Some things take flow out of ag-time

The variation in length — and lack — of a schedule on the farm or ranch has been mentioned before, and it’s all still true. The day to day varies from week to week and season to season and so forth and so on.

The big perk is the flexibility. Most of the time, you can work your work around the rare event in the outside world that has a certain time and a certain place.

But even though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there are things that must happen at a certain time and at a certain place — the closest equivalent in ag-time is the set of those things that absolutely can’t wait.

Sometimes you see them coming, and sometimes they weren’t always that way. But when they get to that point, there’s no argument or alternative, you’re suddenly on a schedule that isn’t really a schedule, because that suggests that it was planned at some point. You could say you have a deadline, but that implies that there is extra space in between now and then — and that’s not quite accurate either.

I’ve put it on my maybe-do list to come up with a word for what I mean, but I think you get the gist. It’s like the deadline is really more a line than a point, and you’re in it until you get it done and get back to regular ag-time again.

Now that we all know what we’re talking about, I can say what I was thinking about already. Farming has perhaps a higher frequency of such spots, but most of them are easier to see coming. There may be a few less if you make your living on the whims of four-stomached critters, but there’s caveat when it comes up in the cattle business.

Running cows seems so nice and relaxed a good deal of the time. There’s no shortage of work to do, but as long as you don’t wait too often, or put it off for long, most things can wait a tomorrow or two.

But when they can’t, they can’t. Even in the worst case, if you leave a tractor, it’ll probably stay. When you’re in the middle of when you’ve got to take care of the cattle, you don’t get to pause anything.

It’s probably worth it, but the cost of running cattle is that when they can’t wait until tomorrow, they can’t wait.

Audra Brown had to go have fun alone last weekend, because the rest of the family’s cattle pulled rank. Contact her at: [email protected]