The one percent and the 99 percent

VA Medical Center, Cheyenne, Wyo.

What is freedom?

The well-publicized “occupiers” around the country seem to know the answer, though it usually takes a bit of deciphering.

The message of the self-professed “99 percent” comes down to this:

Freedom is a government provided sinecure (not a “job” job; heaven forbid!).

Freedom is the government forgiving whatever debt the 99-percenters have amassed.

Freedom is the government taking wealth from those who’ve earned it (especially the “rich”) and giving to those who want it but don't want to earn it.

Freedom is free food, free medical care, and “…no hassles about rules, man.”

Freedom, to paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, is not having to take a job so that one can follow one’s muse.

Oh, and freedom pretty much means ridding the world of Jews. I never really thought I would see that kind of naked hate return. It’s human nature, I suppose. Some control it, some refuse to control it or find excuses not to.

As you may have guessed, I don’t agree with the “occupy” crowd. Perhaps you don’t agree with me, that’s fair. But I’ve spent a lot of time studying this self-professed movement, and if you’re honest, you have to agree that I’ve pretty much suitcased their demands and their idea of freedom.

Initially the occupiers were reasonably peaceful and law abiding, in the goofy  tradition of “everybody gets high, and everybody gets a chance at the mic” fashion so beloved by young protesters since the 1960’s.

Unfortunately, while the message hasn’t changed, the occupy protests have grown considerably more violent of late.

While the 99-percenters rail against the greed of the one-percent, the vast (?!?) Zionist/Capitalist conspiracy that controls the world government, they seem oblivious to the fact that a different “one-percent” exists. A one percent that ensures the liberty and rights of the real 99 percent, the 300-plus million Americans who, for the most part, continue to live their lives of liberty one day at a time, in good times and in bad times. The same one percent ensures the rights and liberty of the childish occupiers as well, because they swore a solemn oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States, and not just the people they agree with.

As I write this on Tuesday morning, it’s closing in on 10 p.m. in Kabul, 9 p.m. in Baghdad, and Mombasa, 2 a.m. on Wednesday in Quezon and at Naha. In these places, and in nearly every one of the 24 time zones on this planet, American fighting men and women are prepared to go into harms way on your behalf. In many places they are, as you read these words, in direct peril. On this day, Nov. 11, 2011, some of them may give their lives, others will surely bleed.

I visited the Cheyenne VA Medical Center on Monday. As I walked through the halls of the big, clean, high-tech hospital, I carefully looked at all of the veterans. There were a lot of older fellows who had seen service in WWII and Korea, and a younger generation of graybeards who had fought in Vietnam. There were a scattering of folks my age who fought in places like Beirut and Grenada and Panama and what we now call “Gulf War One.” And there are younger ones, too. Men and women who look far too young to have fought for our nation, yet bear the healing external scars and unfathomable internal hurts of combat.

On Monday I thought about the experiences shared across time by those few hundred vets. Experiences so very similar within the community of those who have served, so utterly foreign to those who have not.

I wondered what those men and women thought about the occupiers. But I didn’t have to ask. They know, as do I, that a “…government of the people, by the people, and for the people” can sometimes be pretty messy. Disgusting, even. It’s the nature of self government, and so far as anyone has been able to determine, the only way to ensure individual liberty.

So long as enough Americans believe to their core the ideas our country was founded on, the country, the people, the Constitution, will be worth defending. The one-percent will continue to raise their right arms, will continue to take the oath, will continue to fight and bleed and die.

For us.

I wrote this on Veterans Day. When I write about Veterans Day I often urge you readers to thank a vet or someone on active duty.

This time I’ll ask you to think about the difference between one percent and 99 percent.

To my brothers and sisters: I know and understand your sacrifice. Bravo Zulu.

Chores and a puppy

November 5 was a pretty day, a day filled with chores and delight.

Not that there’s anything particularly delightful about hand-scooping five tons of corn or tinkering with tiny engine parts deep in the bowels of a skid-steer or deploying four miles of electric fence.

But these are some of the things that must be done if one wants to continue to raise cattle and continue a legacy.

