As you may know, Paul Marchant’s blogs are often found in my entries here. This month’s “Irons In the Farm” is another essay which really touches my heart.
Shabbat Shalom!
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HOME – Paul Marchant as found in Progressive Forage Magazine.
Irons in the fire: Home
Paul Marchant for Progressive Forage Published on 01 December 2020
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Home to me is the early morning bang and echo of horseshoes on old trailer floorboards. It’s the half-eager, half-asleep complaint of the 8-year-old who can’t find his spurs as he clambers into the pickup.
Home is the after-dark smell of horse sweat on wet blankets and the joyful relief in an old pony’s groan as he rolls in the dirt at the end of a long day on the mountain.
Home is the constant, all-night droning of 300 freshly weaned calves in the pens right outside the bedroom window and the stab of angst in my heart when they break through the fence. It’s the heavy emptiness in the pit of my gut when the buzzards are hopping around some still, silent, lifeless black object in the bottom of the draw a quarter-mile away or the jump my heart feels as I watch an old mama cow or a first-time heifer as she nudges her newborn to stand up on its unstable, brand-new legs.
Home is dust in my eyes, grit in my teeth and the wind in my face; it’s the smell of diesel exhaust on a 20-below morning or new leather gloves at the start of a 3-mile fence. Home is the squeal of school bus brakes at 6:48 and the canine symphony of two heelers and a shag barking at the UPS man. It’s wire-cut colts and half-broke mares and the arrow-straight tailhead of my daughter’s last show steer.
Home is the squeak of sneakers at practice in the old gym and the conference championship in the new gym. It’s the late-night reliving of the 24-point, 10-assist game and the all-night tears of missing the cut. Home is the joy and the exasperation with a litter of new pups and the heartbreak of putting an old dog down. It’s an auctioneer’s chant and a Sunday morning sermon, a cat underfoot and storm clouds overhead.
Home is cold Halloween nights with a pile of sugar-high goblins, Thanksgiving with grandkids in Wyoming or a lonely couple’s first Christmas away from family on a remote, high-desert ranch in eastern Nevada. It’s disappointment and elation, sorrow and satisfaction, joy and heartbreak, comfort and irritation.
Home smells like fresh-cut hay and bone-dry sagebrush. Home is too much rain in May, too much sun in September and too much snow when I’m calving heifers. It’s a premium from the buyer of last year’s calves and a gut punch from the worn-out transmission in the old pickup. It’s the first call home from the son in the army and sitting up all night on the porch with the 3-year-old with croup. It’s fighting with kids to finish homework, feed the horses or shut the door and my pretending I wasn’t worried when they got home a half-hour late from the homecoming dance.
Home is early mornings and late payments, new bills on old trucks and broke-in saddles on half-broke horses, homegrown tomatoes on a cull-cow hamburger and late-night calls informing me the cows are out. Home is my wife leaving me stranded in the sorting pen when I cuss her for missing the bad-eyed cow but still fixing me a midnight supper after a late-night fair board meeting in town.
My home is loaded with imperfections, but the grandkids are still perfect, wherever they may be. It’s Christmas music in November, hymns on Sunday and country music in the truck.
Home has been eastern Nevada, central Utah and southern Idaho. Home is, has been and will probably always be a lot of different things. But home is where I belong. It’s more than a town or a house. It’s not just a place, at least it shouldn’t be just a place – not for me, not for anyone. Home should be where you want to be. Home should be where your heart feels best, even if it sometimes hurts.
So, as this chaotic year comes to a close, take some time to appreciate home, wherever and whatever it may be to you. Be calm. Be quiet. Listen to the stillness and turn your heart to Him. That’s where you will always find home.
Paul Marchant is a cowboy and part-time freelance writer based in southern Idaho. Follow him on Twitter or email Paul Marchant.
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Way back when I was in grade school, one of the biggest events of the year was the science fair for the fifth- and sixth-graders.
