in conclusion to my cowboy days

Mudder was a problem child

 Mudder's all to familiar last look

     Fortunately she is someone else’s problem now. I visited the farm where she ended up and as I think I have said I know the guy from having worked with him years before and he was telling me of his English breed of cattle, and how he was only one of two farmers in Ohio to be able to offer them as registered. The name eludes me of the breed but if I did know, shouldn't say unless I asked him first. I am only mildly interested in cattle now hopefully leaving that part of me in this feedlot today. Mainly I wanted to see just for sure it was Mudder, not wanting to take money for someone else’s cow.  Instead of noticing me as she actually seemed to at first, and then figured I was coming to take her home, as she turned around and headed up the hill offering me the look I had been accustomed to numerous times while chasing her, it was the one of her rear end as she headed away from me and back to the comfort of the herd. Instead of cuddling up with the herd she still remained a little independent and stood outside the crowd and looking as if she wished I would secretly go away.  Gladly I did as I took a check for the young lady and turned over her attitude to my friend.

        It is my understanding she is going to be bred and kept on his farm as his adult son has taking a liking to her. She is happy in her new digs. Not only did she find comfort in a herd, but she also managed to give up the lush over ample pasture that tickled her belly, for a dry dusty feedlot eating baled hay and being fed grain twice daily. Guess you can’t get all that you want, but you can try to get what you need. Nature is calling.

      I had considered the possibility of placing sandwich boards that would slip over her back and could be charged with solar cells that would discharge LED light, lighting her lean black sides up with a billboard that would put Lost Vegas to shame. This I all in an effort to see her at night making her more visible while making some money on here while she was out there street walking like the little slut she was. I am sure I could have found a hundred steak houses that would surely love to have a cow with a billboard out walking the streets stopping traffic. I am sure a couple of days of this and I would be famous. But fame has its limitations especially when the law is involved. Sometimes you have to watch what you are famous for. Thankfully I never had to resort to such a measure. But definitely a GPS system would have been nice at a couple times during the chase.

the pond over the hill

     In retrospect I will say I have learned a few things from this little episode. It had been years since I had visited the farm beside me, the old city farm as it was called and I was amazed at how the reclamation of the land over there that has been accomplished compared to some memories I have had of it over the years. Their reclamation effort is creating what appears to be a healthy environment and enough shade to rehabilitate the forest floor and maybe someday actually erase the fact that here is a farm that had been a role model for why shit rolls downhill.  Raped for her subsurface soft coal and probed for her deeper oils, and at times left for dead and crapped upon. Mother Nature is doing her best now to erase that fact under a lush green canopy. It had one before man came, we only lost a couple of hundred years making all the wrong decisions, and all the time the sun still shined. Sometimes it seems as if all we need to do is lift our heads up to see the solution to our energy problems. That would be too easy and free, therefor of no consequence or interest to the profit takers out there.

    One other thing that is kind of haunting about this area is that there are very little fences left to turn cattle, most having rusted to the ground or dozed into pits and outside of this fence used now to house this young lady, she traveled almost four miles without encountering any real fences. All the old farm fences have been buried under gob piles of mine waste as the coal mine operators sterilized vast swaths of land in our area with their mining operations. The tops of our hills now scalped and a former vision of what they were, just bald. Although the farm beside me is reclaimed to a larger degree than most, there still is a need to rehab other mine areas as they contribute little to our environment under current mine reclamation laws. Work needs to be done restoring the trees that were always a part of Ohio’s history. We need it for our environment and for locking up carbon dioxide as this land is unfit to farm commercially. There is no topsoil for the most part, and in some ways just barely supports minimal growth. Trees are needed to cover the soil with organic material while establishing a woody structure to reach out and lock carbon in it, with their long reaching tentacles called branches as it sweeps the sky gleaning those gasses harmful to us and releasing oxygen to replenish our soul. I need this and I am sure almost all of you need it, save a couple of aliens locked up in hangar 17. That’s another story.

       We waste time on so much with so little value, why not waste time making our world a little better. We all owe our environment so much but give little, except by accident. We need to change this and I could tell you how but then I assume you all know how, even in a little way. A little is better than none at all. Reduce your footprint and increase nature’s.