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.

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!

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on May 1, 2024

What a springtime we have had! As I write this, a gentle rain is falling outside on a world becoming almost too green to look at. I love watching the animals in a rain like this. Unconcerned, unbothered, unflapped. They don’t seek shelter, or hump up their backs against it, but just let it fall and go about their business. The grass seems to double its height every day, and I think I could sit and watch my garden grow. The pastures are vivid beneath last year’s cured grasses, and the hayfield is slowly coming back to life after being stripped by hail last summer.

The forecast looks promising for continued moisture. We have had inches of precipitation so far this year, mostly in the form of rain since we had a nearly snowless winter, but the funny thing is that I look back on the last month or two, and I don’t remember when it happened.

We have no trouble remembering storms. In a climate where we measure rainfall in hundredths of an inch, we care deeply about the storms. Winter or summer, springtime or fall, it doesn’t matter. We remember the summertime gully washers, the calf-killing blizzards, the deadly cold snaps, or the heat waves that spike a whole region into red flag warnings. We remember the fire-starting lightning storms, powerline-downing ice storms. We remember the washout that fills all the dams in three hours and the wild green-up afterwards. We remember the hail that devastates and destroys, and the subsequent work re-siding and re-shingling the house. We remember the massive storm that follows a prolonged and agonizing dry spell, wrenching us violently out of a drought and providing moisture for a hay crop when we thought it wouldn’t be possible.

Good or bad, we remember those things.

But we never remember the rain. Just the rain.

Funny, because of all the kinds of storms, of all the kinds of weather events that bring chaos and goodness and growth and blessing, the gentle drizzle is the best of the best. The rain that falls gently, not driven by wind, but straight-falling rain, hushing sweetly in the grasses, trickling quietly down the windows, dripping lazily from tree branches and running softly down the sodden gravel road, slowly – so, so slowly! – filling puddles and dams and soaking deep into the ground where it can actually do the most good.

The gentle drizzle. The good it provides it provides slowly.

We do the same with metaphorical storms as well. We remember the big events, whether they bring grief or blessing. We remember the deaths and births and marriages and the marriages falling apart. We remember the big promotions and the job losses.

But what about all the gentle drizzle of good things that fill in the gaps?

We remember relational storms as well. We remember being madly in love or desperately heartbroken. We remember feeling wildly loved and feeling devastatingly hurt. We remember the glittering engagement ring, the wedding (maybe), the honeymoon (maybe), and we remember each other’s failures.

But what about all the gentle drizzle of good things that fill in the gaps?

We remember spiritual storms as well. We remember dry spells so critical we felt our faith would break, or being in such a vicious storm we couldn’t see our way out of it. We remember droughts breaking in a cloudburst of certainty and joy, and all our dams of hope and faith and joy being filled up overnight.

But what about the gentle drizzle? The times when a gentle heavenly watering keeps the ephemeral springs trickling, keeping the dams full in a less spectacular way? The things that keep the grass green, and ripen the crops without flattening them? The things that keep the ground soft for working, rather than pouring out everything all at once and running off?

It is easy to see why we remember storms. Real ones and metaphorical. They’re showy. A lot happens in a short amount of time, both good and bad. We remember that sort of thing. We can’t be faulted for that, but we can be faulted that we don’t remember the rain. It takes work to remember it. It is a choice to remember it.

And we need to remember it.

Life isn’t made up of storms, although some people do seem to have more than their fair share of stormy happenings. Sometimes I think we look for storms as the answer to our problems, whether it is an actual meteorological drought, or a metaphorical drought. We, in a way, like the show of the lightning and the roll of the thunder and the downpour that is unmistakable, watching the dams fill up in a matter of hours. We also brace for storms, sometimes going through life expecting to get flattened by a microburst at any second.

But life isn’t sustained by storms. It doesn’t take a storm to bring change, and a lot of times the change that a storm brings is short-lived, doing much less good than a much less spectacular gentle rain.

Gentle rain…Those daily graces God pours out. The sustenance, even if it seems meager. The spiritual sustenance, the physical sustenance. Like the daily awaking next to a beloved though imperfect spouse, the shared morning routine, the shared meals and quiet companionship of faithful marriage. Like watching the day to day and year by year growth and change in a loved one, or in oneself. Like the hindsight awe of getting by, even if it was tough. Like comfort in loneliness, even if it is years of loneliness. Like all of the millions of little things that can easily be overlooked or taken for granted.

That’s what life is made of. So, remember the rain.

The funniest sights of calves always involve their tongues. Either they forget they have one or they can’t quiiiiiite reach. This little guy was super determined to reach his little hind end, and was occupied for quite awhile doing so. I left and came back and he was working on the other side. Perseverance!

My favorite is seeing a baby calf, a little dozey-looking, probably just finished nursing, sitting there with his tongue sticking out of his mouth. Sometimes he has a milk mustache. It always makes me laugh, though half the time I don’t notice until I’m looking through pictures later.

Funny little critters.

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.