Many of the dairymen and cattlemen I have known through the years have been people who farm the land and raise livestock not just as a way of making a living, but because they enjoy working with the animals. Thinking about my own Dad, in the years ago if you had asked him, "Russell, what do you do for a living?" He would probably have said that he milks cows and sells milk for a living. Dairying is a very demanding way of life, with night and day commitments every day without fail. My dad finally gave up the dairy operation in the 1980s after 45 years, but he continued to keep a beef herd and to raise livestock until he was 90 years old. You don't do that when you regard your work as drudgery and look forward to the time when you won't have to do it anymore. You keep on keeping on like that because that's what you enjoy doing with your life and time.
Farming and dairying or raising beef cattle definitely has some tough aspects. I particularly remember one conversation with my dad after he had moved to the place on Arkansas Highway 72 in Pea Ridge and was handling a fairly extensive beef herd. At that time, the market for beef was down, rather badly down, and he remarked that he had been thinking maybe he should get himself a less expensive hobby. His beef cattle business, which he was calling his "hobby," was not profitable at that time.
So, he was acknowledging that he was hanging in there with it for other reasons besides making money. He enjoyed working with the cows and calves every day, even more than he could have enjoyed another standard hobby, like golfing or fishing or boating. He had tried several "hobbies" and we thought that maybe in retirement he would spend a lot of time as a photographer. He did take quite a few good pictures, and we as a family have benefited from those, but nothing seemed to appeal to him quite so much as seeing about the cows and calves day by day, putting out grain feed, feeding hay in season, doctoring the ailing, taking some to market from time to time, listening to the goin's on at the sale barn, and so on.
I have had several friends, both in eastern Arkansas and here in the northwest, who just flatly regard farm work as dreaded drudgery, and would never willingly pursue a farming occupation, let alone see it as a desirable and attractive way of life. When I think of myself, I didn't pursue the farm as a career, but actually I didn't leave the farm life for not enjoying it. I have enjoyed working with churches in farming communities, and I am happy to be back in my home area where, despite many changes, the farming way of life is still alive.
Quite often, dairymen and livestock producers work their herds in such a way that this time of year is calving season. This was a part of working with livestock herds that I have always enjoyed, seeing the new baby calves and the mother cows around the farm, doing their thing. Our conversations around the farm when I was growing up always had expressions about such and such a mama cow that was waiting on a new calf, or that young first-calf heifer that was expecting her new offspring before long. I remember some times when I was quite young, when a mama cow expecting a calf was turned into a pen in the barn because Dad thought her calf was coming soon, and he seemed intent on having me there when the new little calf was born. I think that may have been an intentional part of my education about life and reproduction. Sometimes the mama cow would need a little help in bringing her newborn into the world, and we would play the part of a mid-wife, sort of.
Of course the mother cows don't always come to the barn and tell you that "it's time!" Sometimes they go hide in the woods or in a thicket in the back 40 to have their little baby calf. One of my early duties as a teenage farm boy was to go hunt the mother cow who had hidden her little newborn somewhere. Like the deer's little fawn, sometimes the mother cow would hide her baby in the thicket or in the weeds, and seemed to be trying to keep us from finding the little one. Usually she gave some clue about the general area, so I would go looking all around nearby. It might take awhile, but I was usually able to bring the new mama cow and new little baby calf home to the barn and a little TLC.
It has always been fun to me to see little calves out in the barn lot or out in the field, energetic and feeling good. They will run and run, apparently just for the joy of running, kicking up their heels, baaaiing to each other like they are having the greatest time! Later on, as they start to get a bit older, the little bull calves will start practicing their bellowing. It doesn't sound quite like a bellow at first, but at least the little bull is saying "I'm gonna be big and strong and tough and loud when I grow up!"
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. The opinions expressed are those of the author. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 03/08/2017