Going to the Sale Barn

I’ve been helping my husband raise beef cow/calf pairs for as long as I’ve known him (11 years as of this writing). I’ve spent many hours alongside him feeding bales, pulling twine off of bales, putting out salt and mineral, creeping the calves (feeding extra pellets to help them grow better), vaccinating calves, branding replacement heifers, fixing fence, building new fence, digging thistles, cutting trees, maintaining windmills and keeping records. I enjoy this work and am proud to be a part of raising beef cattle for a living.

Twice a year, we load up the calves and take them to the sale barn, hoping to get a good price for all our hard work. Calves are sold by the pound, so the heavier the better! Calves sold off the farm will then go to a feedyard to be fattened further and eventually made into steaks and hamburgers to feed everyone looking for beef at the restaurant or the grocery store. My husband and his father take much pride in the cattle they raise. It’s a family tradition to care for cattle and raise healthy animals that make good beef. One of the small perks of raising these cattle is getting to take a day off work, hauling the calves to the sale barn and then spending the day waiting to watch them sell. The sound of the auctioneer, the smell of the cattle, eating lunch in the café and even the uncomfortably hard seats at the sale barn all add up to an oddly delightful experience for a cattle producer.

Since Jarrod and I both work full time jobs off the farm, we don’t always get the pleasure of spending an entire day sitting at the sale barn waiting for our calves to appear in the sale ring. Sometimes Jarrod’s dad is gracious enough to take our calves to the sale for us. Sometimes Jarrod makes the trip, but I stay behind and work. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to work the day away in the office and still watch the calves sell by viewing a live video stream of the auction on the Farmers and Ranchers website. If you can’t have the real deal, this video stream is a great substitute.

I look up from my work once in a while and see a brand new baby calf sell, or maybe a rare Hereford with horns. Most of the day, what comes through the sale ring is black, white or crossbred feeder size calves in large loads. After you watch about 100 head of cattle sell, they pretty much all look the same anyway. If I keep my ears open (and sometimes if Jarrod sends me a text message to tell me that our cattle are almost to the sale ring), I will get the pleasure of watching some familiar cattle appear on the screen for a brief minute, hear what a buyer was willing to give for all our hard work and go back about my work with a contented smile. I may not have got to have my Snickers treat after lunch at the café, nor did I get to help load the calves on the trailer, or ride all the way to the sale barn with the cattle sloshing around in the trailer jerking the pickup as we go down the road. But I didn’t have to sit on those hard sale barn seats all day either.

Hopefully in a few more years, we can take baby Kaitlyn along and share with her the sale barn experience to look forward to a couple times a year.

It's not all work all the time around here

We're pretty hard workers, but truth be told, we did take a break over the long weekend. It rained on Sunday and was overcast all day so we packed up the tent, sleeping bags and fishing poles and went pasture camping! We just went out to the pond at Jarrod's Dad's place in the evening. We tried to do a little catfishing but it had just rained and they weren't biting. We even made ourselves up a little trot line with what we had in the tackle box, and strung it across one corner of the pond. We got to see a pretty sunset when the sun dropped below the cloud bank, and the temperature was pretty good for sleeping outdoors. I really thought there would be something on the line in the morning, but there wasn't. Not a single fish. Not even a little tiny one. The cows even came down to visit us in the morning. Except they brought that mean bull with them so we packed up our shit and got outta there bright and early. We had work to do anyway.







Have to tell you a quick story about the rodeo we had a few weeks ago shuffling cattle around for the summer. We normally have very docile cattle and bulls. Somehow 2 years ago we ended up with a bull that was freaked out by being sorted off by himself. He seemed to settle down over time and the guys decided to keep him and give him a chance even though he tried to take Uncle John a few times. Well this year it was time to rotate him to another Heinze cattle herd and he had to be sorted into another pen with the spring herd at Bob's place. Everything was going well until we tried to push him through the gate by himself and then he turned and came snortin and blowing right at us! It was like being on ground level as a rodeo clown! I ran in a circle around the feeder in that pen to try and give myself a chance to get away and Jarrod ran for the fence. Up and over it he went, ripped a gaping hole in his jeans and somehow the bull managed to blow and snort his way on out through the gate. I can't believe that Bob stood his ground as the gateman, I would have been jumping the other side of the fence! Jarrod and I both put our foot down again then and said that "a**hole" needs to go to the sale barn. That is his name, btw, just in case you were wondering. Our other bulls have had nice names like Herman, Okie, Mr. Cheney, Woodrow, etc. As long as A**hole can hide behind his cows he is fine, but if you get him cornered by himself, he is a force to be reckoned with. We don't think there's any place for a potential oops like what happened a few weeks ago. We can't have any more rodeos like that. Hope we can finally convince Dad and John that it's not worth somebody getting hurt or killed. And in 2 more years when it's time to rotate him to Jarrod and I's place, he better be long gone! That last picture above is of the mean ol booger!