A Day at The Ranch

9/27/07 - 5th Day - After Supper. Wakened at 1 a.m. to what sounds like a storm blowing in. The wind is howling outside and Danielle is rushing around securing things. "There's lightning off to the north" she says as I try to shake the cobwebs from my head. In my sleep-addled state I think it is 5 a.m. and time to milk, so I lay there for a few seconds deciding how much I am going to hate milking in a thunderstorm. Danielle rushes around some more and I can hear things blowing around outside. When she comes back in I ask her the time and if it is time to milk. She tells me it is 1:08 and I relax back into my pillow. Usually I would fire up the laptop and be on storm duty, but my computer is out of commission. I get the two-way radio and turn it on, hoping that Elder David is watching the storm. I want rain, but not enough that I will be milking in the mud. I fall back into a deep sleep.

At 5 a.m. I hear Danielle and Tracy preparing the milking "stuff". At 5:30 Tracy comes to the door and says "I'm ready". I struggle to get out of bed, pull on my jeans and shirt... belt, boots, etc. Grab a flashlight and head out. Tracy, Danielle and I have it down to a routine, which is the way I like it. I am a man of habit, and I like no deviations from what works. No changes. No innovations. Same movements every day. I fill the bucket with grain and put it down for Holga. While I go through the fence, Danielle clips her lead to her halter. I grab the leg tie and secure her leg to the back post. I grab my sitting bucket and Tracy hands me the udder wash rag. I wash down the udder and hand it back and she hands me the milk bucket. Holga is a bit restless and is moving around a little, but I start on the milking. When my hands begin to cramp (which is pretty soon, I am a writer not a ham-fisted fence pounder) Tracy comes into the corral and takes over. She is really good at it. I always wondered why the women did all the milking. I keep Holga from moving around too much with steady pressure on her haunches. Holga is not really into it today. She is moving around, coughing, pulling on the lead. We get about half as much milk as usual, and it is obvious she has had enough. We give her some range cubes and that calms her for about 2 minutes, then she is back to pulling away. I decide to cut her loose and we let her go. Her calf (Chico) is not waiting for her at the gate like usual. Wonder where he is? We head back to the cabin to filter and process the milk. The dishes weren't put up from last night - which perturbs me not a little. The ice cooler was left open too. All of this on top of a reticent milk cow. Coffee is ready ahead of schedule though, which is nice. Danielle is making breakfast and I sit on the porch with my flashlight and my coffee to read in the John le Carré book that Kelly let me borrow. My computer is out of commission so I can't get online, so reading is a great fallback. When the first rays of daylight begin to show through the clouds I walk up to the front to see if Chico has been found. I find Holga, Pita, and Chico all along the north fence. Chico is suckling - probably enjoying the surplus that we didn't take from Holga.

Back to the book for a few minutes, then I go and rotate the solar trailer to prepare it for the morning sun. We make our solar trailer into a solar tracker by moving it every hour or so as the sun tracks across the sky. It is light enough now, so I walk down and check on the piglets. Luella is a little perturbed that we grabbed one of her piglets the other day to mark its ear. She remembers. She comes to the fence snorting at me, but calms down and lets me scratch her back. The piglets run around play-fighting one another. That seems to be all they do... fight, eat, run, play, fight, eat, sleep...

Another cup of coffee and breakfast is served. "Breakfast chili" which today is a delicious mixture of eggs, hamburger, sausage, cheese, beans, and maybe more. We add sour cream and eat it with tortilla chips. Always a treat.

Everyone is off to their chores now. Breakfast dishes, cleaning the porches. I'm back to my book for a short while.

Picking up acorns. Picking up acorns is now going to be a regular September/October chore. Hopefully followed by picking up mesquite beans in October/November. My studies into acorns have convinced me the labor is well worth it, and I have procured three thirty-two gallon trash cans for storing the harvest. The children hate picking up acorns, but they will do it anyway. If I had told them that IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM ARE THEY PERMITTED TO TOUCH, PICK-UP, or OTHERWISE STORE, ANY ACORNS - we would be spanking them all day for surreptitiously picking up acorns. But since they are commanded to pick up acorns, they hate it. Like pigs playing, they naturally must chafe against authority, order, necessity, or mandate.

8 a.m. - I call Elder David and inform him that Kelly Sustaire told me at 10 p.m. last night that we need to go pick up a donated yearling steer this morning. A friend is donating the steer for hamburger, hopefully for a Ranchfest hamburger cook-out. We are supposed to pick up the steer and keep him until Tuesday, when he has an appointment at the butcher's. David is duly informed, and I try to get hold of Kelly so he can arrange the pickup with the donor.

10:20 David calls - Our donor friend (Frank) is willing for us to pick up the steer this morning, so David says he will be by within the hour to pick me up. We head to Brownwood with the cattle trailer, hoping to be back at a decent time to get some more work done today. I had told Brother Logan that I would help him move some book boxes today, but I'm not sure I will be able to get over there.

