Category Archives: Writing

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 | Legacy in a jelly jar

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

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle, August 16, 2023

Chokecherry season crops up at the most inconvenient time. It’s hot outside, hot inside, and even hotter standing over a boiling pot of almost-jelly, stirring and pouring and fishing hot jars out of hotter water, burning fingers and creating chaos in the kitchen. It isn’t as if there’s not enough to do or the summer hasn’t flown by fast enough. The branding irons are hardly cooled and we begin the late summer work of preconditioning calves. The bulls hardly start their summertime gig before we gather them up for their 10-month vacation. Teeny little seedlings hardly pop up in the garden before the tomatoes are towering over my head, zucchinis the size of small dogs hide under every leaf, and I’m trying to find my strawberries in the dill forest. Just when I think we might catch a break, the chokecherries (which I’m pretty sure just bloomed yesterday) are suddenly ripe in Gobbler Knob and we’re picking them by the bucketful. And the more we pick, the more work there is to do. Funny how that goes. And this year is a bumper crop year.

So, I find myself wondering…why? Why in the world do I go to the trouble of picking chokecherries and processing them, or canning anything for that matter?

To be quite honest, no matter how madcap the summer, I love the chokecherry harvest, inconvenient as it may be. The task itself is pleasant, the rhythmic stripping stem after stem of berries, the sweet-astringent tang on the tongue, the sunlight and fresh air, a forced slow-down. Sometimes that inconvenience is a disguised blessing. Then there’s the aroma in the kitchen as the berries cook for extracting the juice, the jewel-like color of the juice itself, and finally the jelly in gleaming jars set out in proud rows on the countertop, or, better yet, spread generously on a slice of fresh bread. Oh, boy. A person can founder on that.

Several years back, before she passed away, my grandma gifted me her recipes, and those two worn boxes of handwritten cards have become cherished possessions, especially the one for chokecherry jelly, dirty and smudged as it is with age and use and love, scratched out in her spidery handwriting.

Chokecherries were plentiful on my grandparents’ little ranch near Hermosa, and they were diligent in utilizing them. As far back as I can remember, chokecherry jelly has been a family tradition, and I don’t know that there was ever a meal my grandma served that didn’t feature a little dish of the ruby-red jelly in a crystal bowl, with the obligatory tiny jelly spoon.

I picture that little bowl of jelly and vividly remember family gatherings packed around the long wooden table Grandpa built. I can remember how good their house smelled, built of rough-cut lumber. I remember cousins and Christmases and sweet summertimes, our twice-yearly pilgrimages to the Black Hills. I can remember Grandpa’s simple blessing over the meal: “We thank you again, Lord, for the many good things You give us…” And I can see the blue enamel plates Grandma served lunch on, and the brown stoneware for suppertime. And Grandma, always the picturesque wife and homemaker and hostess, with permed silver hair and a cardigan, seated next to my jovial, plaid-shirted Grandpa, who was the life of that house.

All from a little bowl of homemade jelly, and a smudged recipe card. Reminders of the best parts of the past, the happiest memories of my childhood, and my lifelong love of the Hills.

But beyond that, that simple, smudged recipe card and my jars of jelly foster a broader connection to a whole era and a way of life that is in danger of passing away.

It is an era of family gatherings around a dinner table. Before cellphones and social media intruded into every aspect of our lives. Before Walmart and online shopping reduced the need for self-sufficiency. An era of recipes passed hand to hand, not looked up on Pinterest. An era before “Ask Siri,” but rather “Ask Dad. He knows.” An era of mothers teaching tasks to daughters and granddaughters, and fathers to sons and grandsons. An era of taking pride and pleasure in doing by hand – whether that was a garden, or a meal, or a home, or a family. An era of multi-generational learning and sharing of skills and knowledge. An era of legacy-building through seemingly unimportant tasks. Like chokecherry jelly.

As a culture, we have segregated our societies by age, families have spread out geographically, and we’ve chosen again and again to prioritize convenience over relationships (especially generational ones), over community, and over self-sufficiency. As a culture, we are losing skills and knowledge that used to be passed down, generation to generation.

Chokecherry jelly isn’t just about chokecherry jelly, or how much better homemade is than storebought.

It is so much more than that. It is about those little things that remind of us who we are, and where we came from. It is about connecting to the past in tangible, meaningful ways. It is about preserving a way of life, a dying art, a heritage skill, and cultivating a mindset of capability and productivity. A mindset of choosing to not dollar out every action, every decision, but rather intentionally choosing to sacrifice convenience for things that are of greater importance.

Besides, you just can’t beat chokecherry jelly on homemade sourdough toast.

Homestead Happenings | What a Summer!

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

Sometimes I just have to pause for a minute and think about everything that is going on, and going on well. Just taking a few steps outside and seeing all the green – incredible green! – is reminder enough of how blessed this summer is. It has been wonderful. It couldn’t be more different than last year, where the grass was basically done growing by the end of June, and we ate dust all summer long. The grasshopper infestation was unreal and our stackyards stood empty of hay. The only reason the garden survived at all is because of the amount of time I spent watering it.

