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Listening to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue as he addressed cattle producers at NCBA in February, it was readily apparent this administration is misusing one of its best assets.

Thanks to our Creator and the tilt of the Earth, winter is just starting to think about leaving us here on the Northern Plains. When summer finally comes, we can look back on the memories of this time and reminisce, with the warm breeze on our face while sipping a cool iced tea. Unsweetened, of course, because if you want sugar in your drink this far north, you have to order a pop.

Maybe it’s my Celtic ancestry; maybe it’s my naivety; or maybe it’s just human nature – but I have always put a lot of sway in luck. When it comes to those of us in agriculture, I am hardly unique in my little superstitions.

It was cold – painfully cold. The kind that instantly slaps you in the face, stiffens your coat and freezes your nose hairs. Horses were hunkered under trees, cattle were grouped up along fencelines, and anything smaller, or perhaps smarter, was nowhere in sight.

 At sunrise, just a couple of days after Groundhog Day, I heard a comfortably familiar yet startling sound. Just outside the back door, 20 feet up in the bare poplar tree, two or three dozen blackbirds were chirping away as if they were welcoming May Day to the first week of February.

It was one of those two o’clock mornin’ calls: “Looked like everything was comin’ jes fine, Doc, then he got stuck. Could you come?”