A century ago in Belgium and France

Got an email from dear friends in England yesterday.

Hmm. Dear friends. How do you define that?

I've only ever met Elwyn and Julie the one time. They traveled to the States last summer for a vacation and to visit relatives in Colorado and Iowa. They visited the ranch almost by accident, having stopped at the High Point Welcome Center as they drove west to east along I-80.

They wondered if there might be local ranch available to tour, and HPWC Director Jo Caskey gave me a call.

Elwyn and Julie are fourth generation farmers from Herefordshire, England. They raise cattle and sheep, hay, small grains, and cider apples on a lovely farm that looks exactly like you'd expect an English farm to look.

Elwyn and Julie trimming ewes hooves on their farm in Herefordshire, England.

We struck up a fast friendship, comparing and contrasting our farming and ranching experiences. Much was different, but all the basic things were similar. Our "quick" tour lasted three hours.

Julie and Elwyn on the ranch last July.

We've kept in contact through mail, email, and whatsapp. It was great to meet them and it's been great getting to know them a bit better through the convenience of modern communications technology.

So yes, dear friends.

At any rate, Elwyn sent pictures an comments on their recent visit to the Ypres and Somme battlefields. When he mentioned the pending trip a couple of weeks ago, I told him I envied his proximity to such sites. I'll let his words do the work here. A lot to ponder.

"Got a few pics for you of my trip. As you said 'my proximity to it.' I never realised it was all so close. four hours to the tunnel, half an hour sat in the car on the train and one hour more and we were in Ypres.

"I am a lot wiser now than I was before I went, although I have always been very interested in all WWI stuff. Until I got there I never realised so much fighting went on in such a small area, about 12 miles across with Ypres in the middle.

"Went to Vimy Ridge . It has the most spectacular memorial to the Canadian troops high on a ridge overlooking the plain.

Vimy Ridge Memorial.

"Then we went on down to the Somme and followed the front line.

An old trench system near the Somme.

"We hear a lot about numbers and casualties and yes they are terrible but until I went there it really [hadn't] hit me. As you drive through the Ypres area everywhere you look on streets, in towns and villages, out in the fields and on hill sides, some times only one hundred yards apart, there are cemeteries. Some small, others massive and all pristinely kept. In fact there are 142 cemeteries of more than 40 graves, all for Commonwealth (All the countries of the old British Empire, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India etc.) Soldiers.

"Five cemeteries for the French and one for the Germans at Langemarck, a very grim looking place.

Langemarck German WWI Cemetery.

"We went to Tyne Cot Cemetery which is the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. I looked at all these white grave stones, nearly 12,000 of them, so tightly packed together, and you can just see in your mind rank after rank of young men. A lot of graves said 'known only unto God' on them while others sometimes had two or even three names on them, basically they were in such a mess they didn't know which bit belonged to who.

"The most shocking thing I encountered though was the stone panels, about twenty feet by ten, that were covered in the names of the poor souls that had no known grave. There were 34 panels around the outside of the cemetery with 34,880 names on them.

"We visited a farm that was in no mans land and they showed us what they have found over the years. Scores of rusty rifles, machine guns, bayonets that puncture the tractor tyres, and hundreds of shells and cases, sometimes live! They said two people a year die from unexploded munitions. Two Bulgarians working on a building site [recently] had brought up a shell, so lunch time they tried to get the brass detonator off to sell as scrap ......with a hammer! One killed, [the] other very badly injured.

“An experience I'll never forget, especially Vimy Ridge and the craters on the Somme made by those ex miners digging tunnels under the German lines.

I even picked up a bullet as we walked across a ploughed field down there. I better stop , I could go on and on it was amazing and very sobering. Best Wishes, Elwyn”

Thanks Elwyn and Julie! Wonderful pictures, and I so much appreciate your sharing your thoughts.

'86, frustrations and fun

I'm pulling my hair out a bit. I'm working on a post that shouldn't be that hard to write. I'm slowly getting the upper hand, but it's complicated. If I'm up to the task, none of the hair-pulling complications will show. I think I can pull it off. I also think I'm trying to hard just now and it's time to put it away and rax.

"Dreams" was a smokin' cool vid in '86, and this is a very clean copy for the interwebs.

I don't think the Blues ever flew a better jet.

A-4 Super Fox. Weight: 11,300 lbs. J52-P408. Thrust: 11,200 lbs.

Do. The. Math.

Go ahead and punch it up to full screen.

Van Halen-Dreams (Blue Angels) from Max Martin on Vimeo.

