It has been so fun to see my writing and photography taking off over the last year, this year in particular! And I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge how big of a thing it is to have a loving husband encouraging me in my endeavors!
After the vendor markets earlier this summer, I decided to take the plunge and sign up for the Buffalo Roundup Arts Festival in Custer State Park at the end of this month. A little daunting, super exciting, and it is coming up so fast!
Here are some of the card bundles I was working on today. Aren’t they cute?
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Strangely wonderful, strangely defeating by turns.
Exciting new opportunities have presented themselves, writing for a local newspaper and magazine, shooting more portrait sessions, a wedding. Canning like crazy with the wealth of chokecherries, zucchini, and tomatoes. Baking bread, brewing kombucha, fermenting milk kefir. Productivity and fruitfulness.
A freak hailstorm wiped out my garden a few weeks ago (thankfully my greenhouse survived). I lost four of my precious cats to poison before we figured out where it was coming from. I grafted four TSC chicks onto a broody hen and she took to them readily, only to have my nasty rooster (who is no more) kill three of them a week or two later. Those frustrating defeats.
And then days like today, when this is the bountiful harvest reaped, reset things a little. Eggs from my chickens, tomatoes and jalapeños from my greenhouse, and succulent wild plums from the road ditch.
Isn’t this a beautiful sight?
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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle, August 16, 2023
Chokecherry season crops up at the most inconvenient time. It’s hot outside, hot inside, and even hotter standing over a boiling pot of almost-jelly, stirring and pouring and fishing hot jars out of hotter water, burning fingers and creating chaos in the kitchen. It isn’t as if there’s not enough to do or the summer hasn’t flown by fast enough. The branding irons are hardly cooled and we begin the late summer work of preconditioning calves. The bulls hardly start their summertime gig before we gather them up for their 10-month vacation. Teeny little seedlings hardly pop up in the garden before the tomatoes are towering over my head, zucchinis the size of small dogs hide under every leaf, and I’m trying to find my strawberries in the dill forest. Just when I think we might catch a break, the chokecherries (which I’m pretty sure just bloomed yesterday) are suddenly ripe in Gobbler Knob and we’re picking them by the bucketful. And the more we pick, the more work there is to do. Funny how that goes. And this year is a bumper crop year.
So, I find myself wondering…why? Why in the world do I go to the trouble of picking chokecherries and processing them, or canning anything for that matter?
To be quite honest, no matter how madcap the summer, I love the chokecherry harvest, inconvenient as it may be. The task itself is pleasant, the rhythmic stripping stem after stem of berries, the sweet-astringent tang on the tongue, the sunlight and fresh air, a forced slow-down. Sometimes that inconvenience is a disguised blessing. Then there’s the aroma in the kitchen as the berries cook for extracting the juice, the jewel-like color of the juice itself, and finally the jelly in gleaming jars set out in proud rows on the countertop, or, better yet, spread generously on a slice of fresh bread. Oh, boy. A person can founder on that.
Several years back, before she passed away, my grandma gifted me her recipes, and those two worn boxes of handwritten cards have become cherished possessions, especially the one for chokecherry jelly, dirty and smudged as it is with age and use and love, scratched out in her spidery handwriting.
Chokecherries were plentiful on my grandparents’ little ranch near Hermosa, and they were diligent in utilizing them. As far back as I can remember, chokecherry jelly has been a family tradition, and I don’t know that there was ever a meal my grandma served that didn’t feature a little dish of the ruby-red jelly in a crystal bowl, with the obligatory tiny jelly spoon.
I picture that little bowl of jelly and vividly remember family gatherings packed around the long wooden table Grandpa built. I can remember how good their house smelled, built of rough-cut lumber. I remember cousins and Christmases and sweet summertimes, our twice-yearly pilgrimages to the Black Hills. I can remember Grandpa’s simple blessing over the meal: “We thank you again, Lord, for the many good things You give us…” And I can see the blue enamel plates Grandma served lunch on, and the brown stoneware for suppertime. And Grandma, always the picturesque wife and homemaker and hostess, with permed silver hair and a cardigan, seated next to my jovial, plaid-shirted Grandpa, who was the life of that house.
