TOWNER, N.D.—Fencing is one of those jobs best done when the temperatures are tolerable and the ground isn’t frozen. But sometimes we don’t have a choice.
I had a small fencing project to keep two groups of cows separate that I feed in the winter. I roll some hay out for the cows out on the range. I figure it’s easier for them to scatter their own manure out there in the winter, than for me scoop it out of a feedlot, haul it out and scatter it for them next summer.
My older cows get fed pretty good, but my heifers and youngest cows get fed a little better including some distiller’s grain from an area ethanol plant. The generational segregation of the haves and the have-nots was accomplished with three strands of loose barbed wire that was beginning to drift under the snow.
Pretty soon, I was feeding the young cows their distillers, and then I’d stop and look around and realize there were more and more mature cows in my pampered herd. I guess an old cow doesn’t get old without being smart enough to figure out where the good groceries are.
Actually, it isn’t much of a trick to walk across a drifted under barbed wire fence but I was holding on to the hope that they wouldn’t figure that out.
So, with tractor, snowmobile and snowboots that sunk the full length of my 38 inch inseam at times, I commenced to stringing an electric wire and attaching insulators to make my point on the separation of cows who needed a little extra protein and those who didn’t.
Harder jobs out there
After watching the news of events a couple hundred miles south of our ranch this winter, my little one day winter fencing job was pretty darn easy.
Freezing rain and sleet, followed by high winds, brought down high line electric poles like they were toothpicks in parts of North and South Dakota. Several thousand homes, farms and ranches were without power for a few days to more than two weeks.
One estimate I heard said that 3,200 poles had snapped. That’s a lot of “fencing” for lineworkers to do in the middle of winter…when the grounds frozen…and you have to doze away several feet of snow to get your equipment in to do your work…and the temperature’s below zero.
I’m plenty leery of electricity. It’s one of those special things in life that, in modest doses, can toast your bread, or, in abundance, it can kill you.
I don’t even like ticklish jolt from an electric fencer or the static from dragging my leather soled boots across the carpet. I can’t imagine putting on the big leather mitts and pulling electric transmission lines (did we really get them shut off?) out of the snow like a lineman does.
So, here’s to the best winter fencers in the business, the lineworkers who dig in and tamp tight the 40 foot fence posts and stretch up the heavy wire with a potential bite worse than a red point barb.
We all might cuss a little when we see our electric meter turning and start adding up the dollars in our head of what those revolutions cost. But we have a lot more to cuss about when that meter quits turning altogether, the house goes dark and cold, and the cattle start to go thirsty.
Thanks to all the people who get those meters spinning again.
Taylor is a fourth generation cattle rancher from Towner, ND, a columnist, and the author of two books, “A Collection of Cowboy Logic”, and “Cowboy Logic Continues”. For more information on Ryan and his writings, please go to www.mycowboylogic.com |