VFC-13 bonus clip

Ideas and complications

One of the reasons I like giving ranch tours is that for the vast majority of my fellows, food production remains a great mystery.

Sure, we all learned about farming in elementary school, then learned something about the science of farming in jr. high, and maybe even more of the science in high school.

Um, my niece tells me it's middle school. Not jr. high. And it should be capitalized. Middle School.

So. Where was I? Oh yeah. Nearly all of us Americans learn stuff about farming in school. And most of us occasionally watch television programs, some of which are billed as educational, about farming. We also read propaganda insightful, informative farming and ranching articles and essays in books, magazines and newspapers.

But we get our food at the food store. There are no crops or livestock at the food store. So the connection between food production and the wealth of nutritious, safe, wholesome and inexpensive foods on display at the food store is rather tenuous.

Also, much of the propaganda insightful and informative farming and ranching stories we read, listen to, and watch in the media is, shall we say, less than complete. And sad to say, some things taught is school these days are rather questionable. I've seldom had tour guests who didn't have questions and concerns about GMO’s, Roundup, herbicides and pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, E. coli, pink slime, animal rights, etc.

If you cast your gaze over to the right and toward the top, you'll see a poll regarding concerns about food. Feel free to vote!

In my experience, people visiting my ranch seem to enjoy the opportunity to discuss these concerns. Nearly all of them listen closely to my answers and ask good follow up questions. When they leave, they seem to have a bit less anxiety about their food and where it comes from.

The learning experience is great, but there should be fun, too. And what’s more fun than feeding bottle calves? What’s more preciously photogenic than little Bobby and Susie and the slobberingly insistent little bovine?

To that end I’m trying to put together an exhibit slash bottle calf feeding experience at our local Visitors Center, which happens to adjoin our ranch at Exit 20 on the mighty I-80. If it works out, it’ll bring together the Visitors Center and their local advisory committee, city and county government, the local high school FFA/agriculture program, and the local Farmers’ Day committee. Adding stakeholders (particularly government stakeholders) adds, well, complications. And much of my hair is already missing (Stakeholders: IKBIL!). Still, there seems to be lots of upside here, for visitors and locals. We’ll see how it goes.

And now for a completely different complication…

Cattle need food and water. In this part of the country, and in particular on my ranch, there’s usually enough of the former available. The prairie is grass, after all, and grass is cow food. There is, however, very little surface water. Water is not optional -- without it the cattle die.

So we clever ranchers drill down into the ground and pump water from the Ogallala Aquifer into stock tanks from which the cattle drink. On our ranch many of the stock tanks come equipped with a float and valve assembly which regulates filling of the tanks. When the water level drops, so does the float, which allows a float arm to pivot and open the water supply valve on the bottom of the tank. When the water level rises the float lifts the float arm and shuts the valve. See? Clever! Sometimes there is a little spillage, but it’s all good.

When the temperature drops below freezing in the winter, however, ice forms in the tank and, well, complicates things. Cattle can’t drink ice. So ranchers have to chop holes in the ice so the cattle can reach the liquid water beneath the ice, which forms, of course, on the surface of the water. The ice can also capture the tank float, holding it fast and preventing the valve from opening to refill the tank.

So clever ranchers also chop the float free of the grasping ice.

Some ranchers, unfortunately, are more clever than precise.

Torpedoed by an imprecisely wielded axe, this float is a gonner.

First drain the tank...

Remove float from float arm...

Assess the damage (eewwww)....

Secure the proper repair materials (this stuff is da bomb!).

Apply the patch.

Me: "I gotta fix the float in that tank in the hay meadow."

Boss: "Axe?"

Me, with head hanging: "Yessir."

Boss: Patented double move. Eyeroll and headshake. Not many can pull this one off. "Okay."

Think today's food consumers need to know this level of detail?

Yeah, me too.

Mick, Stevie, Lincoln, Kittens

I threw up (keep an eye on that phrase) some videos yesterday, which was kind of lazy of me. I did work at it a bit, trying to post music that reflected what my shipmates and I listened to on a road trip back in 1984.

Great music, IMO, and decent vids, but I'm not that happy with the way they look on the blog.

Definitely not happy with the way 13 videos look on the blog. Oh well, live and learn.

A few days ago I posted a Fleetwood Mac video from The Midnight Special. I think it's a cool video and the song performed, "Rhiannon" is one of my all time faves.

So anyway, Fleetwood Mac was on stage at the Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Nebraska last night. I didn't go. The arena is 393.4 miles from the ranch. I got an email from my brother about the concert though.

He didn't go either.

