As we rode around we would talk about the things I had read or the seminars that I attended through the U of A and other government agencies on land management. How we need to haul water to good remote grass, or how we need to fence smaller sections of land as to force graze areas for thirty to forty five days then move off.
I told him that in truth, we are grass farmers who use cattle as a by product to care for the grass and soil, then as we sell of the calves we become ranchers.
He agreed that is what we needed, but he admitted he was just to old to implement those plans. He said, what he did to survive the drought years that we were just climbing out of was, to cut the herd back.
He spoke to my mom about my ideas because her and I were visiting and she mentioned what I had said to my dad and she asked more questions. Which shows I had made such an impression that mom and dad were talking together about it.
After his passing I started to haul water. It was mostly by me, but others helped when they were up there. The idea of building fences was put on hold because we had water issues that called out to be first on the priority list.
Skip to present time and it looked like my only option to run cattle was to fence off a little section and haul water to it. My partners/family had me thinking I was fence in, the lease on the water was not going to be renewed and they wanted me off their state leases. So we spent two days building and mending a mile's worth of fence. Only to find a day later that I have all rights to land and water.
A week before we built the fence I was again entering a feeling of despair but not quite defeat. A calm came over my heart and a sweet peace entered my mind as I heard the words, not spoken by the lips of any being of this world but by a whisper from beyond, "The beginning of the end".
At the time I was riding with Tom back up to Vernon to check my cattle, this was during the time that my partners still had some of my cattle that they took. I turned to Tom and said "It has just been confirmed to me we are in the beginning of the end. I don't know how long it will last or how rough it will get but a calm has come to me that we will start seeing an up side to all this."
Knee jerk reaction
Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Wikipedia.
Related to Knee jerk reaction: Knee jerk reflex
1. an immediate unthinking emotional reaction produced by an event or statement to which the reacting person is highly sensitive; - in persons with strong feelings on a topic, it may be very predictable.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.
Gut feeling
gut feeling and gut reaction; gut response
a personal, intuitive feeling or response.
I have a gut feeling that something bad is going to happen. My gut reaction is that we should hire
Susan for the job.
See also: feeling, gut
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc
Tom, I and Jesse spent Saturday morning moving water to a new pasture but also filling the drinkers in the section I had been using. The new section that we were implementing has no water. The last time it was used was more than two years ago when I hauled water to it for the Nicoll Brothers cattle. It has been left alone ever since.
I put water on it so Nicoll Brothers could use the mill and graze the pastures that are attached to it. Just weeks ago they moved their cattle onto the mill pasture, then abruptly moved them off along with some of mine, so I figured they wanted it and went another direction.
Heck in some of the dispute between us they stated they never wanted to haul water (even though they helped or took interest in it) and are demanding that I reimburse them money for the fuel I spent hauling water to their cattle but never once told me to stop.
We finished just after noon then headed to meet up with Amanda and kids who were in Virden. By three pm Jesse received a text wanting to know if that was our drinker on section thirty six. Jesse wrote back yes. Then he received another one stating they were going to fence that section off and use it.
My first thoughts were a gut feeling that they were bullying me again. They had a knee jerk reaction to us moving water on that pasture.
As I thought about it a calm came over me. We decided to write back to the text that we would help them build the fence, in fact we had just built some and still had the tooling gathered for it, to please tell us when so we can be available.
Bullied or not my hopes and prayers are being answered. I have only wanted to be good stewart's over the land. To utilize it the way I had been taught to do in my classes. My heart leapt with joy to know we are down sizing the pastures and hauling water. My only other desire is for the whole family to experience their heritage.
May the Lord work His miracles in behalf of our true heritage and inheritance. The Lord in all his mercy understands my heart and lifts me in times of despair. For this I will always be grateful and in his service. I will always rejoice in our forefathers that were sent to Arizona by Brigham Young and pray we will always be found worthy of their sacrifices they made in providing us with our heritage.
One happy soil caring, grass growing, cattle loving girl.
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