Getting Ready

A tinge of green grass taunts winter.

The cows waddle to the hay I spread.

Sweat, a stranger for the last five months, cools my arms and face as I work.

Get ready, I think to myself.

My favorite season is coming.

Real life -- here and now and commanding all of my attention -- is about to commence.

Some of my neighbors already have calves on the ground, some delay their season for another month or two.

All of us know this time of year can be exhausting, exhilarating, discouraging or any combination of the three.

We know we will be engulfed by waves of watching, waiting and reacting.

This hands-on, life-or-death, sunshine-or-snow, act-now-not-later is real life, not available in books or online.

I have lots to do to get ready.

I check the trough in the corral on the hill where I will bring my heifers soon.

I usually ask my cows and heifers to calve on the pasture where they have space and privacy, but this year they will calve where a creek meanders through the entire pasture.

When they calved in this pasture five years ago, every single heifer chose to have her first baby on the edge of the creek bank.

Newborn calves standing for the first time often wobble on their own personal, unfamiliar stilts.

Some splashed into the creek.

My daughter, Abby, and I rescued several calves because we happened to be in the right place at the right time. In fact, we missed my cousin’s wedding while I held a calf’s head above water and Abby pulled it to safety.

We apologized to my cousin. She was glad the calf was okay.

A few others were not okay.

The corral on the hill poses less risk than the creek for newborns of first-time mamas.

Also, I need to repair some fence on the county road.

Every winter, the snowplow throws drifts over the barbed wire of that fence. If the wire doesn’t break, it certainly sags.

I won’t complain about a safe road, especially on that steep hill.

As soon as I’m relatively sure we won’t have another heavy, deep snowstorm, I’ll patch that fence again.

I’ll think about Dolly Parton’s song, My Coat of Many Colors, as I patch it. So many varieties of wire twist together that Dolly might be singing about that fence.

Unexpectedly, the best aspect of this approaching calving season comes from my milk cow, Maija.

At 20 years old, Maija poses a dilemma that I have been considering all winter.

When she calved last spring, she almost died from milk fever, a calcium deficiency that often affects old milk cows.

Abby saved the highest-profit-center-on-the-ranch bag-of-bones with a lot of injections and determination.

I’m sentimental about Maija.

When my other cows get old, I take them to the auction, thank them for their contributions, send them to fast food burgerland and bring a check home.

Maija would not do well at the auction.

She would not bring much money and I doubt the auction workers would understand that she comes straight at people, mouth wide open, because she wants a treat, not to attack.

All winter, I wonder whether she is pregnant.

If she isn’t, she has to go.

I prepare for the inevitable, dread it.

Even if I kept her, I couldn’t let Maija suffer the pains of old age.

The only alternative is a bullet.

Meanwhile, Maija has been eating a good source of mineral, stocking up on calcium and other vital minerals, just in case.

Yesterday, I noticed that Maija’s udder is filling.

She is getting ready to calve.

Elated and nervous, I get ready, too.