Plans

Everybody has days where nothing goes like you planned it.

Days that go something like this: You plan to feed cattle, do chores, sort heifers and haul wood. So you wake up early to find that the weatherman was wrong again. It doesn’t matter. You’ve still got all that stuff to do. You stomp out into the snow, get in the feed truck and … it won’t start. The key was left on. So you use the tractor to jump it. When it’s running, you go feed cows and stop to bust ice. You reach for the shovel that’s always tied to the headache rack. It’s not there. Somehow that shovel must have rattled out the back.

After you break ice with a big rock and get soaking wet, you head back to start your other work. On the way, you notice a heifer calving and it looks like she needs help. So instead of doing the other chores, you catch your good horse and go to get the heifer.

When you get there, you see that the calf’s hung up. There’s no time… you throw a rope around the heifer’s neck and tie her to a tree. You aren’t carrying anything but a piggin’ string, so you’ll have to use that. After striving and straining and using all your strength, you get that baby on the ground. But when you turn the cow loose to tend to it, she gives up on motherhood and takes off.

You load the wet baby up on your ‘good’ horse, who just decided he’d rather be a bronc. It’s a long way to the house. Once you get Baby on the porch, you go back after Momma.

By evening, she’s in the corral. With her hobbled and in the chute, you are doing everything short of swallowing the milk to get Baby to eat. When the pair is squared away, you do the other chores and go to the house. But there’s no wood, and that means no fire…

I guess what matters is not what you planned, but how you handled what came at you that day. Without days like this, how would we ever know what we’re made of?