Mountain Cowgirl
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- Mar 19, 2021
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I pose the question, is ranching for you a living or a dying? What did you do for medical insurance?
I can think of a couple of years I lived solely off the small profit I made from ranching. It was based on trading. I would help my alfalfa grower in trade for enough hay to feed dairy goats through winter. They were profitable because I could buy half-breed day-old calves from dairy farms each spring for a very low price. Once weaned I moved them to an allotment I had in trade for my labor for keeping count and watch over a rancher's herd. The great cow horse I used was in trade for spring, summer and fall pasture for it. The owner was still responsible for vet bills. Adding another 20 or so head to the allotment didn't cost the rancher anything since he ran a lot fewer cattle than most on his allotment. He found he profited more by under grazing than overgrazing and it kept him out of the politics and in better graces with the FS "experts" that leaned more toward tofu than beef.
Besides, when these loafer light experts considered that the addition of 20 orphaned half breed calves, rescued by a kindly young woman that bottle-fed them twice daily and released them to frolic in the mountain meadows as nature intended, they were reduced to tears and labeled me as a compassionate hippie whereas some ranchers labeled me a crazy goat roper although I never roped a goat in my life. The hermit that saw me riding double bareback wearing only homemade leather pants and knee-high mocassins, with the horse unencumbered by heavy cinched leather, was brided with a pot of homemade chili to unsee what he thought he saw. From then on he referred to me as the Indian Lady.
After a brief scrape with an illness that ran up some hospital bills, I decided to return to work in good weather for pay and medical insurance. I discovered that medical insurance is necessary for "making a living" and my self-sustainable lifestyle was paving the road to "making a dying."
I have thought now that I am on SS, Medicare, and a union pension, it might be nice to return to ranching because that small profit every year would be a bonus. Then reality takes over and I realize I struggle to keep up this place on the edge of town and don't have the patience for all the political bull pucky that is falling on ranching. Since riding a horse, even an old slow one, would be considered reckless self-endangerment and the rattlesnake sighting this last summer reminded me that ranching can be hard on an old lady's bladder, I have removed ranching from my bucket list.
I should have listened to one of my hardworking lifetime ranching grandmas when she said, "It isn't that girls can't do hard heavy work, it is that they shouldn't." In my youth, I thought that marriage was about having babies, but now I realize it is about getting free labor for the hard and heavy work.
Time for a break as this key pounding is hard on my old several times over frost-bitten and swollen knuckle fingers.
I can think of a couple of years I lived solely off the small profit I made from ranching. It was based on trading. I would help my alfalfa grower in trade for enough hay to feed dairy goats through winter. They were profitable because I could buy half-breed day-old calves from dairy farms each spring for a very low price. Once weaned I moved them to an allotment I had in trade for my labor for keeping count and watch over a rancher's herd. The great cow horse I used was in trade for spring, summer and fall pasture for it. The owner was still responsible for vet bills. Adding another 20 or so head to the allotment didn't cost the rancher anything since he ran a lot fewer cattle than most on his allotment. He found he profited more by under grazing than overgrazing and it kept him out of the politics and in better graces with the FS "experts" that leaned more toward tofu than beef.
Besides, when these loafer light experts considered that the addition of 20 orphaned half breed calves, rescued by a kindly young woman that bottle-fed them twice daily and released them to frolic in the mountain meadows as nature intended, they were reduced to tears and labeled me as a compassionate hippie whereas some ranchers labeled me a crazy goat roper although I never roped a goat in my life. The hermit that saw me riding double bareback wearing only homemade leather pants and knee-high mocassins, with the horse unencumbered by heavy cinched leather, was brided with a pot of homemade chili to unsee what he thought he saw. From then on he referred to me as the Indian Lady.
After a brief scrape with an illness that ran up some hospital bills, I decided to return to work in good weather for pay and medical insurance. I discovered that medical insurance is necessary for "making a living" and my self-sustainable lifestyle was paving the road to "making a dying."
I have thought now that I am on SS, Medicare, and a union pension, it might be nice to return to ranching because that small profit every year would be a bonus. Then reality takes over and I realize I struggle to keep up this place on the edge of town and don't have the patience for all the political bull pucky that is falling on ranching. Since riding a horse, even an old slow one, would be considered reckless self-endangerment and the rattlesnake sighting this last summer reminded me that ranching can be hard on an old lady's bladder, I have removed ranching from my bucket list.
I should have listened to one of my hardworking lifetime ranching grandmas when she said, "It isn't that girls can't do hard heavy work, it is that they shouldn't." In my youth, I thought that marriage was about having babies, but now I realize it is about getting free labor for the hard and heavy work.
Time for a break as this key pounding is hard on my old several times over frost-bitten and swollen knuckle fingers.
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