The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
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Years back almost every ranch kept a "farm flock" of 100 – 200 ewes. They provided extra income from their wool and lambs, but could be a nuisance with their fence crawling ways and propensity to die when offered any opportunity. We got started in the business when a herder working on a ranch that ran thousands of sheep gave our father thirty orphan lambs. I don't know how our mother managed. She had at least four or five children then, none old enough to be much help, plus s...
Some time ago I saw a photograph taken at the Helmville cemetery on the day they buried my great grandfather in 1922. In the picture there's a cottonwood sapling, maybe 10 feet high. Both the tree and my great grandfather are still there, but the cottonwood is 80 feet tall and about 3 feet at the butt. I'm sure the old man is part of that tree. Entering the family ranch, a person sees the corrals and the cow barn built before the 20th century. The first cabin still exists,...
It took me a long time to fully appreciate the differences between a rural upbringing and an urban upbringing. These differences are not especially manifest, but they exist. Montana has no large cities, so all its urban areas retain a bit of country influence. Some years ago the most common name for a bar in Montana towns was “STOCKMEN'S.” Until the 1970s, law mandated that children attend school in the county where their parents paid property taxes, so all the high sch...
Our mother had four children under six years old in the house (two more came some years later,) a wringer washer, but no clothes dryer or dishwasher. Frozen foods came later, so every meal took a lot of work to prepare. That was the situation of most women sixty years ago, the number and ages of the children were the only variables. The world was divided into women's work and men's work. Our father was aware of the disparity, and would occasionally quote the old adage: “A m...
That summer that I was ten - Can it be only one summer that I was ten? May Swenson – The Centaur [1958] We all say that as we age, time seems to pass more quickly. There exists in the human sciences a name for that phenomenon. It's called the just noticeable difference, and it extends to all of our senses. The jnd, as it's called in the jargon, can be quantified and calculated empirically. The crux of the principle is: the larger the original stimulus, the larger the i...
Tis not the meat, but 'tis the appetite Makes eating a delight. Of Thee, Kind Boy John Suckling 1609 - 1642 The haying crews were large during the years that the ranches put up loose hay. A normal team was eleven men on most places – some had more, others fewer. Many of the hired men came from Butte to escape the bad air of the mines for a couple months; some lived in towns nearby, and others had no homes that we knew of. I think a good number were hiding from abandoned famili...
Agricultural techniques, like all other facets of life, have progressed over time. With cattle and other agrarian businesses, the cultures themselves have changed. I'm old enough to remember when a large percentage of the labor on our ranch and others was dedicated to subsistence, rather than productivity and profit as it is now. Almost every ranch kept a bunch of chickens for eggs and meat, and most maintained a herd of sheep – selling the wool for profit and using the a...
In the days of loose hay, when the cattle were fed by hand, Christmas meant two days of extra work. - the day before and the day after. In order to lessen the time spent with the cows on Christmas morning, most ranchers spread the next day's hay in an adjacent meadow, then closed the gate. That meant feeding twice, a process that took all day. If things went correctly, all the rancher had to do on Christmas morning was open the gates and let the cattle onto the hay that was...
I was eating lunch at the hotel in Barra do Bugres, where I had been sent by the Peace Corps. The establishment offered rooms plus meals, and was the only place to stay back in the early 1970's. In the middle of the meal a mud-spattered Jeep roared up. In the back of the vehicle was a dying man with his intestines spread everywhere. He had been wounded in a knife fight, and they brought him over 40 miles of muddy, evil road looking for medical help. Someone had put an empty...
Back in the 1950's people didn't travel much. The vehicles of the day weren't that reliable, tires weren't dependable, and the roads were difficult. Our maternal grandmother lived in Deer Lodge, 50 miles distant from Helmville, and a trip to visit her was a big event. Once a summer we spent a week or so in town, where our mother could renew childhood friendships and we kids could make them. Four of the six of us were born in four and a half years time, with two more coming a...
One afternoon, back in the 1990's, an old friend and I were philosophizing. The question came up as to what technological development of the 20th century had, or will have, the deepest effect on human society. Of course: cars, airplanes, consumer electricity, and the atomic bomb were mentioned as possibilities, but we were both in easy agreement that the transistor is the thing that has caused (and will cause much more) change in our civilization, as we call it. The...
Robert Frost wrote that one time he came upon the owner of the land next to his. The man was building a fence in the woods, where there was no actual need for one. When Frost asked him why, the fellow responded simply, "Good fences make good neighbors." The neighbor had it backwards, I think. By rural Montana custom, it is "Good neighbors make good fences." Ranches and farms often share miles of fence, along with water, ditches, pasture, creeks, and a myriad of other things. T...
