Bleak But Beautiful by The Pioneer Woman

I went feeding with Marlboro Man yesterday morning.

 
 
I can only describe Oklahoma using one work right now: Bleak.

Bleak and cold and icy and wet and dreary. And I’m not singling out Oklahoma; I’m just talking about this particular time of year (mid-February) when the earth has never been so dead. No signs of life. No green.

Nuttin’.

 
 
But you know what? What is bleak, ironically, can also be beautiful. Because it is mid-February, because it is late winter, and I know that the beginnings of spring are not far away. Plus, I really think that a bleak landscape is sort of dramatic and violent in a soul-moving way.

But it’s also really getting old. Ha.

 
 
I’ve said it before, but I love going feeding with Marlboro Man. And it’s not like it’s a new activity I’ve never seen before. It happens the same every time. He unrolls the hay with his feed truck…

 
 
He drives back through, dropping feed on top of the hay…

 
 
Then the cattle move in…

 
 
And start chowing down!

 
 
So the cattle get a bellyful of hay and feed, which is so nice for them during this icy weather. It keeps them nourished, but it also allows them to withstand the cold better.

 
 
“You’re darn tootin’.”

 
 
“No joke.”

 
 
“You ain’t kiddin’.”

 
 
“Why are you wearing that hat?”

How rude! It’s not my fault Marlboro Man was in a hurry and I had to grab the first hat I could get my hands on. So what if it’s a neon green stocking cap with a neon orange logo and doesn’t exactly complement my skin tone!

Some cows can be so direct.

 
 
So here’s something that’s neat: When the hay and the feed arrive, all the cattle file in and dive in.

 
 
And often, if a cow has a calf, she’ll escort the calf to the hay.

 
 
But you also have cows that are really ready for breakfast, so they leave their calves behind so they can eat in a hurry. (They’ll go back and find the calf afterward.) In the case of this little newborn, he tried to follow his mama but got caught up in the creek. He was wet and cold, having fallen in the water a few times.

 
 
So Marlboro Man got out of his feed truck and hightailed it across the creek so he could help the calf out and get it to its mother.

I wasn’t able to take photos and videos at the same time, but you can check out the action on my Instagram.

 
 
I like this guy! I can’t take him home with me, though. He has a mama, they’re reunited now, and besides that, I am so inundated with dogs, I can’t see straight. As if my two Basset Hounds, two Labs, and German Shepherd wasn’t enough, two of Cowboy Josh’s dogs have decided they like our food better here, so I have no fewer than seven dogs on my porch at any given moment. And seven dogs combined with ice, rain, slush, mud, and all the things they find in the pastures and bring home…

Let’s just say HGTV Magazine isn’t going to be coming to take pictures of my porch any time soon.