Whenever I am having difficulty making a decision I always do what any reasonable person would do. I grab a yellow legal pad and make two lists. One list is the good points and the other is the bad. Here’s an example:
I Like Ranching Because…
* Cows are punched… not a time clock.
* You meet some interesting people including veterinarians, neighbors, truck drivers and marriage counselors.
* Every year is a rebirth.
* Old things are respected giving hope to all of us in our old age.
* There is no commute to work. You just wake up and there it is.
* Cows don’t talk a lot.
* Many humorous things happen on a ranch. Whether it is a banker attempting to open a tight gate or a calf attacking the flank of a cow, a day never passes without something funny happening.
* You never know when you’ll spot some form of wildlife. Thankfully most of the time it isn’t human.
* Ranching is never boring. If you get tired of building fence you can always change to digging post holes and stringing barbed wire.
* Dog food qualifies as a business expense.
* More time is spent in the saddle than the seat of a tractor.
* No necktie is required.
* Despite the best efforts of AT & T and Apple there are no telephones on horses. (At least not on my horse).
* There hasn’t been a perfume invented that smells as good as early morning dew on sagebrush.
* A rancher can get plenty of daily exercise without having to join a fancy club or wear those skin-tight purple leotards. How embarrassing!
* The feeling you get inside when you are out checking cows in the pasture next to the road and a car goes by and the kids inside are waving furiously because they like cowboys and there you are pretending to be one.
* 90% of the time is spent with cows and 10% with people, which is just about right.
* Hanging out at the auction market qualifies as work.
* You get to spend a lot of time with two of God’s greatest creatures…your horse and your wife. Not necessarily in that order.
* Feeding cows is fun.
* You usually don’t have to pay a lot of income tax.
Things I Don’t Like About Ranching…..
* Feeding cows for six months isn’t that much fun.
* You don’t get to pay a lot of income tax.
* Litter that blows on to the ranch thrown by passing motorists. Inside the fast food bags are empty containers for chicken nuggets and other decomposed poultry products.
• The boss is never far away. But usually she’ll feed you breakfast before she tells you everything she wants done that day.
* External parasites that sometimes pop up in the cattle business such as environmental lawyers, grubs and government bureaucrats.
* Media people who say things about us that aren’t true.
* Truck drivers who knock over your antique loading chute.
• Personally, I don’t care for landlords, calf scours, environmental impact reports, heavy panels, barbed wire, water gaps, trespassers, cockleburs or calves that have to die.
You can see my list of things I like about ranching is much longer than the list of things I don’t like about it.
I guess that means I’m doing what I ought to.
But I have to tell you, it doesn’t matter what the lists say… I’d be doing it anyway.
