Another Day Another Cookie

Authors note: I may have a cookie addiction

Hi everyone! Its supposed to snow again tomorrow but its fifty degrees right now. Kerry is bringing home some groceries and I’m going to make Butternut Squash soup. I like soup, chili, or stew when its cold out, how about you? Remember to hit that Like button and leave your soup recipes in the comments. When I make yours you will get proper credit!

It is a schizophrenic time of year in southwest Montana. Single digit lows followed by daytime temps in the 50s. Screaming winds that eat the snow followed by two-day storms that dump 1 ½ feet of snow covering the green tips of daffodils and hyacinth that got a touch too brave. I was not in a good mood as I made my way to the chiropractor for my hip this week, when I passed the Hereford farm that’s just outside of town.

The rancher was feeding with a round-bale feeder attachment mounted on the bed of the truck. All the cows came trotting over, new calves in tow, as the hay rolled out in a long carpet. Most of the calves were born in the last two weeks due to the wonders of artificial insemination and those little buggers had already learned how to run and buck. They dove into the hay just for fun. The cows lined up on either side of the hay line and started munching. I pulled over to watch for a minute or two. My mood instantly got better. I liked working with cows and this scene reminded me of being on the ranch.

The second winter after we moved to Montana was nasty as far as snowfall goes. Sometimes we needed chains to get around, especially when the road grader from the county road department didn’t get to us for a few days after a storm. After one such storm, the phone rang. It was our neighbor Dora. She wanted to know if I could help her husband Doug with feeding for a few days. Between all the snow and calving he was exhausted, she had said. There was a break coming up in their breeding cycle so he could catch up on some sleep, but just needed some help with the physical stuff to tide him over. He was so swamped, his morning chores weren’t done until afternoon, and the afternoon ones weren’t done until well after dark. They would be happy to pay, she added as an incentive. The situation as she told it did sound a little grim, the two of them were not kids anymore, so I agreed to come over and help the next morning. As luck would have it, another winter storm was due to hit overnight but the TV said there wouldn’t be too much snow.

 There was at least 6 inches of new snow and more falling when I drove down the road to Doug’s ranch. He was very focused on feeding the cows which his taciturn greeting made clear when he answered the door.

“I usually start earlier than this, but I had to wait for you,” was the first thing out of his mouth. It was 7:45 in the morning. Fifteen minutes earlier than Dora told me to show up. He was wearing sweatpants, a t-shirt and fuzzy slippers. I tried not to laugh. Sure, buddy. I had been past his place almost daily and saw him feeding cows at ten o’clock in the morning, sometimes as early as 9:00 a.m. but never sooner. So, he was rude and self important. I had dealt with guys like this before. You can’t work in the horse world without meeting them.

Doug sent me out to brush snow off the feed truck’s windshield and sweep off the steel deck while he got changed. Of course there was no windshield scraper in the cab. There never is in a ranch truck. Searching around in the shop I found an old broom which was suitable for the job. I started the truck to get it warmed up and defrost the windshield.

The truck had seen better days. Doug called it the feed truck, but he used it as an everyday ranch truck as well. It had a bench seat in the cab with the seatbelts latched behind it so the seatbelt warning wouldn’t sound. The passenger side floorboard was filled almost level with the seat with looped and knotted baling twine—so much twine that I couldn’t get in the truck. So I scooped it all up and tossed it in the burn barrel in front of the shop. Guess what was under all that twine? A broken windshield scraper with teeth marks all over it. I was pretty sure they weren’t human teeth marks so Doug must have a dog. At that moment he came out of the mudroom door with two Border Collie type dogs. Both looked gray in the muzzle and the larger one was missing a leg. Doug told them they would have to stay home and then walked right past me and got in the truck. I followed, got in, and off we roared through the snow.

All four tires were chained up so we had no trouble heading toward wherever our destination was. Doug broke the silence.

“Have you ever done anything with hay before?” He asked.

“I’ve picked up and stacked my share,” I replied.

