Stampede!

      I knelt in the rain-softened earth, my mind filled with rivets and hold-downs, and wear plates, all things sickle.  I looked beneath the sickle bar and over the bar trying to find the friction point that caused the sickle to stick.

    It was a tedious and strenuous exercise.  The wear plate and hold-downs happen every foot along the bar.  The wear plate holds the sickle bar forward, while the hold-down keeps the sickle down on the ledger plates.    

    When the sickle section crosses over the leger plate, it snips through the straw of whatever crop is being harvested.   Having replaced the sickle sections (all 76 of them) and having worked the bar with new sections back through the sickle guards, I was adjusting and tightening the wear plates and the hold-downs. 

     Tighten one set of hold-down / wear plate, then try working the sickle back and forth to be sure things aren’t in a bind.  It’s a lot of up and down and craning the neck to see where things are rubbing against each other when the attempt to move the sickle back and forth either failed or was too hard.

     So there I was down on my knees looking for friction when I heard a strange noise.  At first, I thought it was a big truck or machine with a very good muffler.  I couldn’t hear the roar of the engine.  I could hear it thumping along over uneven ground, and a low unfamiliar hum.  

    I ducked down to peer under the combine header, but I could see nothing.  I got up to try to look over the header.  No luck with that.  So I moved to the end and away from the header entirely and then I saw it—about 100 black yearling steers headed through the yard.

     They were headed north, towards the wheat.  I jumped on the old golf cart and headed north in a futile effort to flank them and send them back south.  About half of them turned back, but the leaders were already into the wheat.

    I dismounted and headed into the wheat afoot.  I could see I would be unable to get far enough athwart of them to turn them, so back to the golf cart.  I traded it for the 4X4 and ventured out into the damp grass to drive the trailing bunch back towards the pasture before they decided to visit the wheat. 

       All the while I had been desperately dialing the neighbors on my cell phone to call for help.  Finally somebody answered.  I had a bunch of them getting close to the open pasture gate.  The steers had “opened” the gate by crowding against it till the gate post broke, enabling them to escape in the first place.

       In order to check the gate, I had to leave the herd, see that the gate was open, then get back on the north side of critters.  I had lost track of those in the wheat field.  Then I saw them.  They had gone all the way to the north side of the wheat and were helping themselves to the neighbors’ corn. 

      Neighborly came along in time to drive that bunch out of the cornfield and back towards the pasture.  Unfortunately, they went a second time through the east end of the wheat on their way home.

      As Neighborly brought the wheat invaders along, I had my bunch near the corner with the open gate.  They were hesitant and wouldn’t go the last thirty yards out of the CRP grass, through the gate and into the pasture.  They stood there, eyeing me, getting nervous, considering jumping the one-wire fence into another neighbor’s wheat. 

     So I backed off.  Two more helpers arrived.  Soon both herds were consolidated and the bovine sensed they had lost the battle.  Through the gate they rushed.  They finished off the gate post and took out the corner post as they all tried to be the first one through the opening at the same time. 

       The last two cowboys to arrive then went to work rebuilding the corner.  That was accomplished in fairly short order.  The gate was closed and that should have been the end of the story.

     But wait.  Earlier in the week, I had been thoroughly vetted by an inspector from the Colorado Department of Agriculture to determine if I had fulfilled the requirements to qualify the wheat crop (yes, the very same wheat in which the cattle had just taken a stroll) as organic.  The interview started at 9 a. m. and the inspector left after 2 p. m.       

       I learned a few things.  One thing I learned, there must be a ninety-day period between manure application and harvest.  We even took a trip down the line between the pasture and the summer fallow to be sure manure couldn’t run from the pasture into the crop (future crop in this case).

      Well, if you know anything about cattle, you know I had a recent manure application on my would-be organic wheat.  What to do?  Pretend it didn’t happen?  Couldn’t do that. 

    I put in a call to the head organic lady at CDA.  She, not a secretary, answered after the second ring.  I told her briefly what happened.

      “How many cattle?” she wanted to know first.

      “Thirty or so.”  Well, maybe a few more.

      “How long were they in there?”

     “Thirty or minutes or less.”

     “Oh,” she said.  “That’s not so bad.  If it were three days, that would be different.  I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

     A sigh of relief.  In my head I had calculated, July 1^st, August 1^st, September 1^st, October 1^st.

The calculation disappeared.  Maybe the closing of the gate would be the end of the renegade cattle affair after all.

      It won’t be the end of my organic worries, I’m sure.  The sickle awaits my attention.