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Spring feels like the first chapter of a new book that you hope becomes a favourite classic.  

At the start of a new growing season, you have an idea of the basic summary of the story. The familiar rhythms of the arrival of baby calves and planting crops are certain. However, you can never be sure what the overall theme of the story will be. Mother Nature, the unpredictable main character, will keep the other people in your series wondering what might happen next.  

Like most farmers across Canada, we make full use of the longer daylight to get some important jobs done that will set us up for the rest of the year. On our ranch, we will be almost all done calving our cow herd by the spring equinox, which means one of our top springtime tasks is processing calves and moving pairs out to pastures.

We refer to spring processing as “branding” even though branding calves is just one part of a flurry of many necessary practices. We also apply and record RFID tags, vaccinate calves, tattoo and collect DNA hair samples on our purebred Gelbvieh calves, and perform or record other management practices as needed.

Good or bad, processing calves has evolved on our ranch. Years ago, we hosted a large mounted branding in an outdoor pen where calves were roped, wrestled, and processed by a capable crew of neighbours. Now that our in-house home-grown labour force has developed into a helpful team, we harness that youthful energy and have a smaller-scale event. After sorting, our kids push calves up to a chute where we process them one at a time inside our barn. We brand commercial steer calves (banded at birth) in one group, commercial heifer calves in another, and our purebred calves in a separate group. We administer pre-breeding vaccines to our cows at the same time.

There are a lot of things I miss about having a big, efficient branding with a large crew of friends helping. Luckily, most of our neighbours still have a traditional style branding that we enjoy helping with. One thing I don’t miss is branding in the blustery snow and cold weather that inevitably hit on the early spring day we scheduled our workday for. One reason we moved toward working calves indoors is they can stay dry and clean and hopefully have less stress during and post-processing.

Seeding is another time-sensitive task that is a top priority. While our main focus is livestock production, we plant annual and winter annual cereal crops and polycrops that can be turned into feed, seed, grain, silage, straw, or grazing, depending on our needs as the season progresses.

In our corner of southwest Saskatchewan, we’ve experienced many successive years of drought, so if Mother Nature wanted to surprise us all with a precipitous plot twist for this year’s crop and pasture narrative, that would be welcome.

Being that crop farming isn’t our main enterprise and ranching is, we tend to get through the “franching” season with a lineup of equipment that may not be shiny or brand new but it gets the job done. Running used equipment cuts down on costs but it can add a little extra time for filling drills or repair work. On the plus side, I get a warm feeling of nostalgia every time I “grind ‘em ‘til I find ‘em” in the 3-tonne truck I’ve ridden in for literally my entire lifetime.

It’s hard to know how spring and the subsequent chapters of the year will play out on our farm or yours. Hopefully, the story of our growing season will unfold with lots of humour and little drama, perhaps a bit of mystery but no horror, and everyone will stay engaged in the plot but not become obsessed. We all deserve an easy read with a happy ending once in a while.

Originally appearing in the April 18, 2024 issue of Grainews.

Prairie folk love a weather story. We mark certain years, even decades, by memorable weather events, and use storms or extreme temperatures or even winds as a yardstick for recalling other important happenings like weddings or births.

It’s easy to understand our prairie preoccupation with the weather given that it is responsible for making our lives inconvenient, drastically changing our plans, and even putting us or our animals in downright dangerous conditions. Yet weather is one of the few things that is completely out of our hands. Perhaps the fact that we can’t do anything about current weather conditions irks us more than the weather itself.

We can collectively complain or post dozens of photos of our thermometers on social media, but these efforts won’t increase the temperature. More helpfully, people can share their water-bowl-thawing devices (and there are some good ones out there!) but even that isn’t enough to warm the atmosphere. We cannot stop power outages and in spite of our best efforts, we can’t always minimize equipment malfunctions because unfortunately, machines don’t run at their optimum potential when it’s ridiculously cold. In case anyone needs a reminder, patience levels and relationships also don’t function at their peak when a cold front moves in.

While we can’t will the weather to suit our needs, there are a few things that we can manage. For example, we can control our ability to find our block heater cord before we need it. I’ve had two years to source that cord on our family vehicle, yet I found myself fishing around under the hood on the coldest day of the year at the darkest time of night in order to locate it.

As per the old saying that there is no such as thing as poor weather, just poor clothing choices, another thing we can control in many cases is how warmly we outfit ourselves. In our household, the rule is function over fashion and as the temperature decreases, our layers and use of woollen accessories increases. My warm winter chore boots are a wardrobe staple from October through April. My choice of footwear not only keeps my feet warm and dry, but it has been scientifically proven to reduce my cold-feet-complaining by 73% which 100% of my family appreciates.