“Aren’t you from Connecticut?” Doug seemed incredulous.

“We have cows and horses in Connecticut, Doug. Hay fields too. Of course, a forty-acre field is a really big one back there. Most of it goes into haylofts to keep the weather off it.”

“My bales weigh about 70 lbs.”

“Ours did too.” Small bales are universally about 70 lbs. Was this guy implying I might not be able to lift his hay bales?

I got out a couple times to open and close gates. We went through a calving pasture, where there were at least 25 pairs watching and anticipating being fed. We went through a second gate and began to go up hill. All I could see out the windshield was the outline of a road hugging the base of a hill. Out my side window it seemed like the road fell into oblivion so I hoped Dave knew what he was doing. At the top of the hill was a large stack of hay bales protected with a decrepit mesh fence. A group of about twenty mule deer ran out the open gate of the fence as we approached. Doug started blowing his horn, I assumed to scare off any stragglers because the herd had already disappeared into the blowing snow. As it turned out, the gate wasn’t really open, just flattened by snow or deer I guessed. Yanking the gate out of the snow, I leaned it upright to one side. Doug backed in to the snow covered bales.

“We need about fifty bales stacked two across leaving no room in between them.” Doug instructed. We will be making a couple trips because I’m also feeding another ranch’s cows. There is a science to feeding…” he continued his lecture as we climbed up onto the slippery steel deck. He stopped to hand me a hay hook.

“Do you know how to use one of these?” He asked.

“I’ve used them a few times.’ I replied as I sank the hook into a bale and dragged it to the front of the deck. Doug continued his long-winded lesson on how many pounds of hay we needed to feed the cows. The deck was rapidly filling up as the two stacks got higher. I double checked my count because I guessed Doug was going to ask me how many we had when my legs got hit from behind by a hay bale. I fell forward against the stacked hay and caught myself, so luckily I didn’t fall off the truck.

“Watch out!” Yelled Doug way too late to keep me from getting hit. I spun around and he was on top of the stack pushing the rows over on to the deck with his feet.

“How about yelling first!” I said in a not too friendly way.

“Oh, I thought you saw me.” He said.

That’s when I began to suspect Doug couldn’t see very well. I decided to be a lot more alert around him.

The truck was loaded, Doug pulled out of the hay yard and turned left, away from the road we had just come up. Once we were behind the stack he plunged us down the side of the hill. The truck crab-walked back and forth, despite our chains, until we landed with a THUMP on the road. The truck rocked back and forth so hard I was worried about the bales falling off. I must have had the obvious question on my face.

“It’s faster this way,” he said.

It was? I thought better of having him explain it to me.

We stopped to feed the pairs on our way out. Doug had me stand outside to watch how he fed. Now, almost everyone I knew fed round bales using hydraulic arms attached to the bed of the truck. Its quick and easy on the operator. I had noticed Doug’s haying equipment was set up for small squares so that must be why we were doing all this work.

The sequence went this way. The truck pulled itself along in 4-wheel low with no one driving. You had to point it where you wanted to go and then feed fast enough to be done before you hit something. His course set, Doug jumped out of the cab and clambered up onto the deck and began feeding out hay. I couldn’t see very much with the blowing snow and milling cattle. I should be up on the deck with him I thought but he finished before I could say anything. With feeding done in that field, we left the calving pasture and headed all the way down the driveway to the county road before turning South. Visibility was practically zero but I assumed the cows were in the same fields I had seen them in over the past weeks.

“I’m keeping them all together to make feeding easier and then when we get closer to calving time I’ll separate the heavies out. Do you know what heavies means?” I was getting a little tired of the Twenty Questions Game. He was doing this because I was from somewhere else that was not Montana. I knew he was from Minnesota so he was not exactly a multi-generation Montana rancher. Besides everyone in Montana is from somewhere else except for the Native tribes.

“Yes, I do. They are the ones who will calve next.”

Doug gave me a confused look.

