Why We Get Up Early

Now that I’m away from the ranch and have a four-day respite from getting up at the crack of dawn, I have enough distance from the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth that I can actually take the time to answer a question I’m often asked, which is this:

“Why in the name of all that is good and holy do you guys have to get up so early?”

Incidentally, this question is usually in the same vein as another question—one I used to ask before I was yanked from my life in civilization and plunked into a pasture full of cow patties:

“Why do cowboys wear chaps?”

Before I met Marlboro Man, I used to think cowboys wore chaps to show off and look like cowboys. I think I actually resented it. It would keep me awake at night and cause me to stew. I thought it was just one of those things that cowboys did because they were cowboys and they wanted to look the part and make girls swoon and perspire.

I thought wrong.

I stewed wrong.

Here’s an older post here that explains what I found out, and then I’ll move into the getting-up-early part.

The Difference Between Chaps and Chinks – November 2007

So, why do cowboys choose to wear chaps (or chinks) over their jeans in the first place? To look cool? To play the part of a cowboy? To make women swoon? I once thought so. But what I’ve found in the course of my reporting is that there are actually many, very practical reasons for a cowboy to wear chaps.

1. The tough leather serves as a substantial layer of protection while riding horseback through brushy (read: stickerbush-heavy) areas of the ranch.

2. In the cattle pen, when it comes to wrestling energetic calves to the ground, it’s nice to have a thick piece of leather between the calves’ kicking legs and your leg, as denim jeans don’t serve as much of a buffer.

3. In cold, windy weather, the leather from the chaps serves as an added layer of warmth.

4. Chaps protect jeans from excessive filth.

Allow Marlboro Man to demonstrate.

I love it when Marlboro Man demonstrates.

You’ll see that Cowboy Lynn, above left, is wearing chaps. Marlboro Man, right, is not wearing chaps. Cowboy Lynn’s wife will kiss him when he walks in the door. Marlboro Man’s wife (that’s me) will begin weeping. Then she’ll kiss her container of Tide. And her front-loading washing machine.

And okay, then she’ll kiss Marlboro Man. But that’s outside the scope of today’s post.

Now, the decision of whether to wear chaps (left) or chinks (right) usually boils down to personal preference. As you can see, chaps run the entire length of the leg—from hip to ankle—which can make them considerably more constricting. Chinks, on the other hand, stop at or below the knee, allowing for freer movement. Chaps, in colder weather, provide more warmth than chinks; chinks, in warm weather, stay cooler than their full-length counterparts.

Here, Marlboro Man and My Pesky Brother-in-Law, Tim, are both wearing chinks.

They’re wearing chinks here, too.

They’re wearing chinks here, too.

And now for the untold story.

This is what chaps are all about.

And don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

Okay, so that settles the whole chaps question. Aren’t you glad you have me to provide this level of in-depth reporting?

Aren’t you glad you have me to show you photos of my husband’s bottom?

Never mind. Don’t answer that.

So we only have one question yet unresolved:

 

Why do we get up so early, particularly in the summer months?

It’s a very valid question. Why do I wake up at 4:00 in the morning, then cry, the wake up four young children, help them get dressed, and send them out the door into the pitch black of night?

Who would do such a thing?

Is it to teach them a strong work ethic? Keep them out of trouble?

Is it so we can feel ahead of the rest of the world (except for everybody east of us) by getting up at an ungodly hour?

Is it so I can get on my blog and write about what a hellhole this life is?

NO to all of the above!

 

Here’s why we get up.

We get up very, very early to work cattle in the summertime because the heat is hard on the cattle.

Our ranch is in Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, tornadoes go blowing across the pastures, snow and ice rear their ugly heads in the winter, and summer can be unbearably hot. Oppressive. Hades-like.

Honestly, the past two weeks on the ranch have been absolutely untenable, if untenable can be used to describe weather conditions. The air conditioning in our house can’t even keep up; the sun is roasting it from the outside in. My garden is shriveling before my eyes; I can’t water enough to keep the hot wind from frying the foliage.

Still, despite the heat of the summer, the work of the ranch must continue. But in order to make it as easy on the cattle and cowboys as possible, we get up when it’s technically still nighttime. That way, by the time the cattle have been gathered into the pens, there are still the first couple of hours of daylight when the temperature is still tolerable. When it gets very hot, the cattle are uncomfortable, then they’re liable to act a little wilder and crankier, and they’re liable to run over the cowboys, which makes the cowboys uncomfortable, which makes the cowboys more liable to act a little wilder and crankier, then the whole thing starts to spiral downward and before you know it the cattle pen is one hot mess of a bad mood. You know the phenomenon that crime rates increase as the temperature increases? That’s sort of how it is on the ranch.

Heat is hard on cattle, not the least of which is the little-known fact (did you know this?) that cattle don’t sweat. They don’t have functioning sweat glands like their equine counterparts, who, after a morning of working in the heat, are drenched with perspiration. The only way for cattle to cool off is through their mouths and (I think) their noses, but please consult a large animal vet for verification of this bizarre fact. All I know is, when cattle get hot, they just can’t cool themselves off like the rest of us can. This is why for the past week, most of our cattle have remained parked close to our ponds; it’s not unusual to find them parked right in the water, keeping themselves as cool as possible.

This is also why we give thanks to God for every drop of rain that fills our ponds in the spring and early summer. Without it, we’d be in serious trouble.

When we work cattle, as I’ve shown you many times, we (and I’m using the term “we” as loosely as ever here) gather the cattle on horseback and take them to a large working pen, where we keep them until all of them have been worked. “Working cattle” can refer to branding, vaccinating, and castrating, or—as has been the case over the past two weeks, weaning calves and preg-testing cows. (Don’t click on the latter if you have a weak stomach.) Often, there are anywhere from 100 to 300 head of cattle at each working. If we piled all the cattle into the pen and kept them there for hours in the middle of the hot day—or even late in the morning during weather like this—they wouldn’t do very well. The heat of the day alone would be unbearable, but the combined body heat of the cattle themselves would also be too much.

 

So that’s the skinny, my friends. We get up at four in the morning not to get our jollies or keep our kids out of trouble because they’re passed out by 7 pm. We get up early so that we can work before the mid-day heat moves in.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.