Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere

Somebody is feeling the heat for a recent decision he made. In my opinion he can make all the excuses he wants and I won't buy them. He sold cattle producers out for support from the big meat packers pure and simple.

We also need to have a solid plan in place for animal identification. With the large number of cattle that move back and forth over our borders, we need solid rules to determine what makes that meat from Montana, Canada, or Argentina.

I have always asked the question, why do we need to identify US cattle for COOL? Why not identify the cattle that come in from other countries and put the burden and costs of identification on the imported cattle instead of our homegrown cattle? I can answer this question myself by the way. If we identify imported cattle the cost will be on the meat packers but if we identify domestic cattle the cost will be on the cow-calf man, i.e. all the ranchers around the country. Guess which one has the political power?

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Harry S. Truman

I received this joke in my email this morning and had to share it.

A cowboy was herding his herd in a remote pasture when suddenly a
brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses
YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly
how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his
peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure. Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects
it to his AT&T cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he
calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his
location which he then feeds to another NASA
Satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The
young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it
to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has
been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database
through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex. He
uploads all of this data via an email on his Blackberry and, after a few
minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech,
miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and
says, "You have exactly 1586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the
cowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on
amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly
what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why
not?"

"You're a consultant," says the cowboy.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even
though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already
knew, to a question I never asked; and you don't know anything about my
business...

Now give me back my dog.

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end. Sid Caesar

While I was taking pictures of cattle yesterday I took a few more that I wanted to share with you. For some reason geese come from far and wide to my barley stubble field and eat on it. I always enjoy seeing them but if I get too close they fly off. What a surprise.

I have read somewhere that people are complaining that digital cameras are the demise of photography. The problem seems to be if you don't like a picture you delete it right on the camera. The next picture was a failure in my mind when I took it. I don't delete the pictures on the camera since it is too time consuming so it was still on the camera when I down loaded it.



The effect I was looking for didn't turn out but the blue sky in my opinion was just amazing.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. E. E. Cummings

We are getting ready to ship the calves on Thursday. For those that don't know what this means it is the time when we wean the cows calves and sell them. I have a contract all ready so we will weigh them at the scale here at home, load them on the trucks, and they go down the road. I will keep some of the heifer calves to raise for replacement heifers.

I though I would show you the difference form when they were born to now. You might remember this picture and this picture from this spring when the calves were really young. Now here are pictures of what they look like now.







Quite a difference over a few short months. The steers are supposed to weigh 525 lbs. by the contract and I think they will make it. Just wanted to share these pictures.

What we share with another ceases to be our own. Edgar Quinet

I must be missing something here. You take a king size candy bar and split it into "two shareable portions" and this is supposed to help fight obesity. What would stop a person from eating both of the pieces therefore still making it a king size candy bar? You can have all the good intentions in the world but if the idea is to reduce portion size you should make a smaller package, not the same size package with two portions.

Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. Ogden Nash

I have a few rss feeds for news that I get and yesterday here was a series of condensed headlines I got via one of those rss feeds.

09/26/04 16:19:00 Jeanne Hammers Florida
09/26/04 14:11:00 Jeanne Drenches Florida
09/26/04 12:16:00 Jeanne Pummels Florida
09/26/04 10:58:31 Jeanne Lashes Florida
09/26/04 10:00:00 Jeanne Slams Florida
09/26/04 06:46:00 Jeanne Hits Florida

Do you think hurricane Jeanne might have affected Florida? I am not trying to make light of the latest hurricane to hit Florida, but I do have to wonder about the major news orginazation that had the above stories all day long yesterday. Kind of felt like they were making fun of the situation to me with the series of headlines they decided upon.

Four major hurricanes in one year. The drought around here is a problem but I am glad I don't have this one.

We can be sure that the greatest hope for maintaining equilibrium in the face of any situation rests within ourselves. Francis J. Braceland

Sometimes I wish I could figure out how to handle these kids. I have a young 4 year old horse the hired man was working with who continues to act like a little kid and get himself in trouble. The hired man had brought him home to ride when somehow he got to pawing something in the corral and cut a big gash in his leg. This happened about a month and a half ago and he is healing very nicely. I turned him out with the kids horse I have here at home where i could watch the wound and thinking he would stay out of trouble but guess what, no luck.

It occured to me yesterday afternoon that the two of them had not been up for a couple of days so I figured I had better go look and see what the problem was. I went down to the far end of the pasture where they were standing and found the kid in trouble again. For some unknown reason he got to pawing at the barb wire fence with his unhurt leg and managed to get himself all tangled up in the barb wire. Luckily he calmed down and didn't tear the fence or himself all up. He let me get up to him and I cut the wire away from him and got him out.

He now has an injury around his hoof on the front leg that was undamaged. It doesn't look to serious so I won't take him too see the vet but what am I going to do with this unruly kid? He keeps finding ways to get himself in trouble. Hopefully I can finsh healing him up with no more injuries.

Take most people, they're crazy about cars. I'd rather have a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake. J. D. Salinger

It is unbelievably beautiful September here. Since the beginning of the month we must have had 4 inches of rain, more rain than we have had all year to this point, and the grass is green and growing. It is now greener than it was all year now and as I said before you can hear the grass growing.

The moisture and grass growing now is the best thing that can happen to insure a crop of grass next year so I am just ecstatic. The cows are just loving it too even though the calves aren't too sure of it. They have never seen green grass before so they are almost scared of it. I have seen this happen before and they never did well on grass since they never learned what it was when they were young.

Then the temperatures are so fall like it is wonderful. Cool and crisp in the morning and not too warm in the afternoon. Great for the grass, cattle, and me. Just the most wonderfully beautiful September I have seen in more years than I can count.

I thank the Lord for this truly wonderful blessing he has bestowed upon us after this cool and trying spring and summer. It reminds us all that all things are transitory and with time we will be reminded again of the beauty that you have given us to enjoy. I thank him for the patience to wait until the beauty shines through and I thank him for all the beautiful things life gives me. Amen

There s too much beauty upon this earth For lonely men to bear. Richard Le Gallienne

Now here's a guy that definitly is a waste of human flesh. Anybody that does such despicable things should have their right to breed removed permenetly.

All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil. Ovid

This article sure will open your eyes about agricultural subsidies in the state of Montana.

Fifty percent of the net income in 2003 in Montana was from government subsidies

I am not here to argue the merit to government subsidies for farmers. I personally quit wheat farming a number of years ago because even with the subsidies all I was doing was losing money. The books for the ranch are a whole lot prettier now that I don't farm wheat.

Just think how that money affects the state of Montana though. The article states that "the average job pays $26,900, the worst wages in the country." A lot of that money for wages comes from farmers. If the article is right and farm subsidies are cut by 20% how is that going to affect the overall Montana economy since agriculture is one of Montana's top industries? Not very well.

Just something to think about is what my point is. How to help Montana farmers is a question I don't have the answer to. The government has been subsidizing them for many years and it doesn't seem to help very much. There has been talk for years about producing ethanol with wheat but it never seems to get off the ground. The reason for that is the price of gas is still cheaper than producing ethanol and using it, so ethanol is not economically viable at this time. Mostly I think farmers have to help themselves. Either get out of those businesses that need such large subsidies or brand their product like Wheat Montana and make a thriving business out of it. Tough choices but it might be necessary.

The governmentâ