Rounding Up The Cattle

Ranchers are busy rounding up their cattle and getting the calves ready for market. Roundup can take from a few days to several weeks. One of the most impressive sights is when the cattle are being gathered up and moved to corrals on the Wittmayer Grazing Association. Watching association members on horseback urging the cattle on evokes thoughts of long ago roundups.

While my husband was out on the range helping to round up the cattle, I was in our pickup, driving along our fence lines checking for any break in the fences and repairing them.

It took about a week for the cattle to be collected. So every day, I packed a lunch for my husband. Once roundup was finished on Wittmayer pastures was finished, it was time to gather the cattle we had on Porcupine Grazing Association lands. This was usually done on a Saturday and Sunday as our children helped trail the cows and calves home.

I always canned beef to be used during the winter. One year, I canned an old cow who had a displaced hip. When I went to use a quart of that meat, I discovered it was so tough eating it was impossible.

Wondering what I was going to do with 120 quarts of canned beef, I began searching through my cookbooks. Suddenly I had the answer.

I took the beef, chopped up an onion, and put the beef and onion through the grinder attachment on my mixer. Adding a couple of spices and salad dressing spread yielded beef roast salad that could be made into sandwiches.

Those sandwiches were immediately dubbed Roundup Sandwiches and were a huge hit. Several one-gallon ice cream buckets would be filled with the sandwiches, another bucket was filled with cookies, and the crew was off for the day.

The testimony as to the palatability of the sandwiches was two empty buckets being brought back.

Making roundup a family affair helped teach our children about everyone working together. It also taught them about marketing and how the beef market could fluctuate. They learned that when the income from the cattle fell short of expected prices, adjustments had to be made in order to pay expenses.

Now, years later, I look back on those days rounding up cattle and smile as I remember lessons learned, but most of all, the time our family spent together.