Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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You never know when something is gonna come in handy — and when it is something that you find useful over and over again and in new and never before seen contexts. That’s when you know that something is handy. Handy is a modifier that can be applied to objects. There are handy tools that just outpace their competitors with versatility and range of use. Some are so bold as to claim the title of handy right in the name. Say, for example, the Handyman Jack. A daring choice, but...
Last week, we started branding. Assuming we’re done, finally, we can move past the fun part of hollering and handling the calves. Time to tear it down and take it home. First things first. Turn the cattle in on some feed and water, shutdown any thing that has to be turned on, unplug anything that has to be plugged in, and grab one of those liquid refreshments that somebody better’ve brought. The irons need to cool, and we all can do with a five-minute break. Now that the spo...
There’s always lots of attention paid to the action-packed part of cattleworking that is really just the middle. But before you can brand those calves, you’ve got to get everything ready. There’s the obvious part of getting the calves that you are gonna work to the pen where you are gonna work ’em. That can be as western as horseback over rough country, or it can involve any combination of pickups, four-wheelers, motorcycles, and the odd old military transport vehicle you pic...
There are jobs that require one to learn to sense the motivations of other human beings. This is difficult, due to the fascinating complexity and flexibility of the human mind. There are some, I’m certain, who profess to know so much about the inklings of people that they can maneuver and herd them to wherever they deem that they ought to go. I would shed some suspicion on any such claim, claiming that it is likely a situation where expectations and outcome aligned, rather t...
When it comes to the particular challenges that nature places in the path of a not unsuccessful agricultural enterprise on the high desert, I’ve got a decent expertise. But there are places that aren’t the high desert, where people grow crops, harvest crops, run livestock, and do all the work that comes in between. A significant portion of those other places are what might be accurately called “greener pastures,” especially from the perspective of the dry High Plains. But wha...
There doesn’t seem to be enough room or attention in the human mind, generally speaking, to store each and every experience that has been lived over the years. It’s inevitably interesting to find out what sticks around and what gets lost and forgotten. Ain’t it funny, the things you remember? It ain’t always sunny, that’s for sure. For whatever, reason, there was a reason to recall some stories of a much younger me, about the time I’d become fully certified to ride a cow-...
For every people there are those events that mark the past. Any person who decides to continue farming or ranching, year after year, forgets the middling inconveniences, for both sanity and space. You’ll need that room to remember where all the trailers are parked and what you need to do with those steers. There are more things on the minds of those folks than they can probably fit. So, what do we remember? Well, there’s at least one thing that’s burned into a few brain...
The best parties are those with all your friends, with the time and space to have a good time together. But some get-togethers are less personal. Business banquets are an example of such a thing. It might be a feed company looking to explain a new mix of mineral, a bank buying a steak for all the loan-taking farmers and ranchers that it does business with, or one of the equipment manufacturers showing off the tractors that won’t be available used for at least a few more y...
Traffic is probably the most commonly understood reason for a delay on the road. Next is some sort of weather that makes traveling impossible or slow. Neither is too common when you get a little bit out of town and you are on a high, flat desert. That is not to say, however, that there aren’t other things that get between a vehicle and its destination. Vehicles are scarce, and the average automobile doesn’t cause much trouble as long as it stays on the proper operating sur...
Rather than regale you once again with tales of spring shipping, let’s talk about the first destination of the cattle mustered on such mornings. Known also as corrals, the pens are the construct that is intended to keep the cattle restrained in what one always hopes is a rather certain manner. Alas, there are no guarantees when dealing with living creatures, and mechanical constructs have their battle with physics, deterioration, and that old trickster Murphy, of course. N...
The best laid plans may or may not work out, but that foundation is still a nice place to start. Indeed, it’s probably not the plans that were laid out so neatly that caused the problem. The stuff that lies beneath is what will collapse and throw those carefully calculated plan-parts all out of alignment. When your plan-parts get askew, plans change. A small aberration is likely to result in a change of time or a subtle shift in venue. A moderate collapse will make the m...
If standing wasn’t so tiring, I don’t think we’d be nearly as interested in finding ways to sit. But given that it does take a toll, there’s sense in finding alternatives. Sitting is a surprisingly common situation on any given day somewhere in the agriculture business. Sitting in a pickup is common to both the field and pasture and in between, and is one of the more comfortable and flexible seats to find yourself in. Jobs that get done from that seat are often quicker or at l...
What do you need handy when you leave the house? That’s an important question in any situation. Some common contents of pockets or purse are keys, currency and, these days, a phone. Not to mention your identification, and all those other important papers and cards. Beyond the basics, it might be a good idea to carry a pen and asset of earbuds. Now, this makes sense, but it doesn’t quite mesh with the morning pocket procedure when you don’t expect to open the outside gate....
