Day after day, these intrepid souls are up before dawn, busting their butts to feed the world. It’s enough to bring a tear to my eye and make me proud to be a rancher. I’d like to give every one of those hardworking folks a pat on the back and tell them, “You go, guys. I’ll catch up later.”
We are not devoted members of the crack-of-dawn cult. No one in my entire family is genetically programmed to pop out of bed raring to tackle the day. At times, we struggle to make it out the door by the crack of nine. Some might look at us in askance. We would argue that since ranchers are supposed to be such rugged individualists, we are merely upholding tradition by refusing to cave to peer pressure.
Seriously – who decided that it’s better to work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. than to hold off until a reasonable hour and come in later for dinner, especially in a climate where mornings can be frosty in July? I have no idea who coined the phrase, “The early bird gets the worm,” but they can have ’em. We’ll all take another couple of hours of sleep. If you’ve ever wondered what the zombie apocalypse might look like, drop by my place for breakfast, but I take no responsibility for what you might find shuffling and growling around our kitchen, attempting to mainline caffeine and Cheerios.
Obviously, there are times when the job dictates that we must rise and attempt to shine at obscenely early hours. Calving, shipping and pregnancy testing all require that we work around someone else’s schedule, and on hot dry days, the alfalfa insists on baling best before the dew burns off. And worst of all, there is school.
Our son boards the school bus at 7 o’clock in the morning. The bus stop is 20 minutes from our house. To be safe – and to give him time to eat breakfast in the car because that’s an extra half hour of precious sleep we don’t waste feeding him at home – we leave at 6:30 a.m. Thank the stars above that I have a boy child who has no concept of fashion and likes to save steps by sleeping in the shirt he plans to wear the next day. Actually, left alone, he would wear the same shirt until it disintegrated into rags, and then still have to be forced to change. As a result, we can crawl out of bed at 6 a.m. and be gone in 30 minutes.
Lately, he’s been whining that he doesn’t have time to watch cartoons before school, so he’s been setting his alarm clock and getting up early. Fine by me; that’s another 10 minutes I can linger in my warm, comfy bed instead of trying to wrestle him out of his. Last week, though, our alarm failed us, and we woke up when we should have been leaving. I stumbled into the living room and found the boy happily watching television.
“Why didn’t you wake us?” I demanded.
He gave me a blank stare. “For what?”
“School! We’ve missed the bus, and now I have to drive you all the way to town.”
“Oh.” He calmly considered the situation, then shrugged. “You’re kind of old. I thought you must be tired.”
And you know what? He was right. FG
Kari Lynn Dell is a third-generation cowgirl, horse trainer and rodeo competitor. She writes from her family ranch on Montana's Blackfeet Reservation. For information on her novels, short stories and other writing projects, visit her website.
PHOTO: The world may believe all ranchers and farmers are up at the crack of dawn, but “up” is a subjective term. Does this count? Photo by Kari Lynn Dell.
