APRIL / MAY 2012 | WORKING RANCH | 8988 |WORKING RANCH | APRIL / MAY 2012

t’s a late March morning in Adel, Oregon. The sharp chill in the airmakes our breath curl into jets of steam as we pack wood from thegooseneck to the branding pot. Birds are diving and wheeling onthe fitful gusts of wind, chattering at each other in the pale sky.

Yesterday John O’Keeffe, owner of the O’Keeffe Ranch, sent acrew to set up a trap in the corner of the pasture, so gratefully wedon’t have to mess with any panels this morning. I stand back a

ways as John douses the wood with some mysterious liquid from a dirtyunmarked bottle and tosses in a match. FOOMP! The pile ignites like a jetengine. We gather around the roaring branding pot, a former air com-pressor with a cowboy weld makeover. Rubbing our numb hands togeth-er we make small talk, waiting.

Then we see them, creeping across the broad pasture; an armada ofpick-ups and gooseneck trailers. They look like a flotilla of whales as theynose and wallow across the flat, gradually approaching, and coming to ahalt with a gentle squeaking of brakes outside the trap.

Doors open. Kids in broad-brimmed hats tumble out, some clutchingpint-sized catch ropes. Their parents follow after, bridle outfits hangingover their arms.

Blue eyed, weathered, and quiet-spoken, Joe Cahill is a regular at theseO’Keeffe brandings. Joe’s wife Chandra maintains order as Rachel, theirfreckle-faced daughter, scampers off to find her friends. Mary Barbaraand Kelly Woodworth from Coleman Valley are here, with kids Sissy andHammond. George and Robin Shine, also usual suspects, come well-mounted on excellent Shine Ranch horses. In all, over twenty friends andneighbors will arrive to pitch in this morning and work.

After some handshakes and gossip are passed around, everyone jumpstheir horses out and bridles up. Then John lines us out on how he wantsthe pairs gathered.

Cowboys, neighbors and bigger kids mount up and string out in asweeping semi-circle that eases around the scattered cows and calves likea great net, gradually driving them towards the trap. In ten minutes, thewhole bawling mob of pairs has been worked past the wings and into thecorner, where we leave them to settle awhile. There’s friendly visitingamong neighbors while the irons heat, calves mother up, vaccine gunsare filled, and pocketknives get a final honing on the steel. Then, wheneverything looks like it’s ready to go, John gives the signal.

“Let’s brand ‘em.”In about five hours, right around four hundred HOK calves have been

roped, branded, vaccinated, earmarked, castrated, and doctored if theywere scoury. The twenty-odd neighbors who showed up to accomplishthis Herculean task gave up the better part of a day’s work on their ownranches to make it happen. The pay for their time and sweat? A chanceto rope, visit with friends, a hot lunch, and cold pop or beer off the backof a beat-up flatbed.

Just about every cow-calf producer will be familiar with some versionof this performance. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a big production orjust a couple of neighbors branding a handful. The calves may be head-ed and heeled, or they may get run through a chute. Method doesn’tmatter much. What matters is the common theme running throughthese scenes like a vibrant golden thread. Like so much of the work inthis industry, these things get done because of a valued rural traditionwe call neighboring: that fading but time-honored art of cooperatingwith the people who share our communities and partake in the com-mon joys and miseries of ranching.

Neighbors to the rescue!

APRIL / MAY 2012 | WORKING RANCH | 91

tune inevitably pitches. Case in point:when time is of the essence, there’snothing like a fresh pair of hands at 2a.m. to get an ugly situation, and astuck calf, turned around.

“[Especially with] neighbors thatdon’t have employees, it’s always beenimportant to me that they felt it wasokay to call any time of the day ornight,” O’Keeffe reflects. “And it’s areciprocal deal, ‘cause if I need help attwo in the morning, I gotta call some-body, too.”

NO ONE’S KEEPING SCOREIt is one of the beauties of American

ranching that everyone has a pocketfulof stories like this to tell. JimConnelley, who ranched for thirty-oddyears out of Mountain City, Nevada,has a few good ones up his sleeve aboutthat close-knit community spirit.

