It was late for Easter that year, possibly 1976. We were over half-way through calving, a stressful time of the year on our farm but it had gone well with very few losses. The weather had turned quite spring-like in east-central Alberta, so I had recently turned out the cows, both those with calves and cows still to calve, into the second pasture from the considerably smaller night pasture. That’s what it was called many years earlier when my parents had milk cows but after I was married and stopped milking cows in favour of only beef cows, it became known as the calving pasture. It was small and ran parallel to the road, which made it easier to keep an eye on what was happening at calving, even from the road, during the daytime.
I walked the pasture once or sometimes twice a night with a hand-held powerful lantern. That was until I got a trike, a used Honda three-wheeler with a dim and bright front light that made checking the cows, especially at night, but in the daytime as well, faster and easier. With a trike the job became much easier. But this was before the era of the trike.
When the calving peak ebbed the small calving pasture became more crowded. As the weather improved and the snow slowly disappeared from the second pasture, I gave the cows some additional space and freedom just by opening the gate.
Opening the gate to the second pasture was a spring’s really here kind of ritual; I loved it, and the cows with their little calves loved it too. They all galloped to the far end, to the closed gate leading to the Dorin Quarter pasture. That gate was at the very centre of our section, approximately a half mile from the farmyard.
The second pasture had several prairie knolls, some grassy sloughs, water-filled in the spring from the winter snow-melt, and clumps of poplar here and there with willows growing near the sloughs. At this time of the year, the trees and willows still didn’t have any leaves but provided some shelter if there were colder, windy days.
The cows were fed their hay on the knolls of the second pasture, and if it was mild, they spent the nights, with their calves beside them, on the knolls. Some still preferred to return to the calving pasture at night, or, if it became windy, all the herd came back to the large, straw-bedded area on the southeast side of the wind-break slab-shelter fence.
It was almost Easter. The weather had stayed spring-like, April weather. Our family, Inez and I, Dale, about 10, Joyce about 8, had been invited to my sister Gertie’s in Edmonton, for Easter Sunday dinner. It would be a fairly large dinner with my sister’s family, my brother Ben’s family, my family and both my parents who had retired to Edmonton—eighteen of us in all. It would be a nice happy family get-together.
Easter Sunday dawned cloudy, cooler and windy. I got up really early to feed and do all the chores. We planned to go to church at Tofield, then drive on to Edmonton for dinner, probably around one o’clock.
When I fed the cattle I also checked for any cows showing signs of calving; there was one. A large cow in the early stages, restless, eating some, then moving away from the rest. One mature cow: it was mid-April, there shouldn’t be a problem.
There wasn’t a good weather forecast on the radio at breakfast. Colder weather, windy conditions, and snow beginning in the morning and continuing until late evening.
We went to church, and when we were dismissed it was snowing very lightly. We drove to Edmonton where Aunty Gertie, as always, had a wonderful Easter dinner for the large, cheerful family. I’m sure it was most likely ham with all the trimmings, including pie and ice cream. Aunty Gertie never asked anyone else to bring something.
Outside it was snowing harder. Soon everything was white. The snow grew higher on the car roofs, the sidewalk and lawns. Everyone began leaving earlier than normal, in the daylight, even though it was April and the days were getting long. But it was snowing as though it was winter again.
We got home fine on the snow-covered highway. I changed clothes and hurried to do the feedlot chores. I walked through the calving pasture to the windbreak shelter. Sure enough, all the cows and their calves were behind the slab-fence windbreak.
The month-old, even week-old calves were strong and able to stand the snow and wind. The very young calves were uncomfortable, lying down in the snow, their mothers standing close beside them. Uncomfortable for sure, but they’d be fine till morning when the snowfall would likely be over and perhaps even melting.
I checked the bedded, cattle-filled area twice; the snow-covered cows were hard to distinguish. No, the cow that showed signs of calving in the morning wasn’t there with the others.
I checked the entire calving pasture on my walk out. She must have calved somewhere in the second pasture during the day.
I hurried through the snow into the second pasture, ziz-zagging around, checking the poplar bluffs and willow clumps. Everything was white and covered with snow. It was still snowing, but it seemed to be easing.
It was taking quite a while, checking the treed areas, criss-crossing the larger pasture. I was almost at the end, at the Dorin Quarter, where there were several small clumps of poplar, when I saw a dark shape in the trees. I picked up my pace and hurried towards her.
She had calved; the calf was lying in front of her. She talked to the calf with her nose down to it as I got closer.
