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.

When I got engaged and left a budding career as a paramedic, the first question people asked me was “So what are you going to do now?” The implied question was what I was going to do for “work.” Um, be a wife. Build a home. Serve my husband. Keep a clean house. Do laundry. Cook nourishing meals. Reduce our food bill by gardening and food preservation. Help on the ranch (we’re re-siding and re-shingling right now). On top of that, I teach piano, do photography, and write for a handful of publications.

Yes, I am a homemaker. And I have never been busier! My countertops are overflowing with home-canned goods and baked goods and eggs and garden produce. My husband has clean clothes and good food to eat. The house is welcoming and pleasant, generally tidy though loved and lived in.

Somehow society has convinced women that it is demeaning and belittling to build a home and serve one’s husband and family and to actually enjoy doing so, but that it isn’t demeaning or belittling to enter the workforce and serve your employer (who statistically will likely be a man) and customers.

Women will say on the one hand how they’d be bored to death if they stayed at home as a wife, but then the next second they’ll talk as if it is “privilege” to be a homemaker. We’ve created a modern home life that doesn’t have to take a woman’s full attention, with washing machines and dryers, dishwashers, Amazon and Walmart and easy access to anything you need. But more than that, women have let themselves be convinced that the work within the home shouldn’t take their full attention, and is somehow “lesser” work.

As far as it being a “privilege”…I know that there are situations where a dual income is necessary, or where a wife needs to work outside the home. I also don’t for a second think that women can’t or shouldn’t ever work outside the home. But the prevailing attitude towards homemaking is so sad. The home used to be a woman’s pride. Now it is generally viewed as a cage, or a worthless pursuit.

What a sad lie.

I have never been so busy. I have never felt so needed and purposeful. I have never felt such passion for my work, whether it is hanging laundry up to dry or making coffee for days working cows or canning my garden’s bounty or feeding chickens or mopping the kitchen on hands and knees. I take pride in a clean home, but I take even more pleasure in a loved home, one that is welcoming and hospitable and safe and comfortable.

I have figured out where I’m needed. And it is beautiful work.