What a different year it has been!

The garden is gorgeous, really just thanks to the heavenly weather. My perennials are thriving, as well as some annuals I started from seed this year, and I’m already scheming to dig up another part of the yard to start planting volunteers and babies, and to rehome plants when I divide them up. A well-kept garden is almost a thing of the past, and I think that is such a loss. Beebalm and catmint and verbena and coneflowers, cosmos and zinnias and poppies…I love the color they add! Taking pride in one’s home and in beautifying the home and yard is a valuable pursuit!

The vegetable garden, though…Oh my. Every few days I’m able to harvest wonderful quantities of greens and herbs – kale, chard, arugula, spinach, lettuce, cilantro, dill, basil…We’ve been eating the most delicious steak salads! But for some reason I didn’t ever write about my greenhouse, when we first built it a couple of months ago. Maybe because I was afraid it would just be a disaster, possibly due to the fact that it blew down within three hours of initially setting it up. It really was quite heartbreaking.

But after my handy husband did a lot of head scratching and dirt work, he designed and executed a frame made out of old railroad ties from a corral my grandpa built, sank the railroad ties in the ground about four feet, and the greenhouse cover (from the one that blew down) perfectly fit over this frame. A lot of 2x4s and screws later and plenty of redneck flair, this greenhouse isn’t going anywhere. It has withstood some pretty heavy winds, a significant hailstorm or three, and the vegetables in it are absolutely thriving. Weekly fertilizing of the entire greenhouse, weekly strip-pruning of the tomatoes, and it is doing better than I ever anticipated. My tomatoes are taller than I am, and I’ve been having to tie the branches to the roof of the greenhouse as they’ve outgrown the cages. The branches are loaded with green fruit and yesterday we ate the first tomatoes of what should be an abundant harvest!

Gardening is so fun when it works the way it is supposed to!

The pullets started laying a few days ago, and it makes me chuckle how much I enjoy finding white eggs from my Leghorns! I am sad and not sad to say that Bernard the rooster got voted off the island a week or so ago, leaving my hens (and myself) much happier and more peaceful, with Big Boy doing all his roosterly duties in a much more respectable and respectful manner. However, Bernard may be joined shortly by Peewee, the jerk of a Leghorn rooster that was supposed to be a pullet. He is tiny, fast, and just mean. Bernard was a jerk, but he never chased me down. Peewee is a whole different story, and he’s only four months old. Yikes.

So we are finally eating meals again entirely produced on this ranch, from the beef to the eggs to the veggies and greens, and how satisfying that is! At any given time I have about a gallon of kombucha brewing, and a half pint to a pint of milk kefir. Bread baking happens on a weekly basis, give or take, whether it is a quick loaf of machine-baked whole wheat, or a carefully tended four-loaf batch of sourdough.

The hay crop is almost entirely rolled up, our fat steer is getting fatter on his daily grain ration, and in short this is just a good summer. They aren’t all like this, and it didn’t take me long being married to a rancher to figure that out…They aren’t all like this, so when we do have a great year, I will savor it. And savor it. And savor it some more. Sometimes I think a little more savoring of the good things would help get all of us through the tough times.

Tickled Plum to Death

Posted on by under country life, Writing

Just before church started this morning, as I was getting my piano music all lined out for service, a gal from church came up to me. “I just had to tell you how much I enjoyed your article in MaryJane’s Farm.”

Well, how fun is that! I mean, sure, obviously a lot of people read MaryJane’s Farm, but surely no one I know does!

Shortly after we moved to South Dakota, I wrote an article for MaryJane’s Farm, a magazine for women and by women, related to all things gardening and home-building and simple, country living. It really is a lovely magazine, and one I’ve read on and off for a number of years. I wrote another article for the magazine earlier this year, and it hit newsstands in early May. So you’d better hurry up and get your copy if you want to read this fine piece of literature!

It seems fitting somehow that the theme of the first magazine was “Home is Where the Heart Is,” and my article reflected on God bringing my family to South Dakota, and the theme of this magazine is “Coming Home,” and my article reflected on God’s kindness in providing a husband. Looking back over the years in between those two articles, it just amazes me and fills me with a smile to see what God has done!

It just tickles me plum to death.

The Men Who Made Us

Posted on by under country life, gratitude, Writing

Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction, and be attentive, that you may gain insight. ~Proverbs 4:1

We learn the foundations of life from them – Our work ethics, how to interact in the world, how to treat people, how to be the people God made us to be. We follow their examples. In relationships. In work. In spiritual and faith matters. We learn life skills, of all sorts. We learn our sense of humor from them. We learn how to shrug off a skinned knee or hurt feelings, how to stand up tall and stand our ground. Boys learn about manhood how to treat women by how their fathers treat their mothers. Girls learn about womanhood and how they should be treated as women, by watching how their fathers treat their mothers. We share their genetics. Physical characteristics. Personality traits.

