Black-eyed Peas and Coleslaw

Right after Christmas, I turned my attention to New Year’s Day.

My mother grew up in the South so black-eyed peas and coleslaw on New Year’s are a tradition in my family.

Black-eyed peas bring riches and we always eat coleslaw because that is the only edible form of cabbage. Cabbage entices good luck.

Some Southerners use other greens, such as collard greens, to bring good fortune, but that would be just like trying to make kale edible.

The southern blood is a bit diluted in my Montana-born offspring so when I mentioned to my 14-year-old daughter, Abby, that we get to have black-eyed peas and coleslaw on New Year’s, she groaned.

“We should skip it this year,” she grumbled.

“We skipped it last year,” I replied. “Look what happened.”

Abby didn’t hesitate: “We should eat two helpings. But can we make them taste good?”

I took the salt pork out of the freezer.

In the South, salt pork and cornmeal are the steak and potatoes of Montana.

We made it through 2020 without black-eyed peas and coleslaw, but I won’t make that mistake ever again.

The weight of responsibility is just too heavy.

Hindsight is always 20-20, goes the old adage, but who wants to look backward?

I’ve been studying up on good business practices lately.

This year, I’m going to work on making my business of ranching and writing a little better.

I want to create better habitat for microbes and muledeer.

If I give the fungi, bacteria and worms lots to eat, my cows and sheep will enjoy whatever the muledeer leave behind.

I want to employ a person so he or she might learn how to run a ranch.

That means I better learn how to be an employer.

That means I need to learn to finish my sentences before I turn my head into the wind.

I’m ready to expand my direct marketing.

Back in June, after six months sans black-eyed peas and coleslaw, I found myself content with the number of steers, lambs and wool pelts I sell to people.

In fact, I was stunned to hear myself proclaim I was satisfied with what I already do.

I shivered in the warm sunshine.

That attitude is the beginning of the end for a sole proprietorship, according to business experts.

I’m not sure I agree with that theory – many businesses chug along just fine for years without expanding – but my head-down, just-do-the-basics, depressing attitude shocked me.

If I kept my head down and worked to just get by, my cool-at-least-to-me ideas would fade away into the fog.

My head popped up.

Just because a calf fell in the creek and drowned, another was drowned by rising water behind an ice jam, my dog died and chaos reigned throughout the world didn’t mean I needed to just muddle through.

I clarify life by diagramming how the cogs of my various roles fit together.

The teeth of mother, business owner, hay hauler, fence fixer, writer, marketer, lamb puller and poop scooper keep the wheels in motion as long as one cog doesn’t grow too big to overwhelm all of the others.

By June, the cog of uncertainty had certainly overwhelmed the others.

I’m pretty sure mine weren’t the only overwhelmed cogs.

I wonder what would have happened if I had simmered some black-eyed peas and grated some coleslaw in June.

Even better, if everyone ate black-eyed peas and coleslaw, just think of all of the good luck and riches flowing.

The whole world might have been an entirely different place.

It’s not too late to do your part for 2021.

Just remember to add some salt pork to your peas.