My granddad’s favorite way to describe his “spare tire” was that he had a bad case of “water on the belly.” Now certainly, this was not a physiologically accurate diagnosis, but people understood what he meant. Grandpa’s extra 15 pounds he put on most winters settled right on his gut.

Dairy feeder steers are the red-headed stepchild of the beef industry – at least that is what we like to call them. I learned that idiom from my dad. It is his favorite. You can use it to describe pretty much anything – a sore on your big toe, an ugly runt in a litter of puppies or, in our case, a few black and whites in a pasture of Angus genetics.

Last year, my brother-in-law took a cowboy job with a ranch in northern Utah. It’s his dream job, no two ways about that. The guy spends his days on the back of a horse and can train as many cow dogs as he pleases. His rope is never far from his hand, and his cowboy hat doesn’t leave his head. He makes as good a cowboy as Marlboro Man.

The day after Christmas, the aptly named winter storm Goliath blew its way through the Southern Plains states. The snow and 80-mph wind ravaged dairy country in Texas and New Mexico. Like winter storm Atlas two years ago, this storm hit the agricultural community hard.

When faced with the facts, it’s hard to argue that production agriculture is not a dangerous line of work. Recently, I read a Forbes article that ranked farming and ranching as the fourth most deadly occupation in America.