Originally printed in Custer County Chronicle, July 19, 2023

“It is a year for the books,” a lot of people are saying. Looking down from the house towards the barn, the yard is a peaceful chaos of color and activity, a stark contrast to the dull and lifeless landscape of last year. The smell of fresh-cut hay is heavy and sweet, the birds are noisily serenading themselves, and the two roosters down by the henhouse are just full of it and sharing it with everyone else. My little flock of pullets started to lay in the last few days, adding their pretty eggs to the basket and joining the ranks of the laying hens. A robin ruffles his feathers in the spray from the sprinkler watering the flowers, and the vegetable garden is a fruitful jungle: bright yellow dill towering above the hail netting, the zucchini and yellow squash overflowing from the stock tank they’re growing in, zinnias and poppies shining their bright faces up at the sun. The little greenhouse is bursting at the seams. A few of the horses below strike up a heated conversation for a moment, and one of the puppies harasses the steer or barks at a buzzard. A delightful chaos. And there, soft in the background, is the comfortable whirr of the rake and the baler, the hayfield in the distance studded with bale upon bale of hay.

What a sight.

What a year.  

This time a year ago, we were just trying to keep everything alive. A tough calving season was followed by bleak drought, the worst that a lot of folks around here had ever seen. Pastures basically stopped growing in June, if they ever really grew to begin with. Hay crops were devastatingly low, and we didn’t even try mowing half of our hay ground. Driving across the ranch or down Highway 79 left a little knot in the pit of the stomach, seeing the dust and the cured-out grasses. And if it wasn’t tough enough already, the grasshoppers moved in, demolishing gardens and thinning the already thin pastures. The summer became a game of just trying to stave off some of the effects of the drought, struggling to keep water in front of thirsty cows, and at the end of it all there was very little to show for anything. Stackyards were empty, dams were low, herd numbers were forced to dwindle, and pastures were worn out. Winter, then, was the struggle of trying to keep weight on hungry cows, and then trying to keep calves alive in the snowstorms. It was a tough year. A tight year. One of those years where the inputs and outputs were wildly disproportionate, where all the best efforts and the gallons of sweat didn’t mean a thing. Or they sure didn’t seem to.

I love talking to people who have been around the sun a few more times than I have, people who have seen their share of drought and storm and life in general. They have a longer perspective than I often have, a longer perspective than I am able to have. They’re the ones who can say, with the voice of experience, “It’s just what it does.” The ones who have seen the brink of disaster, but who have also seen what followed. They have weathered the worst without breaking.

Because those best efforts and gallons of sweat do mean something.

Maybe the effort felt wasted, or the sweat dried and everything was still the same or even worse, but days, weeks, months, and years of challenge and difficulty prime us for receiving the good years, or months, or weeks, or days. Sometimes, because we have stubborn hearts and blind eyes, we don’t see the good or fully appreciate it, until and unless we have something to compare it to. Last year gave us something to compare to.

So even as I take a break from chores and look down over the greenness and fruitfulness of the garden and hayfields, and see the sleek cows, well-summered, and soak in the peace that is this year, the sense of relief seeing water in Spring Creek and hay in the stackyards and water in the dams, even as I enjoy the satisfaction of a fruitful harvest without a fight, I’m thankful. Thankful for this year, of course, for answered prayers and work that is fruitful. But it isn’t just this year I’m thankful for.  I’m thankful for last year, for the struggle that it was, for the difficulty and challenge that makes this year that much sweeter.

The years like this one might be the pleasantest, and they are certainly the kinds of years we pray for. But it is in those tough years where faith is strengthened, where resilience is born, where endurance is built, where the ability to cling tight to the things that matter is cultivated, and where strong individuals, families, and communities are made. That effort, that sweat, is never wasted. Those are the times that make us.