An Old Friend Leaves

It was sad to watch ORF roll down the hill on a trailer today—what in the world is ORF you might ask??  A 1971 Ford pickup—the cowboy was employed as a ranch manager when I met him—a young man named Donald worked for Michael.   Donald must have been bored one day, he took the “F” and the “D” from the “FORD” emblem on the front of the truck and reversed the two letters—the truck became “DORF.”  The “D” fell off, thus the old truck became “ORF” and we always called the old green, beat up, wreck of a truck “ORF.”   In spite of its age, ORF was very dependable, always starting even in the coldest of weather.

When I met the cowboy way back in 1994 I was a city girl—raised on an Arkansas farm—but I wanted nothing to do with farms or ranches as an adult—that is until the cowboy swept me off my feet!  I almost went back to the city when I met “ORF!”  You see, “ORF” was our feed truck—there was a bale spear on the rear of the flatbed—it stuck straight out and you jabbed the spear into the center of a huge round bale of hay.  There was then an electric winch which pulled that hay bale upright onto the flatbed of the truck. 

Now comes the fun part—if there were two of us it was great, one drove, the other stood on the back of the truck and forked the hay from the round bale to the cows.  If the cowboy was off working somewhere and it became my job to feed our cows—that’s when it gets interesting!   

It was no problem to stab the round hay bale and winch it onto the bed of the truck.  BUT—now you were both driver and feeder!!  Very, very carefully you put the truck in first gear, opened the door, climbed out onto the running board and onto the step up to the flatbed—now remember, the truck is moving while you are doing this.  Cows don’t need to be fed in summer so it was usually cold and it might be snowing or raining, you are bouncing across uneven pasture land over frozen cow pies and horse poop, all the while forking hay off to the cows.  The cows and calves are all around you—Michael put a toggle switch on the cab of the pickup—if you thought you were about to go over the edge of one of our many gulches or you were about to mow down a baby calf, you hit that switch and the truck engine died, stopping you. 

My friend Jill would come up some days to help me feed if Michael was off somewhere.  She always refused to drive ORF saying she felt safer on the back of the truck forking hay!!!

Yep, life was exciting in those days!!!  We used that truck to feed cows right up until about a year before we sold the cows—the cowboy bought a round bale feeder and I thought I had died and gone to heaven the first time I fed with it—you actually got to sit in the warm cab of the pickup!!

Well, our Indian summer weather might have ended.  Cold, rainy and breezy today.  We did manage a walk before the cold front rolled in and I snapped a few fall photos:

Check out my pupil Angie’s latest blog—she wrote and published it with no help from me—she writes about the sport of Cowboy Action Shooting.  She and Ralph moved down to Billings yesterday so Ralph could shoot in a match at the Billings Rod and Gun Club this weekend.