We are entering autumn – harvest season and “get everything done on the list before winter comes” season. This season is impacted by the weather, so we check the forecast regularly. (Let’s be honest, at our age, we check it at least once a day, anyway.)
“Might snow this week.” We’ve been ranching long enough to know that if one of us says this, it means we’re asking how many layers to wear. Thus, the follow-up questions are: “How many inches?” and, “Which direction will the wind blow?”
This is basically code for, “Do I need to wear my cowboy lingerie?” which itself is code for long johns, or “man tights,” as one of our daughters used to call them.
But the big aspect of incoming weather is The List.
The List encompasses all the projects that need to be done before snow flies.
Do ranchers in every climate do this? I don’t know; I can only speak for Montana. Here, autumn really means first winter. Snow can start in September. Frost will happen by September, if not the end of August. I start watching forecasts in August to see when I need to harvest or cover the garden. When it’s apparent that the big frost is coming, it’s time to quickly harvest every zucchini, green beans, etc. – usually in a scurry because I don’t want to lose anything. (Although the carrots will be okay. They taste better after a frost.)
The List contains seasonal projects:
- Did we pound every fence post that we need to before the ground freezes?
- Is the hay adequately covered?
- Are water sources secured?
- What needs antifreeze?
It also includes summer projects that we ran out of time to do and autumn projects that may or may not have been started:
- Paint the buildings
- Fix the deck
- Build all the fences. Fix all the fences. Anything to do with fences. (Fences are on every season’s list because of the wildlife that hop over, around and through them, as well as the weather we have.)
- Clean the corrals
- Harrow the pastures
- Grade the roads
- Put up electric fence/take down electric fence
- Prune the trees
- Plant fall seeds
- Store lawn equipment
- Prep the chute shack
- Hang that gate
- Drain hoses and solar pumps
The List has any number of things on it, depending on the year. It’s never short. Usually, it gets longer the more we do. We start doing one project and realize we need to add more to The List instead of only scratching things off. The List has perennial projects, too, such as fall works/processing that we aim to do in the best weather possible. However, that doesn’t always work out.
Last year, we scheduled preg checking and thought the weather would be OK. But the day roared in like a lion and then brought the whole lion pride with it. Temperatures dropped and hovered near zero. Snow blew sideways, forcing itself through every crack in the chute shack and decreasing visibility. The overhead heater wouldn’t work. It would’ve been a good day to reschedule, but consecutive days looked worse, and we had help. So, did we plow forward? What do you think?
Since weather impacts ranch life no matter the season, The List also gets adjusted.
One winter, sheets of snow dropped and wind whipped drifts into solid structures. Our bulls walked over the top of an 8-foot fence. Over. The. Top. Not one of them sank in the snow. These are things you don’t necessarily see coming until they happen once, so then you stand guard.
Guess what got added to The List? Obviously, retrieving the bulls (who didn’t stray far from the hay), and backhoe work to dig out drifts away from fences.
Before this happened, it hadn’t occurred to us that packed drifts would hold the weight of multiple bulls, to the point of walking over an 8-foot fence. Hopefully, we won’t have to watch for that for a couple more months … yet The List now includes checking all the fences and wind breaks.
We love The List because it keeps us organized – unless, of course, we don’t write it down and keep it on the list in our heads.
The list in our heads is equally important but is not always the same as The List, which is written in a notebook. Sometimes the two overlap, which creates a virtual Venn diagram of ranch chores. This is helpful, though, because the things that overlap usually hold high importance.
The List is one of our most helpful tools, if we write stuff down and keep it in one place. It’s possible we have more than one paper with a list started …
Now where did I put my first list?
