A Peculiar Obsession

October 27, 2020

"Everything is better with some cows around!"
Corb Lund

Addictions present themselves in many different forms. Some are horribly destructive, while others are relatively harmless, some are practiced in secret and some are clearly visible. Some addictions are hidden in plain sight.  It was this latter type that afflicted my father, James Hainsworth.

From an early age, it was clear that my dad was destined to be a farmer. Although he had side gigs, mostly community involvement and political causes, at heart he saw himself and the world around him through the lens of a farmer. My dad loved the land, and he worked hard to see it flourish, seeding crops in the spring, haying in the summer and bringing in the fall harvest. But perhaps even more than he loved the land, my dad loved his cows.

By today's standards, he didn’t have a big herd. At one time it may have approached 100 cows, but for most of his farming years he usually kept about 50 cows. In those days, most mixed farmers kept their calves after weaning to fatten them up for market so there were usually a good number of them on the place as well.

Looking back on it now, it was apparent that those cows rated pretty high in my dad’s scheme of things. Much to the chagrin of my mother, Lois, the cows came before pretty much everything else. Things like family vacations were a no go. “Who would take care of the cows?”  Even day trips were regulated by the need to get home to do the chores.

Oh, mom put up gamely with the whole bovine thing. She helped with calving when required and even tolerated the odd calf being brought into the back porch to be warmed and dried off after being delivered in a snowbank.  As she washed those malodorous barn clothes, she longed for the days of cows to be over.  Dad, however, continued his bovine love affair well into his later years.

“When are you going to get rid of those damn cows?” she would plead. We knew this was serious… mom never said “damn” or any other curse word, at least as far as we knew. In my recollection, the only time I heard her say “damn”, it was immediately followed by the word “cows”!

As dad entered his elder years, mom finally got her wish and after 50 years, the last cow left the farm. It seemed that dad was settling into his elder years nicely. Feeling the need to provide some animal husbandry, he took on boarding a horse for a neighbor. To us this seemed innocent enough, but the signs of addiction were there to see. Dad just wasn’t content without some living thing on the place and no chores to do.

Mom often did her grocery shopping in Lacombe on Fridays. And dad began to accompany her. It so happened that the local auction mart held their livestock auctions on Fridays, so dad would often while away the time when mom shopped by visiting the auction, “just to have a look” and visit with the other farmers.

The addiction was rearing its ugly head... Like an alcoholic falling off the wagon, dad just couldn’t stay away from cows. And so it came to pass that, after a year or two of cow freedom, he ended up buying one or two at the auction, just to “eat the grass around the barn”. And just as any craving manifests itself; soon he was back with a collection of animals, small at first but growing bigger every year. Within a few years he was back in ownership of a sizable herd.

Fortunately, a grandson, Jim came to save the day. Expressing a desire to get started in farming, Jim and my dad made an agreement for transfer of the farming operation, including the cows. That cow herd was now safely in the care of Jim. Dad, however, couldn’t abide not having any stock so retained three decrepit old cows to care for on his own.

Dad’s farming days came to a sudden end, when in the fall of 2001; at the age of 81 he suffered a debilitating stroke. When it became apparent that he was not going to be able to return to the farm, we held a family meeting to decide what to do. And somehow I became the owner of those three old crocks. Not being set up to care for them, they remained where they were, cared for alongside Jim’s herd. In all honesty I am not sure I could have identified them if I had to. After a few years it was decided that it would be simpler just to turn them over to Jim and I retired from my short career in farming. Thinking back on it, getting rid of those cows was probably a good thing. If I had owned them any longer, who knows what would have happened. I’ve heard they can be habit forming!