In a particularly memorable inci-dent, a neighbor had lost her husbandto a heart attack shortly before thestart of haying season. With no kidson the place to help and short onfinancial resources, the bereavedneighbor had few options.

“She was in a bad position,” recalls

Connelley. In a classic act of neighbor-ing, he and a few other ranchers gottogether, pooled their haying equip-ment with what she had available, andset about putting up hay on her outfit.

“We told her, ‘Just relax, and feed usat noon,’ ” chuckles Connelley. Thewidowed neighbor covered the cost offuel, but the time and labor were gratis.“We did that for two years ‘til she gotthe place sold,” he recalls with pride.

When I pointed out that there waslittle chance of reciprocation if theranch was being sold anyway,Connelley was philosophical.

“If you have a sense of community,you help your neighbor and they helpyou,” Connelley reflects. “The crophad to be got off the field and put upwhile it still had value. Nobody keepsscore. You just deal with the problemsas they come around.”

Connelley also recalled a time onewinter when a neighbor with whomhe’d had an irrigation dispute buriedthe hatchet to bail him out.

“We weren’t real buddy-buddy,”Connelley admits. “We differed onthings and just didn’t have a realfriendship.” But when word gotaround that Connelley was so sick hecouldn’t get his cows fed, the neigh-bor came around for a visit.

“One morning he comes rum-bling into the yard in his pick-up,comes to the door and just says, ‘Imay not get ‘em fed right, but I’llget ‘em fed. Tell me what’s where,and that’s all I need to know.’ ” Theneighbor and his hired man got thecows fed until Connelley was backon his feet. The irrigation squabblewas never mentioned.

These little neighboring gemsremind us that even though we mayhave a load of reasons to be ticked-offat the guy or gal over the fence, theneed to help each other survive inthis business/lifestyle puts all ourgripes in perspective. Maybe theneighbor still hasn’t patched thoseholes in the fence. Or maybe hereturned your tractor without fillingup the tank. But that same neighbormay also be the one who lends youtheir baler when the bearings onyours go out. Or gets your cows fedwhen you’re stove up. Or helps youfight fire in your stack yard. These arethe things that count out here.

90 |WORKING RANCH | APRIL / MAY 2012

A FRONTIER ETHICTo an untrained eye, neighboring

may just seem like friends helpingfriends. But there’s much more to it.Though fun and friendship clearlyplay a part, generosity, duty, evennecessity are what set real rural neigh-boring apart from the affable subur-

ban gesture of lending your weed-whacker to the guy next door. In itspurest sense, neighboring is the act ofcollectively helping each other sur-vive when it takes more than one per-son, or one family, to get a job done.

Nobody knows this better thanO’Keeffe. Without good neighbors,

his calves wouldn’t get branded, atleast not without a ton of hired help.So when Cahills or Shines or any ofthe other Adel area ranchers put outthe word that they’re ready to brand,O’Keeffe makes a point of being thereand bringing his crew.

In the early spring, O’Keeffe alsoneighbors by being the “go to” guy inAdel when a calf pull goes from bad tougly. Any time between February 1stand mid April, he may get rousted bya dead-of-night phone call asking himto come out and help with a hardpull. O’Keeffe always goes. The pay? Acup of coffee, maybe breakfast, andthe unspoken promise that when he’sin need of help, help will be there.

“It’s kind of a code in this commu-nity,” observes O’Keeffe, mirroringthe feelings of thousands of others inthe same boat. “We’re real fortunatehere that we have a core group of peo-ple that’ll help each other.”

Call it a code, if you like, or the gluethat holds a ranching communitytogether. Either way, most of thesefamily ranches depend on goodneighbors to tackle the big works, andto handle some of the curve balls for-

1/3Vert.

Sharing the work is more than a survival tactic;it’s the fiber that binds our communities together.

The author titled this one ‘Ears ‘n Beers’ for obvious reasons.

