All in the Family

Anyone who knows me can tell you that math is not my subject. But these two guys have been gathering cows and calves off the Rattlesnake Pasture since they were junior high age. 

That takes more fingers and toes than I've got. (It's been at least 50 years - whew!)

Randy and his cousin, Don Fritzemeier, are now the owners of the pasture, which has been in their extended family since 1900. They've always called it "the big pasture." The ground was purchased for $4 an acre by a great-great-uncle, August Brinkman. Originally in a tract of 1,040 acres, today 560 acres of it remain in the Fritzemeier family.
It is a Farm Bureau Century Farm. Back when Randy was a child, the pasture located along the Rattlesnake Creek was owned by his grandpa Clarence, Don's dad Ed and their brother, Harve.

The three brothers on the back row owned the pasture. Clarence was Randy's Grandpa; Ed was Don's dad. They are pictured with their two sisters, Minnie & Edna.

 Today, Randy and Don are the remaining owners.

L to R: Clarence Fritzemeier (Randy's Grandpa) Milton Giedinghagen, Ben Fritzemeyer, Melvin Fritzemeier (my father-in-law) & Harve Fritzemeier. Yes there are two different spellings on Fritzemeier - it's not a typo!

 

Years ago, the extended family would gather in the spring to take the cattle to pasture and then round them up in the fall. I think this undated photo would have been taken in the 1950s.

While the guys were rounding up and sorting the cattle, the women got together to make a big meal.

My mother-in-law Marie, Jean Newell Fritzemeyer & Marjorie Giedinghagen on a cattle working day back in the 1950s.

I helped with the round-up there for the first time in 2019. To our knowledge, I was the first woman to help with the actual cattle work. I guess I passed: I was invited back for the 2020 round-up.

While we waited on the semi to return from a trip to one of the farms, I listened to Randy and Don share tales from their youth. Back when Randy and Don were young, the brothers and families hauled all the cattle back home in small trailers. As they drove through Stafford, Randy remembers his dad telling him to "duck down." School was in session, and Randy was absent for the day. (Knowing Melvin, it was probably more joking around. It wasn't unusual for kids to be excused for a day of work back then.)

Undated photo - Clarence and Melvin

As we ate our ham sandwiches, I thought about the previous generations who'd done the very same thing. 

Who knows? Maybe this Hereford pictured with Melvin was on the big pasture at some point. At that time, the Fritzemeiers raised horned Herefords.

Now, Randy and I also have Hereford bulls as well as Angus bulls for our crossbred herd. But we have opted for polled Herefords. 

My first cattle-related duty of the day was honking the horn to attract the cattle to the hay in the back of the pickup. (If I want to get technical, I guess my first task was making and packing the lunches to take with us. The woman still gets that job.)

.

I became the Stafford County version of the Pied Piper, but I had a horn - not a flute.

It was a bouncy ride across the pasture toward the corrals.

Four guys on 4-wheelers had to go back to find additional cattle, and I watched the action in my rearview mirror, hoping we didn't lose any of the ones we already had gathered.

 

Once they were gathered, it was time to set up panels, the loading lane and loading chute so we could get the cattle from the pens to Don's semi. Don built the lane and chute one winter. 

 

  

Just like their ancestors before them, they used plenty of wire to keep everything together. (It's a farmer thing!)

The two cousins (along with a couple of other helpers) sorted while I ran the gate. The guys have been doing this a long time, and they seem to know instinctively what the other is going to do. It took four semi trailer loads - two with cows and two with calves - but the job was finally done.

And, of course, there was more time for sharing stories.

But some of that visiting was interrupted with trying to corral a bull who had taken his sweet time to arrive at the sorting corrals, along with a calf who'd escaped.

The semi blew a tire, so Randy and I took a 4-wheeler ride to pick up the electric fence charger and battery.

The Rattlesnake looked a little different dressed for fall, rather than in its summer wardrobe.

