us choose to raise cattle. It’s a small part of the non-monetary compensation package we get. I doubt many of us would enjoy our profession as much if we weren’t able to take the time to watch calves at play. I know I wouldn’t.

Antibiotic resistance in food animals: What's wrong with this report?

There have been many reports lately in the major entertainment-news media regarding the use of antibiotics in food animals. In only the last two weeks nearly every segment of the so-called major media – television, print, radio and internet – reported on a study purporting to show that nearly all meat products sampled in grocery stores were contaminated by antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. What the entertainment-news media failed to report, however, were the bulk of the actual findings of the study, funded by the Pew Charitable Trust, and the study’s very significant shortcomings.

Firstly, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (PCIFAP) was formed in 2006 to “…investigate the problems associated with industrial farm animal production…and to solve them.” Think about that for a moment. Though in its mission statement PCIFAP says it was “…formed to conduct a comprehensive, fact-based and balanced examination of key aspects of the farm animal industry,” the group’s beginning assumption is that there are “problems” with animal agriculture and they are going to “solve” them. With a brief like that, it’s naïve in the extreme to expect findings which are comprehensive, fact-based, or balanced.

Little wonder that in the preface of their 2008 report on US agriculture, PCIFAP calls modern US agriculture “the agro-industrial complex” and equates it with President Eisenhower’s dire warnings about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. If you've followed histrory at all, you might have noted that the military-industrial complex did not, in fact, take over and destroy the world.

The preface of the PCIFAP report closes with this paragraph: “The present system of producing food animals in the United States is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health and damage to the environment, as well as unnecessary harm to the animals we raise for food.” To see a copy of the report, visit http://www.ncifap.org/bin/e/j/PCIFAPFin.pdf

It’s clear that Pew and their affiliate researchers have taken a one-sided, highly-partisan approach to studying US agriculture. Let’s look at some of the shortcomings of their latest so-called study.

Pew used the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) of Flagstaff, Ariz. to conduct their study. TGen collected 136 samples of meat and poultry from 80 brands in 26 grocery stores in five US cities – Los Angeles, Flagstaff, Ft. Lauderdale, Chicago, and Washington D.C. The company refused to disclose the brand names or the names of the grocery stores. Those who’ve studied statistics and scientific methodology will recognize that 136 is a tiny sample size; far too small a size from which to draw their sweeping conclusion that bacterial contamination of the US meat and poultry supply is “pervasive and widespread.”

When the USDA studies bacteria in the US meat supply, they take thousands of samples from grocery stores across the country, and their report includes store and brand names. The USDA also samples over long periods of time, a strategy which helps to identify trends in contamination. The USDA, in fact, is continuously sampling all food products available to US consumers – not just meat and poultry.

TGen reported that 47 percent (“nearly half”) of the samples they collected were contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus, and that 52 percent of those bacteria were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics. Furthermore, TGen said that DNA testing indicated food animals “as the major source” of the contamination.

Unfortunately, TGen seems to have been fibbing about the source of the contamination. According to Drs. Elizabeth Wagstrom and Peter Davies of the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Population Medicine, isolates of Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) found in the study were human types, meaning the meat likely was contaminated by people. Methicillin, they added, is not used in food animals.

Moreover, according to Dr. Ellin Doyle of the University of Wisconsin's Food Research Institute, Staphylococcus aureus is found in over half of human nasal passages. The incidence of MRSA is much lower – estimates by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicate that only about 1.5 percent of people in the general population carry MRSA. Doyle adds that only two foodborne outbreaks of MRSA have been identified, and both were attributed to food handlers contaminating food – not to the food source itself. S. aureus is also carried by household pets and can be transmitted in health care settings, she said.

The TGen study also failed to sample foodstuffs from non-meat and poultry areas of the grocery stores. Such samples would have provided a “control” of sorts, and provided the researchers data which would likely have helped them understand whether humans or food animals were responsible for the contamination. Were S. aureus and/or MRSA found on canned goods, bakery products, or fruits and vegetables, for instance, the researchers could hardly have concluded that the contamination came from food animals. The culprit would have been identified as most likely human.

Unfortunately, consumers can’t rely on the major entertainment-news media for honest reporting. To arm themselves with the facts, consumers should view most news reporting through a skeptical filter, asking themselves whether what they are being told is fact-based and reasonable or speculation-based and sensational.

In the next installment of this series we’ll look a what pathogenic bacteria are and how they make us sick.

How protective is too protective?

