Steve knows the shortest, best routes
from farm to farm in this area of Nebraska. "I know every dirt road, back road, abandoned farm place in a fifty mile radius," he said. "I hunt and trap this area. It's like the back of my hand."
"Thank the Lord we actually got some rain yesterday," Steve said. "That was the most rain we've had in three years. People were panicking."
"There are over 500,000 head of cattle in Cuming County," he said. "It is the heaviest cattle-producing area in Nebraska. Outside of Omaha, it is probably the richest county in the state."
The truck was pounding the gravel road, the gravel road was pounding back. It was a good truck I was riding in, with good shocks, it was a good seat I was sitting on, but I was getting a headache from the bouncing. I was not used to such work. We went on down the road.
Steve traps coyote, he said, about sixty per year on average, sixty-two last year. He traps raccoons, too, about four hundred per year. "It helps with the income," he told me. "It's hard when you're working ten hours a day already, then go trapping half the night." But he wasn't asking for sympathy, don't make that mistake.
"I trap coyotes so they don't go in and kill the baby calves," Steve said. "They'll surround the baby calf and kill it. I'll never eliminate the coyotes, there are way too many. There is no way you'd ever get rid of all of them."
The mobile phone in the truck rang. Steve answered it, talked. Then he explained: "They are working on my other truck." Steve has three trucks. He drives one, an employee drives one, and at the busiest times Cindy drives one.
"My dad, Leroy, is a rendering truck operator and he's a preacher," Steve told me. "He always says, 'Even in picking up dead animals, there is life.' He finds great fear among farmers about uncertainty with prices and everything. He's a comfort to them. He's got a rendering truck ministry."
We crossed Highway 32 southwest of West Point. "We've just entered my new area," Steve said. "I'm still developing it. One thing they like about me is my speed of service."
"One thing around here," Steve said, "a man's word is still good. You give your word, you keep it. A handshake is still as good as a signed contract."
In meeting his commitment to farmers, he said he has driven with "busted fingers" and high fevers, sometimes with Cindy riding next to him to be sure he didn't fall asleep.
We made our second stop of the morning. It was a big brood sow. The engine of the truck barely changed pitch as the winch pulled the sow up into the steel box on the truck.
"It's the saddest thing," Steve said, "when big corporations buy up farms for feedlots and bull-doze down the farm houses. There should be a law against that. There have been hundreds of farmsteads bull-dozed out of existence in the past few years. One of the reasons they want to do it, they want to push the little guy off the farm, into town."
Most of the bigger feedlots we've seen along the gravel back-roads are owned by corporations, Steve told me.
To be continued....
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