Country Lifestyles
Cowboy Culture
By Clay Reid
In my business as a cowboy and ranch manager, there are many other titles that you get to wear sometimes. Welder, electrician, plumber and the list goes on and on. A man has to be pretty dang diverse in this line of work or he ain’t gonna last long. Above all else his number one title is the shepherd of his flock, and to be a good shepherd he must be able to heal them when they need mending.
That means when they get sick you cure them. When they break it you fix it. When they cut it you sew it. And then there will be the time when a new mama will need assistance in bringing new life into the world.
This ain’t always a cowboy’s most favorite thing to do, because usually when a cow decides to do it is in the middle of the night on the coldest night of the year. It’s never in the middle of a 75 degree day. Oh, no, it’s God’s way of poking fun at a dumb cowboy. Sometimes he goes a little overboard on the funning and this is where my story begins.
25 years ago, me and my practice wife was living over in Archer City. I was doing my second tour working for a drilling company and trying to keep the wolves from scratching at the door. We had a little boy named Jake who was a year-and-a-half old, but I always wanted a little girl. You know the one—they always talk about “Daddy’s girl.”
To read more pick up a copy of the November 2016 NTFR issue.
By Martha Crump
That old adage, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.,” may have some basis in truth when applied to minor situations. However, when what you don’t know is presented in the form of a “Trojan Horse” and is what amounts to an incredible attempt to fleece American property rights, it becomes a different story altogether.
To put this unbelievable tale together, we need to step back to Joe Biden’s 2021 Executive Order which pledged commitment to help restore balance on public lands and waters, to create jobs, and to provide a path to align the management of America’s public lands and waters with our nation’s climate, conservation, and clean energy goals.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
By Lacey Vilhauer
Ingredients:
1 whole lemon, seeded and roughly chopped
2 cups sugar
2 pounds strawberries, hulled
Juice of 1 to 2 lemons
¼ cup water
Directions:
Place the chopped lemon and sugar in a food processor and pulse until combined. Transfer to a large bowl. Puree the strawberries in a food processor and add to the lemon mixture along with juice of one lemon and water. Taste and add more juice as desired.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
By Nicholas Waters
As winter plods along – come Spring and gopher mounds – homeowners and farmers find themselves playing a familiar song – fiddling while Rome is burning.
Let’s make a mountain out of a molehill. Those mounds on your lawn and pasture could be moles, but they’re more than likely gophers; Plains Pocket Gophers to be pragmatic – Geomys bursarius to be scientific.
These rodents dig and chew, and the damage they can do goes beyond the mounds we mow over. Iowa State University cited a study in Nebraska showing a 35 percent loss in irrigated alfalfa fields due to the presence of pocket gophers; the number jumped to 46 percent in decreased production of non-irrigated alfalfa fields.
The internet is replete with academic research from coast-to-coast on how to curtail gopher populations, or at least control them. Kansas State University – then called Kansas State Agricultural College – also published a book [Bulletin 152] in February 1908 focused exclusively on the pocket gopher.
To read more, pick up a copy of the April issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
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