If you’re lucky enough to have a
job these days, you probably get paid every two weeks, or maybe once a
month. A rancher gets paid once a
year, at the conclusion of fall works.
Fall
works are to a rancher what harvest time is to a farmer. In the fall, the pairs of mother
cows and calves are gathered in from the far-flung ranges where they have
grazed away the summer. The calves
are stripped off the cows, weaned, and sold. Then the rancher gets her yearly paycheck. After paying off whatever loans and
bills she’s accumulated over the past year, she gets to find out what her job
pays.
Fall
works is not just when the rancher’s crop is gathered and sold. It’s also when she makes sure the seeds
for next-years crop are sewn. Cows
are “preg checked” to ensure they got bred on the range, and will be calving in
the spring. Cows that are not pregnant, or “open,”
are almost always sold as slaughter cows.
A cow costs money to feed through the winter, and raising a calf is the
way she earns her living. An open
cow is a free rider, like an office worker that gets paid but hangs out at the
water cooler all day. In the
cattle business, an employee like that gets culled from the herd and is sent
“down the road.”
Conclusion
of fall works signals a full revolution of the great wheel that marks
agricultural time. Winter is for
feeding cows and catching-up with lingering projects. This is kitchen table time—time to plan for the coming year,
time to spend with family, time to reflect. Through the short, dark days of winter, feeding her cows is a
rancher’s prime concern, until the new calves start hitting the ground in
February.
After
fall works, cowboys of the wandering variety may “roll their beds” and leave to
spend Christmas at home, or head for warmer country where they might be able to
find some work. Or, as the old
cowboy song tells it, they may never make it back to where they came from…
Charlie was buried at sunrise. No
tombstone at his head
Nothing but a thin board, and this is what
it said
"Poor Charlie died at daybreak. He
died from a fall.
He'll not see his Mother when the work's
all done this fall.”