Well, I hadn't been to Brownwood since around May 7 that I can remember. Which is fine by me. Brownwood is the closest "large" town, and I don't like to go there unless I have to. Today, I have to. We run a few errands in town, then stop at Cafe Millonario (a local Mexican Food joint) for lunch. The food is good and cheap - and the bonus is that they now have a buffet. I have two tacos, beef enchiladas, one chicken enchilada, and two tortillas. $5.99. We finish lunch and call Frank who is with Brother Kelly (who is working with him today), and they are going to meet us at the ranch that has some of his cattle. Frank has a lot of cattle, spread out over 3 or 4 ranches - so you have to travel a bit to see all of his animals. The place with the yearling steer we are going to pick up has about 30 cattle (that I saw). There is one big 15 year old steer who has horns that are at least 7 feet across. WOW. I cannot impress upon you how big that is. 7 feet across! This is an impressive animal. Mabye 1500-1800 lbs. Anyway, we run about 10 of the cows into a pen, then separate out about 5 of them. Then we separate out our target steer and easily get him loaded into the trailer. This is a sweet and easy job when the pens and corrals are set up properly. So now we stand around and talk to Frank. Frank is one of the foremost experts on pure Longhorn cattle in the whole world, and he LOVES to talk about Longhorns. So we talk Longhorns for 30 minutes or so, then we hop in the truck to leave. Well Frank, who LOVES to talk Longhorns (did I tell you that?), comes by and says, "Hey guys, I don't know if you guys have 5 minutes, but if you do, I just received 4 mounted Longhorn heads from Fayette Yates widow (Yates is THE name in Longhorn cattle, just do a search on him), and you would probably really enjoy seeing them. And if you have another 5 minutes, we can run by another ranch and see some more of my cattle, where, by the way, there is a bull which is one that we could end up putting out at your place in the next year or so." So, twenty-five minutes later we are on another ranch, looking at another 40 or so beautiful Longhorn cattle and discussing the finer points of Longhorn breeding and history. Now, don't get me wrong, there is no man who you would want to talk Longhorns with more than Frank, and, since I am underemployed I have no problem spending all day talking Longhorns with Frank, but it is now well over 90 degrees with no wind and we are all starting to feel the heat... even the steer in the trailer. Another 30 minutes and we are off to Frank's house (for just 5 minutes!) to see the Longhorn heads he has on his wall. We see the beautiful mounts, and some other very interesting horns and after another 30 minutes of cattle talk, we are on our way home. I am personally soaked through with sweat and the steer in the trailer is doing no better. At least I have some water. It takes us about 45 minutes to get home and just as we pull in to the front of the property, it starts to rain. Well, we need the rain, so I'm not complaining, but the temporary UPS guy has left a box of cigars right by the mail box and didn't even wrap the box in plastic. The cigars are late anyway and now I am a little upset that the UPS guy didn't even think to wrap the box, or just bring it down to the cabin like our regular UPS guy does. Ok, it is raining pretty good by now, so when we get to the corral Tracy meets me with my raincoat and my hat - which is nice. Sometimes she is very thoughtful that way. Well... usually she is, which is very nice for a father. David and I get the steer into the corral, and we retire to the front porch to inspect my cigars (which were in fine shape, by the way) and have a nice beer. We hang out until the rain stops, then David heads up to his land - having blown most of the day hanging out with me, for which he receives no remuneration - just my thanks.

I run down and check the pigs and make sure the new steer has plenty of water, and then I sit down to regale the family with tales of Longhorns with 7 feet of horns (which I suppose is better than some beast with 7 horns of feet).

Ok, so the best story we heard from Frank today: He shows us these two sets of mounted horns which were really kind of old, mangled, and gnarly looking. They looked like an off-white version of those snake fireworks you would light on the 4th of July, that curl around and just look nasty. They look like they might have come off of some African mythical beast, or off of a ROUS, or maybe a huge demented jackalope. Well, the story is that these two sets of horns came off of a set of cows owned by Fayette Yates way back in the day. One of the cows was 28 years old, and the other was 23. You should know that most commercial/industrial cattle only live about 10 years tops, and they only produce for about half of that time, so these are the cow equivalent of Sarah in the Bible (maybe 90 in human years). Well, these two old cows had calves on them at the ripe old age of their mid to late 20's. Well, when Fayette goes to wean their calves (the story goes) the very day that he takes the calves off of them, they turn around and walk off and go under some huge beautiful oak tree and die. They had done their duty, raised scores of calves, had grown old - and went and died together. Great story. The horns were really old and gnarly though. Frank says that when a cow gets that old, that their horns really get ugly. Interesting. I would like to have those horns, just so I could tell that story a dozen times or more a year.

Ok, so the family sits on the porch until suppertime. At about 7 p.m. we sit down to supper of Brisket, green beans, okra, and cornbread. Very delicious. The sun starts setting as the wife and children begin to clear the table and do the dishes, and I retire to the now darkened screened porch to finish this tale. I light a cigar, have a scotch, and listen to the cicadas and crickets as darkness sweeps over the land. Right now, as I finish this line, a cool breeze has begun to blow... the perfect period at the end of a great day here on the ranch.

I am your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker