The West Pasture

In the 1950s when I was a kid, my dad owned several acres of pastureland about 3 miles west of our farm place. The terrain there was deep canyons and steep trails that he would drive our old pickup across, up and down and around to check the windmill and cattle. We liked to ride with him and thought it was exciting to have to gear down and spin the tires to get the last bit of the way up a steep bank.

The fence on the west divided our pasture from Ern Workman's and on the east side, up on the 'top' was Charles Workman's field. I don't know who owned the land on the north, but the road (now called BB) was on the south.

I always loved that pasture because of its rugged gullies and hidden canyons with chokecherry and dogwood bushes providing hiding places for the cows and calves. My dad told us there was in Indian grave over there and Dick and I always wanted to find it, but never could (mostly because we didn't really know what we were looking for and it might have been an "entertaining story" that someone had begun). We did find arrow heads and petrified wood there though.

Since this pasture was separate from our other land and dad would put several head of cattle over there in the spring, we would "drive" them down the road for those three miles to get them from the home place to this pasture. Usually, Momma would drive the pickup ahead and block side roads so the cattle would keep going the right direction. Dick, Daddy, Leah and I would ride horses and "herd" the cattle along, keeping them out of the ditches and from going out into unfenced fields. Eunice was too little to help and Leone probably stayed home to read a book. (haha - not really - we all had to help, but she didn't like to ride horses).

In the fall when it was time to take the calves to the sale, we would load them in the truck in the corner of the pasture that was somewhat flat and we had a loading ramp and pen. Then we would drive the "mammas" back to the home place for the winter, where we fed them hay from stacks that we baled and built into square stacks and silage that had been chopped and dumped into the silage pit east of the barn.

--Editor