Great Value: Life Lessons from a Montana Cowboy

By Eldon Toews

GREAT VALUE: Life Lessons from a Montana Cowboy

In this book, the author relates his daily experiences as a working cowboy on numerous, large, Montana ranches. The short stories vary in themes of breaking and training range horses, to gathering and caring for cattle. The events take place in all seasons and different kinds of weather. The book invites readers into a rare collection of real life and sometimes hard to believe events in a ranch-hand's life. Each chapter ends with a lesson of encouragement for the reader to move forward in their life. Nearly all the stories contain a sketch by the author to bring the story even more to life. Any person with an interest in the western lifestyle will find this book fascinating to follow. The life lessons would apply and inspire readers of all ages and walks of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449766924

Eldon Toews

Eldon Toews was born in Glasgow, Montana in 1951 and grew up on his family’s farm and ranch operation north of Frazer. He began to help with cattle work and breaking horses at a young age. By age thirteen, he was doing day work for neighbors; at seventeen he went to work at the Ortman Ranch and later the Halverson ranch. Eldon attended Montana State University in Bozeman, during which he spent the summers working on the Taylor Horse Ranch north of Fergus, Montana. In 1973, he graduated with a BS in animal science, after which he spent a year working on ranches in Bolivia, South America. He returned to work on the Reno Creek Ranch and later Brooks Ranch near Crow Agency, Montana. In 1976, Eldon married his childhood sweetheart, Carol Funk; they began to work on a ranch in Washington State, during which they spent some months in Israel, working on a cattle ranch on the Golan Heights. They returned to Montana in 1984 and helped on ranches near Busby and managed a ranch north of Red Lodge, Montana. They now live near Miles City, Montana, where Eldon helped on ranches while pastoring Living Way Fellowship church. They live on a small ranch east of Miles City. These meditations were originally published in a weekly pastor’s column in the Miles City Star.

Book preview

Great Value

IT WAS 3:00 A.M., and I was exhausted, hungry, wet, and cold. But after a ten-minute break to change out of my snow-soaked pants and look for a dry pair of gloves, I was ready to head back out. It was snowing again, and the temperature was hovering around zero. I was working as a night calver. Already that night I’d carried four newborn calves into the calving shed and coaxed their reluctant two-year-old heifer mothers into pens with them. I helped each pair mother up, seeing to it that each calf was beginning to nurse before checking on the next pair.

I knew I could not take much of a break, because I had seen two other heifers ready to give birth imminently. Calving season is the most exhausting, yet exciting, time of the year. A night calver is a cowboy who has such value for newborn calves that he is willing to forego sleep, regular meals, and comfort to spend long hours giving every calf a fighting chance to live. He knows that the combination of subzero weather and first-time mothers can be deadly. A calf can be born perfectly healthy, but unless the mother aggressively licks her baby dry to get the circulation going, it can die within minutes. Some two-year-old heifers don’t do that because of their own fatigue, cold, or inexperience. The cowboy knows that if there is someone there to help, most calves can be saved.

All of us possess something of tremendous value—our souls. We have been given the ability to choose whether we keep and nurture that possession or overlook its value and squander it. It is easy in the busyness of life to ignore the value of our souls and give our attention to other temporal things that add to physical comfort and satisfaction.

Jesus Christ made an amazing statement: What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36). From this we see that if we gain tremendous wealth but unwisely ignore our spiritual lives, we risk great loss in the end. Let us value our souls as much as a night calver values the lives of newborn calves. This can only happen if we trust in Jesus Christ, who has made provision for this through His life, death, and resurrection. Pursue a relationship with Him today.

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The Round Pen

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THE YOUNG, WILD COLT was terrified. His eyes were bulging, his breath came in snorts, and flecks of sweat dotted his glossy coat as he frantically circled the corral. His head was facing the outside, his rear turned toward the human standing motionless in the middle of the round pen.

Most young horses begin their lives out in open pasture or rangeland. At the owners’ discretion they are brought in from the pasture to begin the breaking process with a skilled horsehand that knows how to turn a wild colt into a usable ranch horse.

This process starts in the round pen, which is a circular corral that the trainer puts the young colt in alone. The unbroken horse in the round pen is terrified because he realizes he is in the presence of someone more powerful than himself and freedom as he’s known it before is gone. What the horse doesn’t know is that endless possibilities await him—things and places that will become accessible to him when he learns to trust this two-legged human. He doesn’t realize that what he sees as freedom could land him in a loose horse sale and possibly even in a glue factory.

Gradually the colt slows down and turns to face this leather-clad creature with the persistent and steady voice. When the colt’s full attention is gained and he is no longer looking for ways to escape, the gentling process can begin. No horse can be gentled and become useable until he learns to submit to the trainer.

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We, as people, have a Creator who sees a destiny in us and waits for us to slow down in our running and trying to get away from Him. Why would we want to escape His gentle voice and invitation to yield? Are we unaware of who He is and His intentions for us and how good they are? Are we missing the stark reality that when we ignore Him and His plans and desires for us, we may end up in a loose horse sale and eventually in a spiritual glue factory? His plans for us are so much greater than we can imagine. The choice we have is to submit to His hand and let Him come close to us and take us into new expanses, territory we’ve not seen before—the best life we can possibly experience! What stands in the way of you and me saying to Him, Okay, Lord, I want to submit to your plans for me. Help me overcome my fears and listen to Your words, stop running, and yield to You. I realize that it is best to have You in my life. Forgive me for resisting You. Thank you, Jesus, for dying on the cross to purchase me and give me a brand-new life. Help me today and each day to learn to submit to You and to what is good.

‘For I know the thoughts I think toward you’ says the Lord, ‘thoughts of peace and not of evil … to give you a future and a hope’ (Jeremiah 29:11)

"You are not your own, for you have been bought with