Controlling our expectations can be a little trickier. On one hand, if we are looking at that long range forecast and already mentally celebrating when temperatures appear to warm up in about ten days time, it’s hard not to be disappointed when – as we get closer – the temperatures not only remain chilly, they actually dip colder. On the other hand, during winter on the prairies, we can’t be generally shocked when we get long stretches of sub-zero temperatures.

One final thing we can control is our weather chit chat and that’s where things can get really complicated. If you say “cold enough for ya?” to someone who has cold-started that engine or searched for that heat gun or hooked up that generator or thawed that water line one too many times, you might find the conversation will heat up before you know it.

Tara writes a regular newspaper column about momming and ranching and a few things in between. Her family is proud to be a part of the beef industry and she enjoys sharing how they raise cattle on their farm and produce the beef that’s on your table. Come along and read about the western way of life… the good, the bad and the ugly!

We are smack dab in the midst of winter weather (of sorts). For many, it doesn’t matter if it’s raining, windy, snowing, or darn cold – you’re outside whether you like the weather or not. My winter outfits may not always be in vogue, but I will note that I have yet to lose my ears to frostbite, and on some wintry days, I would consider that a win. Here are a few of my fashion tips for those braving the elements this season:

1. Know your internal thermostat: I tend to like to be a little warmer than the average person. During the dog days of summer, I may actually be the only person you will find who is content with extremely hot temperatures. On the flip side, when the barometer drops in winter, I seem to feel colder than most. Also, I’m not sure if there’s any truth to this theory, but I have been informed that I am slightly less than pleasant to be around when I get cold and apparently I’m also less productive. Therefore, it is in my best interest (and the interests of my loved ones choring around me) if I dress a little warmer than the rest.

2. Invest in a few key pieces: Any good fashion magazine will insist that it is important to invest in a few key wardrobe pieces. When it comes to winter chore clothes, I wholeheartedly agree! This applies not just to myself, but our entire family. There is nothing like buying a brand new pair of coveralls and pulling them on that first really cold day or sending your kids off to school in brand new warm winter boots. Of course, investment pieces should last a lot longer than normal articles of clothing, but when the time comes and you have to replace them, just do it, no matter how costly it seems. Trust me, your warm, intact toes and fingers will thank you.

3. Layer up: My love for long underwear deserves a column to itself, however I will speak to the power of layers. Closely affiliated with my first rule, if other folks are happy wearing two layers, I definitely don’t set foot out the door unless I’ve donned three. The challenge with wearing more layers, however, involves a higher level of Layer Management. For every layer you add, it is essential to ensure layer compliance. While slightly time consuming, you will be happy that internal layers are tucked and hiked up where they should be, and external layers are loose and bulky where appropriate. The worst thing that can happen is a middle layer malfunction, leaving inside and outside layers pulling and tugging where they should not. While layered up, if one encounters such challenges as an urgent call of nature or the need to nimbly hop on a horse, do what I do – just don’t.

4. Tools of the Trade: Post-chore clothing administration has evolved. We now have one mitt warmer going strong in our porch at any given time and we also employ a boot drier. We seem to have an unspoken power struggle over the boot drier, and the winner is our oldest twin son. No matter what time of night or day I remove his warm and cozy boots from the drier (whether they need to be there or not!), he surreptitiously places them back on the warmer. He clearly has the honour of the toastiest toes of the family.

I am certainly not be the best person to obtain style advice from, but I have learned a lot about what not to wear when it comes to winter chores. I’ll always favour warmth and function over casual and cool culottes or whatever else is haute couture these days. In my humble opinion, warm is always on trend.

Spring is here, according to the calendar at least, and with the warmer weather comes everyone’s favourite season – tax time. After turning over a new leaf last year, I’m actually not terribly stressed with tax preparation for the past fiscal year. An odd turn of events, however, has me slightly preoccupied with the tax records from previous years…the past thirteen years to be precise. You see, it turns out that it’s not a fabulous idea to store large volumes of important papers in cardboard folders in a storeroom immediately adjacent to a bathroom with a toilet that has the potential to overflow with (thankfully) clean water. By the time the aforementioned water travels through such a storeroom, winding its way throughout ones basement before saturating ones feet in their office, those boxes of receipts have soaked up floodwater like a sponge.

A few days of fans and dehydration dried my boxes of papers fairly well, but I wasn’t interested in returning the records to their rightful spot without a little consolidating and waterproofing first. Going through all the boxes, I took out the extraneous papers and envelopes, stacked the invoices and receipts together and flattened and squished them until I fit several years’ worth of chronicles into a plastic lidded container.

