Ranch Wife Musings | Making Hay

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on June 26, 2024

The heady perfume of sweet clover and alfalfa is thick down in the hayfield, the landscape painted vividly with yellow and all shades of purple. The green is fading, slowly but surely, in the summer heat, but it is still greener than it usually is. Kingbirds with their white-tipped tails, dickcissels with their yellow bibs, and bobolinks, all black and white and wheaten, dip and dive, singing lustily, skimming the tops of the clustered flowers, coming to land gently on the thicker stems before lofting skyward again. Sandpipers scoot down the driveway before darting into the thick grass of the road ditch, or taking off in their not-quite-aerodynamic flight, and killdeer limp around in their comical and fascinating displays.

After the whirlwind of calving and branding, summertime settles into a pleasantly mundane routine. Barnyard chores are quick and easy this time of the year, the milk cow is out to pasture with a couple of calves, and the chickens are self-sufficient with all the bugs and seeds and greens they could ask for. But even with the sense of lull on the one hand, there is never a shortage of work to be done, but the days are long enough and the work has a sweet normalcy about it, a rhythm and regularity, the biggest chore – and it is a chore in heat like this – simply being keeping everything watered, animal or plant, and the biggest problems being water issues.

June is a good month and the optimism runs high in a year like this. We have had enough rain to grow a hay crop, enough rain to have lush pastures, enough rain to have a thriving garden, and the cattle prices are better than ever. But in a livelihood that relies so heavily on the whims of the weather, you know how fast everything can change. Even a good year is sobering. If it isn’t you struggling, you know someone who is. You don’t have to travel very far to see that a lot of ranchers are already having a tough go of it, with grass done growing before it could start, pastures all but used up and no hay crop to speak of. But they carry on in a bad season, just as we do in a good season, knowing how fast things can change, for the better or for the worse, and how different one year can be from the next. Good year or bad year, you do the next thing that needs doing. Maybe it is fixing fence or watering a garden or cutting a hayfield or doctoring an animal. But you do it, because it needs doing.

July is when the rubber really starts to meet the road, when things tend to start getting harder across the board. The meteorological challenges that we just take for granted in western South Dakota crop up further into the summer, with heat waves that stress the livestock and cure out the pastures, threatening fire danger, hail and grasshoppers that wipe out grass and gardens and trees.

Ranching is a funny thing. You do it in spite of everything, in spite of the weather sabotaging your efforts, in spite of hail and drought and grasshoppers and other plague-like inflictions over which you have absolutely no control. You do it in spite of prices, inflations and deflations and manipulations at a level far above your own head. The bulk of your yearly income is made in a single day, and it is just a part of the life to occasionally find $2000 lying dead in a pasture or to have it keel over right in front of you. And that same $2000 may only be worth $500 the next year. The hay you grew in a good year isn’t worth anything monetarily because everyone has hay, and the years when there is little cash to flow and little hay to go around, the hay is unaffordable.

It is a life and a livelihood that makes little sense to someone who is purely business minded, purely numbers-oriented. The modern American way of thinking wants to nickel and dime every transaction, and every decision must carry an objective benefit. Outcomes must be guaranteed, as well as possible, and monetary gains and losses are dissected and analyzed. If it doesn’t look good on paper, it goes away. That mentality is pervasive in our culture and affects everything, from job choice to church choice to relationships and community and extra-curricular pursuits.

But the things that matter can’t be nickeled and dimed.

You can’t nickel and dime honest sweat, hard work, and the satisfaction of being exhausted at the end of a long day. You can’t nickel and dime the sunrises and the cool mornings, and the sweet work of animal husbandry. You can’t nickel and dime the sense of neighborliness working shoulder to shoulder with friends who would drop everything to help you in a time of need. You can’t nickel and dime the feeling of being connected deeply to the past, and keeping something valuable alive. You can’t nickel and dime being part of a vibrant community, of knowing people’s names and having them know yours. You can’t nickel and dime the family relationships that are allowed to thrive, relationships that in our modern culture often are quick to dissolve or be put on the back burner until it’s more convenient.

