Soapweed
Well-known member
This morning at the breakfast table, Peach and I were visiting about Life, and how it is influenced by the different events that happen as we experience living. Some things are of temporary value, and others have long reaching implications.
As a kid growing up, I was never too good at sports. My only aspiration in life was to be a cowboy, and somehow football, basketball, and track just didn't seem to be part of that goal. Even though it was required to play junior high sports, my heart really wasn't in it. My dad, who I looked up to very much, never really encouraged me to do sports, as there were always plenty of chores on the ranch for me to do after school. It did kind of amaze me though, when he wondered later why I wasn't one of the sports jocks. :roll: :wink: My competitive spirit did come out a bit more when it came to cowboy events such as team penning and ranch rodeos.
Peach and I got married in 1979, when she was 21 and I was 27. My whole life had been spent ranching with my dad, but we newlyweds started ranching on our own on land my folks had purchased 30 miles away from where they lived. Peach and I had kind of an idyllic life, 20 miles from town and ranching like we wanted. We watched quite a few of my dad's cattle in the summertime where we lived, and we were running 200 cows of our own year-round. The first year just the two of us put up 103 four-ton stacks of hay. We used a reverse M IHC tractor with a Farmhand to stack. We had a little David Brown tractor to mow, a Case SC tractor pulling the rake, and a reversed Case VA to sweep. The first two years we ranched, all of our hay was fed with four head of Belgians hooked on a cart, pulling a four-wheeled feed sled. We would unhook the cart to cable on half a stack of hay, and then hook the cart back up to the sled to pull the load to the cattle. Our horses were a bit on the broncy side, so one of us always had to hold the lines to drive. The hay was pulled off and strung out for the cattle to eat with a drag fork as the horses kept the sled in motion. Those were good times, which we enjoyed very much.
Peach and I were running commercial cattle, but the thought entered my mind that there might be more money to be made if some registered Angus were acquired. I went to a seedstock sale and purchased a nice looking eight-year-old cow, bred to High Voltage. He was syndicated for a million and a half dollars, and had recently sold to Leatherstocking Angus Ranch in New York. Anyway there was a lot of suspense waiting for this particular cow to calve. She was due about a month before our own commercial cattle were to start calving, so I got up in the middle of several nights to check this cow. About ten o'clock one evening she delivered a little bull calf. The weather was nice and she was nervous, so I went to bed knowing that everything was fine. At the crack of dawn, I was out to look at the new bull calf that was going to put our Spearhead Ranch on the map. Imagine my disappointment to see that the calf was deformed. It had a tail growing out the side of its neck, and the regular tail came out of his spine at a 90 degree angle. When the calf walked to follow his mother, he walked with a 45 degree hitch in his get-along. My hopes, dreams, and aspirations were momentarily dashed. It broke my heart to have to do it, but I castrated the calf and fed him along with some commercial bulls I was raising at the time. We butchered the steer, and it was the worst beef we had ever eaten.
In 1986, Peach and I and our three-year-old son, Sparky, moved to a different ranch which joined my parents' place to the east. We significantly enlarged our land holdings, and were able to run quite a few more cattle, but also had more work and responsibilities. Having dabbled with a few other registered Angus, we soon learned that the seedstock business was probably not our forte. We decided to run a no frills commercial cattle operation, and concentrate on having the best most trouble-free cattle that we could raise. I did have one cow, number 416 (born in 1984) that I thought was an ideal cow and the best cow that we had ever raised. She was straight, square, feminine, had an excellent udder, good legs, and trouble-free feet. She also had a daughter that looked just like her, and would have the potential to carry the torch well into the future. I had 250 pairs summered out with a neighbor, and these cattle were grazing on either side of a county road oil strip under "open range" conditions. A new bridge was being built where this road crossed the Niobrara River, and the building crew was staying in camper trailers near the work location. One evening after we had gone to bed, the phone rang. One of the bridge workers had journeyed to town and stayed a bit too long at the local watering hole. On the way back to his camper, in the black of the night, he ran into a black heifer calf on the black oil strip. The calf didn't die, but it needed to be put out of its misery. I took a gun and drove down to shoot the calf. Wouldn't you know, out of 250 possible calves to hit, it was my favorite heifer, Number 416, lying dying in the road. There went another big dream. Since then I just go for the averages and try not to get too attached or to put any animals on a pedestal.
Sandra was my wonderful sister, friend, playmate, mentor, and my dad's favorite child. She was a bubbly vivacious great Christian lady, and a school teacher by trade. She positively influenced a multitude of people, but died of ovarian cancer at the tender age of 38. All who knew her still miss her. She lived life to the fullest and had traveled in all fifty states, besides several European countries, before she died. She had a profoundly positive impact on a great many people. Sandra didn't smoke or drink, so it wasn't wild living that did her in. Sandra and Sparky had a special camaraderie, and it was especially hard on the young boy when his beloved aunt died. Why did she die so early? This is a question for the ages.
