Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Farming and ranching is often full of surprises that keep us on our toes and busy enough that we are engaged and entertained. But there is a not insignificant amount of time and work that is not much more than what you might call routine. It does not always engage the mind as well and leaves us with time and motivation to expend on something else. That something else, of course, has to be doable in amidst the day-to-day routine of fixing fences, driving tractors, checking...
There’s a tool for every job and there are a lot of tools that will do the trick with a little bit of determination and ingenuity. The list is long of things that will do instead of a hammer. The list is short of things that can’t be done with tie-wire, duct tape, nylon ties, and a large adjustable wrench. And just for your information, the latter set of supplies can make many hammer-like solutions. A person’s tools are more important and personal than they might at first appe...
There is no clock in the barn. Or, if there is, it’s probably wrong because who remembers to take care of the clock in the barn? There is a reason there is no clock in the barn. The barn is for things that need doing, not things that you can pause at an arbitrary moment. When you are welding up a gate or fixing the planetary gears that go inside the hubs of a rather large tractor, you can’t drop what you are doing — literally or figuratively. Indeed, it is equally as diffi...
Sounds are funny things. They are always there but, depending on what you are used to, you may or may not notice them. Personally, I find the sounds of the city to be less than not-noticeable when I’m in a more urban location and trying to sleep. It’s obviously not the decibel level, as the sounds are often faint, but there is something uncomfortable about the sounds of all those people, doing all their people things. On the other hand, I reckon the sound of a corral full of f...
What do you need to be a rancher? Land covered in something that the livestock will eat, a well or some way to keep them in water, fences to keep them off the neighbors, a hat to put your feather in and quite importantly … cows. Those four-hooved, quad-stomached, moo-making, rascally bovines are kinda the core of a cattle operation. But since you can’t have the cows before you have a place to put them, and you usually have to pay for the place to put them with them, fin...
There’s a change in the air. As the days get more regularly warm and the random snow-days abate, people find themselves out and about, in the out-of-doors. It’s time for listening. It is the time to keep your ears open and your boot-tops high. There be snakes in the sand. That tell-tale rattle is something that you can never hear without at least a few hairs going up on the back of your neck. And though we all get a little antsy and worried about those sounds that sound sim...
The basics of what needs doing haven’t changed over the ages of agriculture. Farming requires that you grow plants and ranching requires that you raise livestock. But thank goodness, even though the end-results are still pretty similar to the good old days, human ingenuity has produced new and less-exciting ways to do the job. And that is the tradeoff that is hardest to feel good about sometimes. I mean, what would the stories about old cowboys be like if they had it this g...
There’s this thing that people do that I find curious. I believe it is most commonly referred to as composting. Folks apparently build or buy a rig that ferments the garbage. It looks to me like not enough fertilizer for quite a bit of work, but I see how it might be fine for smaller scale operations. Out on the flatland farm where I grew up, things like that aren’t hardly worth counting if you have to measure it in any unit smaller than a truck-load. To be fair, there are...
We all know technology is obsolete before you even get to see it most of the time. You order that new phone and there’s already an upgrade before it gets to your door. This is important as a concept because there is a lot of technology on the farm. Mind you, it does tend to advance at a slightly slower rate, but it is nonetheless a mess when you realize just how useless a piece of equipment has become. There is both pleasure and pain that comes with the obsoleting of some c...
There is a thought that people think about growing up on the farm. They imagine many things, but I suspect that a library isn’t the first image that pops into the brain. Some of you may have gotten there quickly and I’m glad you understand. But for clarity, let me paint you a picture. The room was built with one full wall of bookshelves and a few shelves that weren’t really optimized for the storage of literature — being too deep and neither tall nor short enough. Less than ha...
When the wind blows for a day, as long as that day isn’t shipping day or one of the other firmly scheduled events on the farm or the ranch, you can probably find enough inside jobs to keep you minimally sandy. But when the wind takes up residence for a longer span of time, avoiding it is just out of the question. Advice on the wind isn’t new. We’ve heard not to spit into it and to throw caution into it. And I’d certainly posture that you ought not run around in it with to...
As I’m sure we’ve covered before, a good reason to get off the tractor and go somewhere is always appreciated — and the most rare is that sort of opportunity when it isn’t due to something breaking down and requiring a trip to town for parts. The county fair, the annual board meeting of the bank that lets you borrow the money to keep farming, the annual meeting of the power coop that gets quite a bit of that money, the cousin’s graduation that only happens once … There’s a s...
Spring is here. Don’t argue temperatures with me. There have been enough warm days and enough windy days to officially call it. And if that isn’t enough evidence for you, the kicker is that it is shipping time here on the High Plains. Shipping time is the best of times in the winter wheat cattle business. It means the calves are not all dead, the wheat isn’t quite all gone, and you’ve hopefully found a buyer for all that beef on the hoof. It’s not an easy day, this day of bo...
