Category Archives: gardening

Ranch Wife Musings | Beginning Well

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

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

And just like that, we are standing on the threshold of a new year.

For better or for worse, last year is gone, done, nothing to be added or subtracted, and a brand-new year is just beginning. For some, it is exciting to look ahead to the future, gleaming with possibilities, while for others it feels like more of the same, and maybe is discouraging to look ahead and see nothing changing. It is bittersweet to see the last year pass away, with all of the joys and sorrows, successes and failures, regret at what we didn’t accomplish and gladness at what we did. It is easy to fall to the negative in all those things, seeing the struggles much more clearly than we see the joys. It is easier somehow to remember everything that went wrong, and to forget all the things that went right. But here we are, standing on the threshold and peering ahead into an unsullied year. And many of us, maybe most of us, catch at least a little of a sense of excitement.

Seasonally, it is a refreshing time. A dusting of snow underfoot, brisk breezes to nip the face, glorious watercolor sunsets we only ever enjoy in the dead of winter, and trees reaching up their bare branches into the pale skies. By South Dakota standards, we are halfway through our winter season, and spring is on the horizon, or just over it. The days are getting longer again, releasing us little by little from the long, dark evenings. Seed catalogs, colorful reminders of the joy and work of summer, have been perused, and in no time the seed starting will begin in earnest. Chick orders are being placed, and heifers are looking heavy, starting to waddle in their pregnant-ness, and could calve in as little as six or eight weeks for us, imminently for others. The lull in the ranching calendar is truly short lived, and a lot of folks are gearing up for the impending rush that will launch us into a new cycle of work on the ranch.

I admit, I love the start of a new year. I love the process and the discipline of reflecting back on the last year, seeing the ways in which God provided, the joys that He brought, the ways I have changed and grown, skills I have learned, people I have met, opportunities that were presented. And there is a sense of relief in being able to identify things that I truly wish to change, and to look ahead with hope and optimism and with trust that God isn’t done working on me. We get so caught up in our routines and habits, it can be hard to think outside the box we have built for ourselves, to shake some cobwebs off our thinking and our dreams and get to work doing something better, something new.

The New Year provides just that opportunity, and the freshness of the year gives permission.

Some people scoff at the idea of setting New Year’s resolutions, probably because so often those resolutions fail within a week or three of the New Year. Some people see failed resolutions as training in failure, but I think that’s just an excuse, and I think there is benefit even in an uncompleted or imperfectly kept resolution.

I think a lot of resolutions fail because they are poorly thought out, poorly conceived of. Maybe they are arbitrary, just another thing to add to the to-do list, without any real reason behind it. Maybe they are overly specific, so that they are almost impossible to keep, or under specific, so we can easily talk ourselves out of them. I think a lot of resolutions fail because they aren’t really honest about what our struggles are, what our habits are, and we don’t solicit help from our family and friends, and we don’t invite accountability. I think resolutions fail mostly, though, because we are complacent in our comfortable habits.

Personally, I like to think of goals, rather than resolutions. I find the exercise to be a beautiful reminder that life is a process. We don’t get to skip the work and reap the benefits. Without being intentional in our personal, spiritual, physical, and relational development, growth will be inconsistent at best. Growth takes work, it takes sacrifice, and sometimes it takes some backsliding and incomplete successes and downright failures. And that’s okay.

Sometimes the very act of setting a goal in our sights is enough to at least keep us pointed in the right direction. We might get off, we might fail, but we can reorient towards that goal and get back on track. It is hard to make changes without specifics, without something concrete to be working towards.

So, I love to use this season as a time to write my lists and set my goals, and I take the time to evaluate, dream, and ask questions. What would a richer faith look like? What would greater trust in God look like? What would time better spent look like? What benefits would that reap? What would a sweeter marriage look like? How can I grow in love and forbearance and patience? What is something I want to learn? Something I want to do better? A way I want to grow?

New Year’s resolutions and goals don’t have to be complicated. Honestly, it is probably better that they aren’t. But having a vision and goals can help to infuse hope and optimism into the New Year, and help us to begin well.

Make Something

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

In a culture that wants fast and easy, cheap and replaceable, instant gratification and consumerism, convenience and mass-produced, it makes no sense to walk away to something totally different. It makes no sense to do for oneself. To take the long way around. To do it the slow way. To accept and embrace inconveniences.

If you had told me how satisfying it would be to eat eggs from my chickens, milk and cream and butter from my own milk cow, our own meat and vegetables and fresh baked bread, I would have believed you, but I wouldn’t have understood. Five years ago and ten years ago, my heart wanted that. But I had no idea.

