A Day In The Life of a Ranch Hand During Calving Season: Part I – Night Checks

11:50 PM: I groan as I roll over to shut off the alarm on my phone, playing music way too cheery for this tired young lady after only 2 hours of sleep. I rub my tired eyes as I sit up out of my warm bed, exposing my bare arms to the cold air that fills the room from the cracked window. I quickly bear crawl around the room, grabbing the barn clothes I left out just for moments like this. When I’m fully dressed in sweatpants, sweatshirt, Carhart jacket, stocking cap, gloves, and my all-important Muck Boots, I grab my flash light, bracing myself for the cold that awaits, I close my eyes behind my glasses and head outside to the barn next door.

12:00 AM: I walk into the corral to find the heifers all comfortably laying down in the clean straw. Careful to not wake them, I walk around the edge of the corral, checking to see if anyone has started labor. Most night checks, I simply find sleeping heifers, but tonight, I hear grunting coming from inside the barn. As I head inside, I spot a heifer lying on her side with two little feet coming out of her. Since I have seen both front feet and they are coming out pointing up, I know all is good so far. I head back into the house and will check on her in thirty minutes.

12:30 AM: As I am walking up to the barn, I hear a low bawl and I know that she has calved because she must be talking to her baby, it’s a different kind of bawl than normal. I walk in and see the heifer standing over her baby, licking it clean and talking to it. All is in order and Mom is doing her job, so I leave them to be until the next check in an hour and a half.

The night goes on like this for the next 7 hours, someone checking every two hours between my fiancé and I. We have been doing this now for a month and a half, but oddly enough, even though we are tired, there is still nothing more precious than a happy, healthy calf, wobbling over to mom to get its first milk. We love what we do and I’m not sharing a day in the life of a ranch hand to get your sympathy, I just think it is important to share our story and let people understand what happens on farms and ranches, day in and day out. Then all my friends back in the Twin Cities and beyond can see what it means to live on a ranch in McLaughlin, SD.

One Love, One Passion, Every Day

            “I don’t have a heart of steel,” my fiancé, Nick, said to me as we carried a stillborn calf out of the pen. I had been thinking the same thing, but I just wanted to put the calf where it belonged and keep working, not thinking about the sad situation. Later that same day I watched as he carried a beautiful, healthy, little calf inside to clean and warm her up. We bathed her, fed her, got her on her feet, and back with her mom in just a couple hours. Watching him smile as she started to get feisty and we knew she was going to be okay, made my heart so happy. There’s no faster way to a farm girl’s heart than through the cows.

Nick and I with the new mama and baby.

            The first time we danced together almost three years ago, he told me that his dream was to have thousands of cows some day. I was smitten from that moment on. There is nothing more precious than being able to look into your partner’s eyes and know that the same fire that fuels your soul, burns inside of them as well. I thank God every day that he gave me a man to work side by side with, day in and day out, growing our passions together in support of our common goal to one day have our own farm and feed the world one happy cow and healthy field at a time.