The work can be miserable. The physical toil exhausting. Most of the work is done outside, in hammering heat or freezing cold or something in between. Early in the morning and late at night and at all hours in between.

But not every hour of every day. There are compensations.

After scooping corn and bringing life back to the skid-steer, my Border collie puppy Nona and I went off to check the cows.

As we got out of the pickup I felt like I was stepping into a magical place, a secret place, a place only Nona and I could experience. The overnight coolness was flowing away across the prairie with the gentle northerly breeze, and a bright sun slanted down through a nearly cloudless, deeply blue sky. The touch of the sun was just right – warm and embracing and neither too hot nor too cold. As the ground warmed the smell of autumn filled the air, damp grass and sod and junipers melting out of the first snow of the year.

Nona dashed about hither and yon, following her nose and seeing some things for the first time in her life – she was only about 15 weeks old, after all. As we approached the cow herd on foot she seemed to take on an extra dose of excitement. She’s been around cows every day for more than a month – nothing new there. But there’s always an extra spark when she sees them, as if she knows they’re somehow special, but she can’t quite put her paw on what it is.

Border Collie puppy Nona investigates some cows and calves on the EJE Ranch south of Kimball, Neb.

On our previous walks among the cows Nona has been clearly curious but timid, preferring to stick close to me. On Monday she lost some of her timidity and trotted off ahead of me toward the cattle. I flopped down on the grass to watch her.

She moved straight toward the cows until she was fifty or sixty feet away, then paused. She looked back over her shoulder at me a couple of times, then slowly started circling to the right in a classic gathering move. As she moved to the right, several of the cows began to drift away from her to the left, reacting to the pressure of her proximity. Nona paused and watched, then as the cows stopped, she began to loop back to the left, gently pushing the cows back to the right and ahead. Her herding instincts were clearly starting to show up.

As a curious cow approaches, Border collie puppy Nona stands her ground momentarily – before scooting back to the security of her master.

All was well until a curious calf decided to take a closer look at her. Nona stood her ground for a moment, but as the 600 lb. calf drew closer, she turned and dashed away, back to her master and protection. She fairly leapt into my lap, wiggling and wagging with excitement. She’d taken a big step, and seemed to know it.

After she settled down a bit she moved off toward the cows again and went through a nearly identical process, only this time, a calf sneaked up on her from behind and gave her quite a surprise. Some of her timidity returned and she stayed close to me for several minutes.

She finally found a happy medium at about 75 feet from the cows, a place where she was close enough to watch, yet far enough away that she couldn’t be outflanked.

As I lay on the cool, spongy grass and soaked up the warming autumn sun, I thought about how fortunate I am to be able to enjoy the simple pleasures of the real world.

Opportunity: costs and benefits

I've been neglecting this blog of late, and for that I am truly sorry. Between ranching, newspapering, and now writing and maintaining two blogs, I've struggled to keep my plates spinning, if you'll pardon the trite metaphor. That's just an excuse however. And fortunately, I think I'm starting to find a way to get it all done (the secret is to waste less time. I am a champion time waster).

 On to opportunity costs and benefits.

Most ag producers reading this post will be well acquainted with the concept of opportunity cost. Those readers who aren’t familiar with the term will almost certainly recognize the concept of judging opportunity cost, because it is something we all do, to a greater or lesser extent, when we consider selling or purchasing something.

By definition, opportunity cost is the value of the best but foregone alternative. In a bit plainer language, it’s the value of the best thing you could have bought, but now can’t buy because you’ve already spent that money. Alternatively, when it comes to selling, opportunity cost is the best money you could have pocketed if you had taken a different marketing approach.

On the EJE Ranch we look hard at opportunity costs. By weaning time, we have essentially harvested our annual calf crop, and like the corn or wheat farmer, we have to decide how to sell our crop in a way that maximizes our profit.

If we sell all the calves at the sale barn, we have to be aware of the opportunity cost (which we cannot now realize) potential in backgrounding or stockering the calves until spring. The potential profit in selling larger calves in a higher market always looks good, but is balanced by increased risk. Losing a few calves over the winter can wipe out profit, as can a change in market prices.