No idea how satisfying it would be. How inconvenient and simple and hard and beautiful and growing it would be. How frustrating and elevating. It has moments of romance and sheer hilarity and humbling. And I wouldn’t want to change a thing.

Push back against a consumer mentality and become a producer. In small ways. Learn to make bread. Cook from scratch. Grow a few veggies on your deck. Keep an herb garden. Learn a few skills to do things yourself. Dust off your sewing machine. It doesn’t have to be complicated and baby steps are beautiful.

Because there is nothing like serving a home cooked meal, picking veggies from the garden, or pulling a loaf of fresh baked bread from the oven, or handing a neighbor a dozen fresh eggs, or a gallon of fresh milk. There’s nothing like knowing you made that. A factory in China didn’t make that. A computer didn’t execute that. You did that. You did the cultivating and the picking and the mixing and kneading and milking and stitching.

So go make something.

Soaking it all in

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, gardening, gratitude, Ordinary Joys, Photography, the homestead, Writing

I woke up last night to the lullaby of rain on the roof. Gentle rain. Peaceful rain. No hail, no devastating winds. Just music on the roof. We woke to 2 inches in the rain gauge and another inch has fallen since. It it one of those turning-inward kinds of days, where outside chores are accomplished as quickly as possible, and the oven and stove and dehydrator all warm the house and fill it with the tastes and smells of the season.

But fall really is less of a season and more of a sense, or an over-abundance of the senses. It is the time of gathering in, of putting up, of savoring and preserving.

The color palate shifts, in one last glorious display before the long winter sleep, as the last of the flowers send up their leaves and open their buds, and the trees, which in summer are a wonderful backdrop of green, burst into the most vivid of colors in a center-stage kind of a way. Living right inside the treeline of what becomes the Black Hills National Forest a little further west, a ponderosa pine forest, the hardwoods hide until the fall, at which point they come out of hiding in flamboyant style.

The last of the harvest is trickling in – the last of the fruit tasted sun-warm off the vine, the last of the shaking of the branches, the last eaten while perched in the branches to reach just one more. But even when the last of the harvest has trickled in, the work still isn’t done, and it continues in a pleasant flurry. The whirr of the dehydrator, the bubbling of the waterbath canner, the tastes and aromas of the summer, preserved for the winter. Every countertop surface is a chaos of things preserved and things to be preserved – The jams and jellies from the abundance of wild fruit, summertime salsas from the garden, enough to last us through next summer, bags and bags of dehydrated apples and zucchini, and jars of glassed eggs to get us through the winter slump. It is a delectable time of the year!

Flowers I thought wouldn’t bloom after the August hailstorm wiped out the gardens have flourished in the interim. One last bouquet was hastily cut last night, on the eve of what could still turn into our first winter storm if the temps drop tonight. Herbs were gathered in quickly – mint and thyme and lavender and dill – and are bundled neatly to dry.

But the savor of the season is mixed with the sweetness of routine – Baskets of eggs fresh from the coop, loaves of fresh bread, still warm.

Daily walks in the freshness of autumn, with a passel of dogs.

The company of a good pup.

Kittens in the barn, shades of cinnamon and the one little white one.

The view between a horse’s ears.

A certain pair of eyes in a sun-browned face.

Quiet evenings.

Beautiful sunrises.

Winter will be here before we know it. It is storing up the joy of times like this that keep the winter blues at bay. So I’m just listening to the whisper of the rain on the roof, and soaking it all in.

Ranch Wife Musings | Grandpa’s Apples

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

First printed in the Custer County Chronicle, October 11, 2023

Every other year, right about this time, when the leaves have started to turn and the shadows have lengthened, two gnarled and twisted apple trees blush rosy-red with clusters of fruit hanging heavy on the boughs, like clusters of grapes. They are my grandpa’s trees, planted some forty years ago, and are the best apples I have ever tasted. There were others, but only these two made it through the decades. I always get a little sentimental on a bumper-crop year. Grandpa has been gone for 15 years, and there’s something poignant and important in continuing a task he started.

And what task is there more intrinsically autumnal than that of the apple harvest? The warmth of the sun, the honeyed aroma of the fruit, the smooth, cool satin of the apple skin, the soft thud as apples hit the grass or the peals of laughter as falling apples are dodged, or biting into the crisp white of sun-warmed apple fresh-picked from the tree! While everything else is preparing for a winter sleep, some of us hurry to gather in the summer sunlight, to enjoy when the sun is at its lowest and coldest. After the apple picking comes the real work, the washing and cutting and coring and slicing and freezing or canning or baking. But it is a pleasant sort of work. A good sort of work. A wholesome work. A slow work. A kind of work that is out of step with society.

