Winter Days and Winter Nights

Dear Reader,

              Winter is almost over, but the precarious months between early winter and late spring are the hardest in ranching. Everything is tired of being cold: the horses, the cows, the dogs, even the trees. The rancher is constantly calculating whether things will hold out until the grass comes back. If there is a late spring, will the hay hold out? How much will it cost if there is a dry spring and we have to feed longer than expected? There is the concern about the animals’ health, about the newborn calves in the cold and the nursing mothers keeping on weight. All while dreading a dry spring when everything seems to get a cough while waiting for the spring rain.

              While this season of the year can be the most stressful, it can also be the easiest as far as the workload. Yes, there may be more feeding chores, and maybe a little bit more breath holding (or exhaling if you are like me and like to watch your breath in the cold), but there is also more leisure time because like most things in winter, it’s just too cold and production is hibernating. There is time to take care of the things that get neglected during the summer and autumn, cleaning out the barn, mending the barn, cleaning tack, and maybe even picking up a new hobby.  In the summer, every ounce of work is squeezed out of the sunshine, but with the shorter days of winter there is more time to devote to interests not required for the survival of the ranch.

It might surprise people what interests a ranching family may pursue, but with the entertainment that town provides a little out of reach, and probably being too tired to host the neighbors, time and boredom can lead to pursuing every curiosity that comes your way. When someone in the family brings home a new item or book to learn a new skill, it seems that everyone picks up something from that item or skill. One year, someone got a badminton set and a chess set for Christmas, and by spring we were either proficient at badminton or sick of chess. With mostly siblings for company, we also learned to take board games to the extreme and probably took games that involved friendly debate and reasoning further than the creators could imagine. Besides board games, there were also the books that we got our hands on. If someone brought a code breaking book home from the library, it inevitably got left in the bathroom and other members of the family read it as well. This would lead to code writing, breaking, and coming up with theories about how unbroken codes were written. There is also time to actually watch movies and T.V. shows, and still go to bed at a reasonable hour (we always looked forward to watching the evening game shows during winter because we were actually inside at that time).

Even with the obscure skills and knowledge a ranching family can pick up during the winter months, there are also the more traditional “ranchy” things that are given attention during the short days. It is not uncommon for Daddy and some siblings to have different braiding and craft projects scattered across the living room. My sisters are usually more inspired to try new desert recipes in the kitchen, while my brother plots his next plan for pest control in the barn with his traps. The long evenings are also an opportune time for Mama to corner Daddy to go through paperwork with her. And me, dear reader, what do I do on these long nights? I, dear reader, curl up in a chair with my favorite books and blankets while I hope that the weather outside decides to get warm soon.

Sincerely and Warmly Yours,

The Rancher’s Daughter