In drought, in quarantine, the water pump goes south

By Ma. Eugenia Guerra

As if the tick quarantine and the drought weren't big enough in-my-face facts of life on the ranch these days, the water pump went south, too. This combo deluxe of unwelcome events was so huge that it merited only the slightest panic. We dealt with it as we had to (Plan A) and made a contingency plan to haul water from the San Ygnacio Municipal Utility District if we had to (Plan B).

Every now and again the submersible pump that fills the 25,000 gallon tank on the highest spot on the ranch fails us. It's happened enough times over 20 years that I know the drill well. Mark Wied from Hebbronville will come as quickly as he can and fix things. Slowly but surely the big tank will fill and gravity will push water to the bebederos all over the ranch and to the ranch houses.

Plan A was to convey stored rainwater from the big black plastic Y2K tank at the barn to the water trough in the corrals. A little submersible pump, a water hose, and a long rod of two-inch PVC pipe did the trick. The pipe kept the cows from chewing up the hose. The cattle loved the change from the brackish salt water to which they are accustomed, and they drank well. I knew I had at least three days of reserve stored up, and by then Mr. Wied would have taken care of the water dilemma. Plan A took care of the cattle but not the human inhabitants of the ranch. Even so, I loved Plan A. All that guttering and the expense of the tanks almost six years ago made perfect sense on the day we ran out of water. The other thing I loved about Plan A is that we had everything on site to take care of moving the water.

With no water anywhere else on the ranch, the cattle conducted their own impromptu roundup, driving themselves in to water. All we had to do was shut gates after them until they were all in the trap behind the corrals. With all the cattle in one place, we could call the tick inspectors to see how we were faring in the quarantine.

We were ticky, which set into motion the three-dip protocol and the move to another pasture after the final dip at the government pens in Ramireño. And while we were going through this exhaustive exercise of the movement of the entire herd in drought and quarantine, it looked like a propitious moment to sell off the bull calves and the really old girls.

The really old girls were a heartbreak. They'd become thin and drawn, especially those that still had calves nursing, but they were part of the herd my father and I had built and it didn't seem right to sell them, except that the good price at the market, the drought, the lack of green grass in the pastures, and the quarantine tipped the scale. It wasn't painless, however.

A friend brought out an old gent from Zapata, a horseman and a vaquero, who helped me make the right choices for keepers and losers. Every single animal or every pair were discussed in detail -- confirmation, udder, feet, horns, calf bearing ability. I learned a great deal from him and admired his agility on a horse. He was full of ranching stories and life stories that were so rich and vivid that they took the edge off the day. He quit smoking in '52, he said, so that he could make sure he could afford taking care of his wife.

The friend who brought him out spoke no Spanish. The vaquero spoke no English. I watched them in the shade of the trees in the corrals communicating perfectly well, the two of them speaking the language of working cattle.