His charming bride Tammy took him to a different Lincoln venue to celebrate his 50th birthday. 

"The big fun was going downtown to the Haymarket for some Blazing Pianos at Brewsky's bar and grill. They have two pianos set up in their basement lounge area and two players do great job of entertaining the crowd with old favorites and funny tidbits. Those players are good! Interestingly, a Fleetwood Mac concert was going on at Pinnacle arena, so the area was crazy busy and parking was tight. Mick Fleetwood ended up getting sick and barfing so they had to stop the show - and lots of folks left there and crowded into Brewsky's."

Kind of an interesting story in the Lincoln paper today.

Over at his place Sarge talked about winter weather today, including his recollection of winter in Colorado and Nebraska, and the fact that there is often a January thaw in Vermont. As I write this we are in the midst of a not-so-uncommon January thaw here in the Panhandle of the state, following the two weeks of sub-zero temps Sarge wrote about. Here's what the thaw looks like.

Nearly 60 degrees. Believe it or not, thoise cows are finding a little bit of green stuff to eat.

Okay, the post title promises Mick and Lincoln, which we've covered. Here are the kittens. They are playing with their new favorite toy, a pebble.

Now, Stevie. And quite a bit more Mick than in the vid I posted earlier. Some great Christine and John and Lindsey too. Same song, but a much better version and a much better video. Goodness that Stevie could wail. In this song she goes from soft and cuddly-dovey to full-on raging Janis Joplin. Just amazing.

In his post Sarge mentioned demons. I'm wrestling with a few just now myself, some of them reawakened in the process of trying to write a blog post. As I watch the band and their incredible performance, I know that in 1976 they were dealing with some pretty stout demons themselves. It occurs to me that demons are demons, and if a bunch of old rockers can navigate through demonic rocks and shoals and find a way to persevere and keep suiting up and showing up, well, maybe there's hope for me, too. Even if Mick did hurl last night. Enjoy.

Naval aviation road trip music circa 1984

Well, Sarge did it again. He wrote about an Air Force road trip, which caused me to recall a navy road trip. Which I'm afraid I'm going to have to write about. But not today. I have a full plate of WOTB on the schedule and I can't avoid it. It's the price of profitability.

But...

The wayback machine demands feeding, so here's a baker's dozen vids reflecting some of the music me an' my runnin' mates listened to as we drove from sea to shining Reno.

Sunrise

I was talking to a tourism expert yesterday, trying to get a sense of how best to arrange tours of the ranch.

There's a danger of TMI creeping in here, so to be brief, one of my ideas was to promote sunrise tours.

"Which is a great idea," allowed the expert, "but you'll never make money that way."

The problem is this:

Sunrise on the prairie is the most beautiful and spectacular time of day. No one who has seen the sunrise in this part of the country (or indeed across most of the globe) is likely to dispute this fact.

You can click on the pics to enlarge.

Sunset is great, too, and I plan to take advantage of that, but sunrise is an order of magnitude better.

However. Sunrise.

Tourists, explained the expert, are unaccustomed to rising before the sun. Some will be interested in getting up early and watching the sunrise and will appreciate the opportunity to pay for the experience. But they are a small subset of tourists. By definition, tourists are travelling. Travelling is tiring, particularly for families with children. Tourists generally take their evening meal later than they do at home, and tend to get to bed later too. They need their rest. For the most part, the expert said, they also get up early, but not predawn early. They also generally like to get breakfast before embarking on a days adventure.

The expert's recommendation? Offer sunrise tours by all means, but by appointment and with payment or a deposit up front. For daily morning tours, start at 9 a.m. or so.

Which makes sense. It's good to have experts.

Because left up to me, I'd have tried to pound square-peg tourists into the round hole of sunrise. For their own good, mind you. But I'd have lost money, gone out of business, and then where would the tourists be? They wouldn't be on my ranch, enjoying themselves, which is where they belong.

If I'd have been thinking (which is right up there with "if I was taller for my weight") I'd have remembered this "sunrise yoga" session on the ranch a couple of years ago. It was the prequel to a ground nesting bird tour. But it was sunrise yoga, right?

Right!

At about 10 a.m.

I feel a little bit embarrassed when I charge money for my tours. It's all free for me (not precisely true, of course, but it feels that way), and I enjoy it, so why should the tourists have to pay? Well, obviously they don't, and I don't have to charge. A few weeks of that, however, and I'm out of business, and the tourists have to cross a potential adventure off their lists.

So while I somewhat reluctantly have to exchange tours for cash, the most important payoff for me is providing good, valuable, real enjoyment to my guests. The report card is in the smiles.

