Angus | Sage to Meadow ~ Jack Matthews

Tag Archives: Angus

March 17, 2012 · 7:57 am

Why I wrote, ‘The fox, the hare and the chef.’

As benchmarks go, I have one coming up. My blog will surpass 100,000 hits sometime today or early this evening. That’s not like a seventieth birthday or turning twenty-one, and it will not be chiseled on some rock for passersby to see on the road to Samarkand. It’s a blog thing, don’t you know?

Whether many or most people have read entire posts or have glanced and surfed on, I have no way of knowing. What I do know is that one of my posts, ‘The fox, the hare and the chef,’ March 30, 2011, has continued to rack up over 1,000 hits a week for several months. If I am to be known by one piece of writing in my life, this is the composition I desire that to be.

I want it remembered because with beauty comes violence, and, as human beings, we attend that performance in reverence — or at least we should.

‘The fox, the hare and the chef,’ was written in one, long sitting, but I had thought about the content and structure for a long time. To be quick about it, I had wanted to write about Thomas Keller, the chef of the French Laundry in California, not because of his fine cuisine, but because of his full experience with preparing a rabbit dish, from slaughter to the pan. He vowed not to waste that rabbit he had personally slaughtered. This young man in learning the skills of his trade, to become one the world’s most heralded chefs, had insight of a Socrates in the backyard of a restaurant. He would not waste the life he had taken.

I nearly always seek humor in writing about nature and our relationship to our good earth. That’s hard to find these days in the midst of waste, tar pit oil and needless consumerism, but it is there to alleviate the anguish of what we see and read about. My post, ‘The fox, the hare and the chef,’ however, had no humor, no comedy and it just, frankly, turned out that way.

The humor in ‘The fox, the hare and the chef,’ is not evident, but it is there. When I started to raise a beautiful herd of Angus cattle in 2007, I was going to be an impersonal cattleman — no affection or emotion for the heifers and steers, all business, no silliness or attachment. Well, was I ever caught asleep. In caretaking the Angus, I was shot twenty-seven times by cupid; for in each of the twenty-seven cows I raised, I found myself seeing personality, behavior patterns and sociability I never thought existed. I walked among the creatures, just to be with them. Go figure, I fell in love with a herd of cloven-hoofed beasts! Impersonal? Heavens no! I took care of those cattle like they were my own offspring. Funny, but also quite serious.

So, when I loaded the twenty-seven Angus in the stock trailer to take them to Carter Cattle Company for transport to Perryton, Texas, the cleanest feedlot in the state, a part of me went with them, and I knew that their rearing to that point had been the best around. Whatever table they came to, I wanted people sustained with a healthy product and a sense that the great chain of being continue with a reverence for the gift of life on their plate — like Keller’s little bunnies. Don’t waste the cattle I tended with love, and don’t waste your own life in boundless folly, for that does not honor the life in front of you — or on your plate.

With beauty comes violence, and, as human beings, we should attend that performance in reverence. That is why I wrote, ‘The fox, the hare and the chef.’

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Notes, corrections and additions:

Thomas Keller, ‘The Importance of Rabbits,‘ The French Laundry Cookbook, New York: Artisan, 1999. See page 205 for the essay, recipe on page 207.

The fox is beautiful to behold, but it will take its cut in the barnyard and in the field — beauty and violence.

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Filed under Life in Balance

Tagged as Angus, California, Cattle, Chef, French Laundry, French Laundry Cookbook, Samarkand, Socrates, Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, Texas, Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, Thomas Keller

October 5, 2009 · 1:31 pm

Floyd McRorey Angus in Cherokee, Texas

In 1946, my first experience with cattle occurred on the Floyd McRorey Ranch near Cherokee, Texas, San Saba county. I was four years old and the first time away from my family. I slept on a cot beside my aunt and uncle in the master bedroom. My uncle Floyd and his son, John R., ran a cow-calf operation of about forty head of black Angus. He sang a cattle call to bring them to feed: “Whooooooie, su, su, su!” He repeated the call twice more. Cattle came running and he would count. The last time I saw Uncle Floyd in 1977, he was spraying the cattle for ticks.

As a boy, I visited my aunt and uncle, staying days, even weeks. The ranch was the second or third ranch on County Road 407, north of Cherokee. The house was white clapboard with three bedrooms and a grand room with dining table at one end, living room at the other. A flower garden, lawn, and oak trees surrounded the house. A windmill stood outside the fence surrounding the house. The master bedroom had floor-to-ceiling windows facing south and Aunt Lennie had five or six shelves holding African violets across the windows. Floyd took a nap after lunch everyday so that he go back out in the field to work. Before napping, he could look out of the bedroom window and see the oak trees and cattle when they grazed. After I had seen Floyd the last time in 1977, a few months later, he ate his lunch, went to the master bedroom for his customary nap, and died in his sleep. Before falling asleep, his last visual must have been violets, noonday sunshine, oak trees, and his Angus cattle, a scene to carry for eternity.

Floyd’s Angus were very dear to him. His son, John R., told me that he thought his dad loved those cattle more than him. John R. laughed at the rivalry for he knew how much Floyd loved him.

When I had a herd of twenty-seven Angus-cross on our place, I called the cattle with, “Whoooooie, su, su, su.” In reflection, I thought of my uncle and how he husbanded his Angus and his family and me, a blond-headed kid that always asked too many questions. Of all the days and nights I spent with uncle Floyd and aunt Lennie, there were no unkind words directed toward me or others in their country home. There was silence, a lot of it, and we would get up in the morning with the sun, listen to the weather report and markets from WOAI radio in San Antonio, and then to the fields.

When Angus Number 27 on my place became ill, I sped him to the veterinarian. He survived his illness and recovered his eyesight. The 27th heart, as I call him, made it back with the herd because I remembered how Floyd cared for his cattle. A cycle complete, I was tending a herd sixty years later the same way Floyd watched his Angus and lived with the land in Cherokee, Texas.