Hand-me-downs are a thing that happens just about everywhere. Older siblings pass down clothes, toys, and maybe even a few lessons to their younger siblings, cousins, or even friends. It’s economical and can sometimes result in better stuff than if you’d bought it new. Nobody likes to break in the sorts of things that need to be broken in. Of course, there are some things that are best just thrown away when the original owner can’t use them anymore, but let’s not focus on thos...
On the movies, the kids dream of ponies and cars and money and being left alone. I found out, in those rare times that I spent a concentrated amount of time with people my own age — those mysterious humans that lived further than just down the road — that real kids are often similar. It can be a luxury, to have a little extra spending money to buy some things that you don’t need. But the important thing, which is left out of all those wishes on TV, is you don’t get it for fre...
Homework, of the kind that we’re all familiar, with numbers and letters and grades that range from A to F, was rarely, if ever, done on a desk. Flat surfaces include the floorboard of most tractors, the tailgate of a pickup, the nearest side of a piece of box-tubing that’s either in a pile of steel or part of an implement toolbar. You can note, however, that a horse isn’t easy to write on, but some saddle-horns are the right size and shape to get a little spot that is more...
Perhaps you’ve heard of the famous cat that ol’ Schrödinger put in a box. The idea being illustrated is the problem with knowing the state of things if you can’t (or won’t) take a look — or any other kind of observation or measurement, eyes aren’t the only option. Thus, the question arises, as to what one would assume when one does not have a way to know for sure. The razor that Occam apparently kept around would say that the simplest answer is the one to operate on if the od...
Utensils are easy to take for granted. The next time you find yourself a little lacking in that department due to a flimsy plastic piece of silverware, when a mutant recombination of utensil concepts has dropped your food, or when you just have to use what God gave you to get that porkchop into a bite-sized piece … be thankful for the food, and for the fact that you’ve got something that at least was intended to help you eat. What I wouldn’t have given for a spork — but cer...
There are known to be stories of kids overhearing things that they shouldn’t from their parental figures. Such accounts vary from sad, to hilarious in their misinterpretations, to all spots in between. Some of the more adventurous fictions always led to a kid running off on an exploratory vacation that is always more temporary than it started out intending. If there was ever a moment in my recall that could be the seed for one of those, (given a normal dose of dramatic e...
When it comes to heroes, it’s hard to find one that you can always look up to. It’s even rarer to know one well enough to know what it is that you’re looking to be. There’s no luck better than the luck that I had, knowing my Grandma Frieda. Imagine the toughest cowboy you can imagine, but who never complained — and got the gates. Then had food for a crew that might be just her, or a dozen grandkids who “happened” by the house at noon. The accounts were kept and the house was c...
Bite-size sweets are hard to top as everyone’s favorite treat. As a kid, growing up far enough from the candy shop as to not know that such a thing existed, such sugary snacks were usually limited to the selection at the convenience store, on the rare occasion that you found yourself there and could either convince the legal-driver who got you there to spend some money on your sweet-tooth — or you had a little cash to spare in your own small pocket. The better source, alb...
Prior to the integration of GPS-controlled, self-steering tractor accessories, reading a book was not the best option when spending all day on the tractor. Honestly, it’s not the best idea, even if the GPS is doing most of the driving. You really have to learn how to split your attention between the engrossing intrigue, implement awareness, in-field obstacle location, and your sense of how close you are to the turn-row. That in mind, some sort of audio playing device, that c...
There’s this week between Christmas and New Year’s that just seems to be the strangest sort of time. No matter the work you have to do or the places you have to be, it still seems like time and the world is just a little bit off from the speed that it normally runs. Out on the farm and over at the ranch, work doesn’t stop because it’s the season for celebrating, but it still seems to soak up the festive spirit. The family manages to show up at Grandma’s for Christmas...
There’s a saying about herding goats, and I’ll wager it’s not unfounded given the few goats that I’ve had the opportunity to meet. Plenty of herds of livestock must be directed and handled. Cattle are the sort that I’ve punched more than any other. It varies from place to place and herd to herd, but over time you find that there are some basic principles that stay consistent across cattle-coaxing situations. One special sort of situation is the rare occasion when the herd...
You can travel a long way without seeing a building tall enough to be mistaken for a grain elevator. You can go even farther before finding a body of water where you can’t easily see the opposite shore. So, what can you see on the high, flat plains that you can’t see anywhere else? I’ll admit to not noticing much to look at here on the home ground, but familiarity does tend to distract a person from what is right in front of their eyes. But when I travel off to some other plac...