Peach and I have three wonderful children. Our boys are great, but at one time we possibly thought our daughter, Sunflower, had even more potential than did the boys. The boys had off and on caused us a bit of grief for one reason or another, but after the age of three, Sunflower had not given us one bit of cause for concern. Prior to that, there was a time I was thinking we should have named her little Vanda Liza. :roll: :wink: Sunflower was a goal-oriented girl, with aspirations of becoming a famous architect designing magnificent buildings. She really wanted to go to Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. That is a long ways from the Sandhills of Nebraska, but since we knew she would make the most of such an education, Peach and I did everything in our power to make her dream become reality. Sunflower went off to college and did us up proud. She got on the Dean's List, and accomplished some wonderful artistic projects as assignments in her work. She came home at Thanksgiving time and had the whole month off until after New Years. We enjoyed her visit, but she had met a young man from Colorado the previous August at her cousin's wedding. During her break from school, the budding romance was pursued and she went to Colorado to see the young man. The upshot was that she didn't come back home. Her obligations to the school went unfulfilled. She was supposed to accept a scholarship and pose for a picture, which she didn't. Our lovely daughter was letting us down, and she was not being the responsible citizen which we had tried to train her to be. Sunflower tied in with the young man, and joined a religious cult with which he was a member. The world of Peach and I came crashing down about our shoulders. Fortunately we both knew Someone who was willing to carry our burdens so that we didn't have to. His name is Jesus, and He does a mighty fine job if we just let him. After four years of no communication, we are so very happy that Sunflower came back home. She was our prodigal daughter, and it is so wonderful that with the help of God she has returned. Now she is the same responsible hard-working young lady that we knew before. She was deceived, as she will be the first to admit, but she has benefitted and grown so very much from the experience.
As sports enthusiasts, we sometimes place great importance on the outcome of a game. The Super Bowl is on as I write this, but in the long-term scheme of things, does it really matter who wins? As ranchers, we continually strive to raise the ideal cow or the ideal bull. Sometimes even a show steer, with no chance of ever producing any offspring, will defy all odds and sell for the astronomical figure of $210,000. One day we are healthy as a horse, and the next we suffer afflictions that have long-standing effects. People with whom we place a great deal of trust can let us down. It hurts. These things can all seem very important as we live our earthly lives, but in the long run we need to know how to separate temporary achievements and set-backs from those having long-term, especially eternal implications. Our lives in the here-and-now are but a mere fly-speck on the Big Picture Window of Eternity, but it is an important time. Forever is such a long, long time. Right now is the only opportunity we know we have to decide where we want to spend eternity.
As a kid growing up, I was never too good at sports. My only aspiration in life was to be a cowboy, and somehow football, basketball, and track just didn't seem to be part of that goal. Even though it was required to play junior high sports, my heart really wasn't in it. My dad, who I looked up to very much, never really encouraged me to do sports, as there were always plenty of chores on the ranch for me to do after school. It did kind of amaze me though, when he wondered later why I wasn't one of the sports jocks. :roll: :wink: My competitive spirit did come out a bit more when it came to cowboy events such as team penning and ranch rodeos.
Peach and I got married in 1979, when she was 21 and I was 27. My whole life had been spent ranching with my dad, but we newlyweds started ranching on our own on land my folks had purchased 30 miles away from where they lived. Peach and I had kind of an idyllic life, 20 miles from town and ranching like we wanted. We watched quite a few of my dad's cattle in the summertime where we lived, and we were running 200 cows of our own year-round. The first year just the two of us put up 103 four-ton stacks of hay. We used a reverse M IHC tractor with a Farmhand to stack. We had a little David Brown tractor to mow, a Case SC tractor pulling the rake, and a reversed Case VA to sweep. The first two years we ranched, all of our hay was fed with four head of Belgians hooked on a cart, pulling a four-wheeled feed sled. We would unhook the cart to cable on half a stack of hay, and then hook the cart back up to the sled to pull the load to the cattle. Our horses were a bit on the broncy side, so one of us always had to hold the lines to drive. The hay was pulled off and strung out for the cattle to eat with a drag fork as the horses kept the sled in motion. Those were good times, which we enjoyed very much.
Peach and I were running commercial cattle, but the thought entered my mind that there might be more money to be made if some registered Angus were acquired. I went to a seedstock sale and purchased a nice looking eight-year-old cow, bred to High Voltage. He was syndicated for a million and a half dollars, and had recently sold to Leatherstocking Angus Ranch in New York. Anyway there was a lot of suspense waiting for this particular cow to calve. She was due about a month before our own commercial cattle were to start calving, so I got up in the middle of several nights to check this cow. About ten o'clock one evening she delivered a little bull calf. The weather was nice and she was nervous, so I went to bed knowing that everything was fine. At the crack of dawn, I was out to look at the new bull calf that was going to put our Spearhead Ranch on the map. Imagine my disappointment to see that the calf was deformed. It had a tail growing out the side of its neck, and the regular tail came out of his spine at a 90 degree angle. When the calf walked to follow his mother, he walked with a 45 degree hitch in his get-along. My hopes, dreams, and aspirations were momentarily dashed. It broke my heart to have to do it, but I castrated the calf and fed him along with some commercial bulls I was raising at the time. We butchered the steer, and it was the worst beef we had ever eaten.