You just can’t nickel and dime those things.

So, you give thanks in the tough years and in the good years, both, and do the things that need to be done.

And right now, that’s putting up hay. The mower and rake are already at work, whirring away in the distance. Soon the swells of the hayfield will be striped with windrows and then dotted with bales, and then the stackyards will fill for winter feeding. The sun is shining, so we make hay.

Print Gallery

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This is something that has been on my mind for a long time, and I just hadn’t ever gotten around to doing it–I now have an online gallery set up for photo print ordering! Although I love to sell prints face-to-face, it just isn’t feasible to keep up with printing my newest photos, or keeping old favorites around, but now it is possible for people to order their own prints through this online format! Check it out, and let me know if you see a photo come through the blog that you think should be added!

Spangled Afternoon

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, gratitude, Photography, Writing

Yesterday was wet. Just wet. Wonderfully so. We got a little actual rain, but most of the day was just heavy mist, and we basically were inside a cloud. We couldn’t see the highway down past the hayfield, and the tops of trees were obscured, and the drops settled, all silvery, on everything. It almost looked like frost, everything was so spangled.

Spiderwebs and blades of grass, mundane on other days but be-jeweled in the mist, drops of water hanging like jewels on the fine threads of the spiderwebs. Roses and rosebuds, and spiderwort, gathering the mist, holding it on leaves and petals and stamens. And then, if you looked closely enough, the whole world reflected upside down in the drops of water, the sky, the flowers, the grass. It was dazzling.

Right now, our society is weighed down with all sorts of mental ills, and the self-care “movement,” if you will, is thriving…It would appear that the best solution anyone can suggest for the chronic anxieties and depressions and just generally not getting along well with life is that people need to love themselves more. For as long as the self-care solution has been being promoted, it is obvious that that isn’t the problem. We don’t have a problem with people not loving themselves enough. The problem is that we as human creatures are tuned to love ourselves, and to love ourselves too much. We don’t need encouragement in that vein.

We need, rather, encouragement to look up from all of our – in the big scheme of things – petty problems and look to the Creator God who loves us. Sometimes we find reminders of that in the tiniest, most mundane yet spectacular ways. Like taking a walk in a cloud. Gazing on the littlest, least-important things that God clearly cares deeply about. And then realizing that if He cares about the flowers of the field, the birds of the air, the mists on the meadows, He must care that much more about His human creatures.

Just a Golden Evening

Posted on by under country life, Photography

We have had some stunning early summer weather this year, the kind that makes one loath to come inside at the end of the day. A few nights ago, the light was perfect so I took off with my camera and Josie, and who would follow but my three not-kittens-anymore, Elsa (the white one), Portia (the true yellow one), and Buttercup (the creamy looking one). They kept up on the whole walk. Just about all of my cats will accompany me on walks from time to time.

The shell-leafed penstemon was blooming everywhere, and I was tickled to discover a little patch of white irises. We don’t have wild white irises, so who knows how these got there, but they were lovely. Whether a bird planted them, or a homesteader’s wife years ago, who knows, but no one else knew about them when I asked Brad and my in-laws. It has been such a wonderfully wet spring, a lot of things that have bloomed that were somewhat dormant in previous years, so it may have been years since these white beauties bloomed.

Wonderful golden evening.

Ranch Wife Musings | When the Irons Cool

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, Writing

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on May 29, 2024

It is an exhilarating feeling, riding out in the cool of the morning with husband and family and neighbors, hearing a chorus familiar voices sing out gently in friendly conversation, the soft plodding of the horses’ hooves on soft earth, the occasional metallic ringing as a shod hoof strikes stone, watching the rolling hills fall away, the row of pickups and trailers get smaller behind us, seeing the cow herd stretched out over the entirety of a pasture. It is an exhilarating feeling, as we get further and further onto the prairie or into the breaks, and one by one, or two by two, riders are left behind until the herd is more or less encircled, and the gather begins.

