One Red Cow

She was a terrible mother.  No interest in her baby, the cow calf got skinnier and skinnier until finally Tom at the ranch had to bottle feed the baby for a bit.  It was really a shame.  That big cow was pregnant this fall too. Such a shame she didn't want to be a mother.  The Wyoming sun would shine off that red coat, fire across the hairs backlit on her back.  She was a lovely specimen of a bovine creature, but a terrible mother. 

And that earned her a place in the line at the butcher.  And a line there is!  She got fed good hay and grain and got big and fat before her number came up.  They called to tell us our beef was ready to be picked up on Monday. 

Mike emptied out recycle containers, containers with garden grow cloths, and containers with items for the second hand donation store in preparation to pick up the order.  The racks were tall and full!  At least 36 cubic feet of space was filled with two pound tubes of hamburger wrapped in red and white packages of "Ground Red".  All ground beef recipes are requested!

Tender loin steaks, round steaks, sirloins, cross cut steaks (what the heck is that?), giant briskets, flank steak, skirt steaks, rib steaks, and on and on.  The white, frozen packages got lined up, stacked up, and put in a total of four freezers by the time we finished.  

Mike has stated that I am a food hoarder.  It was a Food Hoarder's Nirvana, the day of putting Red into our various and scattered about freezers.  

Snow-a-geddon

 

Hoback Bee Hive, December 26, 2021

January 6, 2022

It has snowed.  A lot.  Then it rained.  Which is really awful.  

This is our roof this morning.  Some of the roof has already slid.  When it goes, it's a bit alarming.  Sounds like a freight train rumbling down metal tracks overhead.  We saw a big fabric tent that had collapsed under the weight of the wet, soggy snow on our way home last night from Freedom.  Bummer.  Which was, by the way, one of the most white-knuckled, treacherous drives I have made in a long time.  

I stuck the car in the Freedom driveway, the snowmachine twice as I tried to mitigate the banks and drifts and got soaked blowing and shoveling snow.  Michael was none too impressed.  

Today the world is white and soggy.

Climate Change Topics

Last year, two books came into my life.  Dark books.  The first by Cormick McCartry THE ROAD , a story about a man and his boy walking a ruined and frightening planet.  One gets the feeling the destruction was more nuclear than climate change.  The very next book that fell on my lap was THE BEAR by Andrew Krivak which was not quite so dark.  This one, a man and his daughter are walking the planet which the Reader gets the feeling that a pandemic may have been the cause of the end of humanity.  It was well written.  I do not recommend either of these books to anyone who might feel negatively affected by dark and emotionally-charged words.  These may not be great books for the current pandemic-turning-to-endemic climate......

However, it is weird when books land in your lap in a narrow time slot and have similar messages.  Again, this has happened to me recently.  The first book THE INVENTION OF NATURE by Andrea Wulf was one discovered from Ryan Holiday, a guy who makes his living reading books and tell us followers what the books he is reading are all about.  Alexander von Humboldt was an adventurer and the first person to recognize man's impact on changing the climate.  This was pre 1800's and he was most likely the first to give climate change a name.  The next book that came to my lap (well, really my ears as all of my book reading is done through Audible!), was CLOUD CUCKOO LAND by Anthony Doerr.  This one took some work to recollect where the recommendation originated - thank you Mary Austin for bringing me this wonderfully written, delightfully crafted, and enormously entertaining book!  The topic of climate change threads through the many stories told as the author guided us from BC to 2085 time eras.  There was a Siri aboard a ship to answer your every question (her name was Sybil) and a library fashioned just like Google!  The characters become real beings jumping off the pages.  Well read, I strongly recommend this in Audible format, this well-crafted adult story tale. 

Meanwhile, a wicked fire has touched a town east of us and we all watch, horrified.  This article, sent to me by one of our County Commissioners, tells the story of panic, disbelief, and very high winds the residents in the Colorado communities of Louisville and Superior experience.  We are reminded that when there is high wind, fire becomes a Monster.  Wind is a four letter word.  The "lessons" of climate change bang around in my brain after reading these two books and watching the news of this urban landscape conflagration.  

So 2022 begins.  Our paid staff and volunteers are suffering with COVID infections.  Many are out sick and staffing is very very skinny.  Our ability to respond is crippled.  The ambulance is currently driving to a remote location in our county for a woman with COVID symptoms.  I am on duty Saturday and Sunday and have ominous foreboding concerns about what our organization will "look" like by then.  A storm brews to the west with predictions of heavy snow and blowing winds making emergency response even more challenging.  

By nature, I am an optimist and can usually find good in most anything.  Today, I am trying to find some ray of light, some positivity in this daunting world of pandemics and climate change. 

There are 88 working days left until I retire.  Maybe that is today's positive thought. 

Stay well. Stay positive.  We are all in this thing together.   

The picture below is why buying an amaryllis bulb is so rewarding!!