Celebrate With Me!
Edith Cook
Miss Edith
(Dr. Edith Cook)
Published November 4, 2024. Editor’s Headline: “Being Neighborly.”
In the summer of 2022, when I lived with my dog on rural acreage in Platte County and sometimes depended on the help and goodwill of ranching neighbors, I wrote the following essay.
In “Mending Wall” Robert Frost repeats a line from Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack: “Good fences make good neighbours” but asks, “Why do they make good neighbours?” (italics Frost’s). The poet offers no answers to his question, merely observing that the stone wall between his neighbor’s property and his own seems superfluous.
Furthermore, Frost doesn’t inquire into neighborliness. For me, a woman living alone, the question takes on an immediacy the poet could afford to ignore. Granted, we all should keep our critters from bothering the neighbors, but being a good neighbor does not end with a sturdy fence, far from it. Neighborliness asks for goodwill, reciprocity, and the exchange of services. It requires prudent decision-making, an investment of time, and the overlooking of irritants.
My acreage near Wheatland, acquired in 2004, came in the form of a wheat farm. I invested in it because my son was the state’s veterinarian and worked with the Wyoming Livestock Board, which consists of ranchers appointed by the governor. And so, he’d acquired a herd of cows. Walter needed winter pasture for his livestock, and the wheat farm fit the bill.
“Winter grazing doesn’t hurt the seedlings,” the farmer selling the acreage said as he showed us the new sprouts in October. He explained that wheat was a form of grass that went dormant in winter. The farming method for winter wheat was “dry-land” farming, i.e., without irrigation. He said he would sharecrop the fields for a few more years and then retire, at which point I would be on my own. A deal was struck.
Every spring, when it was time to take the cows off the land and haul them to their summer range, Walter’s brother Andy, with whom he’d invested jointly in the herd, flew in from California to help. On horseback they herded the cows a mile down the road to run them through a ranching neighbor’s loading chute. Usually the neighbor and his rancher brother joined in on their ATVs. To reciprocate, Walter lent a hand with vaccinating the neighbors’ cows at round-up time, for which I tagged along, bearing potato salad and a tailgate dessert. Cheyenne was my home then, where I looked after my kindergartner granddaughter before and after school.
Together with some interested farmers, I began to lobby for laws permitting the raising of hemp in Wyoming. A helpful service for novices passed pointers on how to petition lawmakers. Inasmuch as my acreage lacks the groundwater to irrigate a crop like sugar beets, my long-term focus was on raising hemp.
A few years later, having accepted out-of-state job offers too good to refuse, my son and spouse sold the cows and packed up their daughter. My days of grandparent duty having ended, I had a house built on the acreage. Climate change and other factors having rendered the field devoid of wheat, it was reverting to grassland, not prairie exactly; still, pronghorn and mule deer love to graze there. Grassland birds like meadowlarks and goldfinches are multiplying. So are prairie dogs and the badgers and coyotes that eat them.
These days my ranching neighbors hold a grazing lease for their cows. When I need something done that I can’t accomplish on my own, I ask them for a favor. “When we can work it in,” they tell me—and they do work it in. Ranch work comes first, of course, which is understood. The costs of the favors are deducted from the grazing fees I collect from them.
A woman rancher has an easement on a road crossing my acreage that leads to her rangeland. One time we chatted by the gate where I was cutting weeds as she drove by. She stopped and mentioned that the county had dug up several heaps of gravel on her property but left them unused. “They paid me for it but decided it wasn’t good enough for road maintenance,” she said.
“I could use some gravel to build up my driveway,” I said. Another deal was in the making when I said to my neighbors that my driveway turned muddy whenever it rained.
“We, too, need gravel for our roads,” they said.
“She’ll sell us the gravel for a few dollars per ton,” I said. “It beats ordering from an excavation company.”
Soon the ranchers carried loads of gravel in a dump truck that holds about five tons per load. They left three truckloads in my driveway. A week later they arrived with their skip-steer and spread it. The gravel’s cost, and the neighbors’ deduction from their grazing fees, were bargains compared to the alternative.
Lying fallow, the grassland fields provide the quiet life. My dog and I take long walks along the acreage. When a neighbor wants to stop by my house and talk, which doesn't happen often, she or he calls ahead. Evenings I practice playing classical guitar on a di Giorgio, a guitar made in Brazil I’ve owned for thirty years.
