A thanksgiving note from 2004:
11-24-04
I had just settled into my office one evening, after driving back from a bookstore in Kentucky, when the phone rang. It was Cindy asking me to head on home. Art (our Milking Devon bull) had been causing trouble and our neighbor was demanding $500. I loaded up and headed home. Forty-five minutes later, I was greeted on our driveway by the sight of said neighbor, an aged farmer whose property backs up to a portion of our property.
For those of you who have been reading these notes for a few years, this neighbor is the farmer who never buys a bull. He instead waits patiently for a bull from another herd to leap fences to spend time with his cows. A few years ago Bellow (our former sire) spent most of one summer frolicking with his ladies. The neighbor was unconcerned since he was getting stud fees for free. And, I spent a lot of time bringing Bellow home only to have him head back over the fences (once he’s seen Paris….) However, this past year he finally bought a bull of his own.
This neighbor and his niece, in their battered pick-up, rumbled past with a smug look and wave of his hand. I drove on up to the house. Cindy filled me in on the particulars. Art apparently during the day had smashed through our barbed wire fence. He then tossed a gate and corner post and entered a promised land where an abundance of cows awaited. Mr. Johnson’s bull was not amused and combat commenced. When the dust settled his bull lay on the ground with his pelvis smashed and his leg broken in half. And, Mr. Johnson earned $500 for a dying mongrel bull.
Cindy and I headed up to the back -field to locate Art and try and get him home. I walked through the fields, hopped a fence and went through the Raby and Johnson fields in a vain effort to locate him. Meanwhile Cindy had located him in another of Raby’s fields. We were quickly running out of light when she went home and saddled her mare in an effort to move Art across the field and into our upper pasture.
Sometime later, as I stumbled through the late summer hay that came to my knees, the light faded. For about the fourth time Art balked halfway across the field and turned back as Cindy pushed him from the saddle. My job was to put side pressure on him as we tried to move him in a straight line. In the darkness I heard rather than saw Art thunder down a small hill in my direction. He was upset. I quit the field. We went home.
The sad part of this affair is that Art shouldn’t have been on our farm. We had made arrangements to sell him to Mulberry Gap Farm in North Carolina. The owners raise the same breed of cattle and had bought a number of heifers from us the previous year. For the past month we had missed connections to transport Art to them. Now we were out $500.
Next weekend Cindy rented a cattle trailer from the co-op. Art in the meantime leapt fences and returned to our herd. With a feed bucket I called all of our cattle into the corral. It was then a simple matter to cull them, leaving Art alone. We ran Art into the chute with the intention of him ending up in the cattle trailer. After several false starts he turned and leapt over the steel gate leaving it bowed in the middle from his heavy bulk. And he was gone. He headed up the hill and with one backwards glance jumped the fence. He was back where he could be appreciated. (Cindy had to restrain me from using the deer rifle to drop him for the vultures).
Saturday morning I called the boys in North Carolina and told them that we could not in good conscience sell them Art. After conferring with Raby we called in the “Specialist”. “The Specialist” was a good old boy who made his living collecting up rogue cattle (there is a niche for everything). After viewing Art, who had now taken up residence in some woods, he bought him for $600. He wanted to try one last effort to get him in the corral before he roped and drug Art onto a trailer. That evening we managed to get Art in the corral. We called our specialist who came out immediately with his trailer. With an embarrassingly efficient display of cattle skills he screamed and beat at Art who ran right into the trailer in seconds. And, he was gone! However, for the next few days, we half expected to see Art standing in the front yard in some sadistic parody of “That Incredible Journey”.
Things have settled down, fences have been repaired. I brought two bull calves back from Kansas in a marathon bit of driving, selling one to the boys in North Carolina. Things are peaceful on the farm. And for that I’m thankful.
Have a nice Thanksgiving.