Every kid in the school walked through and watched and listened to the presentations one afternoon during a designated school day, and parents and the public attended that evening. From the time I was in kindergarten and walked through my first science fair, I knew what subject I wanted when I got my turn in what seemed to be the far-off future.
Beef cows were always my passion, so when I got my chance as an eager and geekishly charming sixth-grader, I put my whole heart into the project. I had my script memorized and my presentation technique as polished as a northern Arizona turquoise necklace. (If only I’d had such zeal as a less-than-stellar college student.)
It was back in the day when Herfies still ruled the world. I could tell you all about Warren Gammon and how he developed the Polled Hereford breed. I loved the story of the King Ranch Gerts and how they laid claim to the title of first true American breed. Continental cattle were just starting to make some real noise, and I was enthralled with the novelty and the variety they offered. But perhaps the philosophy which most intrigued me was that of Tom Lasater as he worked to develop the Beefmaster breed, with his “six essential” traits and the proclamation that hide color doesn’t matter when the T-bone is on the platter.
To this day, I still haven’t been around a lot of Beefmaster cattle, but we did have one Beefmaster cow that came with a load of cows we bought out of southern Utah 25 or so years ago. Coincidentally, one of her calves was the first 4-H show steer of my oldest son, the first of somewhere around 100 4-H and FFA steer projects we went through. (I haven’t done all the math, but the first part of the equation is five kids.) He was a moderate, stout, square-made chunk whose solid color and lack of any extra sheath, ear or brisket belied his bottom-side pedigree and thus spared him any prejudice which he may have otherwise been subjected to in the show ring. That particular steer ended up fourth place overall in a big, competitive county fair show, and he was at the top end when he hung on the rail, as well.
I always figured the relative success of that little black steer kind of validated old Tom Lasater’s philosophies. But frankly, with the way the world’s spinning these days, I think I’m just confused. Who would have guessed a simple ranch-raised calf out of an average old Beefmaster cow and by a nondescript Limousin bull would admirably compete in the beauty contest and still hang a high-Choice, Yield Grade 2 carcass? If that little steer had shown a little more of his mama’s heritage in his hair color, his ear or his dewlap, in all likelihood he would not have stood at the top end of his class. Would that have diminished his value, regardless of what was under his hide?
It’s a tricky question, one you’re probably a little leery of answering, especially if you’re unsure of who may be listening. It can be answered in more than one way. Sure, his value is diminished to the exhibitor if he’s buried at the bottom of the class, gets a red ribbon and sells at the end of the sale order. But wait, there’s more. To the floor buyer who gets that calf at a dollar or two below market and sees the premiums add up because of a superior carcass, he’s worth a lot more than the winner of class 3 that turned out to be a Select dark cutter.
Now, kids, ladies and gents, there’s much to be learned here. For starters, if you want to learn how to handle disappointment, jump into the world of youth livestock shows on any level. It’s more frustrating than golfing with a stick. The good ones can win and the good ones can lose. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It’s fun to win and it’s good to know you can survive losing.
I wanted this to be about more than a cute story about my grade school science fair or my kid’s first steer. I wanted it to be more than a quaint life lesson about winning and losing and handling disappointment. I wanted to sum up human sociology and race relations and what’s right and what’s wrong with the world in a neat little 900-word package by simply telling you it’s what’s inside that really matters, you can’t judge a book by its cover, and we can overcome what ails us.
But I can’t. I couldn’t do it in 900 pages or 900 volumes of 900-page books. I, like you I suppose, am angry and confused and tired and overwhelmingly sad over so many things and so many people. Such times can make us prone to despair. But please don’t give in to despair. I can’t fix Chicago or Minneapolis, but I can fix the gate in the north 40, and I can be decent to my family and my friends and those in my corner of the world. I can start somewhere. So can you.
Paul Marchant is a cowboy and part-time freelance writer based in southern Idaho. Follow him on Twitter, or email Paul Marchant.
Paul Marchant