The Calf That Ate Appendix C
A bottle calf got hold of my three-inch application binder, and the missing part was exactly the part I had been dreading to write.
I used to review ranch loan applications for a living, which means I should have been very good at preparing one. I was not. When I decided to apply for a modest operating loan for my own place, I spent three weeks building a binder that weighed more than a newborn calf. It had tabs, dividers, color codes, and a table of contents I was privately proud of. I set it on the porch rail one morning to let the ink dry on the cover sheet, and I went to feed.
I should say that I had a bottle calf that spring, a little Hereford named Biscuit, who had the run of the yard because he had no mother and a great deal of confidence. When I came back from the barn, Biscuit was standing on the porch steps, working his jaw in the slow, thoughtful way a calf does when he has found something good. There was a corner of paper sticking out of his mouth. The binder lay open on the boards, and Appendix C was no longer in it.
Appendix C, for those who have not applied for a ranch loan, is the projected cash flow. It is the part where you must explain with a straight face what your cattle will earn two years from now. I had spent a week on it. I looked at Biscuit, and Biscuit looked at me, with a smear of blue highlighter across his nose. I will say that, in all my years of reading applications, I had never seen a more honest end for a cash flow projection.
I called the loan specialist, a woman named Dee at the local office, and told her what happened. There was a long silence, and then she said that in nineteen years she had heard of dogs, but never a calf. She said I could resubmit the appendix, and that she would note the delay as unavoidable. I rewrote the whole thing in two evenings, and it came out clearer, because I no longer believed any of it. The people at Farmers.gov have a helpful list of what goes into the file, and I now photocopy everything twice. Biscuit, for what it is worth, grew into the finest steer I ever raised, and he never forgot the taste of an optimistic forecast. I got the loan.
I mentioned Biscuit in a letter to farm.FM, and the editor wrote back that cattle have always been tougher critics than banks.
Next: The Elk Who Joined the Credit Committee · All 10 tall tales