The Seasons of Farming

By Kosha Olsen (guest blogger)

Having grown up on a farm I associate the change of seasons not so much by changing landscapes, but a change in daily activities.

As each season began to show its face at our farm in southeastern Wyoming, my siblings and I always had something, season specific, you might say, that we looked forward to.

For example - summer brought wheat harvest. That hot, dry, season made up of long days packed with swollen hours and more things to worry about than time in which to get them done. But for my siblings and me, it was so much carefree fun. We rode high, on top of wheat mounds, in old trucks, on gravel roads. We helped mom deliver meals to the field, hopping ungainly over strips and piles of prickly stubble to catch up with the combine and its driver. Around and around in the dusty cab we rode, perched and bouncing on the springy arm of the driver’s seat, pressing against the window to avoid the muscled arm of my father as he turned the machine around sharp and lined up for another row.

Fall often meant bonfires, cleaning up behind summer’s busy wake. Mom would take to task the farmyard raking, gathering until she built the perfect bonfire in want of a flame. After the fire was spent and sat smoldering, we’d load long sticks and pitchforks with hotdogs and marshmallows, and toast them to perfection.

But ah, winter.

Winter was moving cows, constructing wind breaks, and readying the farm yard nursery for calving season. Neither watching the road rumble by from the top of a wheat truck, nor the snap of a bonfire could compare to the thrill of perching on hay bales in the haymow, peering down at the barn floor, and waiting for a baby calf.

The cow would lie down, stand up, flip her tail, while we warmed our hands, scooted closer to each other on our hay bale pews, and tightened our scarves to stay warm. The most patient among the watchers had the routine down - the pacing, the pushing, then the feet, the nose, and eventually the calf lay dark and slick in the straw, steam raising into the cold air of the barn. The really patient among us got to see the calf nose dive and stumble his way to standing and first steps. Seeing a baby calf born meant our farm year was complete.

We calve in the winter, and often there are extended family members around to help (?) with the process.  This photo is of my brother pulling a calf with several "assistants" lending a hand.  That poor mother cow! :)

Then spring would come, and those calves would race each other through the pastures, their little tails flipping. The big day of branding will come and go, the prairies would tint to green, and hopefully we’d get some rain.

Spring, with its fresh face shining- reminding us again why we live and work on Wyoming’s high prairies.

Kosha Olson nominated her mother as Farm Mom of the Year in 2011. Her mother, Bette Lu Lerwick, won the Northeast region Farm Mom title and went on to win the title of National Farm Mom of the year. Read Kosha's essay nomination.