Baxter Black

When someone tells me they grew up on a dairy farm, I say, “You have paid your dues, my son.”

The offspring of a dairyman that follows in his father’s footsteps is as scarce as a second-generation Nobel Prize winner, bomb dismantler or president of North Korea. So it is with pleasure that I congratulate those dairymen who are havin’ a heyday this year.

Jeff needed a workin’ pen for his little herd of cows. He decided all he needed was some panels and a head gate. He rounded up some 16-foot panels of continuous fence, a metal head gate and two 8-foot posts.

It all started because Jo wanted a small lawn behind the house. Tom encouraged her. Tom’s friend offered to lend them his heavy-duty, magnum, Humvee version of a tiller.

Jo borrowed my Ram diesel to pick it up in Sierra Vista, 30 miles away. I received the call at sundown. She was broke down. “It won’t start.”

The legalization of marijuana in Colorado has brought to a head a common point of contention that has happened in state after state. It is a generational change, a population shift that is the result of the inevitable roll of civilization.

It also marks a shift from rural to urban.

Man against beast is a theme in many a story, from days of yore to 21st-century wolves ravaging baby calves.It normally takes a hero to slay the dragon or sue the EPA.

I’ve got a year-old Australian Shepherd dog. I don’t intend to use him for livestock; his job will be barker. We live in a rural area. The dogs are penned at night and released during the day into a three-acre house and barn lot surrounded by shock-collar wire.