Chrysalis (n) a protected stage of development

The Vikings won their second playoff game tonight!!! WOW! What a game it was. Final score 8-6! So they are off next weekend to the other side of the state to play in the State Championship! Two years ago they won this game against the same team they will be up against on Saturday. That marked the first state championship ever for this school. Last year they made it to the championship game and lost on a terribly cold and snowy day.

It is so fun to see the boys playing and loving it. And tonight, I got an added bonus. After the game, everyone goes out onto the field (and prays an Our Father together if you can believe it) and then congratulations abound. I had not had the opportunity to introduce myself to the new head coach, who was hired just before school started, but did so tonight after the game. My reward….he told me that Slim and Bubba were the nicest two boys he had ever met!! He said that if he had a whole team of boys like them, he would be one happy coach and would be able to sleep soundly every night!!

Music to a mother’s ears! Isn’t that what we are about? Raising children who will make a difference? I later shared this with the boys and told them they should be proud of themselves because even if their peers don’t appreciate them, there are people who are noticing and whose lives they are affecting.

Lord, thank you for small consolations that give us the strength to keep on keeping on.

It has been awhile since I have found or taken the time to write here. We are into a busy season on the ranch. In October and November, we ship the yearling steers that we have been running all summer on lease. This year we had extra riding due to the summer fires destroying so many of the fences in the pastures. Try finding missing steers in 40,000 acres of hills and trees! We finally shipped the steers we had gathered up and are still searching for the rest.

Once the steers leave, it is time to work our own cows. That means we have to gather them from the pasture, bring them to the corrals, wean and ship the calves and then pregnancy check the cows to see which stay for another year and which get shipped to the sale barn. We are just beginning this process.

We will be gathering the cows and calves in the next few days. Plans are to sell/ship the calves next Tuesday and then work the cows on Wednesday. While I am writing this post, I am also watching and listening to the calf auction at the local sale barn about 45 miles away from the ranch. It is the largest sale barn in the area and they just put in this live internet auction feature. Today they are selling 3500 calves!

For the past few years we have been selling our calves privately to a wonderful young man. Cowboy and Bubba are out moving the new cows that came in yesterday, so my job is to watch enough of the auction to determine whether or not we are getting a fair price from our buyer. Since it is only about 30 degrees today, I am happy to sit in my warm office and watch the sale online. Did you know that buyers pay more for black claves then they do for red or white calves? And that steers (male calves) bring $25-$50 more than heifers (female calves)?

Another interesting fact is that ranchers and farmers, for the most part, cannot set the price for their commodity like other “suppliers”. We take whatever the market dishes out on any particular day. Some crazy thing that is reported on the news or discussed in Congress the day before you ship could drop the market by $5 or more! If you are selling a 500# calf, that is $25. When your only income for the year is selling 200 of those calves, that amounts to a $5000 pay cut!! My best friend always says the biggest gamblers in the US live on ranches…not in Las Vegas! That could change to some degree if the ranchers would unite and form a union…but they are a proud breed and I can’t see it happening in my lifetime!

Here are a few photos from when we gathered some of the steers last week.

Lord, bless us with enough for our calves to hang on here another year!