Pastures

Wildwood Flower; June Carter Cash

We had five pastures on our farm. Dad kept the first-year heifers on a long strip of grass southeast of the barn. After their year-long probation, they joined the larger herd of cows in the four separate pastures to the north and east of the trees surrounding our farm. A charming, half-mile long lane separated two of the cornfields and served as kind of a bovine boulevard, leading from the cattle yard around the barn to, first, one pasture, to the right, and then one more at its end. The far side of the second pasture granted access to a third pasture, and the far east end of the third pasture led to a fourth.

Our farm had a well. It provided water for our house, via a cistern. It also provided water for the cows. Whoever spent the day around the house in the summer time received the task of keeping the stock tanks full of water. The pump had a switch under the windmill and by virtue of a complicated network of hoses, pipes and valves, we transported water to the stock tanks. We had one on the south side of the barn for the heifers, one on the north side for the bulls, and two on the northeast side for the cows and calves. If the cows grazed in the first of the three pastures, the cows ambled down the lane to drink from the tank in the cattle yard.

Make no mistake; the water from the well was cold. Despite the rogue one hundred degree temperature day, the water in the tanks stayed very cool. So much so, that Dad kept his cans of beer in the tanks.

I swear, one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever held down was the one to remember to shut off the water pump so that the tank didn’t run over. The ability to focus on a long-term, time sensitive mission at twelve to sixteen years of age provides the basis for one of the greatest hit-or-miss challenges in human history. I “missed” sooooooooo many times. Sometimes the cows stood in a foot of mud to drink from the tank because I forgot to shut off the pump. Dad would get so mad.

If I were a cow, back when we lived on the farm, I would have spent my winters and springs looking forward to the day in late June when Farmer Glen opened up the gate to the fourth pasture. It sat on a rise in the middle of the section where the breezes blow and you could see for miles. Surrounded on all sides by fields, away from the paparazzi and those rude cows two farms over, it offered all the privacy a cow could require. And best of all … a stock pond. No longer would I have to depend on those forgetful kids. Cow self-sufficiency; there ain’t nothing like it.

At least twice a day, Dad checked the cows. Where’s the bull, any injuries, any diseases, how many calves, how many cows, is the fence intact, any guest cows? Et Cetera. Sometimes, while he was there, he hunted pocket gophers. Sometimes, he mended a fence. But, I think, mostly, he just sat for a little while and relished a few quiet moments out in the country. His country.

For as long as I can remember, Dad would get up early on his birthday, jump in the pickup and drive out to the fourth pasture to check on the cows. While he was there, he would look for wild tiger lilies. Once he found some, he picked them and took them home to Mom for his birthday.

The countryside may not have the din of the city or the sounds of urban life, but you won’t find silence. The prairie wind, the leaves in the trees and the grain stalks in the fields that sway in the breeze, the birds, the lowing of the cattle and the farm machinery working the land all contribute to a different kind of pastoral symphony.

Not all tractors sound the same, and I suppose that a true tractor connoisseur would learn to discern which farmer is on what tractor in which field simply by listening. My mom, my sisters and I, however, listened for something else: singing. Dad’s singing could be heard above the sound of the tractor at a distance of three quarters of a mile away. Typically, it was the same song, marked as the default setting in his song preferences. No words, just pure bluegrass melody. Ask him to sing and the first sound out of his mouth would be this song.

He once told me that it was called “The Mountain Wild Flower”. I searched for it for years with no success. But I found it … in the movie “Walk The Line”. Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash sings sad words, that I’ve never heard, to a gentle, simple melody that hung around our Dad’s voice like a halo. “The Wildwood Flower” sounds just as good with a piano accompaniment as it does with tractor accompaniment. It sits in a place of honor on my iPod.

Credits: To Dad, on what would have been his eightieth birthday. For the fourteenth consecutive year, the wild tiger lilies remain untouched in Paradise Pasture near Bruce, South Dakota. We love you. We miss you.