Rounding up cattle equals, cattle-tirement

It’s 10 a.m. Monday, and I just finished an intense three-hour session of rounding up cattle for an AI (Artificial Insemination) session because we sold our bull last year. I had something else in mind for this morning’s column until I was manning the cattle head gate while the vet was doing his thing on the tail end. I thought this is too good a story not to share it with you. So here goes.

After the AI session, I retired to a rocker on the front porch to compose my thoughts of how and why we got here after a 34-year career of automotive engineering, plant management and Corp VP. Unlike anything else we’ve done together, this move was totally unplanned. Here are the highlights.

In 2001, I had to take an unplanned early retirement from Blue Bird due to heart disease that required a rather extensive quadruple by-pass surgery and mitro valve repair. After the surgery, the doctor told my wife it might last five years; that was 19 years ago, and by God’s incredible grace, I feel great now, but it took a few years of rehab to climb out of that hole.

While I was in the midst of that recovery, it was a very “stormy time” in our life, and we decided it would be a good time get away to a totally new environment that required a lot less maintenance on my part than the big house and five acres I was then tending. So we moved to an investment property we owned in a quintessential retirement community on Hilton Head Island right across from the 18th Tee on a Robert Trent Jones golf course. It was just a couple of blocks from the ocean, and it was beautiful! We went from five acres that I had to maintain to thousands of acres that were publicly maintained in exquisite fashion. I used the extra time I had to build back my health and strength at the gym.

If you’ve never been to Hilton Head with its beautifully landscaped homes, golf courses, cycling trails and beaches, you owe it to yourself to go and enjoy it. In fact, the best season of all, early fall—with its smaller crowds and lower rates—is just around the corner.

But all that beauty comes at a cost: lots of rules and regulations about landscaping, property management, and what you can and can’t do on your property. (I couldn’t ride my motorcycle to my house; had to keep it in a remote storage facility!) I know, seniors my age shouldn’t be riding motorcycles, right? But that’s another story. It was the principle of the thing!

For the entire six years we lived there, we still rented out our house during the summer tourist season. It was a great way to avoid the throngs of summer tourists; about 2.5 million a year compared to a year-round population of fewer than 40,000. And it was a wonderful way to have an annual change of scenery. One year, we spent all summer starting Visiting Angels of Central GA. But after that, it meant we needed a place to go each year. So my wife quietly started to look for a piece of land in middle Georgia closer to our sons and growing family of grandchildren. We wanted a place to park an RV.

She sent an interesting link to my computer of an old 40-acre farm in Crisp County. We made an appointment with the realtor to see it with the rest of our family. Even though the house and barn were virtually falling in on themselves (my mother-in-law said, “The only thing that house is good for is a match!”) there was just something about it that made it “love at first sight.” Don’t ask me to explain it, it just was. Part of that charm was the fact that one of my now neighbors was renting the pastures and grazing his cattle on them. Long story short, we bought it never intending to live here full time. That was 2012.

At the end of that first summer, when it was time to go back to Hilton Head, I said to my wife,”I don’t want to go back.” Why she didn’t divorce me right then and there, I’ll never know … but she didn’t, and I’m thankful for it.

That was the beginning of an eight-year (so far) adventure that has seen us renovate virtually every square foot of the house, barns, garage and pastures, but it has been a labor of love (almost) all the time. Our northwest pasture that was chest high in weeds when we came now looks much more like the 18th fairway on that Robert Trent Jones golf course at Hilton Head. And in the process, we get to raise some of the most wonderful grass fed beef you can imagine. If you go to our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/

VisitingAngelsofCentralGA, you’ll see why these girls are really a part of the family.

No, I wouldn’t recommend “Cattle-Tirement ” for everyone; maybe not even for anyone. But for us, it’s been the adventure of a lifetime! Every day, I get to live out the 23rd Psalm in HIS green pastures.

The takeaway: You don’t need to retire like everyone else to be happy. Instead, follow Matthew 6:33: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

Thanks for reading All About Seniors … see you next week.

PS: If you’d like to visit sometime, email me at the address below.

Bill Milby is a Director of Visiting Angels® of Central Georgia, a non-medical, living assistance service for seniors. If you have questions or comments about this column you can reach him at william.mercylink@gmail.com or search for us at https://www.facebook.com/VisitingAngelsofCentralGA/

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