blizzard

The predicted blizzard has landed with results that are predictable.  While the hogs do pretty well on their straw beds, the cattle, which live in the pasture have had their routines disrupted.  The cows, just starting calving, are crowded together in a half hoop usually used for sows on hastily provided stalk bedding.  They are crowded not by us, but because they are reluctant to go out and face the wind. 

The two calves already born are so far alright, and at last check, no more have arrived.  We hold our breath, hoping for the end of the wind and snow, predicted for sometime Friday morning.  Life, meanwhile, is as difficult for us as for the cows.  This is the second year in a row that blizzards have interrupted the start of calving season.  Last year we had no losses.  We have trouble believing that will be the case again.  Again we talk of holding the bulls away for two or three more weeks, getting calving into May instead.  And again we come up against the knowledge that by doing so we risk putting late calves into the midst of the fly season, seemingly worse every year with heat and humidity in June already.  

The choice to produce the cattle in a more natural way, in synch with the seasons, has consequences.  Especially is this so when Nature herself seems unbalanced and reeling like a drunk on the sidewalk.

But clearer thinking shows that whatever Nature is suffering, the drunk on the sidewalk is none other than us, all of us, with our thoughtless careless use and misuse over generations now of what God has given us.  For a farmer who sees clearly that what we have been doing is wrong, there really is no other choice than to go toward and with Nature.  And to comfort ourselves with the thought that Nature has deeper pockets and deeper and truer aims than any of us.  And that however calving turns out, Nature has a great capacity to regenerate and heal.  It is up to us to do our best to stay out of the way, and to learn to the extent possible, to move and farm in synchrony with Nature