Because the West Wasn’t Won on Salad
Post by Clemson Montana Summer Program student Sarah Coleman
A change in scenery and people gave my heart and mind new ideas to ponder the past few days. What did this land look like when it was first settled? Who were the people that made the decision to pick up everything and move clear across the continental United States? I try to put myself in their shoes and imagine what it must have been like to come to this new and exciting land; a land full of promise and hope. A land that is now filled with the blood, sweat, and tears of its native peoples and those that tried to make a go in the hard-pan clay. The cottonwoods blowing in the wind in front of me seem to always be waving goodbye to those that did not make it on this land, while beckoning for more to come on out to try their hand at a new life.
In her book, Breaking Clean, Judy Blunt wrote, “America’s love affair with the mythical West has held strong for more than a hundred years. We need to believe in it, for if the frontier exists just over the horizon, those of us asleep behind bolted doors in cities are not trapped. We can imagine that somewhere a community of our own awaits us, a life on the land under the big sky.”
There is something about the West that calls to me, and if I could, I would come running at any chance possible. There is a community back home in South Carolina that waits for me, but it doesn’t have the same appeal as it used to. Out here I can breathe in the fresh and crisp air with minimal effort. A vision of the “mythical west”, as Judy Blunt called it, plays like a movie reel in my mind. Then I compare it to what I have seen this past week. A ranch house comes into my vision, I see horses coming up for water, and hear a cow bellow in the distance. No matter where I go, cattle and the land they roam on always have me within reach, ready to pull me back into the life in which I was raised. Maybe, if I pray and work hard enough, I will be pulled to the west, to a land that is slowly but surely taking hold of my heart.
(Moo)ving into the 21st Century
A ranch is not simply a piece of land with livestock and fences, just as the west is not only filled with gun slingers and cowboys like the stories of the past tell. There are so many fine details and requirements that must be met. Think of a ranch like a jigsaw puzzle. Every piece fits with another just a certain way. If you lose a piece, the puzzle is not complete. You will have an imperfect end product that will never give you the satisfaction of a job well done. It is a way of life that has changed greatly over the past 100 years, and continues to expand into new areas every day. If it’s possible it’s become more complex. The pieces of the puzzle grow smaller as more and more aspects of ranching come into play.
Animal nutrition and land management are vital to the success of any ranching operation, or just the cattle industry in general. They are very broad topics that overlap in various aspects. If you manage your land properly, you can reap the optimal benefits that it can bestow upon you. However, that is all dependent on the weather. Terry Frost told us on our tour of his ranch that, you can have all the grass in the world, but without water, it’s useless. Many have installed irrigation systems and connected water troughs to wells instead of relying on the boom and bust of the rain cycle. In the past week, I have watched storms brew to the west of us and threaten to quench the thirst of the land, but they have rarely followed through.
It was shocking to hear that the state of Montana did not house any meat processing facilities, considering cattle outnumber people roughly 2.5 to 1. The family that owns the Weschenfelder Feedlot operated the last local processing facility in the state of Montana. Feedlots, a major part of the cattle industry, have to take into consideration requirements similar to that of standard cow-calf or stocker operations. They have also begun to utilize modern technologies to find the most efficient way to reach optimum gain. They have a feeding system that links to a chip placed in the cow’s ear-tag. It triggers a scale below the feed bunk so it measures to the ounce how much the cow eats. Tell me that the agricultural industry isn’t moving into the modern age! There are still ranchers that do everything the “old-fashioned” way, relying on their horse and the rope in their hand, but gradually they are becoming fewer and fewer.
I feel the best way to end this post is with another quote from Judy Blunt. I connected deeply with her book, and cannot possibly express what I’m feeling better than she.
“The ones that live happily here are flexible, adaptable, willing to lie dormant when the rains don’t come, able to move quickly on the strength of one good storm.”
-Judy Blunt, Breaking Clean
A change in scenery and people gave my heart and mind new ideas to ponder the past few days. What did this land look like when it was first settled? Who were the people that made the decision to pick up everything and move clear across the continental United States? I try to put myself in their shoes and imagine what it must have been like to come to this new and exciting land; a land full of promise and hope. A land that is now filled with the blood, sweat, and tears of its native peoples and those that tried to make a go in the hard-pan clay. The cottonwoods blowing in the wind in front of me seem to always be waving goodbye to those that did not make it on this land, while beckoning for more to come on out to try their hand at a new life.In her book, Breaking Clean, Judy Blunt wrote, “America’s love affair with the mythical West has held strong for more than a hundred years. We need to believe in it, for if the frontier exists just over the horizon, those of us asleep behind bolted doors in cities are not trapped. We can imagine that somewhere a community of our own awaits us, a life on the land under the big sky.”
There is something about the West that calls to me, and if I could, I would come running at any chance possible. There is a community back home in South Carolina that waits for me, but it doesn’t have the same appeal as it used to. Out here I can breathe in the fresh and crisp air with minimal effort. A vision of the “mythical west”, as Judy Blunt called it, plays like a movie reel in my mind. Then I compare it to what I have seen this past week. A ranch house comes into my vision, I see horses coming up for water, and hear a cow bellow in the distance. No matter where I go, cattle and the land they roam on always have me within reach, ready to pull me back into the life in which I was raised. Maybe, if I pray and work hard enough, I will be pulled to the west, to a land that is slowly but surely taking hold of my heart.
(Moo)ving into the 21st Century
A ranch is not simply a piece of land with livestock and fences, just as the west is not only filled with gun slingers and cowboys like the stories of the past tell. There are so many fine details and requirements that must be met. Think of a ranch like a jigsaw puzzle. Every piece fits with another just a certain way. If you lose a piece, the puzzle is not complete. You will have an imperfect end product that will never give you the satisfaction of a job well done. It is a way of life that has changed greatly over the past 100 years, and continues to expand into new areas every day. If it’s possible it’s become more complex. The pieces of the puzzle grow smaller as more and more aspects of ranching come into play.
Animal nutrition and land management are vital to the success of any ranching operation, or just the cattle industry in general. They are very broad topics that overlap in various aspects. If you manage your land properly, you can reap the optimal benefits that it can bestow upon you. However, that is all dependent on the weather. Terry Frost told us on our tour of his ranch that, you can have all the grass in the world, but without water, it’s useless. Many have installed irrigation systems and connected water troughs to wells instead of relying on the boom and bust of the rain cycle. In the past week, I have watched storms brew to the west of us and threaten to quench the thirst of the land, but they have rarely followed through.
It was shocking to hear that the state of Montana did not house any meat processing facilities, considering cattle outnumber people roughly 2.5 to 1. The family that owns the Weschenfelder Feedlot operated the last local processing facility in the state of Montana. Feedlots, a major part of the cattle industry, have to take into consideration requirements similar to that of standard cow-calf or stocker operations. They have also begun to utilize modern technologies to find the most efficient way to reach optimum gain. They have a feeding system that links to a chip placed in the cow’s ear-tag. It triggers a scale below the feed bunk so it measures to the ounce how much the cow eats. Tell me that the agricultural industry isn’t moving into the modern age! There are still ranchers that do everything the “old-fashioned” way, relying on their horse and the rope in their hand, but gradually they are becoming fewer and fewer.I feel the best way to end this post is with another quote from Judy Blunt. I connected deeply with her book, and cannot possibly express what I’m feeling better than she.
“The ones that live happily here are flexible, adaptable, willing to lie dormant when the rains don’t come, able to move quickly on the strength of one good storm.”
-Judy Blunt, Breaking Clean
