The recent Blizzards in Colorado and a book I am reading have reminded me of the winter of 96-97 in this area. It rivaled the historical winter of 1887 in it's ferocity and snow cover around here. It started in mid October and didn't end until mid April.<br />n<br />nI have never fed cows so much hay. I don't care how much hay you put out, they cleaned it up. It was so cold they couldn't get enough energy and the snow was so deep they couldn't get absolutely any king of grazing to eat. Cows would just lay down and die for no apperant reason. I claim to this day that they got tired of fighting the cold and snow and just decided to quit. It's the only explanation that makes sense. I lost over 5% of the cow herd that year just do to the winter being so tough. Normally, I don't lose any but that year I was losing them left and right. It was a bad deal.<br />n<br />nThen spring came, the snow was melting and the mud was about 2 feet deep from all the snow and it was quite the quagmire when a when a winter storm hit on about April 4th that lasted for about 5 days. I was in the hight ogf calving season then. The wind blew and the snow fell and the calves died. I fought night and day to save calves and in the end when all was said and done, I lost over 20% of my calves to this one storm. Cows would have them in a bunch to keep warm and the cattle would just tromp them to death in the mud before you could save them. They would have them away from the herd and then get up and walk away never to return and the calf would die before I got there. If I did get there I would never know the cow it came from or have the time to do anything about it. I also had 30 bum calves from the storm that I never could get the time to graft onto cows. It was a never ending nightmare that I never want to go through again.<br />n<br />nThis was the only time since I had gotten out of the Navy that I ever thought that maybe I had made a bad decision. It really made me wonder if fighting the cattle and the weather was worth it. The funny thing was though, when the sun came out and the warm temperatures hit and the remaining calves were bucking and playing, I forgot all about it and loved what I was doing again. Sometimes a person can get really dragged down around here but you can't let it get you. <br />n<br />nThere are so many thing in our lives that we can't control, like the weather, our neighbors, politicians, the rain, the land, mother nature and so on to the point the list is unsustainable. Against all these things we can't control, there is one important thing we can control, <strong>how we react to these things we can't control</strong>. We have to let these things wash over us and continue in our lives and not let them overwhelm us. How we react to these things makes us who we are and let's us set examples for the world.<br />n<br />nWhy do I bring these things up? Like I said, the Blizzards in the Midwest but also raising a teenage daughter. She's having trouble at school with another student and I have been trying to get her to see that she can't change what the other person is doing, she can only change how she react to it. She hasn't been taking the advice real well until her Grandpa independently told her the same thing in a way she heard. She's finally starting to feel better and react better. Hopefully the lesson will stick.<br />n<br />n<strong>It is easy to react if everything is going great. Vince Gill</strong>