Sky is overcast. I cannot see the sun, and there is a heavy of humidity absent for many days—portend of a storm to come.
The cicadas swell and wane in crescendo song. I sit beneath a sycamore—broad leaves and balls still in summer green.
I watch my son practice football. Between plays, I read a Walker Percy novel—and write this thought.
I am relaxed, at ease, lazy in that last of summer way before full-go of autumn harvest.
We worked calves today, and it feels good to be done with the chore; to have them weaned, lotted, and growing.
I bought a bull today—a red beauty of a beast from my uncle whose herd is mostly black. Somewhere in his lineage, he returned to a version of a pale-red, short, slick-hided Gelbvieh ancestor. At the sale barn where my uncle sells, they’d cut him out on account of color, sell him at a steep discount (probably to themselves) knowing, as I or any cattleman watching him for more than a week, he is the best animal in the herd). My grandfather has a mantra, “All cattlemen are crooks,” and with that consideration, we are farmers that have cows (I don’t even know if I am that—I am a writer that makes a livelihood from cows).
He’ll be an outcross to everything in my herd—and will make great cows (the industry—whatever the “industry” is will always promote “terminal” traits for maximum profitability. Such profits, end the end, are always for the profit of another, never the one who is courted and buys into another’s system. Breed for cows—no matter how profitable the “terminal” traits, there is nothing to sell if the cow doesn’t breed).
There was something in the news yesterday. The first known presence of a new “novel screwworm” from Central and South America in, of all places, Maryland. This fly is the reason cattle prices have hit all-time highs as there are zero imports in all beef where the screwworm is known to exist.
Location of the worm and fly, in America, would suggest it was a government researcher going to study, for the sake of bio-security, the very fly he brought home. It goes to show, we manifest what we devote our time and energies—even when entryway to a nightmare. It also goes to show, experts at something “new” are not experts and should not be trusted or empowered on faith—they don’t know any more than you do about what it is they claim the present-day title of “expert” which history will likely revise to “idiot.”
I read my book. I watch tackling drills. My eyes cake over of the residual dirt of being in cattle all day.
A blur runs by. I hear my son’s laugh. He is racing his coat, and by sound and read of white teeth through bearded face—both are smiling and having fun.
I have no answers to worries or troubles. I am just an observer. Much is wrong—but much is good. I give focus to the last.
We manifest to what we devote our time and mind and energy. There’s enough bad, enough giving it their spirit and drain. I’ll give mine to the good.
It’s the only way the better grows.