It’s a madcap world we live in. It is always about the next thing, something new, something different, something to boast about, something to give that little dopamine rush that comes with a handful of “likes” on Facebook. The next toy, the next expensive vacation, the nice car, high-end restaurants, the Instagram house and the Pinterest-worthy décor. Nothing is wrong with any of those things, in and of themselves, but somehow we have turned those things, culturally speaking, into “the American dream.” The instant-gratification of Walmart and Amazon have cheapened our tastes, and punched holes in our pocketbooks.

The very act of planting a tree is counter to the modern way of thinking. I have this sneaking suspicion that most people wouldn’t bat an eye at $50 spent on a meal at a restaurant, a meal that is consumed in an hour, but would cringe to spend $50 on a fruit tree that can be enjoyed for years and decades and generations. But we don’t plan that far ahead anymore. We want instant gratification, or at least a reasonable guarantee of personal gratification somewhere in the not too far distant future. Everything is impermanent, and a lot of money and time is spent pursuing our whims. New hair, new tattoos, new clothes, new job, new house, new experiences. Those things can bring a fleeting enjoyment, I suppose, but does the enjoyment last? And who experiences the enjoyment besides ourselves?

As I pick apples from my grandpa’s apple trees, as I wash and core and slice them, it strikes me just how far this enjoyment spreads. These apples will find their way into pies for the Rainbow Bible Ranch pie auction in November, and onto our dinner tables for the holidays. Did Grandpa picture that, as he dug a hole and settled the roots into the rocky soil? Did he picture his grown granddaughter harvesting fruit, and gifting bags of dried apples to friends and family, as he watched his little trees struggle to survive over the intervening years? Four decades and two generations later, we are breathing in the fall freshness and shaking down the fruit, and will enjoy the bounty for the next year or more, thanks to the simple and selfless act of my grandpa planting a tree. How poignant it is that the fruit we enjoy now was begun decades ago. I wonder if he pictured the joy that he would bring with his little orchard!

Such a simple act, and how profound.

We live in a society that tells us to forget about the next decades, forget about building a lasting legacy, live in the moment and follow your heart, nevermind the consequences or the collateral damage. I can’t change how society thinks, but I can intentionally walk out of step with it. I can cultivate a future-oriented mindset, a mindset that thinks about the next generation. I can think about the joy and gladness of others, and whether the decisions I make and the actions I take are done for my benefit alone, or whether there is a broader vision behind my life.

Because I want to leave something beautiful for those that follow.

Like Grandpa’s apples.

Ranch Wife Musings | When Summer’s Gone

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, gardening, gratitude, the homestead

The first day of fall came and went a few days ago, with a flurry of exciting activity, selling yearlings and enjoying the sweet coolness of the beginning of a new season. A lot of people brace for the end of the summer. I suppose I kind of understand it. I guess I do too, a little. Not every summer, but summers like this one. The warmth, the rainstorms that have kept us green, the ease of accomplishing basic tasks, the colors and sights and sounds and tastes of summertime. The fruitfulness.

I have enjoyed (almost) the last of the flowers of my hail-wrecked garden – To my delight, a number of my plants bloomed again, and I was able to cut yet another bouquet for the kitchen. There is something about fresh-cut flowers that touches my little soul and delights the eyes, and when I’ve grown them myself, cared for them and cultivated them, it is an even keener enjoyment.

The garden is slowly slowing down, as the fruit harvest is in full swing. This is where the fun really is…Because now the summer can wind itself away, and winter can wind itself up, and we’ll still be tasting the fruit of summertime. The early summer fruits like chokecherries prep us for the pouring-in of everything in the fall.

Salsa, and basil, dried apples and the abundance of apples that will be frozen for pies are just some of the evidence of the wonderful bounty of this year! Days have been filled with picking and washing and processing gallons upon gallons of fruit, hawthorn berries and plums and apples, into things we will enjoy for months and potentially years – butters and jams and juices and fruit for pies. A gallon jar of apple scrap vinegar is brewing on the counter, and I have finally started waterglassing eggs from the summer abundance, which will hopefully allow me to continue to fill customer orders with fresh eggs over the slump of the winter, and Brad and I can eat and use the glassed eggs.

Winter doesn’t seem as long, when you can continue to enjoy the summer, even after it is gone.

A Beautiful Sight

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, gardening, gratitude, Ordinary Joys, Photography, the homestead

What a summer it has been.

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?