There are two important fathers in my life, men who have played important roles in my life over the years, and who have, through their examples and leadership and faith and decisions, contributed to the life I feel so blessed to be living. My father, and my father-in-law.

Like many a father does, like a good father will, my dad set my standard in so many ways – He was the dad, the best dad. He was the way a father ought to be. The way a husband ought to be. I think of the things I learned from my dad – My view of the world, my love of Jesus, my entrepreneur-spirit, that it is okay to change directions in life, how to follow God even when what He is asking of us makes no sense to the people around us. How to do what is right even when everything in you and around you is rebelling against it. That there are so many things more important in life than what others think of us, or how padded our bank accounts are. I learned my love of the outdoors. My love of politics and theology. My love of photography, even. In a lot of ways, I can thank my dad for the husband I ended up marrying. Dad’s example of Godly manhood shaped and influenced what I knew to look for in a husband, the things that were important to me. Kindness. Humility. A genuine and abiding love for Christ. A willingness to learn and grow and change. A desire to lead.

But my thankfulness doesn’t stop with my dad. Not only have I been blessed with a Godly and strong father, God has also blessed me with a great father-in-law. I am also so thankful for the man who shaped and molded my now husband as a boy and a younger man, who has served as a primary example to my husband of how a faithful husband and father should act, how to be a leader in the community and church, and a man of strength and resilience. I’m thankful for his kind spirit and his willingness to teach. Incidentally, he was the first person to come alongside me the first day I showed up to a fire department training and start showing me the ropes. Little did I think that five years later he’d be my father-in-law!

Dad, I’m so thankful to be your daughter! Dave, I’m thankful to be your daughter-in-law! For the roles you’ve played in my life, for your faith in God and your faithfulness to the things He has given you. Both of you, for your kindness and care for the people around you. For being Godly men, men of character and integrity.

Happy Father’s Day!

Ranch Wife Musings | Prayers and Rain and Sunshine

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

I think of the prayers. Months of prayers. More than that. Much more than that.

Prayers that went something like this: “God, you know what we need. You know what we need more than we do. You know what we need beyond the physical needs we can see. You always provide – Somehow, You always do. Thank you for Your provision. We also know that how You choose to provide is Your prerogative, and it isn’t always the way we would choose. Align our hearts with Yours. And please send rain. You know we need it. And help us to trust in Your provision.”

I think of the sick pit in the stomach last year at this time, seeing hayfields and pastures dry up, yet the comfort of knowing that God really is faithful. I remember the attempts at optimism, but the realization that last year just wasn’t going to be the year we hoped it would be. But God would provide. Somehow He would get us through. And He did, though it wasn’t always comfortable.

And then I remember the sense of anxiety as we came through the winter with very little snow, very little to dampen the dry ground. And then March passed. And April. And then we got some snow. And lost a lot of calves. And then May came, and weeks went by with very little moisture, but the pastures were trying to green up, and what managed to green up looked wonderful to eyes tired of the brown. But we could start to see that the grass was struggling, needing moisture that just hadn’t come yet.

And how many times I took my walk in the morning or the afternoon and prayed. Hard. As I walked through the pastures and up into the timber, the prayers just came.

And God opened the skies. How many prayers He must have heard! I know a lot of prayers were sent Heavenward.

We have enjoyed so many slow, steady rains over the last month! I enjoy keeping an eye on the weather radar, and a number of times small storm cells have originated directly over our ranch. How different from last spring and summer, watching storm after promising storm develop to our west and dissipate over us! Just this last weekend, we picked up another almost inch of rain.

Little gets better than these sweet springtime storms. Dark days and heavy skies and wonderful rolling thunder. Walls of rain sweeping across the fields. The sound of big drops on the shop roof, or the barn roof, or the roof of the chicken coop, or the cover of the greenhouse. Ribbons of rain streaming from stormy blue skies against the horizon. Sunshine scattering through shredding clouds, dancing on the prairie. Rainbows spanning the Heavens. It has been transformative.

We still haven’t run much water so our dams remain low, but the grass and the hayfields look wonderful and we hope to begin haying next week. The grass is tall and keeps getting taller, up to the top wire of the fences, tall enough to lose the dogs in it, tall enough to brush over our boots when we’re on horseback. Wildflowers have sprung with vigor – Yarrow and beardtongue and spiderwort and roses, just to name a few of the colorful bouquet. My perennial garden has taken off unbelievably. There are puddles everywhere, and every evening the pups are a matted mess of mud and sandy dirt, and every day I sweep up a sandbox from where they sleep in the mudroom. It is glorious!

Prayers upon prayers have been answered and we are so thankful. Prayer matters. God hears. So keep praying. Keep trusting. Keep looking ahead with faith. And then wait patiently. God is listening.