Best left alone?
Why did I abandon the blog for more than two months while helping the Rockytop herd endure, finding a trailerload to cull when it was time for feeding hay to the best of the rest in July pastures?
It was put aside for a rainy day,
but it’s time to cease that delay.
Why look back to pre-drought bliss
when our reality is this—
this stress-inducing world of imperfection
offered for our predilection
or adaptation. Question mark?
Away from my dry gulch for a spell:
I had a bountiful stream of ideas,
like my son-in-law’s uncle Paddy with the dairy cows and fairy ring fort southeast of Killarney.
Paddy, who farms where rains fall soft upon the fields, and have done so nearly every day since his family moved there in the 1700s. He uses every bit of land for its highest purpose, reserving a strip of bog for sheep only, but otherwise making 80 acres support a full-time 40-cow dairy. Paddy harvests marshmallow-white bale bags of hay and trench-silo grass fodder from the land when grass gets ahead of grazing.
But there is one knob that gets minimal use because of its potential link to a fairy curse. An Iron Age ring fort, or fairy mound if you will, lies just 100 meters from the house but the gorse and whitethorn get a little shaggy there. Paddy’s own grandfather stepped into a souterrain while working the land in that area and died within a week of it. That would have been in the 1930s, when cause and effect were not well established by science in the new Irish Free State. Now Paddy makes full use of technology with his dairy parlor, cell phone and hydraulic equipment, but he says if anything breaks down on the farm, it will be near the ring fort. People have asked why he doesn’t just level it all and make full use of his land, but he fixes them with a stare and asks if they would really, seriously chance it if they were in his boots. Question mark?
Back in Kansas, we are one day closer to a good rain. If you need it as much as we do, may it fall soft upon your fields for several days, too. As we gather more focused thoughts in the weeks ahead, be assured that weaning has been set for September 8 and we already know the calves will be well used to hay and creep feed.
Till next time let’s keep targeting the brand and building tomorrow together.
–Steve
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