Farm to Family Column: TheBig Day

By Curt Arens

Northeast Nebraska News Agency

January 13, 2008

DearFriends,

Nomatter what business you are in, there are big days to deal with. These are keydates, when you have to be "on the ball" and "in the zone,"to accomplish things with care and certainty.

Isuppose some examples would be Mother's Day and Valentine's Day for a florist;the day after a hailstorm for an insurance agent; and the day after an icestorm for the power company. These are the days when you dig deep down insideand perform to the best of your abilities. It isn't like these folks are onauto-pilot the rest of the time, but certainly the pressure gauge hits"high" when key duties need to be performed.

Farmersare no different. There are days when everything is on the line. This time ofyear, when we take stock in how we did in 2007, we notice the performance datafrom last year's big days. Some of the days that are noticeable are those timeswe marketed our cattle, or grain. Sometimes, if you market all of your calveson a single day, it causes a little anxiety, at least for me, about how themarkets and the weather are going to play out on that day.

Theday when we bring our cows and calves home from our west pasture in the fall isthe day that I often lay awake, a week beforehand, and think about all of thescenarios that are possible and all of the things that could go wrong.

Thispast year, I truly planned the day out, down to every detail. I had the gatesopen at home, ready to go. I had been feeding our cows in the pasture near thegates where we would lure them out.

Whenthe day came, my neighbor came over on his ATV to help out, thank goodness, andDad drove the tractor with a bale dangling from the bale fork, to lure the cowsand calves home.

Wehad called them all to the gate minutes before my neighbor arrived. We openedthe gate and the cows followed Dad and the tractor perfectly. It looked as ifevery single one would come out of the gate, when four calves balked and ran back,full speed, to the far end of the pasture.

BowCreek meanders through this pasture, and it is impossible to navigate manyspots with an ATV. So I set out on foot, crossed the creek three times, got myboot full of water, and got around the four calves. My neighbor ran the cowsback into the pasture, so the calves would see them.

Justas we got the herd turned around and headed back for the gate, I looked up tothe top of the creek bank above me, to see three other calves which I hadn'tnoticed, peeking over the edge to see what all the commotion was about. Ithought I had counted correctly, but evidently had missed three calves thatwere on the far corner of the pasture. If the other calves hadn't gone back, asI cursed them for doing, we wouldn't have noticed these escapees. If you'veever run young calves without their mothers, anywhere, you know how difficultthat situation would have become.

So wewere able to reunite these renegades with their mommas, and lure them all backout the gate and home without further incident. My fits of anxiety hadn'thelped anything. Maybe instead of worrying so much, I should just start beingmore flexible in the face of adversity, and know that things will work outalright, in spite of my advance planning.

Hope you have a good week.