Crestone Visitors Guide 2003 > crestonevisit.com

Peggy Godfrey
by Mary Lowers
When I got out to Peggy Godfrey’s place north of Moffat, the wind was blowing mightily, as it is prone to do in the spring. I saw a flash of Peggy’s turquoise coat and white wool hat, as she ran from the barn to a nearby pen and sheep shed. I found Peggy, leaning over a mature ewe and her newly born lamb, trying to figure out if the mama, who was nonchalantly chewing and nosing her babe, was gonna have another. After a few minutes, when nothing seemed to be happening, we headed into the house. Throughout our conversation, Peggy kept running upstairs to check on the ewe out the window.
A working cowgirl, poet and small farmer, Peggy’s lived at this end of the Valley for fifteen years. Before moving here, she ranched around the Taos, N.M. area, where she raised her children. Peggy was a well remembered local fixture, cutting hay in the alfalfa and grass fields in her trademark big sunbonnet.
For many years Peggy had worked with cattle, but it wasn’t until she moved up the Valley that she got into sheep and poetry. The sheep entered her life, while she was working for the Cotton Creek Ranch in 1989. “It was my first time around sheep,” she recalls, “and a nine hundred ewe lambing.” Peggy was offered the “bum lambs”, fourteen in all, with an expected mortality rate of seven. She took them and they all lived! Peggy’s now got twenty-two ewes and three retired ewes. In the summer Peggy’s sheep can often be seen in their portable pen, mowing one yard or another in Moffat, a “ewe mow it” service!
Poetry like sheep wandered unexpectedly into Peggy’s life. Peggy’s more recent literary career as a cowboy poet came about like a bolt of lightening from a clear blue sky. An old friend and well-loved local rancher had just died and was greatly mourned and missed by the entire community. “All of a sudden, the words just came into my head, just like my dead cowboy friend was saying them into my ear.” Peggy entitled this poem, “The Cowboy’s Gone” and was requested by the family to read the verse at the funeral service. The poem was subsequently published in the Saguache Crescent.
Peggy, who has attended cowboy poetry gatherings all over the place, says, “Cowboying is a verb, and to write about it, you must do it.” Peggy’s still out there on the range, finding lost cattle, throwing hay in all weather; fixing fences and helping baby animals come into the world. She writes poetry about her world as a very active participant in its cycles.
Cowboy poetry is often about explaining to newcomers how things work in the rural west. The San Luis Valley has experienced tremendous population growth in the past quarter century, and much of Peggy’s writing addresses the old timer vs. newcomer issue. Peggy’s advice for those new to the area is, “Pay attention, listen and watch how people are doing things. If you can humbly take your place and start watching, you will see what works.” Peggy encourages people to visit with their neighbors, who can share knowledge of how to get things done. She says, “If you act like you know a lot, well you better.”
eggy shared some newly composed verse, which reflects questions Valley old timers and rural folks in general are often asked, to appear in her new volume of verse this summer.