Thank God I’m a Country Boy

Thank God I’m a Country Boy

“Well, life on the farm is kinda laid back
Ain't much an old country boy like me can't hack
It's early to rise, early in the sack
Thank God, I'm A Country Boy”

John Denver 1974

Since I returned to Georgia from Alaska I have been living in the North Georgia Mountains close to Helen, Georgia.  My neighbor Jim has a farm with many “big boy toys” to use and work around the farm.  There is a bull dozer, backhoe, and several tractors for doing things like taking hay bales to feed his cattle.  The bull dozer and back hoe for digging and building water ponds for the cattle and an old army deuce and a half dump truck for carrying and moving things on the property.

I’ve written previously about his chickens and several predators that were killing his chickens and the couple of videos catching and releasing them in the mountains.  He did have to kill one coyote that kept coming back and stealing/eating his chickens and rooster.

I have not had a chance to write this story until now as it happened last spring when his cows were having their calves born all over his farmland.  I had just gone to bed when I received a call from Jim that one of his cows was having a tough time delivering her calf and would I come over to help him.  This was around midnight and it was storming outside with the springtime thunderstorms rolling through the mountains of north Georgia.

I told him ok and proceeded to get dressed, found and put on some rain gear and headed over to help him with his cow.  Jim has an old Jeep (no doors) that he uses along with a four wheel ATV to check fences and haul gear around the farm so we loaded up some of the items we would need, ropes, water, full length arm gloves, and flashlights/lantern.  We headed into one of his pastures and drove up the hill to where many head of cattle were milling around agitated and mooing like crazy.  I think they could sense something was wrong and were alerting Jim to the problem.

We find the distressed cow away from the other ones about twenty yards almost on the crest of the hill.  Jim approaches her and proceeds to put a lasso around her neck and tied it to a tree to keep her in place while we began to look at the problem.  We turn the Jeep so the headlights are helping to light the area so we can see along with a lantern but remember it is pouring rain, lightning going off about every forty five seconds so it was not easy to see what was going on at the time.    

We get the cow situated with her head tied close to the tree and as she moved around we wrapped the rope around her back leg and cinched it close to the tree as well so she could not move around as much.  Jim gets out his long arm length glove and proceeds to put his arm up inside the cow finding the calf was turned around which was having a breech birth.  The cow was not too happy with Jim’s arm up inside her so she proceeded to lay down almost breaking Jim’s arm and shoulder.  After a few tries to turn the calf around to no success it was decided that we would wait until mornings light and hopefully the storm passing to come back and try again.  Jim pulls off his long glove; we release the cow and head off into the stormy night.

The next morning Jim calls around seven and asks if I’m ready to help him once again and shouldn’t take but an hour or so.  It is still lightly drizzling rain so I gear up and head over the hill to his barn.  We grab an ATV and load the tools once again along with a large bucket of water and make our way back into one of the back pastures and up on the hill.  The other cows are there across the fence still agitated and making a lot of noise.  We find a cow standing alone about where we left her last night looking tired and exhausted, much like we were that morning.

Jim goes and again puts the lasso around her neck and leg securing it to the tree while the cow is mooing, moving around and does not seem to like what we were or about to do.  Jim once again gloves up and proceeds to try to put his arm up inside her once again.  The cow is not having any of this today looking at us, moving wildly back and forth and just not wanting to have anything to do with us.  Jim makes several attempts and once again the cow lies down next to the tree, seemingly too exhausted to move.

Jim and I discuss the options which were: 1. Get his trailer, take the cow to the slaughter house for food.  (We had taken the wood boards out of the trailer to put in new wood so that was not really an option but was discussed) 2. Keep trying to turn the calf around so it could deliver. 3. Let Mother Nature take its course as the cow was going to probably die anyway.  We decided on the third option but were going to go back to the barn and get the cow some food and more water to make her comfortable.  We headed down the hill back to the barn to get the feed and water and after about ten minutes headed back up the hill.

We go back to where we left the cow lying on the ground.  The cow is nowhere to be seen.  We start looking down one side of the hill then another and another.  No cow.  Jim flatly states, “It was dark and rainy last night was that the same cow as last night?  The color this morning did it seem different?”  We continue our search for another ten minutes but no cow and come to the conclusion that this morning’s cow was not the same one as the night before.  We both cracked up laughing about the reaction this morning’s cow had to Jim trying to stick his arm up inside her and were not having anything to do with either of us.  They both were in the same area and we laughed that it was dark, rainy, and in the light of the Jeep’s headlights that they appeared to be the same cow.  It was not and the second cow had beat feet and ran away from the two crazy men trying to assault her rear end.

We continued our search for either cow on the hillside and shortly found the distressed cow dead next to a fallen log partway down the hill toward another pasture.  She was almost hidden until you were very close to her.  We spent the better part over four hours getting the backhoe and tractor from the barn to dig a large hole in one of the fields to bury the cow.  Jim started digging the hole while I took the tractor and rope to bring her down the hill to be buried.  Once the cow was properly taken care of we still had to take an animal that we had caught overnight who had been eating the chickens up on a mountainside away from town to let it loose back into the wild.

We realized we had not had anything for breakfast or lunch and were both quite hungry and as Jim dropped me back off laughed that his request for me to help him for a couple hours had turned into an all-day affair but we got the job done.  And the second cow, it was two days before we saw her again.

Thanks God I’m a Country Boy!

Ice