Winter lies too long in country towns; bangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. Willa Silbert Cather 1873 – 1947 The consistently warm weather in Brazil spoiled me. It took about a week before I expected nothing else. Even the rain was warm, and wind was a rarity. During some parts of the year the nights can be uncomfortably warm. I had an air conditioner, but only used it once, preferring the heat to the noise. A fan was necessary to keep the mosquitoes away, b...
Every fall, about 2,000 years ago, the Celts celebrated a festival they called Shahmain (show-in). As the centuries passed, some Roman and Catholic Church activities were blended in with the Celts' culture to give us our current Halloween. In the US, a quarter of the candy sold yearly is on Halloween, which is considered one of the biggest sales day of the year, (about $6 billion,) ranking second to only Christmas. So, we capitalists have added our financial (certainly not...
I still think a lot about the hospital in Cuiabá. That place changed me a lot. I used to be quick to become irritated with the smallest thing, but that doesn't happen anymore, because there were so many disappointments when I was at my weakest and I had no strength left for anything other than survival. I learned to leave anger behind. Also, anger and irritation are not acceptable in the repertoire of Brazilian social protocol, and when I demonstrated either emotion, the...
I have the propensity to make decisions with little forethought, then when things fall apart, cast around for help to get out of the situation I created. My siblings have always come through, although I have never been deserving of their help. Some years ago I was making a decent wage, and decided that the only way I´d ever be able to reciprocate for their patience and generosity would be a healthy life insurance policy on myself with them as beneficiaries. So, like always,...
Here in western Montana most ranches are what's called "cow/calf" operations. The owners maintain a herd of cows and sell the offspring at about six months of age, the calf crops go to feedlots, most of which are in areas that produce a lot of grains, especially corn. They'll stay in the lots until they weigh 1,100 to 1,200 pounds, at about a year of age, when they are sold to the packing plants. It varies from property to property and region to region, but in this area most...
Our mother was out at the clothesline while the rest of us were in the house. Suddenly, she burst through the back door, so frightened and angry she couldn't speak clearly. She kept asking for a shotgun or a rifle, and all I could imagine was that a mountain lion or something akin was in the back yard. Finally, our mother calmed down enough to say, "That damned duck!" and we understood her fright, but we knew it wasn't a big deal. One of us had dragged home an old male Muscovy...
I had been incubating a case of pneumonia for some time before I got sick enough that a woman whose name I didn't even know took action and saved my life. For some weeks, I had been getting weaker and becoming more short of breath. I couldn't walk 100 feet without sitting down, and my legs were getting wobbly. I figured it was a combination of Paraguayan cigarettes and lack of caloric intake, but a change of lifestyle would fix me. I met Rosana one evening when she was...
Along with the beaverslide stackers and teams of horses, the family milk cows have disappeared into the past. I don't think anyone misses them. The state of Montana initiated brucellosis testing of all the cattle in the state during the late 1950's and early 60's, and a lot of milk cows showed up as carriers. The Brucellosis microbe in the milk can cause undulant fever in humans, plus make some young cows abort their calves. A few milk cows showed up positive on almost every...
For many years it was traditional for almost every ranch to run 100 – 200 head of sheep. "Farm flocks" they were called. That lasted until to the mid 1970's when the coyotes and prices both got so bad, most ranchers just gave up and sold the ewes. Our father always had a small bunch around the house and corrals. They provided an extra income for our family. I don't know about the present, but in the 1950's and 60's the sheep provided four paychecks a year. We got paid for t...
Matt stood in front of the mirror knotting the $80 silk tie his wife had given him for his birthday. He called to her, asking, "What time to we have to be at the church?" Liz, his wife, answered, "We'll leave here in a half-hour. The baptism is after the service, so we have a little time." Matt and Elizabeth were going to be godfather and mother to their daughter's first child and their first grandchild. It was a big occasion for everyone but Matt. Matt called back, saying, "W...
Labor Day marks the end of summer in Helmville and most of Montana. The hay is baled and the cattle haven't come home from the native pastures. Children are either in school or about to start. For ranchers, it's a hiatus between haying and the fall work. Over fifty years ago a number of ranchers decided to take their horses to the old rodeo grounds a half-mile from town and spend the day enjoying various contests that included horses and horsemanship. The day was a success...
Old habits die hard. The nights are getting chillier, now, and even though I haven't hunted in over twenty years, I still find myself thinking about the coming hunting season. This came from my father, as hunting was his main, if not his only, passion. The season opens near the middle of October, but beginning the first part of September he would start worrying about having tracking snow on opening day. In the 1950's until the 80's, elk were both scarce and wild. Many good hun...
During the loose hay years, we kids would get a respite of four days, and that was the tri-county fair in Deer Lodge. It was the high point of our summer. We were in 4-H, so we always had a project, and the custom was to take it to the fair to be judged. Our father ran a farm flock of about 100 ewes, so it was usual to have a lamb which we had tamed and fattened and groomed. Some took cattle and others took horses, but we stuck with sheep. The fair always occurred about the...