It is an exhilarating feeling, to be behind a growing, moving, shifting bunch of cows, a bunch that gets joined to another, and another, until the whole herd is gathered, encircled by five or thirty horses and riders. The lowing of the cattle intensifies as they mill around, looking for their calves, and eventually the cattle trickle away from the pressure of the riders. The branding pens get nearer and nearer, and the net is pulled tighter and tighter. Instead of riders every 50 or 100 yards, it is riders every 50 or 100 feet, then every 5 or 10 feet, and then shoulder to shoulder for the last push to pen the herd.

The cattle bawl at a fever pitch, like the deafening hum of a riled-up hornet nest, as mamas and babies are sorted and separated, the calves penned for branding, and cows released back to pasture. The perturbed mothers stand at the fence bawling for the calves, the calves bawl back, and the branding stove roars to life. Soon it is an ordered chaos of activity, as each member of a branding crew is assigned a role or finds a role, and the branding settles into a rhythm, like a well-oiled machine, a rhythm of ropers and wrestlers and branders, the soft hiss of ropes dancing, the smell of smoke and burnt hair, the clank as irons are drawn out of the fire, and the crackle of red-hot iron on hide. Glints and flickers of flame, clouds of shifting smoke, dust and flinging mud. Laughter and shouts and snippets of conversation punctuate the noise, and the steady rhythm is occasionally interrupted by the sudden leaping to action of half a dozen wrestlers when a calf puts up a stiff fight. And bit by bit, little by little, but faster than you’d think, the roping pens empty, the deafening bawling of the cows dies away as they head out briskly to pasture with their calves at their sides, without so much as a backward glance. With a suddenness of quiet that is jarring yet a relief, the branding stove is shut off. In the hours that follow the rush of the work, a meal is enjoyed and stories are shared and reminiscences are savored.

There is something bittersweet about the last big branding of the season, the last time the stove roars to life, the last time it cools. Ranching, for much of the year, is a pretty solitary profession. Families hunker down in the wintertime keeping animals fed and watered, and take to the pastures in the summertime with the odd jobs that are the summer routine. Fall work throws neighbors together in small groups here and there before calves are weaned and sold, but it is nothing like the community reunion of branding season. For a solid month, branding follows branding and neighbor helps neighbor, in a celebratory frenzy of work and camaraderie.

It is when the irons cool that there is really time to reflect on that, that partnership with one another for the grand and gritty task ahead, in partnerships that go back decades and generations. No one is keeping a score card, no one is counting hours helped here or there, but everyone is pitching in because there is work to do and that is what a true community does.

This is a foreign concept to many modern-day Americans. We no longer live where we work, or work where we live, to give a nod to the author Wendell Berry. We have separated work from life, and we have lost the vitality of community that results from living where we work in close proximity to others who also live where they work.

No matter how the American culture has shifted in favor of convenience and economy and minimizing human inputs and nickeling and diming every transaction, ranching is still done the old way. And the old way requires people. Flesh and blood people. People who are willing to show up with what skill they have or the willingness to learn a new one. To give of their time without keeping a record of how or whether it was returned to them, and with this spirit the work all somehow gets done.

We aren’t made to live in isolation. We are made to need one another and to be needed, and the ranching life gives a taste of this. Even in my relatively short time as a rancher’s wife, I look forward to seeing the familiar faces, working shoulder to shoulder with family and neighbors, each week of the season sprinkled with these all-hands-on-deck, all-day events. It is the one time of year when the community is reminded in a real and tangible way of how much we need each other. We aren’t doing this alone.  