The utility of understanding opportunity costs is in fact the utility of rating the costs and benefits of all options. There’s never been, nor will there ever be, a single, fool-proof, highest profit option. But the ability to honestly assess risks and rewards allows the thoughtful producer to eke out enough profit to continue.

Time has an opportunity cost component as well. Few if any of us ever get caught up with all the tasks on our various lists. We have to manage our time so that the “must do's” get done. Only when the must dos are done can we afford to expend time on the like-to-do's.

Over the weekend I had a number of like-to-do's tentatively scheduled, including cleaning corrals, fixing a barn door, assembling a dog kennel, and nailing up a few sagging wires here and there.

I had an unexpected call for a ranch tour, though. The few dollars I would collect for driving someone around the ranch and explaining what we do wouldn’t even come close to the value of catching up on tasks that have been waiting too long already. But as is the case for many of us in ag production, money isn’t the only consideration. In the case of giving ranch tours, I enjoy meeting new people, and I enjoy showing them what we do. I also get to expose non-ag folks to a real, working ranch, and in doing so, give them a tiny slice of reality to compare against what they read, hear and see on television regarding agriculture when they return home. In theory, this kind of interaction can pay off by slowly increasing the agricultural literacy – one or a few people at a time – of our largely urban-suburban population.

There’s another incentive to give the tour, another non-monetary benefit. Just as I give my guest a glimpse of life on a ranch, my guest usually gives me a glimpse of their world. It’s important for me as a food producer to understand what consumers think about their food, to listen to their questions and concerns about food, where it comes from, and whether it’s really safe or not. Each of us also get to compare and contrast lifestyles, and the differences provide for some interesting and memorable conversations.

I’ll call my Saturday tour guest Marvin, because he asked me not to use his name or picture.

Marvin was born and raised behind the Iron Curtain of eastern Europe and came to the U.S. in the mid-80’s. He’s retired now and was returning home to an eastern city on the final leg of a vacation when he stopped for gas in Kimball and heard about the ranch tours I offer.

Marvin was astonished at the sheer size of the ranch. He had assumed, he told me, that most non-cultivated land was public land, owned by the government. He wondered how it was possible to earn a living from what looked to him (and frankly, looks to everyone in mid-October) like utterly unproductive land.

As I explained the cow/calf operation and how we are designed to be in tune with nature, how the cows and calves “harvest” the grass for us and convert it into beef and new calves, how we depend on each season to naturally grow and maintain the shortgrass prairie ecosystem, Marvin became more animated. “Ah,” he said in his thick Slavic accent, “this is real green! “Not electric car. Not windmill. This keep healthy planet, this real green!”

Marvin’s excitement and enthusiasm were delightful. We talked for hours, and he told me a bit about growing up behind the iron curtain. I told him about growing up here, my career in the navy, returning home to ranch. We talked about many things, including some of the problems facing the world today. We didn’t solve anything, but each of us had a good time and enjoyed meeting the other.

As Marvin drove off toward the interstate late in the day, I thought about the chores I hadn’t accomplished, and I thought about opportunity costs. The opportunity cost of doing those chores was the cost of not meeting Marvin, not sharing with him the ranching lifestyle, and not showing off the real, boots on the ground reality of modern agriculture.

Our story is worth telling, our farms and ranches worth showing off. I can’t calculate a dollar figure for the value of sharing the ranch with Marvin, but I think it was time well spent for both of us.

NPR: Agriculture is planetary enemy number one

National Public Radio (NPR) crowned agriculture as "Planetary Enemy Number One" last week when it reported on the planned cover story of the Oct. 20 edition of the journal Nature.

The Nature story is a paper written by a team of environmental scientists from the University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, UC Santa Barbara, and Arizona State University in the U.S., McGill University in Canada, Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and the Stockholm Environment Institute in Sweden, and the University of Bonn in Germany.

According to NPR and a University of Minnesota (UM) press release, the researchers have concluded that agriculture is destroying the environment in trying to feed a growing population, and the solution they propose – world-wide governmental control of agriculture and food – can ensure both enough food for a growing world and environmental protection.

