Category Archives: country life

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.  

Ranch Wife Musings | Which One I’d Pick

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

We really don’t go on dates. We didn’t when we were dating, and we don’t married. Maybe someday we can change that, since I really do think it is a good practice for married couples, but honestly our marriage reflects the simplicity of our “dating” life. We did life together. We worked together. We cooked meals together. Picked apples together. Worked cows. And these two photos? I took these just recently, but an awful lot of our dating and engagement was spent just so, and I would occasionally sneak photos of my favorite view when I was riding with Brad to check cows, or check the calving pasture, or check water, or whatever. I fell in love looking at this view.

And it made me think of something. This particular day, I had been busy with all sorts of things, we had vaccinated cows all morning, we were having a couple from church over the next day, and I had a house to clean, bread to bake, some writing and photo editing to do…So when Brad asked me if I wanted to go with him to check the calving pasture, I could have come up with a dozen excuses not to.

But here’s the thing: Those things can wait. They 100% can wait. But I will NEVER be disappointed for investing in my marriage and in my friendship with my husband, even if it means not getting the bread baked when I wanted to get it baked, or even if it means I have to do a bit of cramming to get my writing done, or to get housework done before guests get here, even if it means I don’t get the walk in that I wanted to take with the dogs, or whatever else.

Even now, while we don’t have children, time invested in marriage is priceless and precious. And, ladies, we can be way too prone to think our husbands aren’t romantic enough, or aren’t obvious enough in how they “pursue us.” We can complain, even if only in our ungrateful little hearts, that our husband isn’t doing this or that, and why can’t he just do X?

We have been fed a cultural diet of personality studies and love languages and other semi-worthless psychoanalytical drivel–“worthless drivel” because it is wielded as a weapon against those closest to us, rather than employed as a means of understanding our own quirks better so that we can moderate those quirks better, or understand our spouses better so that we can love them better. Those semi-worthless personality studies and the love languages garbage are used as a way to find fault with our spouses and families, rather than as a way to seek personal growth and maturing.

Have you ever heard someone say (or maybe you’ve said this yourself), “I know he’s trying, but it just isn’t my love language?” Talk about damaging. That way of thinking is poison.

So, when our husbands invite us to join them in their tasks? When they express enjoyment simply of having our company? That is showing love. That is investment. That is pursuit. And it is priceless. It might not look like a fancy restaurant and a bouquet of roses, but aren’t those things a little predictable and overrated? Be thankful for your husband, and look for the ways he loves you. And be willing to set your preconceived notions and prejudices and preferences aside to allow him to love you the way he knows best. It might come in the shape of a dozen roses, or it might come in the shape of riding double on the fourwheeler checking calves.

I know which one I’d pick.

That Time of Year

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

Once again, these early spring months fly by too fast for me to keep up! How is it already almost May? The sandhill cranes are already done migrating north, and the meadowlarks are home for the summer. Bluebirds are plentiful, another sure sign of spring. Finally the pasques are popping up on Potato Butte, the best place on the ranch to find them, and after getting frostbitten multiple times, they are finally gracing the greening slopes in the Calving Pasture. My perennials are coming up vigorously, in spite of multiple freezes and frosts, and I saw the first few asparagus spears yesterday!

We have already done the first bit of our cow work for the year, vaccinating our replacement heifers, calving is wrapping up, and branding is just around the corner. The chicks from the beginning of March just got moved into their kindergarten coop today, adjacent to the big girls’ coop, and Posey had her calf last week. We have been shuffling cows around today, so we’ll be ready to work them through tomorrow and get everything vaccinated.

Between Posey being back in milk, the chickens picking up their egg-laying, and my new found love of baking bread, the kitchen is a busy place, and the simplest and best of things are plentiful.

Winter gets long. It just does. Spring can be slow to start, and calving season can either be an exciting and enjoyable time, or a heartbreaking time. This is one of those great years. And a great time of year.

More Little Baldies

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

Can we just take a moment to appreciate the incredible beauty and diversity of these little baby baldy faces? I have been riding along with Brad when he checks the calving pasture, when I have the time, and it is just too fun to see all the variety and the cuteness overload. I think it drives my father-in-law nuts, how much I love these calves, but that’s just fine.

