Life in the country is unforgiving. Animals die, labor is unceasing and nature fights back at every turn. We say losing a beloved horse or a loyal farm dog is like losing a member of the family. But while the pain is real, it’s certainly not the same as losing a dear friend.
Our long-time farm hand died late last year. He was not an old man by any means and he had the vigor of a younger man still. By the grace of God, he passed away peacefully at home in the small cottage just down the road from the farm. I’ll call him Cowboy, because in truth, that’s what we called him most of the time. He didn’t like his real name. And he certainly lived up to the moniker.
Cowboy could solve any issue, big or small. His only shortcoming was that he hated to delegate
For more than 20 years, Cowboy never failed to show up at the barn. He was staunchly loyal to my parents, who first hired him as a handyman (we jokingly called him our Shabbos Goy, despite never being that Jewish). He was familiar with horses, an untrained but naturally capable rider, but his horsemanship was just one of his skills. He was a jack of all trades – and I mean that as the highest compliment. His pure competence made him indispensable.
The business was much larger under my parents, when Cowboy helped manage the day-to-day running of the farm. My parents were slowing down, I was away at college and someone had to ensure the 60-head farm kept ticking over. He could ride any new horse that came in, no matter how green or wild it seemed; any horse that somehow managed to throw him always wound up regretting it. He could solve any issue around the property, big or small. His only shortcoming was that he hated to delegate, preferring to personally fix every problem, even if it just required a roll of duct tape. Most importantly, Cowboy kept the rest of our notoriously unreliable staff in line.
When I took over, I needed someone who knew the farm as well or better than me and could mitigate any unforeseen crisis while I traveled, and keep the business afloat. Cowboy had already proved he could manage far more complex operations under my parents; my small operation would be easy for him to oversee. We agreed on the unofficial title of farm manager.
Having watched me grow up, he was as loyal to me as he was to the rest of the family; I knew I could trust him completely. In my worst ever incident of a down horse, he spent the early morning in the frozen mud, stayed there until the vet came and safely transported the horse to the hospital. Had he waited until the sun came up to check on the herd, the horse likely wouldn’t have made it.
With Cowboy gone, the farm will never be the same. Obviously, it’s a matter of competence: there are plenty of horse people for hire, but no two horse businesses are the same. No one can step in with his knowledge and experience and provide the same support I’ve come to depend on. There is also the matter of trust: referrals mean nothing compared to time spent together. No one can replace him, although someone has to.
For now, that someone is mostly me. I’m popping up north more, a real pleasure in the winter. As practically difficult as it is to find a suitable long-term replacement, there’s also the emotional implication of taking on someone new – the weight of accepting that Cowboy really has gone. There remains a great tension between my whole family’s continued grief and the reality that life on the farm must go on. In an office job, emails and invoices can wait, but horses still have to eat, no matter what we humans are going through.
The loss of an animal is painful, but it’s eased by the knowledge that this is just nature. In some ways, the farm is a microcosm of the wilderness. This isn’t a comforting feeling for the loss of a human; we crave a civilized safety that lets us fully shut down, to grieve and honor the dead in our own time. We don’t want to exist in the state of nature. But in the country, we often must.
The morning I found out Cowboy had passed, I also had a tree down on the fence line. As painful as it was, the herd had to take precedent – as any true cowboy knows. Only after could there be space to grieve, as he himself would have been the first to tell me.
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