All from a little bowl of homemade jelly, and a smudged recipe card. Reminders of the best parts of the past, the happiest memories of my childhood, and my lifelong love of the Hills.
But beyond that, that simple, smudged recipe card and my jars of jelly foster a broader connection to a whole era and a way of life that is in danger of passing away.
It is an era of family gatherings around a dinner table. Before cellphones and social media intruded into every aspect of our lives. Before Walmart and online shopping reduced the need for self-sufficiency. An era of recipes passed hand to hand, not looked up on Pinterest. An era before “Ask Siri,” but rather “Ask Dad. He knows.” An era of mothers teaching tasks to daughters and granddaughters, and fathers to sons and grandsons. An era of taking pride and pleasure in doing by hand – whether that was a garden, or a meal, or a home, or a family. An era of multi-generational learning and sharing of skills and knowledge. An era of legacy-building through seemingly unimportant tasks. Like chokecherry jelly.
As a culture, we have segregated our societies by age, families have spread out geographically, and we’ve chosen again and again to prioritize convenience over relationships (especially generational ones), over community, and over self-sufficiency. As a culture, we are losing skills and knowledge that used to be passed down, generation to generation.
Chokecherry jelly isn’t just about chokecherry jelly, or how much better homemade is than storebought.
It is so much more than that. It is about those little things that remind of us who we are, and where we came from. It is about connecting to the past in tangible, meaningful ways. It is about preserving a way of life, a dying art, a heritage skill, and cultivating a mindset of capability and productivity. A mindset of choosing to not dollar out every action, every decision, but rather intentionally choosing to sacrifice convenience for things that are of greater importance.
Besides, you just can’t beat chokecherry jelly on homemade sourdough toast.
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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.
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Over and done with just like that, Custer’s 100th Gold Discovery Days was a great intro into multi-day vendor events, and I loved meeting and visiting with people, locals and out-of-stater-ers, and sharing my love of photography and the Black Hills! In spite of rain and hail the first day, and soaring temperatures the next two days, the event came off well and I’m definitely glad I took the plunge. It was a low-key enough event that I was able to work out the kinks of my booth setup easily, resulting in a last-minute rearranging of my booth on Saturday morning. I purchased the tent off Amazon, and definitely am happy with how it held up, especially considering the stormy weather we had on Friday!
Lots of fun ideas are being sparked from this event, including the possibility of teaching photography classes, some new product ideas, and incentive to get an online store set up for selling prints. My little mind is a whirlwind of ideas right now!
It was also great to have company for the weekend, since my friend Hope, with Hope and Health tallow skincare, had a booth right across from mine, and my husband spent Sunday in my booth with me! And once again, the sweetness of the rural community was brought home, as I got to visit with many old friends and neighbors.
I’m getting booked for the remainder of the year, and I’m already looking forward to sharing a booth with Hope and Health at the Buffalo Roundup Arts Festival in Custer State Park in September and getting to do the Winter Popup Market at the Monument Civic Center in November. It is fun to see something I’ve slowly worked at for years starting to bear some fruit! God is good.
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Over the last month, I have been getting ready for my first multi-day art show, and I’m so excited to participate in Custer’s 100th Gold Discovery Days, as a vendor at their art and craft festival! The Hermosa Vendor Fair was definitely a success, so I’m really looking forward to this next event!
I have been getting displays figured out, troubleshooting my tent, labeling my cards, matting prints…I added 4”x6” matted prints, and they are as cute as can be. I’ll also have a handful of large-scale prints as well, plus the standard 5×7 and 8×10 prints, frameable art greeting cards on gorgeous matte paper that makes them look like watercolor paintings, postcards, and a random assortment of hand-dyed silk wild rags, just because.
I have sold cards and prints on and off for several years, but it has been so rewarding to pursue that with a little more intentionality (and professionalism), and to see my photography as art and an art form! As much as I enjoy photographing things, and using them in my blog, it really is exciting to see them printed. Not for this show, but in the near future I’ll be getting canvas prints added to my inventory!
Hopefully I’ll get an online store set up soon, and will be able to sell my photography in a more streamlined fashion!
So if any of you happen to be in the Custer area this weekend, stop by the craft festival and say hi!
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