The branding stove has been put away and the persistent smell of smoke and burnt hide no longer sticks to our clothing. It is a relief to have calving and branding over with for the season, and for summer work and rhythms to be settling into place. We’ll bump into neighbors over fences or at the county fair or other gatherings. But the energy and shared experiences of branding season will leave their impressions long after the irons have cooled.

Old Friends

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, Photography, Writing

Originally published in the May/June 2024 issue of Down Country Roads Magazine

First, I fell in love with violets. I called them wildflowers, but Dad called them weeds, and to his chagrin they grew in abundance in the yard of my childhood home. I can remember picking them handful by fragrant handful, stuffing them into tiny vases with pride and delight. Their sweet faces were enchanting, the sleepy-eyed, quiet little things, all shades of dark blue-purple to white, with the delicate striping at their throats and their whimsical heart-shaped leaves.

Then I learned their names. They weren’t just violets, but some were common blue violets, some were dog violets. It is one thing to know a flower by sight, to recognize it in a distant sort of a way. It is another thing to know its name. It is like the difference between an acquaintance and a companion.

Thus began a lifelong friendship with the flowers.

Field guides became a favorite and treasured part of my personal library. I learned many names. Each hike or rambling walk was a treasure hunt, every parting of the grasses a discovery. For each new flower I found, I learned a new name, like meeting a new friend.

And meet them I did, learning to see the uniqueness of the flowers, not just nature’s wild and wonderful bouquet.

As my friendship with them deepened and their names became familiar, wooded rambles no longer were blind treasure hunts, but reunions, each time I wandered into their domain and sought their company. My photographs of them were no longer just photographs, but portraits. Their familiar faces became as familiar as a friend’s face, their presence was eagerly anticipated, the blooming of different flowers marking milestones throughout the year. I learned their quirks and preferences, to know where each little blossoming beauty likes to be, what hollows they haunt, what hillsides they adorn, and when they adorn them. A well-traveled trail is always new, week to week transformed by the adorning flowers, and sometimes day to day.

Columbine blooms quickly in the early summer and is easily missed, tucked away in the cool, damp hollows and ravines, her salmon and yellow blossoms hanging like pendants from her slender stem. A lucky person might chance upon a blue columbine, rare in the Hills, or even a white morph. Lanceleaf bluebells grow on the hill trail above our house, drinking up the splashes of midsummer sunlight from between the spreading ponderosa pines. Finding the hiding place of the sego lily is a reward in itself, reclusive as she is, and rather shy, maiden-white with a heart of gold. Spiderwort, not overly finicky about where he grows, sometimes in the pines, sometimes on the prairie, boasts his clusters of brightest pink and vivid purple, the local varieties almost impossible to differentiate, as they cross-pollinate with ease. Longspur violets grow in the higher elevations west of us, while their sisters, the pale-lavender larkspur violet and dainty yellow Nuttall’s violet, inhabit the more arid country around my home, flourishing on the grass-covered slopes of the foothills. And then there is the magenta gem of the summer, shooting star, thriving in the shelter of trees and ferny slopes, lighting up like her namesake when the sun is just right. Beebalm, almost a weed but not quite, spreads a mist of color over entire hillsides in the later summer, fragrant and robust. Wild roses, sweet and feisty, grow in the sandiest, hardest-packed ruts of trails, forming rollicking banks of brambles when they are undisturbed, leaving behind crimson jewels at summer’s end which, when harvested, make the most wonderful honey-colored jelly.

So many names! Names familiar and enchanting and delightful. Prairie chickweed. Purple virgin’s bower. Prairie smoke. Blue flag. Dame’s rocket. Wild buckwheat. Yellow ladyslipper. Pussytoes. Shell-leaf penstemon. Cutleaf anemone. Harebells and asters and fleabane.

How sweet it is, to be surrounded by familiar, beautiful faces. To peer into the underbrush, to part the tall grasses, to look beyond what many choose to see, to seek and find and learn. To ramble in the woods in the company of so many old friends.