In 1986, Peach and I and our three-year-old son, Sparky, moved to a different ranch which joined my parents' place to the east. We significantly enlarged our land holdings, and were able to run quite a few more cattle, but also had more work and responsibilities. Having dabbled with a few other registered Angus, we soon learned that the seedstock business was probably not our forte. We decided to run a no frills commercial cattle operation, and concentrate on having the best most trouble-free cattle that we could raise. I did have one cow, number 416 (born in 1984) that I thought was an ideal cow and the best cow that we had ever raised. She was straight, square, feminine, had an excellent udder, good legs, and trouble-free feet. She also had a daughter that looked just like her, and would have the potential to carry the torch well into the future. I had 250 pairs summered out with a neighbor, and these cattle were grazing on either side of a county road oil strip under "open range" conditions. A new bridge was being built where this road crossed the Niobrara River, and the building crew was staying in camper trailers near the work location. One evening after we had gone to bed, the phone rang. One of the bridge workers had journeyed to town and stayed a bit too long at the local watering hole. On the way back to his camper, in the black of the night, he ran into a black heifer calf on the black oil strip. The calf didn't die, but it needed to be put out of its misery. I took a gun and drove down to shoot the calf. Wouldn't you know, out of 250 possible calves to hit, it was my favorite heifer, Number 416, lying dying in the road. There went another big dream. Since then I just go for the averages and try not to get too attached or to put any animals on a pedestal.
Sandra was my wonderful sister, friend, playmate, mentor, and my dad's favorite child. She was a bubbly vivacious great Christian lady, and a school teacher by trade. She positively influenced a multitude of people, but died of ovarian cancer at the tender age of 38. All who knew her still miss her. She lived life to the fullest and had traveled in all fifty states, besides several European countries, before she died. She had a profoundly positive impact on a great many people. Sandra didn't smoke or drink, so it wasn't wild living that did her in. Sandra and Sparky had a special camaraderie, and it was especially hard on the young boy when his beloved aunt died. Why did she die so early? This is a question for the ages.
Peach and I have three wonderful children. Our boys are great, but at one time we possibly thought our daughter, Sunflower, had even more potential than did the boys. The boys had off and on caused us a bit of grief for one reason or another, but after the age of three, Sunflower had not given us one bit of cause for concern. Prior to that, there was a time I was thinking we should have named her little Vanda Liza. :roll: :wink: Sunflower was a goal-oriented girl, with aspirations of becoming a famous architect designing magnificent buildings. She really wanted to go to Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. That is a long ways from the Sandhills of Nebraska, but since we knew she would make the most of such an education, Peach and I did everything in our power to make her dream become reality. Sunflower went off to college and did us up proud. She got on the Dean's List, and accomplished some wonderful artistic projects as assignments in her work. She came home at Thanksgiving time and had the whole month off until after New Years. We enjoyed her visit, but she had met a young man from Colorado the previous August at her cousin's wedding. During her break from school, the budding romance was pursued and she went to Colorado to see the young man. The upshot was that she didn't come back home. Her obligations to the school went unfulfilled. She was supposed to accept a scholarship and pose for a picture, which she didn't. Our lovely daughter was letting us down, and she was not being the responsible citizen which we had tried to train her to be. Sunflower tied in with the young man, and joined a religious cult with which he was a member. The world of Peach and I came crashing down about our shoulders. Fortunately we both knew Someone who was willing to carry our burdens so that we didn't have to. His name is Jesus, and He does a mighty fine job if we just let him. After four years of no communication, we are so very happy that Sunflower came back home. She was our prodigal daughter, and it is so wonderful that with the help of God she has returned. Now she is the same responsible hard-working young lady that we knew before. She was deceived, as she will be the first to admit, but she has benefitted and grown so very much from the experience.
As sports enthusiasts, we sometimes place great importance on the outcome of a game. The Super Bowl is on as I write this, but in the long-term scheme of things, does it really matter who wins? As ranchers, we continually strive to raise the ideal cow or the ideal bull. Sometimes even a show steer, with no chance of ever producing any offspring, will defy all odds and sell for the astronomical figure of $210,000. One day we are healthy as a horse, and the next we suffer afflictions that have long-standing effects. People with whom we place a great deal of trust can let us down. It hurts. These things can all seem very important as we live our earthly lives, but in the long run we need to know how to separate temporary achievements and set-backs from those having long-term, especially eternal implications. Our lives in the here-and-now are but a mere fly-speck on the Big Picture Window of Eternity, but it is an important time. Forever is such a long, long time. Right now is the only opportunity we know we have to decide where we want to spend eternity.
