Spring Fever | The WRCA Blog

After two-and-a-half months of wearing a Scotch cap “flaps down,” we’re entering the phase in my neck of the woods where you still better be wearing your cap—but the flaps can be up for most of the day.

I’m fully aware that cow culture in the northern tier is still flaps down all day. In fact, a friend near Billings, Montana, reported that there’s four feet of snow on the level, and cows are being fed in plowed-off lanes. Some of the wise old mothers are seeing more benefit from the alfalfa as bedding rather than fuel. Ah the price of grass in the summer!

Meanwhile, in the South and Southwest, many of my friends don’t even own Scotch caps. Their biggest fear, as the grass is cured and the winds pick up, is fire. And that’s no joke. Ah, the price of never having to buy hay for cows!

But at my house, on the divide between the Platte and Arkansas Rivers, the weather is in its neurotic phase. We’ll see a cold snap with temperatures staying below freezing for a few days followed by winds (always winds) and 60-degree highs.

Not having an indoor arena, we don’t get the horses out much for the first couple months of the winter—so when we do get a Chinook, and the arena thaws and then dries out, we usually have just a day or two to get horseback before the next Arctic blast hits. Those are the times we remember why we live this lifestyle.

Plus, the days are beginning to get noticeably longer. We can get chores done in the daylight and the kids can be outside—if only briefly—in the evenings after school. Just yesterday I saw a flock of geese headed north. All those signs are working together to give me a serious case of spring fever and bringing to mind all the fun parts of the cowboy lifestyle that are just around the corner: turning out squirrelly yearlings to grass, branding calves, and ranch rodeos.

Driving through cow country recently, I saw a handful of new babies on the ground. Getting closer, I recognized the brand on the mothers as the contractor’s who provides cows to one of the WRCA qualifying ranch rodeos in my area. My mind immediately jumped to assessing their temperament and quirks so our ranch rodeo team would have an advantage if we drew one of them in the wild cow milking! Yeah, like I could figure all that out as I drove by at 65 miles an hour and remember it come August. But with the impending emergence of spring, that’s all I could think about. After a long winter, it’s nice to have something to look forward to.