Weekly Posting of the Conservative Cow Doctor

Muddy Waters

During the eight years I lived on the sagebrush plains of Eastern Montana it rained a couple times. No really, it did. I remember watching my father stand on the front porch staring towards the building thunderhead. Very, very slowly the life-giving storm drew closer and closer and when it finally struck, my dad was one happy man. Rain meant grass and grass meant we could keep our momma cows another season. It only takes one drought-triggered liquidation to temper a cow man’s desire to stay in the beef business and we cashed out twice in ten years.

I was five, so viewed the approaching prairie downpour with a different appreciation. Once the lightning passed, Mom hustled me and my two brothers out of the house to play in the gumbo, mud puddles. Clad in whitey-tighties, we would sprint across the driveway, drop to our backsides, and slide between the greasewood clumps. To be honest, our whitey-tighties were only reasonably white, and we were so scrawny they were not tight at all. This meant gumbo squished up the baggy leg holes and produced tremendous drag. We quickly stripped naked and frolicked in the puddles like feral farm kids at Disneyland. Oddly, Mom was never as happy to see us return home as she was when she kicked us out of the door. Ranch mothers can be moody when it rains. That was way back in 1962 and I can remember eagerly staring at the hundreds of glistening puddles sparkling across the alkali flats. Times have changed, and as of December 30th, 2022, those same puddles are now controlled by President Biden’s EPA. If you thought Obama’s Waters of the United States ruling was water under the bridge, you were wrong. He’s back.

In 2015, President Obama’s EPA ruled a urine filled cow track falls under government control. Trump rightfully repealed this insane decision thereby returning control of said prairie puddles to the landowner. Biden restored the Obama decree so with government controlling all surface waters it is a very small step for them to control everything touching the surface. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-CA, expressed concern farmers could now face thousands of dollars of fines for rotating crops without government permission and this brings me to my point.

A recent early morning ag broadcaster was reviewing the “great things for farmers” tucked in the 1.7 trillion-dollar omnibus bill. He sounded so upbeat, hot coffee shot out my nose. Another piece of America is lost thanks to farmers voting blue in 2022 to selfishly increase the yields of the crops planted in their mailbox. Socialism in any form muddies the water before destroying all it touches.