August 2020

 

Even though it would have been nice to finish sooner, the colors of sunset were a fitting end to the day. 

Until next spring, Rattlesnake Pasture ...

Of course, the work wasn't done. We still had a vet visit on the horizon and feeding chores. More to come ...

Birthday Boy: A Milestone Day

 

As a Kansas farm girl with a June birthday, my special day was often paired with slow trips to the elevator in a grain truck. It was a "hot" celebration, all right.

This year, Randy celebrated a milestone birthday while working, too. Of course, since he's the boss, he set his own schedule. But we gathered cows and calves from the Ninnescah Pasture on his 65th birthday.

As we were looking for a few stragglers, I made him pause for a quick photo. (He's looking pretty good, don't you think?)

 

Five years ago, he asked for a special birthday party, and we delivered with a gathering at the Stafford County golf course clubhouse.

October 2015 - Randy's 60th birthday

As I told him several times this year, I'm glad we did it for his 60th birthday, since we're in the midst of a pandemic this year. 

This year, we had a few party crashers - deer who darted through the pasture as we drove by on 4-wheelers and disturbed their hiding places. (They were camera shy. No photos of those party guests.)

Other partygoers were loud. The migrating geese and ducks honked their greeting as they traveled south for the winter.

I did a little honking, too. But my honking was with our pickup, using the horn to call the cattle up for an impromptu birthday treat of hay. It can't be a party without goodies, right?

Some were anxious to attend the party and dine at the "buffet." Others needed a little nudge to attend but then formed their own parade route to celebrate the special day.

I can't complain about the "decorations" - even with the muted autumn hues rather than the rich green of summer.

The birthday boy even gave me time to pause on top of the dam to take a photo.

 The "guest" most reluctant to leave the party venue was the bull. 

He was a wallflower, hanging out far from the party crowd.

But he finally joined the others - with a little encouragement.

 The only dancing at this party was choreographed by the fallen leaves in the ditches as we drove the cattle back home.

After many trips back and forth with three trailers, the mission was accomplished ... or so we thought. We count cows and calves as they come off the trailers, and we came up a little short. We had to go back the next day to look for stragglers. It was another nice day for a 4-wheeler ride.

I'm slow to post this. Randy's birthday blueberry pie is long consumed. But it was more important to help than write about it. 

2015 - Kinley, 3, and Brooke, 1 ... and Grandpa, 60!

It's amazing to see how the girls have grown during those 5 years. Even though we worked on Randy's 65th birthday, we did get to celebrate a few days later with Kinley & Brooke - and their parents, of course.

2020 - Kinley, 8, and Brooke 6 ... and Grandpa, 65!

 

More to come on fall cattle gathering and vet visits. 

 

The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow

  

The sun came up on the day after the election. 

 

No, we don't have a result in the presidential election yet. 

 

But the sun came up anyway.

And, today, I'll still be helping move more cattle to sudan stalks.

We'll still be feeding cattle, including the ones that were born last winter on our farm and are now our feeder calves. Their moms were also born on this farm. And the cycle continues.

 

And on Friday, we'll be gathering cattle from the Rattlesnake Pasture, just like Randy's ancestors have been doing for more than 100 years. Yep, more than 100 YEARS.

 

There's still beauty to savor. 

How fortunate am I that I've seen whooping cranes several times in the last week on ground we farm?

 

There are only some 800 whooping cranes left in the whole wide world, and they're traveling through my neighborhood on their annual journey to warmer weather.

 Speaking of neighborhoods, Mr. Rogers said:

Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person. ... Sometimes, all it takes is one kind word to nourish another person. Think of the ripple effect that can be created when we nourish someone. One kind empathetic word has a wonderful way of turning into many.

 

May I do my part to make that a reality.

 

One of my daily devotionals had this prayer:

 

A Time to Pray

Lord, I must remember that Your world is ever-changing, but You are constant.

 

Yes, indeed. 