Ranch Wife Musings | Cow-Calling

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

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on April 3, 2024

The miracle of life is front and center during calving season. It is amazing to watch a heifer birth her first baby, looking in vague confusion at the squirming, slimy creature that made its sudden, un-asked-for appearance, and then, prompted by God-given instinct, begin to clean the baby off. The baby is up off the ground in a matter of minutes, his little legs wobbly and knock-kneed, and then he finds the life-giving udder and his little tail goes to wagging, just like a dog. What a sight to see.

The excitement of the first calf of the season is followed by weeks and weeks of chaos, confused young mother cows learning the ropes, babies everywhere, unmixing mixups, and the satisfaction of watching maternal older cows do everything on their own.

It isn’t just instinct that drives a cow, but a fascinating melding of instinct and education, and the first-time mamas are kept under pretty close watch for the first few days, and kept in the nearest pasture for the first month or so. These first-time mamas are prone to wandering off and leaving their calves, forgetting they have calves, forgetting which calf is theirs, forgetting where they left their calves, and can often be seen chasing helplessly after a sprightly baby, entirely unsure how to control the unruly child.

The second-time mamas are a little less helpless, instinct and education both more fully developed, but there still is a tendency towards some of those pitfalls of early motherhood. They are given a little more freedom than the first-timers, but are still able to be supervised. Eventually, cows figure out the concept of nursery groups, where one or three mothers are left in charge of a dozen or so babies, giving the other mothers a chance to go in to water or eat. I don’t know how they figure out shifts, but somehow they do, but early on they forget about the need for a babysitter and just wander off, until something jogs their bovine memories.

And nothing jogs the bovine memory like the sound of a calf bawling. Nothing reminds a mama cow of her maternal responsibility like the sound of the baby she forgot about or misplaced. Some calves are obliging, squealing like stuck pigs if you just look at them wrong, let alone if they are being sat on by a wiry rancher, but other calves are stoics, and won’t make a peep, which is inconvenient if you’re trying to identify them.

Thus, the necessity of the fine art of cow-calling. Although ranching is a lot of science, there are a number of things that definitely fall into the “art” category, and cow-calling is one of those things.

I remember being seated behind my now husband, bundled up against the cold, enjoying the view as we bounced around the hayfield on the ATV, looking for unmarked calves to ear tag and vaccinate. The ear tag given matches the one in the mother’s ear, so they can be easily paired up later on and a good inventory kept. The frozen hayfield wasn’t much fun to drive over, but I was having a dandy time, my arms wrapped snugly around my handsome not-quite-husband, and having been granted the official role of keeper of the vaccine gun and ear tagger. Without warning, an absolutely uncanny sound issued from my not-quite-husband’s lips. Seated as I was right behind him, arms wrapped around him as stated, I experienced the full force of this incredible and unearthly sound. It was truly awe-inspiring, unlike anything I had ever heard before.

And I burst out laughing.

I honestly thought the demonstration was for comic effect. Until I saw fifteen mother cows practically stand to attention, heads flying up from complacent grazing like they’d been stung by wasps, then leave their breakfast and take off in all different directions, whichever direction they thought they remembered having left their calves. For the record, they don’t always remember, the telltale sign being a mother cow walking around bawling until she stumbles across her baby, which is (almost) always right where she had left it.

Anyway, the cow-calling had the intended effect and the mother of the baby in question presented herself, the calf was identified, tagged and vaccinated, and we went on our merry way.

Such was my introduction to the fine art of cow-calling.

I have since had my education on this topic broadened and have learned that this useful skill can be employed not only to quickly identify an unmarked calf, but to mostly accurately separate the cows that have calved from those that have not, to bluff a cow into looking around for the purpose of reading her ear tag, or to keep a flighty cow from running off without her young baby. I’m sure there are other uses for it, but those are the main ones I have identified.

Calving season. By turns hilarious or heartbreaking. Life and death are often juxtaposed. It is the sweetness of new life and baby animals that know no fear, the enjoyment of watching them learn to play and take their first running steps in the wide open, crow-hopping on their spindly legs. It is incredible to see a cow looking for somewhere to calve, and twenty minutes later to find not only that she has had the calf but that it is up and nursing already. It is miracle after miracle after miracle.

But cow-calling still makes me laugh.