I think it's a little early to tell what the economic impact will be. This year our cattle prices have been particularly high. The demand for beef has remained strong in this country, even though there was the single find in Canada earlier this year.
I grew up in central Florida in the nineteen-sixties, barefoot half the time and running around the orange groves where my father worked. I remember flocks of white birds that would lift from the backs of cattle, disturbed by the jackhammers and bulldozers clearing land for Walt Disney World.
The survivors of Hurricane Harvey do not need empty tweets and platitudes from people like Donald Trump and Joel Osteen. They have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that, as we say in Texas, they are all hat and no cattle.
I would like to be on the farm. To ride the horses. To watch the cattle, and the plantations, and the beautiful vegetables that my sons are growing there. I would like it. I am one of those who do not have to worry about what I am doing later. I love the fields.
My first love was, and remains, manual labor; sowing and harvesting, the pastures, the flock, and the cattle.
There's not a lot to do in a small town, but i grew up on a cattle farm... some people would say there's nothing to do on a cattle farm, but I'd say there's everything to do.
In 1977, I wrote a series of poems about a character, Black Bart, a former cattle rustler-turned-alchemist. A good friend, Claude Purdy, who is a stage director, suggested I turn the poems into a play.
The majority of people are perfectly capable of interacting with retail staff without spitting on them or whipping their hides like dawdling cattle, but Planet Earth still harbours more than its fair share of disappointments.
The white men told lies for each other. They drove off a great many of our cattle. Some branded our young cattle so they could claim them.
We gathered all the stock we could find, and made an attempt to move. We left many of our horses and cattle in Wallowa. We lost several hundred in crossing the river.
