The Long Winter

 We've lived in town for nearly 30 years, moving from the ranch in January 1992. It was a big change for Mike, but for me I was just moving back to where I came from. 

I was raised in town and had zero, as in ZERO, idea of what ranching was all about. My dad was a mechanic who did lots of work for area farmers and ranchers, so we owed our financial existence to agriculture, but as for getting any hands on experience, I had none. In fact, I was so ignorant of cattle and ranching that Mike had to explain the differences between cows, heifers, bulls and steers. I had been under the assumption that heifers and Herefords were different pronunciations of the same thing...whatever that was! So it took me a bit to straighten out genders and breeds and get used to whatever went on in ranching.

So when we got married and I moved to the ranch, it was interesting, to say the least. We had little kids and I didn't work outside a lot in those earlier years, but as every farm wife knows, it's not unusual to be called outside to help with a something "for just a few minutes". 

Eventually, as the kids got older, I got out and worked beside Mike more. I could go into detail about sorting cattle together but no one would ever think the same of us again. It seems that it brought out the worst in both of us. We tried to avoid doing that unless he absolutely couldn't find anyone else to help him, then I had to get involved! We'll avoid the details of how that went!

In the case of working cattle, communication was never an issue. We heard each other loud and clear, hoping the neighbors didn't hear us. But when you are operating machinery, verbal communication isn't possible unless you are going to shut down the tractor and hear what needs to be said. So Mike always depended on hand signals! Every ranch wife knows how this goes! Somehow I was supposed to make sense of his waving and weird hand gestures, and it seems like I never got the message. 

There is one incident that stands out above the rest, mostly because of it's disastrous results. Nearly 40 years later, it's kind of funny but at the time neither of us was laughing.

It was one cold miserable winter that year. Pretty sure it was January of 1984, and if you remember that year you will remember how much snow and cold we had had that winter. It was sub-zero for weeks on end, and the roads were closed and were no longer able to be plowed open so we were traveling through paths in the pasture. And, of course, nothing ever wanted to start in that cold.

This particular day, no vehicle would start, the tractor was the only thing that was running. So Mike figured we could get the pickup going by pulling it. Just the mention of pulling a vehicle struck fear in my heart because it seems that process never went well for me. But we needed something to run so I bravely crawled into the tractor to pull the pickup. Mike gave me specific instructions and crawled into the pickup so he could "pop the clutch" and hopefully it would start. 

I slowly moved forward to tighten the chain, then took off to hopefully get up to a speed the pickup would start. Shortly I got the hand signal that the pickup was started so I stopped. As he was still sitting in the pickup he gave me another hand signal that looked to me like he wanted me to take off again. "Must not have started," I thought! So as I was easing off the clutch, my foot slipped off and I lurched forward taking the front bumper and grill guard with me. Oops! Didn't mean for that to happen.

I just stopped and put my head down knowing that this wasn't going to end well. When I looked up Mike was out of the pickup and headed my way, and I was having no trouble figuring out what his hand gestures were meaning at that point! (I could also read his lips!) Turns out what I interpreted as an order to take off again actually meant "throttle down". Not exactly sure how I was supposed to have figured that out! I think it would be a beneficial part of marriage counseling for couples planning to farm or ranch together for a manual of universal hand signals to be included. 

I could go one for hours about some of our experiences trying to work together on the ranch. And I know every ranch wife has her own set of stories that are a lot funnier now than they were at the time. As I've talked with other women, many of the same stories are told. But one thing I've also observed, most of those farm and ranch couples have learned to be team. We learned to work together under some of the most stressful conditions so that now working together on a renovation project or something at the wood shop is pretty easy compared to ranching together. And it definitely helps that we can actually communicate by words rather than hand signals!