Paul Marchant

I was enjoying a dandy start to the new year. January was like a heavenly dream. We’d had some snow and a couple of cold stretches in late December, but the first few weeks of the year felt more like April than January.

I was having a discussion with Audrey the other day. I consider her kind of a kindred spirit, since she’s a farm girl turned journalist/editor who, like my wife, hails from a small-town dairy farm.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me well, but I was running late. I had to make the 230-mile drive to the Salt Lake airport to catch a flight to Dallas on my way to Tulsa.

We finally had most of the calves weaned. As a matter of fact, on the late October day when we gathered the bulk of the cows to pull the calves, you couldn’t have asked for better weather. After a two-week stretch where we’d seen the temperatures dip into the teens, we were experiencing some unusually nice weather.

I spent a few days around Springfield, Missouri, this fall, and although I was a couple weeks too early to take in the spectacular scenery of the beautiful autumn colors the Ozarks annually offer up, I was somehow caught up in the spirit of the Shepherd of the Hills.

I’ve never been particularly fond of birds of any sort. Really, there’s nothing pleasant about a mess of nasty starlings or pigeons nesting in the eaves of the calving shed or devouring the silage pile. It’s the bird world’s answer to rodents – pure avian avarice.