Life on the farm had its share of challenges

“We used to have a farm in Ashdown, Arkansas, this little, bitty town about 20 miles north of Texarkana. It was really inexpensive to live there. We had a small home on a dead-end road. I liked the open space and the quiet. But I was not crazy about raising cows. To be honest, I didn’t like taking care of them because I was afraid of them.

Sandy Barbee wasn’t thrilled about raising cows on their Arkansas farm.

“My neighbors would laugh. I would put the hay and bag of feed on the back of the tractor, start that thing up and try to beat the cows down to the troughs. Then I would dump the feed, throw the hay out, jump back on the tractor and get out the gate before they showed up. When they see food, they come running like a herd, now, I’m telling you. That’s all they’re interested in. It gets pretty crazy around those troughs.

“The hardest thing was when we had calves, if we had problems with the birthing part. We lost several that way. We had one that was born in the dead of winter, and the calf froze to death. She had it in the middle of the night, and it was 4 below zero. She was an older cow, and she ended up dying later because of some birth complications. It was sad. 

“You get attached to the animals. You name them, but you shouldn’t. One time, we were eating dinner when our girls were pretty young. They had played with all the animals. So my husband’s brother, who had no children, said something about, ’Is this that calf?’ And he named the calf. That’s when the girls realized they were eating a calf they thought was a pet. It didn’t go over well with them. But that was just life on the farm.”

— Sandy Barbee