I really do enjoy the winter. I tell the cowboss it is because I can sit inside with my cup of coffee and watch the snow fall....I don't have to be out in the snow! He doesn't always think I am funny.
I do have a lot of fond memories of the winter and snow though. Many a cold morning I was out helping my dad feed cows growing up. I didn't appreciate it then, but I learned a lot about life on those snowy weekends and holidays, the value of hard work and the reward of a job done. I hated feeding cows. It was cold, the hay made me itch all over and sneeze, and would have rather slept in on a Saturday morning. It wasn't always work though, there were a few times we would take old innertubes and tie them behind the wagon and dad would pull us through the snow.
One time we had a cow calve a little early about 1 1/2 miles from the house on the river. It was supposed to get kind of cold that night, so dad decided my brother, sister and I should go down horse back and bring up the cow and he would run down in his new (to him) tractor with the bucket. He would load the calf in the bucket and take him home.
One thing you have to understand about my dad is that he doesn't have any cranky cows on the ranch. If one of us kids were to tell him differently he would say, she's just bluffing and toughen up. We head down there to get Cow Number 302 with the bob tail, and wait for dad get there with the tractor. The plan is dad will get in the bucket, rope the calf, and drag him into the bucket, hop back on the tractor and haul him home. Leaving the three of us to trail 302 back to the ranch. Easy enough right?
Except no body stopped to explain things to 302, and she was a little on the fight. She hit a horse a time or two while we were distracting her long enough for dad to get in the bucket. I had my sisters horse so she could operate the controls on the tractor, and she didn't really know which lever did what. My brother and I got the cow and calf hazed over to the tractor and dad got the calf caught, and 302 tried to climb in the bucket with him. I'll never forget dad yelling "Lift me up! Lift me up!" and my sister lowering him down to the ground! Luckily she soon realized which lever was the right one and got him lifted up out of harms way. We got 302 and her calf safely home and tucked in for the night without much excitement after that. The thing that stands out the most in my mind though, was riding around the "blind turn" and seeing our house, lit up like a Thomas Kinkade picture, as the sun was nearly set and the snow began to fall.
This is a Thomas Kinkade print titled "Christmas Eve."