As I grabbed the hind leg of a new calf, preparing to weigh, tag and vaccinate it, the cow came at me with a will. Bellowing and snorting, she drove her head into my midsection, flinging me back about 15 feet with the power of 1,000 lbs. of adrenaline-fueled protectiveness.

Her charge didn’t stop there, either. She came back at me, head down and bellowing, clearly intent on driving me away from her new baby. As she pushed me back I tried hard to stay upright, leaning forward into her charge with my feet in a wide stance, trading time and distance for balance, instinctively reverting to the old football tactic of being pushed but not controlled. There wasn’t much else I could do. The cow relented after her second rush, then stood there between the calf and I (and my pickup!), watching me closely for any further predatory moves toward her new charge.

Though I was startled by the suddenness, intensity and determination of the cow’s charge, and though it was a frightening experience, I knew that she was only moving me away from her calf; that she wasn’t intent on hurting me. I’ve experienced both, and there’s a big difference.

I wasn’t, however, really surprised at the cow’s behavior. She’d acted in a similar fashion when I tagged her very first calf last April. Similar in the sense that she’d pushed me away, though with much less force and authority. Last year I’d managed to hang on to the calf and flip it in the back of the pickup where I could finish my work in relative peace.

With last year’s experience as a gauge, I was forewarned and cautious this year. I’d be careful and alert as I approached the new pair, but I’d also be calm and confidant. Keeping your attitude and demeanor relaxed and non-threatening is key in practicing low stress cattle handling. Keeping emotions at bay is important, too. From a low stress perspective, the point of tagging at or near birth is to quickly get the pair through the stress of the tagging procedure. We’ve seen that these things pay dividends in healthier, better-performing calves on our ranch, so our low stress approach is one we’ll keep.

Often a cow will be somewhat aggressive in protecting her calf one year, then gradually relax over the next several years. Perhaps they “learn” that the threat isn’t as severe as it first appeared. Perhaps they begin to “understand” the tagging process as a normal state of affairs. Some cows, however, will always be quite aggressive. Researchers believe that aggressiveness is in part genetic predisposition, and in part learned behavior.

As I stood there in the bright sunshine the other morning, separated from my pickup and my tagging chore by a protective cow, I knew that time was on my side. I stood my ground quietly, neither making eye contact with the cow nor moving toward the calf or my pickup. Within a few minutes the calf began to move away and the cow followed. I returned to my pickup, carefully placed my tagging gear in the bed, then settled in to watch the pair. The calf nursed for a while, then lay down in the warm sunshine as the cow moved off a few feet to graze. It was all the opportunity I needed.

I quickly moved the pickup between the pair, calf on my side and cow on the other side. I jumped out, flipped the calf into the bed of the pickup, and hopped in the back myself. By the time the cow had moved around the pickup, both the calf and I were safely above the fray and I could get on with my job.

I quickly tagged, vaccinated, and weighed the calf, checked it for horn buds, then castrated it with an emasculating band. As I worked, the cow dashed around bellowing and carrying on. She acted like she wanted to climb into the pickup bed but couldn’t figure out how to do it. Once or twice she thumped the side of the pickup with her head, leaving shallow dents in the body work. Oh, well, it’s a working pickup.

Finished with my job, I lowered the calf to the ground where his exited mother checked him over carefully. Seeing that all was well, the cow led her newly decorated baby off over a rise, looking for a bit of peace and quiet.

By the next morning, the cow had lost much of her protective demeanor and was grazing several hundred yards away from her calf. She kept an eye on me as I drove through the herd checking cows and calves, but she didn’t seem overly concerned.

But now it’s decision time. With two strikes (literally) against her, can we afford to keep an overly-protective cow in our quiet, very low stress herd?

In the cow’s favor, she’s only been aggressively protective during the first 24-48 hours after birth. Otherwise, she’s quiet and easy to work with. She’s also an outstanding mother, having raised a fine heifer last year – one that we kept back as a replacement. Also, according to the research I’ve studied, temperament is only about 20 percent genetic and 80 percent learned behavior. Considering the circumstances of her first birth and first aggressive behavior, it’s fair to say that I “taught” her, at least to some extent, to be fiercely protective of her calf.

On the other hand, she represents a high level of risk to those who have to work with her during the perinatal period. Too much risk, in my opinion. She’s a great cow, but she’ll be an even better cow in a herd where delayed tagging is practiced.

So as things stand now, this cow will be going to town after weaning.

And next spring I’ll keep a very close eye on her daughter as she has her first calf. We’ll see how it goes.

