Our neighbor’s Hereford bull took a liking to some of our cows last year and paid a number of, shall we say, social visits. It became quite a regular occurrence to kick him back out of the cows and back into his herd, and his beautiful progeny have graced our pastures this spring. I love them all.

In a sea of black Angus calves, the Charolais babies and all their vast colorings are delightful to my eyes…These precious baldy babies, though…My goodness. They are all just a little different, and I love it. As many calves as there are, it is fun to be able to actually recognize some time after time. The following three are Patches, Half-and-Half (look at her eyelashes!), and Freckles.

According to Brad, there are at least 15 more, so now that I can buzz around on the ATV without freezing, I’ll have to lug my camera back out. So precious!

The sun hasn’t woken up yet but the lightening sky is shrouded in fog, the tops of the trees veiled and draped in the weather change and a silver frost. We’ve been craving this. Our too-dry weather looks to be turning, with multiple systems slowly rolling into the area this weekend. Preparations will happen today and tomorrow, after what has been an unbelievably easy calving season due to warm temps and an excellent set of heifers.

This time last year, we were in a cycle of storms, digging out and breaking ice and doing chores multiple times in the day to keep water in front of thirsty animals. Easy tasks were complicated and encumbered by layer after layer of cold weather clothing, knee-high drifts, and an icy crust on the cleared ground. This year, it almost feels as if we have missed winter altogether, with only a handful of snowstorms and cold snaps, and to this date only a single calf loss due to the cold. But we went into March knowing that for the western part of South Dakota, a lot of our snow waits until March and April!

Seeds have been started and little seedlings are flourishing, the chickens are laying almost as well as they ever do, and the chicks are already in their awkward teenage phase and moved down to the barn. The heifers are almost done calving, the cows are well underway, and even Posey is starting to earn her keep with a bum calf on her for the time being. Spring is underway, but winter isn’t through yet.

There is such a mingling of the two this time of year. Crisp mornings turn into barefoot, bare-shouldered days, followed by stretches of winterish, blustery days, before flirting again with springlike weather. One day, it’ll make up its mind, but usually by that point it is almost summer. Yes, indeed, we are on the brink of springtime.

If you enjoy the photography on this blog, I’d encourage you to check out my Photography page, and the galleries nested underneath it! I update them periodically throughout the year, but often don’t share when I’ve updated them! The Beautiful Mundane and This is Ranching are my favorites.

It is almost magical, kind of like alchemy of the Middle Ages. But instead of turning lead into gold, my little cow turns sunlight, in the form of hay and grain, into glorious, cream-rich milk. And then I take that glorious, cream-rich milk, skim the cream, and make golden butter.

Does it get any better?

I have been noticing a persistent trend, and I love it, of women in particular realizing that society has trained us to accept that the little things we do at home are meaningless and unproductive. So I push back against that, relishing the days when I am doing laundry and bustling around the kitchen and milking my cow and gathering eggs and making butter and stockpiling butterballs in the freezer.

Let’s redefine productivity. It can’t all be measured.

It was just a laundry-doing, apple-drying, bread-baking, donut-making kind of a day.

I’m still wading through piles and piles of apples. It’s wonderful. We will be eating these forever.

Baking from Mary Jane Butter’s sourdough book, Wild Bread, is fantastic. My favorite recipe is so easy to double, so I can bake a month’s bread at one time, and freeze it.

Doing laundry with homemade laundry detergent is so satisfying. None of the nasty stuff that’s in commercial detergents, no weird fragrances, and just a sparkling fresh load of towels!

And I ate too many donut holes.

Basically, it’s a great kind of a day.