Take a deep breath when the storm comes

I’m trying to take a deep breath or two after last week, but the schedule and Mother Nature is not cooperating right now.

Mother Nature went to full on hormonal mode last Friday night and decided to gift us a storm unlike any we have seen in a while. I was in Canada for the evening, and in talking to the Boss Man during my drive back to Calgary, we had to stop the phone call short because the lightening was causing serious issues with the landline.

Saturday morning I had an early flight, and during the trip I texted to ask if we got rain. Soon, my phone was filled with photos of just ugly destruction. Over an inch of rain, but the hail and what the Boss Man figured were 90 mph-plus winds just made a ridiculous mess. Nothing makes a flight go slower than trying to get word on everyone’s and everything’s safety.

Swiss Steff and the Holy Terror took cover for the event under the desk in the guest room, as they only had an UTV for transport down there. Both were shook up, but no worse for the wear. My house seemed to take the brunt of the damage, as did the new ranch sign.

Fortunately, we have been removing so many trees over the last couple of years (those nasty Chinese elms) out of the main yard, so damage was minimal. It took just most of Sunday to get it back to semi normal.

The frustrating part was that we have an international tour coming to the ranch in two and a half weeks, and everything was looking stellar for that. But it could always be worse.

The swather finally reached its pinnacle in our relationship and when I was changing knives on it Wednesday at noon, I realized one of my “turtles” was loose. It’s typical to be on a time crunch when a bearing goes out.

Luckily Alliance had everything I needed, and I went back to the hayfield thinking it was going to be full force ahead. Then I discovered two of the bolts were rounded off (thanks to the lovely Sandhills, I’m sure). The wind and dryness was not conducive to pulling the welder out. Being a 45-minute drive from the shop, it made no sense to take it there either. Instead, swathing paused which gave the Boss Man time to catch up baling before I had to leave Thursday morning.

Beef deliveries, an appointment, and speaking at a cattlemen’s meeting Thursday night were on the agenda. I had a Nuffield scholar from New Zealand ride with me from Omaha to the cattlemen’s meeting.

I try to get us much crammed into these trips as possible. With the meeting taking place Thursday night and needing to be around the Holdrege area Saturday night, it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to drive the six hours back home and then turn around and leave again Saturday, so I booked a quick flight into Canada to continue discussions on a business proposal.

I left Friday morning via Denver to Calgary where I grabbed a vehicle and drove around an hour south to visit with a great friend and look at cows. The day ended way too soon, but was able to have some great discussions and idea sharing. More to come on that in the future.

Saturday morning was a beast. The airport security line at Calgary was around an hour long, and fortunately some individual finally came and yelled that those that had Global Entry could use another line. Myself and the gentlemen behind me moved into the new line, which went from a couple hundred people down to a handful. The airport used a different X-ray machine that I had not seen before and over half of the bags were sorted off to go through by hand, including my suitcase.

The lady that tore apart my suitcase finally gave me my two small plastic zip containers of liquid out of my suitcase, and a larger plastic bag and said to put everything in that. Yep, I can’t make that up. Sometimes you just smile and tell someone to have a nice day.

When you try and focus every day being as efficient as possible and situations around you struggle to do the same, it’s always a good reminder to just pause for a minute, take a deep breath and refocus. If nothing else comes out of it, at least it’s a lesson in patience and grace.

With that, have a blessed and amazing week!