The sun'll come up tomorrow, too. And it's my prayer that we will shine, too - with God's compassion and love - whether our candidate of choice is the winner or not. 

 

***

Note: I'll have more on the annual trek from summer pastures back home, along with the subsequent vet visits. But actually doing the work doesn't leave a lot of extra time for writing. So my blog postings will not follow my regular schedule. I realize that other people aren't waiting for another installment of Kim's County Line ... with the possible exception of my parents. But my Type A personality likes having a plan and sticking to it. So this note is probably more for me than for anyone else. May your fall work be successful and productive, too - no matter what that work is!

Multi-Tasking

 

I don't believe I'll be entering this photo in a contest or using it for our family birthday calendar. But it's indicative of the quality of photo you get when you're using one hand to hold the end gate of the working chute open and clicking the camera shutter with the free hand.

It may not be a good photo, but I'm kind of guessing Dr. Bruce prefers it to getting a concussion from a falling end gate while in the "business end" of a bred heifer.

Last week, Dr. Bruce came for the first of a series of pregnancy checks for our cattle herd. The heifers were his first patients on the County Line this fall. These 25 ladies are first-time mamas who began life as part of the Class of 2019 calf crop two winters ago. 

They were a lot smaller when they went through the chute in the spring of 2019!

Now, they'll be delivering the first arrivals of the Class of 2021 to The County Line at the end of January and early February.

Just look at the tilt of that head: Believe me, ladies, I can feel this way about my annual ob/gyn appointment, too. 

But back to photo quality: As I learned last year, there is a marked decrease in photo quality when working cattle now that I have more hands-on assignments. With no hired man, I have added a few more roles on cattle-working days. Photographer is not one of them.

I started taking photos as we were gathering the heifers from the Palmer Pasture. 

Here's the ringleader of our little caravan, bringing the heifers along the fence.

So far, so good ...

But, when they began circling back around - away from the open gate - the camera went in the pocket, and I got more serious about urging the ladies to go the direction we requested.

That mission was accomplished. However, getting them to quit turning in circles and go through the open barn door was the next challenge.

I didn't take the camera back out of my pocket until I was guarding the gate while Randy took the first load to the farmstead. 

I didn't fare much better during our appointment with Dr. Bruce. 

Between encouraging the heifers to move the lane for their appointment, then holding the end gate up while Dr. Bruce did his exam, I didn't get many quality photos. And I then went around the table to record each heifer's ear tag number, along with the "degree" with which she was "with child." Most were 5 or 6 months along. 

On a few occasions, I snapped a few photos while Bruce gave vaccines, but alas, those hurried "clicks" didn't yield any memorable shots.

I'll have some other opportunities in the next couple of weeks. We're supposed to work the next group on Saturday - Happy Halloween farm style! That's if we can get the group gathered from the Ninnescah Pasture tomorrow. We'll see whether the rain curtailed those activities ... not that we're complaining about rain. The Rattlesnake Pasture round-up will on the agenda next week. 

My cattle working photos weren't anything to get excited about. But yesterday, we loaded up the three open heifers for their ride to the Pratt sale barn. Sometimes those extra cattle tasks put you in the right place at the right time.

I guess it all evens out in the end.

We also saw 14 whooping cranes on two different days this week. They were too far away to get a good photo, but I tried anyway. 

On Tuesday, they were at a circle just about a mile from our house as the crow - or whooping crane - flies. On Wednesday morning, they were on ground we farm. But again, they were half a mile from a road and my camera zoom just wasn't powerful enough.

On a trip to the pasture, I had Randy stop for a quick snapshot of the fall leaves with our dusting of snow.

So I guess I can't complain about the view - unless it's the one where I'm holding up the working chute end gate.

Sometimes, being at the right place at the right time keeps the vet from getting a concussion from a falling end gate. Other times, it brings you rainbows. Which is more important? Depends on your perspective, I suppose. I'm guessing Dr. Bruce would vote for the end gate - even if it doesn't yield the best photos.