The life of a farm kid can be quite exciting, but it can also be interspersed with unbearable intervals of being stuck in a location with nothing in particular to do. Innovation without preparation is a skill we learn early in our careers. What good is the sand that blows all over the fences and in your face? It can be the best alternative to the snow we don’t get to see when it has developed into a tall enough hill — hopefully with minimal vegetation to impede your dow...
It’s spring on the High Plains. Time for sunny days, shipping cattle off of wheat pasture, and straight-line winds not normally seen on land. Conventional expectations are fine, but there are more than a few things that defy the definition you’ll usually find in the encyclopedia. Amateur wind speed identification charts that I’ve seen usually stop at 50 mph with a note that you just don’t see that on land except in a circular storm of the hurricane or cyclone variety. This le...
Problems to solve are common in an agricultural operation. Many require only mental effort to figure out and plan; the carrying out is only any afterthought once decided. But the greatest problems are the ones that you don’t see coming and that will probably kill you if you don’t come up with the correct answer in a short amount of time. When the mad-eyed cow decided to flip your motorcycle over, the correct answer was, in fact, a solid turning kick to her face. When the cal...
Here on the high desert, water is both precious and rare. The smell of moisture is more fine than a flower in bloom and possibly even the scent of spoon-floating coffee in the air — though I’m not inclined to put anything above caffeine, personally. We celebrate when it rains, smile when it snows, and even find the damp lining in sleeting, windy, blizzardy storms that are honestly hard to not find unpleasant. But where it is not often an occurrence, a thing is bound to be look...
People are so complex as to be impossible to completely describe, but we need to differentiate them. We use names, faces, and the way they walk, talk, and dress to keep track of which is who and so forth. But these features are all most telling only when you are in close contact with the human you wish to identify. The person-density is low on the Plains, and distance is significant such that walking is not much use as a common form of transportation. You don’t pass by p...
To conclude our study of the many paths on the road to becoming a master puncher of cows, let us look at the most modern of the practices. With the invention and spread of controlled electricity, many things changed and many technologies emerged to make the world a more shocking place. Among the eventual creations is the tool that a cowboy of daring and impatient character is bound to study and use. The Way of the Forked Wand is not a subtle art, but it is a complex and...
Not all cow-punchers favor a direct and safer method of maneuvering bovines. For those who are ready to trade a little predictability and comfort for the wiles of a flexible weapon, then exploration of The Way of the Popping Wrist is probably a good choice. Known for its pains as often as its victories, it is not a path to glory, but it is a way that rarely gets boring or ever runs out of room to be improved. It is the most versatile and involves the mastery of flexible...
We’re back again to peel back the mysteries of the art of punching cows. The Way of the Poking Stick is the most commonly practiced and is the most easily learned. At its core is the simple concept of extending one’s appendage influence by three to five feet with a stiff cane, stick, piece of pipe, or other similar construct that is formally known and referred to as a poker. There is little mystery to the use of the poker. It is direct and straightforward. It is often applied...
Let us look today at some of the flashier disciples of the hidden art of cow-punching known as kow-rate. These are the men and women who confront the livestock directly, they who truly punch the cows. Herd-animals must be maneuvered and convinced to go certain places at the behest of the cattle raisers they belong to, but you cannot ask a cow to go through a gate or walk down an alley. Rather, using the kow-rate method of one’s presence, they must be physically persuaded to m...
Some skills are perishable and some skills go out of style, but the level of competence you achieve working as a farmer or rancher tends to be pretty stable. It is a hard-won handiness that is always in demand, no matter how far you may stray from the path of agriculture. As we’ve discussed before, the concept of a vacation is quite foreign to the dedicated farmer or rancher, and indeed, alien to the man or woman who is both. There are those, who, for one reason or another, le...
Oh, Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree, somewhat flat on one side are you. I’m a firm proponent of the idea that nothing is impossible. But, while anything can be accomplished, that does not always translate into the job getting done in an optimal manner. Sometimes, the best you can do is not quite as good as you’d hoped for. And so it was with the Christmas tree hunt one year. Me and the kid and the one in the middle had been dispatched to the ranch two counties over to fee...
What is the worst part of standing in an alley with 1,000-pound cattle running head-down in your direction? It’s not the hoof cannons they fire in your direction as they run by. It’s not the nerve it takes to stand your ground and hope that attitude beats size when you need them to turn around or veer another way. It’s the dust. The dust is the problem that you can’t avoid. It gets in your eyes and sticks to the front of your teeth. It works its way into your gloves and und...
