Cows Ain't Hard: Making Millions of Mistakes as a Cattle Baron

All farmers want to be doctors, and all doctors want to be farmers. Bill Wright got caught up in the back half of that statement after buying the pasture next door to prevent someone from converting it into a pig farm or salvage yard. He had several friends who ran cows who offered advice, but mainly he was making it up as he went along.

What happened next is how campfire stories come about. Wright’s grandchildren have heard the stories so many times that they now tell them themselves. He is still the county standard by which all cow operations are compared, as in, “This is what he did, so don’t do that.”

Come through that hole in the fence and join the journey of going from the owner of an empty field to a cattle baron by not paying attention.

William J. Wright is a retired physician who lives with his wife, Sarah, on seventy acres outside Pettyview, Arkansas, where they raised their four boys and where these stories took place. He is the author of Beginning with Genesis: A Journey from Knowledge to Wisdom (2022) and Building Blocks of Wisdom: The Chiastic Structure of Matthew's Gospel (2023).