“How do you know all this?”

“We help Butch with the cows and irrigating and we learn a lot from him.”

“You know I’m not really looking for help, right?”

I turned to face Doug’s right ear. He was staring forward, focused on the snowy road which I had to admit was a good thing.

“Doug, I have no interest in working for you. I have my own business. I came to help as a favor.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” he mumbled.

What exactly it was he didn’t know, I couldn’t say.

We arrived at a gate which I wrestled open. The snow was drifting and burying the gates and making it difficult to walk around.

“Leave it open!” Doug yelled as he drove through. That seemed odd considering all the bad things that could happen by leaving a gate open, but it was his place, his rules. We drove down a hill on the lee side which made for better visibility at least. Cows started to appear following the sound of the truck’s screaming engine as we busted through some smaller drifts. Doug reached under his seat and pulled out what appeared to be a piece of  wooden shovel handle that had a blade from a combine cutter bar bolted to it.

“Use this to cut the strings and just feed out one flake at a time. Don’t lose the strings. Just hold them in your left hand and bundle them up when you’re done.”

I was quite sure there was more to it than that but honestly, how hard could it be? Turns out, as with learning most new skills, it was very hard.

First, I had to fight my way through the cows who had descended on the truck and were biting the bales trying to get a mouthful. Then I had to climb up on the slippery, snow-covered deck. Once there I yelled O.K. and Doug started driving forward. I cut the strings with my chopper, which was ridiculously dull, and held the cut strings in my left hand as instructed. I quickly learned that I needed to hold on to the knots the baler made while cutting the twine because they were made of slippery plastic and would just pull out of your hand. I flaked off  the hay with my chopper distributing it fairly evenly. I would kick off the end of the bale and start on the next one quickly so as to not to have big gaps on the ground.

 Doug was driving way too fast so we bounced and shimmied along. I was slipping and sliding on the deck trying to drag the next bale in position, while keeping the strings in one hand and chopping with the other. I yelled at him to slow down a bit and he complied, but of course we would gradually speed up again. Why couldn’t he just keep it in Low and steer? Who knows. Maybe it was some kind of test for the new guy. I fed out the last bale and Doug stopped long enough for me to get back in the truck and off we went to load up again.

Remember when Doug told me the cows were all together to make feeding easier? Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There was another group of the other ranch’s cows that needed feeding in a different field. Driving back and forth I became totally turned around. I couldn’t see any landmarks, the truck was too old to have a compass, and the tire tracks we made were quickly filling in. I was glad Doug was driving because I could get very lost or stuck.

We went down the county road again but much farther than the last time and I opened another gate. It seemed like this field was flat and I wondered if we were at the far southern end of the ranch which I knew didn’t have any big hills. We drove pretty far until the cows appeared and I got out to start feeding. Since the field was relatively level, I had an easier time standing which made my knees feel better. About half way through the load I grabbed a bale to position it when we rolled over something. A ditch, a rock, or badger hole. I couldn’t say. We rocked hard right and then left and I was catapulted off the truck landing on my back in the middle of the herd. I started yelling, kicking, and punching as the cows surged forward right over the top of me as they chased after the truck.

The truck? Doug was driving off into the snowstorm! It is remarkable that I only got stepped on twice with all those hundreds of legs tromping past me. The mad rush passed. I rolled onto my belly coming face to face with an older cow who was eating hay around me. We were so close I could smell her breath.

“Hi!” I said. She gave me a sniff then went on with her breakfast.  A few other cows were on the feed line but there was no sign of Doug. I began to follow his tire tracks but stopped and thought about it. I should stay with the cows because once he figures out I’m not in back he’ll turn around and come back for me, besides the tracks are filling in. I didn’t want to get lost out there. I would wait right where I was.

It was a long wait. Twenty minutes went by. Then another twenty. Some cows that followed the truck were coming back through the curtain of blowing snow to the hay line. Surely, he noticed the hay wasn’t getting off loaded. Maybe he was stuck somewhere out there and needed help. I just didn’t know the man well enough to predict what he would do and our morning hadn’t filled me with confidence that he was concerned with my welfare.