APRIL / MAY 2012 | WORKING RANCH | 9392 |WORKING RANCH | APRIL / MAY 2012

OLD-STYLE CONNECTEDNESS‘Staying connected’ in a ranching

community isn’t measured in texts ortweets. It involves looking out for thepeople around you, even those with

whom you don’t necessarily getalong. It’s about the entire town,including a crew of sweaty cowboysjust off work, trooping into theCommunity Hall to honor the gradu-

ating class (of two) as it completeseighth grade. It’s hospitality (“Don'tknock … just come on in!”) and sim-ple rituals like breaking bread togeth-er (“Stay for supper … there's plen-ty!”) that are the soul of rural neigh-borly grace.

I’m aware of the uniqueness of thesesimple customs more all the time, espe-cially when I read the statistics of howfew families sit down to dinner togeth-er anymore, or how many commutersactually scarf their meals down whiledriving on the freeway.

According to Jim Connelley, theMountain City ranching communitymaintained a pretty straightforwardprotocol on mealtime hospitality.

“When you went to somebody’shouse, you ate,” says Connelley.

“You had to have at least a cup ofcoffee and a cinnamon roll, if not din-ner. If you happened to show uparound the noon-hour some place,there was miraculously always enoughfor another plate.”

To my mind, that is the true essenceof “connectedness.” It’s the helpinghand in the night. The extra plate atdinner. The baler that shows up whenyours goes to crap. And none of theserandom acts of kindness require any-

FULL PAGE

Gotta love neighborsthat’ll help you fight fire!

Five neighbors are better than one.

APRIL / MAY 2012 | WORKING RANCH | 9594 |WORKING RANCH | APRIL / MAY 2012

thing more technologically advancedthan a rotary dial. In fact, I’ll bet mostranchers probably don’t even knowwhat Twitter is, let alone have any“followers.” By contrast, consider thatseventeen million people followhyper-connected Lady Gaga onTwitter. But how many of them wouldhelp her put a prolapse back into acow if she had such a problem?

REALITY CHECKOf course, nobody’s saying that

ranching communities are perfect.Arguably, some people just don’t “get”neighboring. You know, the ones whocan’t figure out how to return equip-ment, let alone a favor? What do youdo about those people?

Here’s a bold suggestion; to theextent that it makes any sense, helpthem anyway. Remind them withyour actions what neighborly decencyis all about. Who knows? You mayteach that old dog a new trick. And ifyou don’t, well, at least you are doingyour part to keep the tradition alive.

And that’s important. Neighboring

is something you have to practice ifyou want to keep it alive. Withoutpractice and careful passing downfrom one generation to the next, thegracious art of rural neighboring—likethe party line, the milk man, the tele-phone booth—will become a creatureof the irretrievable past.

LIVING IN THE PRESENT,LOOKING BACK

Some years ago, I was drivingthrough Ohio and had one of thosegawk-out-the-window-and-almost-wreck-the-pickup experiences: I passedan Amish barn raising. There musthave been eighty Amish guys, maybemore, all with chin-strap beards, flatstraw hats, and suspenders, swarminglike fire ants over the skeletal frame ofa barn that was coming into existenceas I sped by. I couldn’t tear my eyesaway. Not merely because a time por-tal back to 1847 had materializedalongside Interstate 80 … no. Whatmade it remarkable was that so manypeople were hammering, hoisting,joining, and sawing in the sweltering

August sun, simply helping, pitchingin, neighboring.

For some reason, it felt like a fairy-tale moment.

And yet we barely realize that a well-orchestrated neighboring effort like abranding or fall works is somethingequally remarkable as an Amish barnraising. It’s just that neighboring is sobasic to the existence of ranching, wesometimes need to be reminded howrare and wonderful this tradition is. It’sworth reflecting on it.

With neighboring, there’s no con-tract. No fanfare. No kudos. No meritbadges or brownie points. Just help,willingly given and readily returned,natural and unscripted. Insofar asthere’s a recipe for being a decenthuman being, neighboring might bethe best thing we’ve got. The late TedBaker, a lifelong Mountain City ranch-er, saw this. “There’s nothing you canaspire to in my mind that’s greaterthan being a good neighbor,” he wasfond of saying. Well, if you’re lookingdown Ted, I sure hope you think we’redoing a pretty good job of it. FULL PAGE

Tory Jaegar coils back up.