I discovered that nothing triggers a trip down Memory Lane better than analysing how much our farm spent on what items and where. My records pre-date the very existence of our farm, which brings about interesting reminders of the fun and games we endured starting our operation and farmstead. I found souvenirs of milestones like our first land purchase and old receipts from tinning the barn roof at the site that went on to become our farm yard. There was even some fiscal evidence of romance, with a pattern of expenses incurred by my Other Half that followed the main route from southwest Saskatchewan up to Saskatoon consistently over a four year period. During this time, it appeared my Other Half took me out on some dates, or at least that’s what the paperwork suggests. I even found some receipts for flowers. The flowers might have died long ago, but he still has the darn bill to prove that they did actually exist.

I came across bills for horses, dogs and cattle that were bought and sold over the years. There were happy recollections of good animals that we had the privilege of having on our ranch, most of them adding value to our operation. I found a receipt for Spirit, a horse we once had, who was small but mighty, a nip-eared little filly who was fun to ride. There was a statement for Tuck, our tough old border collie we bought in the fall of ’05 to replace Bud, my husband’s steadfast companion. I came across a variety of invoices for cattle, including one from the fall of 2003 for a package of bred heifers, some of which are still in production around our place. Compared with the market at that time, those exact same critters are currently worth double what we paid for them eleven years ago. It’s still hard to wrap my head around the shift in the cattle market. I don’t know where livestock prices are going, but I sure know where they’ve been after assessing old weigh sheets, sales slips and market reports. I kind of like where they’re at now.

If I could offer anyone a small bit of tax advice this season, I would suggest you do yourself a favour and keep those important papers high and dry. And once that important precaution is taken, buy your beau some flowers. It might not be a write-off but it will still be worthwhile.

I enjoy this time of year. I’m not especially fond of the very cold temperatures, but I like the idea of a New Year with new adventures. Starting a fresh calendar. Opening up a new unspoiled day planner, enjoying those first weeks of coffee-spill-free planning, using pages that haven’t yet been ripped out for busy kids to scribble on to keep them… occupied.

Inevitably, everyone is in a self-reflective mood, looking back at the previous year, thinking about the future, resolving to lose weight, quit something-or-other, be better people, blah blah blah. I’m not really into resolutions, although last year around this time I did make the bold declaration that in 2013 I would get a dish washer. Mission accomplished, although it was installed just under the wire and it isn’t exactly a “resolution.” Members of my household would likely suggest this dishwasher may have made me slightly easier to live with, though, so perhaps it does fit into the self-improvement category.

Whether you have big things planned in 2014 or whether the year will come and go as status-quo (which is good too!), for many a cattle producer, 2014 will forever be associated with the letter “B.”

There is an International Letter Code that is assigned to each particular year, and it follows the alphabet. Except for when it doesn’t. So it’s pretty handy, but sort of confusing, and usually involves me mumbling a random reverse 22-letter cowboy alphabet, and counting my fingers. For pretty obvious reasons, letters such as “I,” “O” and “Q” are not used, as they look very similar to numbers. This becomes especially apparent, when ol’ Bessie runs down the chute and out the head gate without a backwards look at the patient data recorder who is left trying to determine if that was 24“I” or “two forty-one?” For similar reasons, the letter “V” is not used either, because who can really tell a “U” from a “V” at 800m away? Someone along the line made the smart call to eliminate these potential problems and any time a cattle handling marital “situation” can be prevented, it’s a good thing. Trust me and any ranch woman on the planet.

Some cattle producers use these letter codes and some do not, however most purebred breeders use this system. The code is internationally recognized and including it is essential when tattooing the ears of your registered livestock. We use this letter system for all calves born on our ranch, whether they are commercial, or registered purebred, because it works with our management system.

Everyone who uses the system can’t help but resonate strongly with certain calf crops and their corresponding letter. My (human) twin babies were born in the middle of calving season and coincidentally in the midst of many bovine twins, in the year X. I did not tattoo my children’s ears, however that is a popular question making me wonder what people actually think of my parenting skills. My youngest is a December baby, squeaking by to be a Z, but I think of her as an honorary A because she was a patient little baby through much of the time that our A calf crop was arriving. R is another special year for us because that is the first year that we calved out cows under our own registered prefix. Understandably, many ranchers get a little sentimental when they’ve come full circle (sometimes into the third or fourth circle!) and return to the letter they used for their first calf crop. And some ranchers remember certain letters that they would rather forget because they may have had a particularly challenging season or calf crop. All in all, the system is pretty handy, because it can quickly tell you if a female is a first-calf heifer, or an old crock, or if a bull has sired three or nine calf crops.

While everyone is ringing in the New Year, contemplating their personal resolutions and tactics for maintaining their new life-changing behaviours, know that for some ranchers, 2014 simply means that it’s a new year, and one that will be brought to you by the letter B.