Night watch

At 9:30 p.m. it’s dark out. The sun is down with not even a hint of light lingering in the west. Overhead a thin overcast hides the stars and mostly obscures a waxing crescent moon. The air is cooling and damp – about 45 degrees – and the forecast calls for overnight rain. The air is still, without a hint of wind. The quiet sounds of the nighttime prairie are all around; tiny clicks and taps of small animals, the distant yip of coyotes a few miles to the south, the sound of cows browsing a long, slow, evening meal.

My eyes have grown adjusted to the dark and I can clearly see the heifer whose birth progress I’m monitoring. She’s laid up in a dense thicket of last year’s sweet clover, hidden from close view but easily visible from my perch on a hill several hundred yards to the south. I’m far enough away to not be a distraction, close enough to see in general what she’s doing and how she’s progressing. Occasionally I raise well-crafted German binoculars to my eyes for a close, clear view. I cringe a bit when I think about how much I paid for the optics, but they were purchased with just this situation in mind. Over the years they’ve proved worth the cost.

The heifer’s labor began about 6 p.m. with the sun still well above the horizon and pasture bathed in late afternoon light. As the day began to close, the heifer struck out north, heading away from the herd and toward a quiet, sheltered corner of the pasture. She moved slowly with a waddling gait, tail cocked and slightly extended. I’d just finished weighing, tagging and vaccinating four new calves and was ready for my supper. I was taking one last spin through the herd on my way to the house when I saw her moving north with a purpose.

Close observation is one of the keys to keeping calving mortality low. For those fixed to do so, watching the herd closely during calving season allows the producer to catch problems early, before they can kill a calf, a cow, or even both. Though close observation takes time and fuel, both of which add directly to production expense, such costs are more easily borne in the context of live versus dead calves. As they say, you can't sell a dead calf.

As I watched her, the heifer was clearly agitated. She tried to graze, but would take only a few bites of grass before she'd pause and stare off into the distance. Then she would lower her head and sniff the ground, then quickly turn and look back along her flank in an effort to see what was going on back there. In trying to catch a glimpse of her bedeviler, she'd turn sharply in a circle, once, twice, three times – like a slow-motion version of a spinning rodeo bull. Finally she'd stopped, absentmindedly bite at a few dried sweetclover stalks, then abruptly lay down.

Soon she stretched out completely on her side, taking a position cows rarely take except when calving. Soon, I think, soon. Laying in tall, dried sweetclover as she is, it’s hard for me to see the details I want to see. But with my trusty binoculars I can see enough. Time for me to be patient.

In only a few minutes the heifer is back on her feet, repeating her earlier behavior, half-heartedly grazing, staring into the distance, looking back and spinning around, chewing on dried sweetclover, then laying down once again. A northerly breeze begins to flow across the prairie, waving the sweetclover and carrying the sounds the heifer is making to my ear. As she continues her parturition dance, she lows softly and repeatedly.

As I watch over the next three hours, the sun fades over the west horizon and night comes. I begin to worry a bit, wondering whether the heifer will need help or not. My fears are premature, though, for she has not yet produced the amniotic sac or “bag of waters,” let alone any sign of the calf. As the minutes tick by, I reach down at flick on the radio, allowing the magic sounds of nighttime baseball to fill the close air of my pickup cab.

Far away in Pittsburgh, on the banks of the famous Three Rivers, the Rockies and Pirates are tied as the ninth inning begins. I listen to the action, seeing PNC Park with my minds eye, the perfection of an emerald diamond and lush outfield dotted with white- and gray-clad players, surrounded by thousands of intense Iron City fans. I hear the fans roar at the crack of bat on ball, sigh and groan as ball slaps leather and another scoring try is defeated. I think of how remarkable it is that I can sit in a cow pasture 1,240 miles distant and listen in to the action taking place in a ballpark snugged in tight against the Allegheny River.

With baseball sounds and half-seen images as a backdrop, I watch the heifer get on with her business of ushering new life into the world. With the onset of true darkness, she seems to settle down and work with determination. Soon she’s straining with a will, and within ten minutes she’s produced a dark-wet calf. The pair lay still for a few moments, resting after their tremendous effort. Through my binoculars I can see the calf breathing, can see that its nose and mouth are clear. Soon it begins to shake its head and move its legs, which prompts the new mother to get up and investigate.

The cow sniffs the calf at first, then with a deep low of contentment, begins to vigorously lick and nuzzle her new charge. Within a few minutes the calf totters to its feet and makes its unsteady way to the udder. After a few moments its tail begins to flick back and forth as it finds the teat and rich, life-giving colostrum.

I smile as I watch, surrounded by nature’s beauty and the wonder and the magic of baseball. Spring is a wonderful time of the year.