We got back into his ranch truck, and Austen drove slowly past the weanling pen and up a gravel drive to a rusty gate. “I had to put a bunch of new fence posts in when I got the place,” he said. “That gate was held on to a rotten post with baling wire.”
“I believe it.” I got out to open the gate, and he drove through, then I closed it.
There were about twenty heifers with their heads buried in piles of hay, and they didn’t pay much attention to us as we wandered among them. I checked each one over, poked through the feed, and then walked around the herd again. “They’re plump and just right for their age. Your hay looks good, too.”
“It’s not too tough and stemmy? It was all I could get by the time I got here. Finney hadn’t bought enough hay for the winter, and all the better stuff was gone.”
“Who told you that?”
He shoved his hands in his coat pockets. “Oh, I see. Good old boys ripping on the new guy, huh?”
“Probably. This was a bad year for hay, but there’s still good stuff around to buy, and there’s nothing wrong with yours. It’s not the best I’ve ever seen, but it’s fine. I swear sometimes cows can digest barbed wire.”
“That’s good, but that’s the last time I buy hay from Morris.”
I laughed. “We sell quite a bit every year. I’ll put a word in for you with Evan.”
“Thanks.”
“Anything else? I don’t see anything to be worried about with your heifers. What were you thinking?”
“Well, I thought they were fine, but I thought a lot of things were fine until I found out they weren’t.”
“Right.” We walked back to the truck. “How’s your new bull settling in?”
“Fat. He’s pretty friendly, actually. I didn’t expect that.”
“They can be, but don’t take it for granted,” I warned. “He’s still a bull.”
“Wouldn’t be much good to me if he wasn’t. So, where to next?”
“Did you want me to take a look at your records? Maybe we can spot some trends.”
“You don’t mind? I’ll order a pizza if you can stay that long.”
“I’m up for pizza. I’ll get the gate.”
“So, what brought you here, of all places?” I kicked back in the chair at Austen’s kitchen table and crunched down the last pizza crust.
Austen had a glass of milk and finished a long chug of it before answering me. “Wanted to get out of the city, mostly. I grew up in northern California—beautiful scenery, lots of horses and cows, and farming. Always missed it after I left.”
“To go where? I heard Silicon Valley.”
“That’s right. I spent my career in San Jose developing and selling software. Wrote a lot of apps, got lucky a couple of times, grew tired of the smog and the traffic, and cashed out. I got enough for my house alone to buy the land here.” He shook his head. “Amazing. Anyway, I was looking all over the country for ranches, but when I saw this one and visited the area, I decided this was where I wanted to land.”
“What made you want to get into ranching? You could’ve just bought a view property in the wilderness.”
He smiled. “Call it a little boy’s dream. Always wanted to be a cowboy. People laughed and told me you have to be born into that kind of thing, but I wanted to prove them wrong. Not doing a very good job of it so far.”
“Well, for one thing, they’re wrong. And for another, you’ve done a lot here in just a couple of months. It’s a pretty steep learning curve, but you’re on top of it.”
“Thanks to a few guys like you, who’ve taken the time to help me out. I really appreciate it. You’re great at this.”
I shrugged and looked down. I never knew what to do with praise. “You will be, too, once you’ve done it for a few years.”
Austen finished his glass of milk and set it down. “But you know what’s still weird to me? Where I come from, you’re always in competition. Sure, people will ‘help’ you, but you have to be careful not to let them know too much, or they’ll turn around and use it to get ahead of you.”
“And how exactly would I do that? We all sell beef to the same market.”