I believe that everything happens for a reason. There is a reason I felt compelled to do this trip. There is a reason God gave me Alex. There is a reason God gave Alex and me our adorable dog, Piper, with all of her stomach issues. I think that there are reasons we may never know, and some we only see in hindsight.
When I started planning my days in Roundup, I searched for a place I could volunteer in the area, but the few leads I found were not open when I planned to be here. This is frustrating when this has happened to me because I am sure there is somewhere or someone that needs help but I don't know how to reach them. When I was at church today, someone actually made an announcement that they needed help tomorrow and wanted volunteers! I literally almost started crying: there is my reason.
After church today, I ended up talking to one of the people who greeted me as I walked into church earlier. He (Jim) and I (and later his wife Donna) talked about my trip, his travels, his recent decision to move from California to Montana, the town of Roundup (which, unfortunately, has seen better days) and the Hutterite population (an Anabaptist sect similar to the Amish and Mennonites) that has more recently migrated to farms outside of Roundup. They are a lovely couple with whom I could have spoken with for hours.
We got on the topic of cattle ranching, as this is what they do for a living. Jim and Donna explained to me that in this part of the US, a cow needs 35 acres of grazing land on which to live. The reason for this is they eat 2% of their body weight daily. So a 1,000lb cow needs 20 lbs of grass a day to eat. So if you are a cattle rancher with 100 cows, you need 3,500 acres, 2,000lbs of grass a day. So naturally, I was interested in what this meant for the weight of grass. Turns out 35 acres of land is 7,300lbs of grass which means 1 acre is a little over 200lbs.
They did explain that this formula is different for different parts of the country and that some places back east accommodate 2 cows per acre. I would be interested in the difference between cattle raised in the dry Montana prairies and those of the more arable eastern land. I would think the weather or the diet changes how best the cattle is used.
Over the course of the almost hour that I sat at the back of the church talking with Jim and Donna, he brought up John Steinbeck's book "Travels with Charley" twice. This is Alex's favorite book. Alex quoted me the very same line that Jim quoted about Montana when we were on our way to Glasgow over a month ago. It's moments like some of the ones that happened this morning that tell me I am exactly where I am suppose to be.
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