Whew, glad I worked all the way through that one. But now, back to this morning's sunrise, which is where I really started this post...

This one?

Or this one? I can't decide.

Taken at 65 mph. Don't try this at home.

Throwback Thursday, kinda...

I'm old enough to remember when we did chores in the snowy winter from the back of a horse. Four-wheel drive was too expensive and unsuited to most conditions, so it was 2WD or ol' futureglue.

These days the 4WD is ubiquitous and some of them are quite good.

They're so good, in fact, that from time to time I put mine in a place it can't drive out of.

Far more rarely, the boss gets stuck.

Which happened today.

All part of the deal.

He came soooooo close to making it through.

Could have pulled him out with a k-car.

Or a horse.

And just because it's stuck in my head...

Getting a charge out of morning chores

After breaking stock tank ice in the northwest hay meadow where calves are wintering, I did the same for the bred heifers. It was a gorgeous winter morning; sun peeking over the southeast horizon, temperature 15 and already warming, calm and still. After the misery of a of blasting north wind, I was almost giddy with delight at the lack of wind. It’s a marvel how many really, really nice days we have here in autumn and winter. That they’re usually book-ended by nasty weather makes them all the more enjoyable.

The heifers were, as usual, fine. They’re a solid group with good disposition and look like they’ll make good herd cows. They're bred to heifer bulls selected for calving ease. It’ll be interesting to see how they do at calving time in April.

On this fine winter morning, curiosity has led the heifers to a weak spot in the the corner of the pasture where my patching and procrastination has led to a dogs breakfast of embarrassment. The not-for-public-viewing fence allowed the heifers to go walkabout, and as I drove toward the group in bright, early-morning sunshine, the last few were just getting up the courage to join their sisters in the adjacent stubble field.

A dogs breakfast of patchwork fencing.

One of the headaches – and paradoxically, joys – of raising young cattle is their natural curiosity. They seem to love to explore the world, and they seem to delight in finding new things. When one finds something interesting, say a tattered piece of feed bag fluttering along the ground, the rest come running to sniff at, follow, and startle in mock terror at the bit of grimy paper. Then, as often as not, they break out across the prairie in a rearing, jumping, heel-kicking gallop. Watching their playful antics, it’s hard not to think that they’re having fun and enjoying life. I’d guess that they are, but I’ll never know for sure of course.

No problem, really. Fixing fence is part of the job. The frozen ground called for more patchwork instead of rebuilding, but in the short term that's okay. If the fences look too nice the assessor jacks the value anyway. That's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it.

I nipped out of the pickup and quickly turned the heifers back in the way they went out. These young cattle have a nice temperament and are used to seeing me up close on a daily basis, so moving them back through the fence gap wasn't much of a chore.

With the warming sunshine, no wind, and rising temperature, stretching and splicing a few strands of wire was a pleasant break rather than a chore.

In less time than it takes to type these words, I had the bottom two wires repaired. I noticed a broken strand in the top wire and clipped it out, then rolled out a four-foot piece of new wire to replace it. I looped and twisted the new wire to the post, grabbed the stretcher, and attached the old wire to the fixed clamp. I opened up the clamp on the ratcheting end of the stretcher, and still holding the stretcher in my right hand, grabbed the new wire with my left hand.

I had failed to notice one detail, and forgotten another detail.

The unnoticed detail was that the new wire I’d twisted on to the fence post had slipped down until it was touching the top wire going the other way along the fence.

The forgotten detail was that the other top wire was “hot.”

ZAP!

The jolt of electricity shot through my body from left hand to right. The sensation is hard to describe. It's a combination of a sharp, snapping pain and the sudden contracting of every muscle along the path the electricity took. I jumped back, hollered, threw down the stretcher and wire, and gave a lesson in salty sailor talk. The heifers stood there looking at me, waiting to see if there would be more entertainment.

I chastised them severely and made fun of their lowly status. “See what you’d have to deal with if you’d developed opposable thumbs and reasoning?” I said. I can be snarky as hell, I can.

Shaking my head I climbed back into the pickup, drove to the building containing the fencer, unplugged it (never just switch it off. Trust me.), then retraced my path to the scene of my recent electrocution.

The fencer.

I quickly stretched the wire (making sure it was no longer in contact with the “hot” side), spliced it together, and got on with my morning chores.

I’m always shocked when I get zapped by one of my electric fences. Fortunately, while the voltage carried by modern electric fence is quite high, the amperage is quite low, so the jolt is painful but harmless. You'd think an experienced fellow would finally learn, but you'd think wrong.

