It’s been quite a year to be in the cattle business.
I’m not trying to brag, but I’m sure not complaining either. It’s the kind of year where you can update equipment, pay down debt, put a little money away and prepare for a day when the markets aren’t so rosy.
We had enough to donate to our favourite causes and buy a few gifts for our family and others.
It was the kind of year where I knew I owed a nice gift to my partner, who always helps me sort the cows and keep the ranch going.
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For years, my wife has asked me to sell a half dozen cows in the herd who would just as soon mash me into the ground as let me near their calves in the spring. On my four point mean and nasty rating scale, they would consistently get a four. My wife keeps telling me that should mean “four sale.”
They are good cows, though: always fat, always bred and always bringing in an above average calf. However, I’m also always dragging their calves underneath the tractor so I can get them ear tagged and vaccinated without having my bones busted by their four-star mother.
I figured it would be a nice gift to my wife to sort those cows into the sale pen as we pregnancy checked this year, even if they were bred and not old and not thin. I consulted my little red calving book, and if I wrote a “four” in the cow’s not-so-docile scoring column, it was getting a ride to the sale barn.
I sold the cows as culls because I wouldn’t wish them into anyone else’s herd. If someone wanted to find out if they were pregnant and calve them out, it was their risk to take. They would get along fine until calving time.
I came home from the sale barn with those little pink slips of paper they give you when you unload your trailer and leave the cows for the next day’s sale. I looked at those pink slips and decided they would make nice wrapping paper for a Christmas gift for my wife.
The only problem was that the pink slips were pretty small. Even if I taped a couple of slips together, I would have to find a small gift for my wife. I tried to think of something small to get her. Maybe a can of snoose? That would sure be a surprise.
I could get her a deck of pinochle cards, which would be small enough to wrap in a pink sale barn slip but probably not a qualifier for special or romantic.
I decided if a person was looking for something small and special, I’d have to do what jewelers have been banking on us to do for generations: go with something small and shiny that sits under a glass store case and comes with it’s own handy little hinged box suitable for wrapping with a small piece of paper.
I like to support local economies while I’m shopping. I figured the closest shiny gem I was going to find in my northern plains neighborhood were the yogo sapphires from the Yogo Gulch in the Little Belt Mountains of central Montana.
I knew if I bought Montana gems I wouldn’t have to worry about funding bloody civil wars or rebel warlords, which is what can happen if you buy those “blood diamonds” or “conflict diamonds” from Africa like I’ve read about.
Nope, I’ve been to the Judith Basin in Montana and it was pretty peaceful country. I could buy with a clean conscience from conflict-free central Montana.
And when my wife opened that little pink wrapped box, our time around the Christmas tree was also conflict free.