Without pre-publication access to the actual paper (I'm writing this on is Oct. 18), it’s not possible to review the methodology used by the researchers nor the data derived from their efforts (though I’ll do so more formally in the weeks to come), but it is possible to glean a bit of information from NPR and the UM press release.

According to those sources, the researchers argue that humanity and the environment are facing a “daunting triple threat” of insufficient access to food by one-sixth of the human population, environmental destruction wrought by agricultural expansion (increased farmland acres and a concurrent increase in water, pesticide and fertilizer use), and increasing demand for food by a population that will grow to nine billion by 2050. NPR and UM hint that the researchers relied heavily on satellite imagery and computer modeling to reach their conclusions. Unsurprisingly, the threat of human-caused global climate change appears to figure large in the analysis of the “threat,” despite the massive flaws in previously published climate research and steadily increasing evidence of the near-insignificance of the human impact on climate.

The solution proposed by the researchers is a five-point plan, predicated on the centralized control of agricultural production and food distribution around the globe. This is a chilling proposal. In every instance where governments have exercised tight control of agriculture, starvation and environmental degradation have immediately followed. One need only look at the “Great Leap Forward” in China and multiple famines in the Soviet Union to understand the potential for disaster. Though admittedly incomplete, Soviet and Chinese records reveal that at least 6 million and 1.5 million people respectively starved to death under centralized control of agriculture in the 1930’s USSR and in 1950’s China.

Nevertheless, this is the five-point solution proposed by the researchers, at least according to NPR and UM:

1. Halt farmland expansion through centralized control and certification of all land use.

2. Close yield gaps through centralized control of agricultural productivity.

3. Strategic reallocation of inputs through centralized control of all water, fertilizer, and pesticide use.

4. Shift diets through centralized control of food production, shifting away from animal protein (meat) and toward “healthy” (though thus far undefined) food production.

5. Eliminate waste through centralized control of all food from production to consumption.

Interestingly, NPR admits that the researchers do “not really explain” how centralized control will increase food production and halt environmental destruction. They do, however, maintain that centralized control is the solution, and lament the fact that there is at present no “global dictator” to “abolish feedlots” or actively set “…prices for land, corn, meat and everything else.”

According to the UM press release, lead researcher Jonathan Foley, head of UM’s Institute on the Environment said, “For the first time, we have shown it is possible to both feed a hungry world and protect a threatened planet. It will take serious work. But we can do it.”

Farmers and ranchers will likely be quite skeptical of Foley’s assertion. They have, after all, been feeding a hungry world and protecting the environment for generations, if not centuries.

Most of those reading this blog will be farmers and ranchers, and they will likely wonder, as do I, whether the proposals of these researchers have any chance of being adopted here and abroad. My own common sense and experience tell me that the proposed solution is folly, yet in talking with a number of well-educated and well-meaning people, all of whom are at least peripherally involved in agriculture or agricultural research, I’m surprised at how much they are willing to take on faith, and without appraising the “evidence” presented by information resources such as NPR and UM.

This is where I see some real danger in the combination of “the few feeding the many” and of badly flawed and unethical reporting by much of the major media. More than 98 percent of the U.S. population is two or more generations removed from any practical experience or understanding of food production, and are much more likely to be influenced by flawed but widespread and well-presented information. Those same 98 percent are therefore vulnerable to voting for, or acquiescing with, policies which actually threaten, rather than safeguard, their food supply.

We’ll have to wait until publication to assess the real merits of the argument posed by the researchers, however, as reported by NPR and UM, there appear to be some potentially major flaws, including:

1. Computer modeling based on flawed input data (including UN-IPCC climate data).

2. Faulty population growth predictions (in the 1960’s, population experts confidently predicted a world population of 10-12 billion by 2000).

3. Flawed information on both the quantity of water and chemical inputs projected and on their environmental impact.

4. Lack of details regarding the centralized control of agricultural production and food distribution and the safeguards which would prevent repetition of past centralized control disasters.

There are a number of other potential problems with the research as it has thus far been reported. We’ll look more closely at these when the paper is published.