The calf wasn’t lying normally with its legs tucked under its body. Its head wasn’t up; the calf wasn’t moving. It was lying flat on its side, legs spread out, head stretched out.
I knelt beside it. It was still alive! Not good, not good, but alive, alive!
I rolled it upright and tucked its legs under its belly, but it could not hold its head up. It had been licked perfectly clean and mothered, but it hadn’t stood up, hadn’t nursed. Hypothermia had set in.
It was going to be close — it was a long way home to the warm porch of the house.
She was a good mother, talking to her calf and circling me as I picked it up and began walking towards the yard as fast as I could.
It was an average-sized calf, so it likely wasn’t a long or difficult birth, it just hadn’t got up. Perhaps it had slipped on the snow and fallen down over and over as it tried to get up on the slippery ground. It needed to have stood up and have nursed, standing beside its mother, its body away from the cold, snow-covered ground. If it just would have stood up, and nursed, it would have been fine.
I kept trudging toward the farmyard, the cow following close behind. The calf ’s head hung down weakly, unnaturally. It wasn’t a big calf, probably 75 or 80 lbs. But it was a long way walking through the snow and I was tiring, but I still tried hard to hurry.
I was almost at the gate to the calving pasture when I realized that the calf was dead, had died in my arms.
Hypothermia caused by the snow, the goddamn snow, had caused its death. The goddamn mid-April snow.
The calf seemed to get heavier after it died. I knew it didn’t get heavier, but it felt like it. And the cow quit following too, gave up, just quit following. Maybe she went back to the trees where she had calved or else she had headed for the windbreak shelter and joined the rest of the herd. I didn’t turn around.
I slogged on toward the yard. I cursed and I cried. I cursed Easter Sunday that had obligated us to go to Edmonton. If I’d been at home, I’d have saved that calf. The calf that should have been alive was heavy and wet and limp in my arms, its head dangling and swaying by my side.
Goddamn the snow, goddamn Easter Sunday, goddamn the cow, goddamn farming!
I made it to the barn, got the horse barn door open with the calf in my arms and laid it on the railroad tie floor of the first horse-team stall.
I laid down beside it, panting and thinking. Should I try to find a replacement calf to graft onto the mother? Where would I find another recently-born calf? Maybe one of all the beef farmers I knew between Bruce and Tofield recently had a cow with twins and would be willing to sell one. The chances were slim.
Then I’d have to skin this calf, tie the entire hide on to the new calf, get the cow home and into the barn. That could be easy, or it could be difficult. Then to go through the process of getting the new calf to nurse, getting the cow to accept the calf, possibly totally restraining the cow. It would be a five or six day process—if I could find a calf.
GODDAMN THE SNOW.
I got up and went back outside. It was dark. The snow had stopped.
There were still the bulls to feed their daily evening meal of grain. The bulls were in their winter bull pasture which also had a small shed and shelter. They were in the Porter Quarter, just across the road from the house.
I filled a five-gallon chop pail with rolled oats from the chop granary, carried it across the road and opened the barb wire gate. I carried the buckets to the grain trough and poured out the oats.
The bulls were there waiting for me, glad to see me.
I closed the gate and was walking back on the driveway carrying the empty pail past the house to the granary.
Music was coming from inside the house, piano music. I put down the bucket and listened.
Joyce was practising her piano music. She was playing Edelweiss.
I was too exhausted to stand for very long. I walked over to the fieldstone fireplace chimney and leaned against it.
Joyce had finished the piece and was starting again.
“Edelweiss, edelweiss, every morning we greet thee …” I only knew some of the lyrics. She continued playing.
“She’s good,” I thought. “She’s really good for only a year or so taking piano lessons; that little girl’s got a knack, a gift, for playing the piano.”
I think she played it three times. Then the music stopped abruptly.
I stayed there, leaning against the fieldstone chimney. The fieldstones were cold and hard, my coveralls were cold and damp.
The fieldstones were the ones my father and grandfather had picked and pulled and loaded and hauled off the fields of our farm when they were breaking the land. I had hired a stone-mason from Edmonton to select them, split them and place them correctly to make the colourful stone chimney only a year earlier. I liked the result.
Still leaning on the chimney I thought Grandpa and Dad must have had some hard days too, and hard years as well, when they were starting from nothing to build the farm. But they made it.
I stayed another silent minute. Then, leaving the empty bucket by the chimney, I walked around the house to the back door into the warm porch and started taking off my wet boots and coveralls.