Oh well, it's a good waker-upper.

Johnny went to war

I never met my Great Uncle John Burback.

“Johnny died in the war,” was the most I could ever get out of his sister, my Grandmother Helen.

So there was that. They called him Johnny, rather than John. The barest touch of personality added to what was otherwise just a name.

Uncle Johnny was born in Sugar City, Colorado in 1909, the second son of Henry and Anna (Hohnstein) Burback, German-Russian farm laborers who had emigrated from Catherine the Great’s German Agricultural enclave in the land of the Tsars. They came to America in 1905, looking for, as most immigrants did at that time, liberty and opportunity. When they arrived at Ellis Island, their name was Burbach. When they left, their name was Burback.

Of liberty and opportunity, they found it. Their path was far from easy. They were very poor and worked very hard, taking agricultural jobs that no one else would take, sometimes as day-labor in the sugarbeet fields, sometimes as tenet farmers. But they were free, no longer the property of the State or of the autocracy. They persevered. In 1907 they had a son, Henry Jr. In 1908, a daughter, Anna. Then another son, John, in 1909. Ultimately Henry and Anna raised 12 children, each of whom went to school and mastered English, a language in which their parents never quite became fluent.

After leaving Sugar City, the Burbacks farmed and worked in Morrill and Scotts Bluff Counties, as well as near Broadwater, Neb. In 1927 they moved to Kimball County and began tenet farming north of town.

The 1930’s were, poor, hard-working times for the family. The children did chores before and after school and on the weekends, and spent seemingly endless days in the beet fields during summer “vacation.” Toward the end of the depression, and as the children grew older, life became a little less desperate and a little more comfortable.

As the 1930's came to a close, war, which had been brewing for some time, was declared in Europe, and the far-away conflict threatened to draw America into a full-scale World War.

Many Americans were isolationist and wanted to stay out of the war. Some were firebrands who wanted to jump into the conflict at once, to save the world from the Nazis and the Communists. A small but significant minority wanted America to fight on the side of the Nazis, against the Allied Powers and the communists. 

In 1940 President Roosevelt and Congress began offering “lend-lease” and other aid to England, and the Selective Service began calling up draftees to fill an expanding military force. U.S. industries were ordered to war footing, and began turning out guns, ammunition, tanks, planes and other war materials in place of their usual product line of cars, refrigerators and stoves, hardware, clothing, etc.

On Dec. 7, 1941, The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Congress declared war on the Japanese the next day. Germany and Italy, allied with Japan as the Axis Powers, declared war on the U.S. On Dec. 11. Congress immediately responded with a declaration of war against Germany and Italy on the same day. Like it or not, America was now at war.

Though the U.S. began drafting men into the service before the country actually declared war, no one from Nebraska, and in particular, Kimball County, had been called up before Pearl Harbor. This quickly changed, however, as draft boards sprung up seemingly overnight in small towns and villages across the nation. On January 1, 1942, Kimball County’s draft board was organized.

On January 29, 1942, the Kimball County draft board called up the first 10 draftees. The second name on that list was John Burback. He and the other nine men went by bus on Feb. 5 to Ft. Warren, in Cheyenne, for induction physicals. All passed muster, all returned home that night, and all left for basic training within a few weeks.

Here is where Uncle Johnny’s story gets murky. I’ve been unable to turn up any evidence of his service between his call-up and death. Both family lore and contemporary newspaper accounts place his term of service with the Army Air Corps (later Army Air Forces) in the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater of operations. He allegedly served in India, most likely as part of the effort to air-lift supplies over the “hump” of the eastern Himalayas to Burma and China.

In late July, 1944, Johnny was air-evacuated to the U.S., suffering from “splenic anemia and complications from tropical disease.” He arrived at Coral Gables Army Hospital in Florida on Saturday, July 29, 1944. He died during the evening on Tuesday, Aug. 2, 1944. His remains were transported to Kimball and Johnny was buried in the Kimball Cemetery on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 1944.

The questions are obvious. Who was this 32 year-old man who went off to war for his country? What were his dreams and plans for after the war? What might have been?

Seventy years after Johnny’s death, and more than a century after his birth, the questions are largely unanswerable. There is more information out there, and I’ll find at least some of it, but it’ll never really tell me who my Great Uncle was, or what he might have been.

More than 400,000 American men and women died in service during WWII. Each was denied an entire future. Each contributed every single thing they had to the continued existence of our nation.

Thanks, Uncle Johnny. I wish I’d known ya.