When Push Comes to Shove

Dear Reader,

            There is something that we should clear up before we get further into this whole rancher life blog… thing.  I have told you what a rancher’s life is like, now let me tell you what it is not. It is not a piece of cake (honestly whose life is?). Hollywood glamorizes ranch life, just like it does everything else. Yes, sometimes Hollywood (or Hallmark) does cover the tough part of ranching like animals dying, a mortgage being due, the land developers trying to edge out the rancher, or bad weather endangering livestock. Those things do happen, but it does not feel like an adventure when you are living them, or even in retrospect a lot of times. When those things happen, it feels desperate and unpleasant.

            A lot of our struggles on the ranch are not heroic escapades. They are the everyday struggles that require everyday solutions and elbow grease to get through. The other day I had to stay home from my day job because I had to fix fence. This was probably the first time that I had to stay home from work or school because of ranching. My parents made lots of sacrifices to make sure that we did not miss college or internships. But on this day, my dad and sister #2 were headed out of state for a week, while some of our cows decided to head out of pasture for an undetermined amount of time. After a U-turn back to the ranch for my dad and sister, a mad cow chase, and a phone call into work later, sister #3 and I found ourselves working on a gaping hole in the fence that wasn’t even in the initial repair assessment. That day, my mom, my two sisters who were left at the house, and I managed to patch the fence, feed the animals, relocate a water trough, and win a soccer game. (I was kind of looking forward to being in the office the next day.) So, yay! We handled our problems, overcame them, and celebrated like a happy family. No, this is not a Hallmark movie. The next morning, which was a Friday, some cows were in the yard when we woke up. So, we spent our Saturday morning fixing fence and finally fixing the problem… and then that night we all watched a movie and crashed.

            But not all of our problems are like that, we have regular problems too. The other day I had to replace a very expensive, yet vital part on my truck (isn’t it funny how those two words are always together, vital and exspensive). I ended up having to use money that I had been saving up for something else for a long time. There are busy days where my mom asks me to tackle a mountain of dishes, and busy weeks where we know on Saturday morning nobody is going anywhere until we get the house under control, unless you want to go to the feed store. I remember nights holding the flashlight for my dad while he tried to figure out how to fix his truck using YouTube and mechanic forums so that he could get to work at a nearby ranch in the morning. I remember him telling me and my little sister that “this was real ranching.” Those are not the fun struggles that they talk about in movies.

            Tough times are ok though, because ranchers are always brave and loving and can deal with anything that comes our way because we always have family with us. No, ranching is not like in the movies where everybody gets glum for a second, but then the one character goes, “but hey guys remember…” We do get glum and irritable and angry – with our situations and with each other. Believe me, trying to hammer staples into fence posts using the 4-wheeler headlights to see by when you have been outside all day will put anyone in a bad mood.  We get irritable with each other when someone forgets a tool all the way back at the barn (sometimes I’m the perpetrator in that one).  And it just makes a rancher really angry when that one cow JUST. KEEPS. GETTING. OUT.

            But we are actually pretty happy people. Why? Because we are doing what we love with the people we love. Yes, it is painful and heart wrenching sometimes. There are times when ranching makes you want to pull your hair out as you lay over your steering wheel whispering unkind things out of frustration. But let me tell you a secret, an age-old secret that is handed down from rancher to rancher, “It always rains at the end of a dry spell.”