國家地理:牧野分歧(6)

In 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act, which gave settlers title to 160 acres of federal land if they were able to "prove up" on the property by building a house and planting crops. But 160 acres weren't enough in the short-grass prairies, so Congress doubled it, then doubled it again to 640 acres for livestock. Today many ranchers feel they need to own thousands of acres and lease thousands more on nearby public land to make ends meet, and keeping the "home place" in the family can require King Lear–like decisions about succession planning. Ranches are big, or they're gone. In that context, land set aside for conservation is land unavailable for ranching families to expand. "It worries me more than water, wind, drought, prices," says rancher Craig French, whose family is involved with the anti-APR movement in Phillips County, across the Missouri River from LaTray.

1862年，國會通過了宅地法，給居民分配了160英畝聯(lián)邦土地的所有權(quán)，前提是他們可以建起房子和種植作物來證明自己的財產(chǎn)。但是160英畝的淺草草場是不夠的，于是國會把這個數(shù)字翻了倍，然后為了蓄養(yǎng)牲畜又把數(shù)字翻了一倍，變成640英畝?，F(xiàn)在很多牧場主覺得他們應(yīng)該有幾千英畝的地，再在附近的公共用地上租幾千英畝來滿足需求，而要保留家庭用地可能就需要李爾王式的規(guī)劃，比如同意牧場繼承制。牧場一般要很大，否則就沒了。在這種情況下，牧民家庭就不能占用留出來做保護(hù)區(qū)的用地。牧場主克雷格·弗倫奇說：“這一點比水、風(fēng)、干旱和價格更讓我擔(dān)心?！彼募胰硕紖⑴c了菲利普斯縣的反對美國草原保護(hù)區(qū)運(yùn)動，菲利普斯縣和拉特雷隔密蘇里河相望。

French is standing in a corral on a cloudy morning in a pasture just north of APR, where his parents, Bill and Corky French, have convened four generations of family and neighbors to brand their calves. Their forebears settled nearby more than a century ago; the couple run more than a thousand head of cattle on 60,000 public and private acres.

一個多云的早晨，弗倫奇站在美國草原保護(hù)區(qū)北邊一片牧場旁的畜欄邊，他的父母比爾和可奇·弗倫奇召集了家里的四代人還有鄰居，去給他們的小牛打上烙印。他們的祖先一百多年前就定居在附近，這對夫妻在60000英畝的公共和私人用地上蓄養(yǎng)著超過一千頭牛。

Brandings here are chaotic, cooperative affairs, with families traveling from ranch to ranch to help each other out. Then they get to work: sorting, roping and dragging, wrestling and branding, vaccinating and castrating, calves squealing wild-eyed in rebuke ("Some are kind of theatrical," Craig French says). We associate this part of the world with rugged individualism, but brandings are remarkably communitarian rituals, willing exchanges of time and labor.

打烙印在這里是很混亂的，涉及到合作，一個個家庭從一個牧場跑到另一個牧場，互相幫助。然后他們就開始工作：分類、套繩、拖拽、扭打和烙印，注射疫苗和閹割，小牛犢怒瞪著眼睛鳴叫著。（“有一些是在演戲”，克雷格·弗倫奇說。） 我們把世界的這個部分跟粗獷的個人主義聯(lián)系在一起，但打烙印是非常顯著的共產(chǎn)主義的儀式，需要人們自愿交換時間和勞動力。

"We don't always agree with all our neighbors," says Craig's wife, Conni, "but we always help each other out."

克雷格的妻子康妮說：“我們并不是一直跟鄰居的意見相同，但我們總是會互相幫忙。”