With temperatures in the low 40s, no frost in the ground nor snow above it, bright blue skies and the absence of even the slightest hint of southern Idaho’s notorious wind, the circumstances of the day belied the truth of the calendar. It was late January, but it didn’t really feel like it. It was a perfect Saturday to do a little cowboying, so that’s exactly what I had planned for the day. My niece Abby was home from college for the weekend, so with the promise of some possibly epic Instagram-worthy photo ops, I convinced her and her mother to hop on the ponies to help me sort the heifers into calving groups before the babies began showing up in a couple of weeks.
The sorting went off without a hitch, something I can rarely say when any sort of cow project is undertaken at my place. We were able to get all of the heifers sorted and tucked away in their maternity accommodations at the field west of the house. Things went so well that I was even able to sneak in a couple of extra horseback projects that were much easier to accomplish with some extra help. One of those projects included the capture of three calves that, by virtue of their late arrival home from the mountain, had missed the weaning party of their peers nearly two months earlier. I figured I’d keep them in the pens next to my house for a few days before I hauled them to the feedlot some 20 miles to the southwest.
I got the rogue calves loaded into the trailer without incident, but it was clearly evident that two of the little darlings were on the north side of just a little rank. If I were to turn them out in the corrals where I intended, they’d surely discover the broken poles on the north side of the pen that were currently held together with little more than good intentions. These particular calves had already proven to be adept at escape and eluding capture. I figured it would be prudent to make some minor, if only temporary, repairs to the fence before I allowed them to test its ability to contain them.
Abby piled into the pickup with me, and we set off to locate some building materials appropriate for the task at hand. The search didn’t take long. Although I had a fairly significant stash of good, new 20-foot poles on hand for the express purpose of corral construction and repair, on this day and for this particular mission, I ignored the obvious and probably better choice. The fact that my chronic procrastination was now coming home to roost was not lost on me. Of course, I now was painfully aware that the best time for repairs is not in the middle of the crisis, but well before the crisis is converging on me like a ticked-off grizzly she-bear. That conspicuous detail aside, I was in a time crunch. So I bypassed the beautifully straight and stout pine poles and headed straight for the cache of pallets – neatly stored, mind you – behind the shop.
I ignored the eye roll and side-eyed grin of my assistant as she popped open the tailgate and helped me load a couple of the finest looking pallets. Her comments about an urban goat farm fell on deaf ears and left me undeterred. I was less concerned with keeping up appearances than I was with finding a Band-Aid of the appropriate size to stop the immediate bleeding, so to speak. I would have said something about my not paying her for her commentary, but I wasn’t paying her anything at all, so I endured her good-natured verbal assault with equally good-natured patience.
As I pulled the pickup next to the offending hole in the fence, which, by the way, was more subtle than gaping, I sent Abby around the corner to the gate to fetch me some more repair materials. She returned with a handful of freshly discarded plastic baling twine and cheerfully offered me my choice of bright orange, royal blue or neon green, as if she were presenting me the wine list at the finest restaurant on the French Riviera. I, of course, chose the orange, so as not to clash with the existing motif. In a matter of minutes, we had the repair job completed.
Abby’s thoughts on our work seemed to have taken a softer, more empathetic tone than her initial attitude had portrayed. “There’s not much you can’t fix with baling twine and a prayer,” she quipped.
Since my fences and my life are often held together by those two very indispensable ingredients, I could only smile and agree.
.webp?t=1687979285&width=640){kind=logo}