In the meantime, farmers and ranchers should continue to monitor major media ag reporting and do what they can to counter flawed reporting, which can be considerably more effective than one might at first think. Thanks to increased access to valid news via the Internet and a growing agricultural social networking community, ag producers seem to have steered the EPA away from implementing plans to regulate agricultural dust, and have been able to effectively pressure companies supporting anti-agricultural causes, such as Yellow Tail.

Bearing the burden

I got the news via e-mail. The son of a close friend and former navy colleague had been killed in action near Kandahar in Afghanistan. The stark message shattered my emotional defenses utterly. Gravity suddenly seemed overwhelmingly powerful. I put my head down on the desk as grief and memories washed through my mind and heart.

I remembered a little tow-headed boy running around at squadron picnics and softball games. A happy little boy, somehow in love with stock car racing at seven and filled to bursting with NASCAR facts, figures, names and places.

The little boy was 28 when he died. Twenty-eight? The juxtaposition of memory and reality rocked me with perspective. Twenty-eight with a wife and two young daughters. The sudden, savage grief I felt for a little boy of memory and a family I had never met was wrenching, to say the least.

I thought about the boy’s mother, who I served with on and off over a dozen or so years in the 1980’s and 1990’s. We were, and remain, great friends. I could scarcely imagine the shock and grief she and her family were experiencing. Years of closely held memories played across the big screen of my mind as a bittersweet admixture of joy and pain flowed through my heart.

Gradually I began to wonder about the power of my own shock and grief. I had fooled myself, I realized, into thinking I could shield myself emotionally from the consequences of our now decade-long war. During my time of active service I lost far too many friends and suffered more than my share of grief. I’d done my bit and had the medals and scars to prove it. I told myself that it was someone else’s turn. Intellectually I supported our fighting men and women and their mission absolutely. But emotionally – emotionally I would sit this one out. I’d done my part.

I raised my head from the desk. Hours had passed, night had come, my house was dark. I realized then the terrible truth. In attempting to shield myself from emotional pain, I had turned my heart away from my fellow warriors just when they needed me the most. It was an act of utter cowardice. The realization burned like fire.

Jumbled words from John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Inaugural Address tumbled through my mind. I quickly pulled up the text of the speech on my computer.

“…We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights…to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship…to assure the survival and success of liberty.

“In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.

“Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need--not as a call to battle, though embattled we are-- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"--a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”

in your hands...

summoned to give testimony...

to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle…

I thought back to the sacred oath of service to country I took so many years ago, when I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, and that I would bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That oath, it occurred to me, had no expiration date. That I am not presently called on to fight is irrelevant. My sworn duty remains. I swore to bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution, to that founding document which explains in simple and majestic terms the idea of America. The idea I believe in with all my mind and heart, not because someone told me I must, but because I realized even as a young man the truth and the power of those words and in that idea.

Just as I had shamefully turned my heart from my fellow warriors, so too had I turned my heart from true faith and allegiance to America, turned my heart against my own sacred oath.

I had gone far off course, I realized, and I knew that the path of brutal self-honesty was the only way forward. Seeing and understanding the stark reality of my failure allowed me clearly see the path I must take to regain the road of true faith and allegiance and service to America. More Kennedy:

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger…The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

 “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.

 “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

 “Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.”

One of the things I can do for my country – one of the many but perhaps one of the most important – is to turn my heart back to my fellow warriors and to this nation. To bear the burden of grief, to pay the price I swore to pay so many years ago. This I have done, and strangely, while my heart is heavy with grief, the fear which prompted me to hide in cowardice is gone. I have been summoned once again, as Kennedy put it, to give testimony to my national loyalty. I nearly failed the test, but in the end I did not fail.

There’s an old saying that when a man or woman joins the military, they are signing a blank check to the government for the amount of up to and including their life. This saying is essentially true, but in reality, they are signing those checks not to some nebulous “government,” but to me and you and every citizen of this nation. We’ve each of us been cashing those checks for the last decade. We are each of us faced with a choice, a choice no one can make for us. We can either bear the burden of cashing those checks or we can turn away from paying such a heavy price. But turning away comes with a cost, too. Freedom isn’t free. Not for any of us.

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.