Friend is a word that I don’t throw around
Though it’s used and abused, I still like the sound.
I save it for people who’ve done right by me
And I know I can count on if ever need be.

Harold has been dismantling his feedlot. He built it over 40 years ago and eventually achieved a 30,000- head capacity. You can imagine the accumulation of steel, rubber, railroad ties, nails, car bodies, pipe, chains, wire, horseshoes and baler twine.

Life is just a bowl of cherries
to a first-rate feedlot hand.
All the gates swing free and easy;

In this column I have often mentioned scours, abscesses, big tits, bad bags, cancer eyes, foot rot, slurry pits, afterbirth, retained placenta, castration, heat cycles, sheep pellets and snotty noses.

We try to be faithful recyclers around the house. I make regular runs to town with the pickup full of newspapers, bottles, aluminum cans, cardboard boxes and tin.

In rural America, farmers and “rural lifestylers” are often neighbors. Seeking a place to better raise their children, to retire in peace or to escape the continuing anxiety of the city, they move to the country and build a house on a 2-acre plot.

A cowboy is the way he is
because he works with stock.
He’s learned it’s best to ease along

“Age-in’ a cow is ’bout the thing I hate most. Seems like they can tell the instant you cross the line into the strike zone.”

There’s nothing like an evening of calving to promote the romantic image of the cowboy. Right, ladies? Don invited a nice woman out to his ranch in Alberta for an evening of candlelight, wine and canned bean dip.

ATTN: This is addressed to teenagers, tuba players and grown-ups in the news media who have gotten great giggles out of the story cow flatulence is a danger to mankind. It can be expected from those who have the attention span of a Bartlett pear, but tuba players should know better.