There are no truer words...You either quit or keep going. They both hurt.
2020 hurt. 2021 hurt. But each day that hurt we got up and chose to fight through whatever pain we were facing that day. Sometimes, there were multiple pains in a multitude of variations.
When Covid became a "pandemic" and the world was shut down, we took a night to consider whether we dipped into savings that would have kept us in the black if there was no income to keep bills paid and food stocked for a year, or, keep moving forward on the build and prep for getting the bison on the land.
We couldn't stop. Come hell or high water we could not stop. So we stayed so busy with building the barn and finishing fencing, getting electricity on it, and setting the handling system so we could build the working pens and feed corral that we didn't really know there was a pandemic. And, staying lost in our own little world kept us healthy.
For the most part!
There were injuries along the way, and some equipment was 'overused' a time or two. But it seemed to always just motivate us to get up and do it again, a little harder. Some might say that's pure stubbornness...others maybe call it stupidity. We call it "motivation."
And call it whatever you wish, we won't judge. But it worked for us. Broken bones, burns, blisters, cuts, bruises, strains, and pulls. We just did what needed to be done and kept our eye on the goal.
Bison.
We spent months planning, drawing, and visiting farms and ranches. And then coming home and re-planning, re-drawing, and re-starting. We looked at herds, picked our starters, then changed our selections. Until everything was just as right as we could imagine it might be.
At the end of October 2021, exactly two years, three months, and three days after we closed on the property -- at 5:18 pm we unloaded our first two bulls, Cadillac and Nature Boy.
We scheduled, rescheduled, and scheduled a few more times for getting the cows and heifers on sight. But, one lesson you learn rather quick...bison time is nothing like any other time!
On New Year's Eve, 2021, the first load of cows arrived. We unloaded in the mud and steady drizzle after dragging the trailer and truck through the mud with the tractor to the off-load ally.
And that was the end of our two-year Phase I. Buffalo Ridge Farm was now a reality.
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