Finally, I heard the truck’s engine and clanking chains. Doug appeared not far away. The hay was gone from the back of the truck. He pulled up and rolled down his window.

“When I said to to throw the hay off the back I didn’t mean you!” He shouted with a laugh. I got in the passenger side, my face frozen and glasses instantly fogged up from the heat in the cab.

‘What happened?”  I asked in an unpleasant manner.

“I fell asleep, and the truck just pulled itself along in 4-wheel low until I ran into a ditch and got stuck. I figured you must have fallen off, so I finished feeding and came back to look for you.”

“You fell asleep and then finished feeding before looking for me? What if I was really hurt?”

“How could you get really hurt falling in all this snow?” I was dumbstruck at this line of logic and didn’t say another word all the way back to the house. This guy was just carelessly dangerous to work around. At least now I knew that it was obvious I had to stay alert and watch my back. Doug parked the truck in front of his house.

“Thanks for the help. I’ve got other things to do,” Doug said over his shoulder as he headed for the mud room entrance. Apparently, I had been dismissed. I guess my performance wasn’t up to his standards. Well, that wasn’t going to break my heart. I brushed off my outfit to go home and let the engine warm up. The truck’s clock said it was noon. It had been quite the morning. It’s true what they say, time flies when you are having fun! I pulled a u-turn to head out when I saw Dora waving at me from the front door. I trudged on over and saw that in her hand was a twenty-dollar bill.

“This for you.” she whispered. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

Now I have been accused of being a little thick at times, quite unfairly in my opinion, but I now understood what was going on. She had arranged this whole thing basically behind her husband’s back probably because he thought he was still thirty years old and physically able to do all the work on the ranch and she knew he couldn’t. Dora gave me a plaintive look still holding out the money. That bill represented five dollars an hour. I could make more running a cash register in a convenience store and not get stomped on by a cow. Normally I would consider it an insult, but was it? She didn’t seem the type. Maybe the cash was all she had to keep this a secret. I sighed inwardly.

“Tell you what Dora,” I said with a smile, “you keep the money and if Doug wants help, he should call me and ask. That way we have no miscommunication.”

“Oh.” Dora’s face fell. She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Then she brightened up. “How about some cookies instead? I just made them.” She grabbed a tin off her table. “They are chocolate chip!”

“That would be great! Thank you.”

At home, eating a cookie, I pulled off my long underwear to look at my elbow. As I thawed out, parts of me were beginning to hurt. My elbow was purple so that wasn’t good. I must have landed on it or it got stepped on. I grabbed an ice bag from the freezer, a glass of milk, and more cookies. Kerry came in the back door with the boys. They had been building a snowman.

“I smell cookies!” She cried. The boys cheered. “Did Dora make these?” She asked.

“Yes, she did.” I replied. “I took them in lieu of twenty dollars.”

“What’s wrong with your elbow?”

I took off the ice bag. The purple was spreading.

“How did that happen?”

“Gravity mostly.”

I told her the saga of my morning.

“Twenty whole dollars, huh? Are you going back?” She asked slipping a second ice bag under my elbow.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure, but I think I was fired. I do know this, I’m not getting paid a measly five dollars an hour even with cookies thrown in.”

“I know. Want some naproxen for your elbow?”

“That would be great.” My eyes were starting to close from the warmth of the woodstove and the sound of the storm outside. A nap might be in order.

Kerry brought the naproxen over to me. “I’m thinking spaghetti and venison Italian sausage for tonight.” The boys cheered again. It was one of their favorites.

“Cookies and spaghetti on the same day? It must be Christmas,” I murmured swallowing the pills with the last of my milk. Kerry laid a throw blanket over me.

“You rest a little. I’m going to set up the bread machine.”

I was almost out when the phone on the kitchen counter began to ring.