Sometimes I visit the creek on adjoining acreage where the underbelly of a bridge houses a colony of swifts who raise their young in mud nests. A resident owl snoozes nearby, eyes wide open. To clamber down the creek bank is arduous; I take a broomstick with me to steady myself. The swifts seem upset at my presence, so I keep my occasional visit quite brief. On hiking back to my house I might spy a pair of bald eagles that have alighted on a utility pole.
Growing hemp has become legal in Wyoming. I have made excursions into Colorado, where hemp farmers raise seedlings in greenhouses—high tunnels in today’s parlance—before transplanting them into fields. We’ll have to see if I can interest a farmer to try it here; if not, I may have to sell the acreage. Anyway, it’ll be time to downsize.
One time my youngest grandchildren from California visited with Andy, their dad. They delighted in observing from basement windows the toads and geckos in the window wells outside.
“How do these critters make a living?” asked eleven-year-old Anthony.
“They are so cute! I want to hold them,” squealed Grace, his seven-year-old sister.
“We don’t cuddle wild creatures,” I said. I pointed out the small caves in the embankment where the animals escape the occasional rainstorm. “In winter, I imagine, they hibernate in these hideouts.”
Neighborliness—reciprocity—isn’t confined to neighbors. In October a handful of pronghorn hunters arrived as my guests, two of them my sons, one a college-kid grandson. Two others were men my sons and I have known since they were in second grade. When they weren’t roaming the fields or cutting and processing their harvest in the garage, they ate three hefty meals a day, watched football games, sipped beer, played cards or dominoes, loaded my washing machine with muddied overalls, and slept downstairs in cots I was glad to provide. In exchange they helped with chores and left antelope cuts in my freezer. They gave me the landowner's coupons that document their harvest. I submitted these to Wyoming Game & Fish for modest redemption fees; it’s how the agency keeps track of what’s been harvested.
Reciprocity may be a form of enlightened self-interest; as such, it may be a poor cousin to the selfless love exemplified in biblical parables. Still, even though reciprocity fails to equate with the Judeo-Christian edict to “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” it permits me, a woman no longer young, to enjoy my place on the high plains of Wyoming.
Patti Sherlock
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Geri Doherty
Susie
On Nov 17, 2024, at 7:32 AM, Edith Cook <e104...@gmail.com> wrote:
Valerie
On Nov 17, 2024, at 9:36 AM, 'Susie' via Edith S. Cook <edith...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Dearest Edith: You are a truly courageous woman because you have suffered this awful condition while not sharing the pain and limitations with your friends and readers. I am so happy that you have survived and are now on the mend. My heartfelt happiness to you and your family who stood by you through this ordeal. All my love, Susie
Susie HurricaneSent from my iPhoneOn Nov 17, 2024, at 7:32 AM, Edith Cook <e104...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Stefanie Possel
Your message truly came as a surprise. I wasn’t aware of your illness and heart issues, but I’m deeply relieved and happy to know that your operation went well!
I also wanted to share that I’ll be in New York in April 2025. The NMUN conference will take place at the UN building and is scheduled for either April 6–10 or April 13–17, 2025.
Sending warm wishes from Heidelberg,
Steffi
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dwb...@vcn.com
Hi Edith,
I am sorry to hear of your heart troubles! And, am so glad they were able to treat the leaky valve. I have a neighbor who has a valve replaced about a year ago. He is up and going, but still not “all” the way back. I have had heart rhythm issues (ventricular tachycardia) as well. They did an ablation on the inside and outside of the heart to “kill” the errant nerve pathways. With some complications, it was a success. It has been eight years in February, so, I thank God and the many doctors who helped me. In the end, it took over a year to get back to a new normal. I am guessing your procedure/surgery will be similar….longer that you expected! Just take it slow and easy!
Wishing you well, and will send a prayer your way!
Dennis
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Sally Hagemeister
Edith Cook
From: Edith Cook <e104...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Nov 17, 2024 at 8:32 AM
Subject: Celebrate With Me!
To: edith-cook <edith...@googlegroups.com>
Birgitt Paul
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Lauren Danley
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2024 4:54 PM
To: edith-cook <edith...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [edith-cook] Fwd: Celebrate With Me!
Edith Cook
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Edith Cook
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creamsaver
Susan Marich
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S. T. Kotowicz
Edith Cook
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