Ranch Wife Musings | The Need to be Needed

Posted on May 24, 2025 by Laura Lindblom under Agriculture and Ranching, Photography

Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on May 21, 2025

The month of May goes by in a whirlwind of fun and hard work, and there is much rejoicing when the last cow calves and the last calf is branded. The nonstop chaos of calving and branding is followed by the shortest of lulls, before the summer settles into its routine. A thousand prayers for rain have been followed up by a thousand thanks, as we’ve emptied the rain gauge not of tenths or hundredths of an inch, but inches. Whole inches. Inches of slow rain that was actually able to soak into the ground where it will do the most good. We aren’t likely to get a hay crop this year, or not much of one, but we should be able to grow grass, and that is huge.

One season blends and blurs into the next, but it is this spring season that is the highlight for many. After months of winter solitude, branding season feels like a family reunion but without the drama, with all the hugs and handshakes, laughter and jokes, stories and community gossip, finding out all the goings on and the comings up, the graduations and babies and engagements and lives well-lived.

And it is in the chaos of spring work that the ranching community shines as exactly that – a community. We branded our main herd on Saturday, an endeavor that is humbling in its scope, humbling in how many people it takes to actually get the job done, humbling to see how many are willing to help in any way they can. Brandings are like that.

As I handed out hot coffee at our mid-morning break, I was able to study the faces, some smiling, some serious, and all the different walks of life they represent. There are the cowboy ranchers, the true-blue, western-through-and-through, how-my-grandpa-did-it type. There are the dirt bikes and four-wheelers, we-can-do-this-faster type. There are the button-front shirt and cowboy-hat-wearing crowd, and the sweatshirt and ballcap wearing crowd. There are the ones with spurs jingling on costly boots, and those wearing comfortable and well-worn tennis shoes. There are the tobacco chewing ones and the straighter-than-straight-laced ones. There are the beer drinkers and the tea totallers. The coffee drinkers and the water drinkers. There are the ones who know cows as well as they know their kids, and ones who know horses and ropes but cows, not so much. There are those who grew up doing this, and those who learned along the way, and those who simply show up for the work, for the fun and the challenge and the sense of community.

And with all the differences, all the variety, the work is seamless. The fellowship is sweet. And none of those categories matter to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re wrestling or roping, branding or cutting, vaccinating or watching the gate, everyone jumps in to get the work done. Although some who come do get help in return with their brandings or cow work, the only repayment many want is a good meal at the end – and we do a good meal, if I do say so myself – and the satisfaction of a job well done, stories swapped, laughs shared, and for them that is plenty. And they’d do it again in a heartbeat.

What is it about agriculture, ranching in particular, that invites this? Or creates this? What is it about ranch work that brings out the best in so many, and fosters an enthusiasm for someone else’s work? When I look at other sectors of society, I’m puzzled and even disenchanted. Even sectors of society where lip service is paid to the importance of community are lacking significantly in this department. I see organizations struggling to recruit involvement from more than the barest percentage of people, and their lack of community reflects this.

I think one factor, maybe the most important factor, is need. Genuine need. Acknowledged need. Ranching families know that they can’t do it alone. They don’t have the luxury to hand-pick those who agree with them or look just like them or never irritate or annoy. They need this neighbor and that neighbor, even the neighbor who might think differently about this issue or that issue, or the neighbor who does things differently, or the neighbor who occasionally pushes some buttons and grates on some nerves. And that neighbor needs them right back.

Could it be that we need to be needed? And we need to need others? It might be that simple.

Our culture tells us, all of us, that we’re good on our own, autonomy is the ultimate state, blaze your own trail, follow your own heart, chase your dreams with no thought to anyone else, and you don’t need anyone but yourself. And too many people have bought into this in one way or another. Connections become optional. Connections become a matter of convenience or personal preference.

Real, genuine need erases so many of those devastating societal luxuries, where connections are based on pet interests and shared hobbies, curating one’s community like a museum curator curating art. When we handpick our community, we tend to reap surface-level connections, clique-like interactions based on emotions and how well we slept and what we ate for breakfast.

But, when community is picked for you, by proximity and history and shared needs, something much deeper forms and something much more lasting is reaped, something that extends beyond brandings and cow work, something that forms the family-like structure of a resilient community.

We need to be needed. And we need to need others.

Ranch Wife Musings | A baby milk cow named Marigold

Posted on March 29, 2025 by Laura Lindblom under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, Pets/Domestic/Farm Animals

Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on March 26, 2025

“So, will your column be about a certain baby milk cow named Marigold?”

Brad has a way of poking fun through the most innocent of questions. And he knew the answer a week ago, when Marigold was born. Of course the column would feature the newest addition to Laura’s dairy operation. Silly question.

Posey calved last Wednesday, producing the prettiest little Jersey x Brown Swiss heifer, all golden brown, and rosy pink wherever her skin shows through parted hair, like along her back or the little spot on her nose. Some calves are sort of knock-kneed when they’re born, or their proportions are just a tick off. Not Marigold. She has the sweetest, brown-rimmed doe eyes, the curliest eyelashes, the floppiest ears all pink inside, and the straightest, slenderest white legs with dainty little deer-like hooves. And she’s happy! So happy. She comes literally skipping into the shed when I’m milking in the morning, prancing around merrily until she decides to nap, quite the contrast to Posey’s calf last year, a big bull calf, who just wandered around headbutting everything and knocking stuff over. This delicate critter is rather captivating.

I’ve spent a shameless amount of time sitting down on the stoop of the shed, soaking in all the springtime pleasantness and the satisfaction of seeing that beautiful little baby milk cow skip around the corrals or curl up in a puddle of sunshine. The last 9 months were spent hoping that the sexed Jersey semen would do its job, and I am basking in the exceptional outcome. And she is perfect. For me, any baby cow is cute, even the funny looking ones or the less proportionate ones. But you know a calf is particularly cute when a seasoned rancher is willing to say so. I felt very gratified and validated when it took no coaxing to get such an admission from my husband or my father-in-law.

But it isn’t just about Marigold, as much joy as she brings me. It is about community. Connection. It is about generational relationships that I feel so blessed and fortunate and humbled to have married into. And those complex topics are represented by the simple existence of this little baby milk cow.

Her mother, Posey, was a gift to me from Brad a year and a half ago, purchased from dear friends and neighbors that Brad practically grew up with. She was born on their ranch, and her mother was their long-time nurse cow, raising who knows how many bum calves. This same neighbor’s brother, the dad of one of Brad’s best childhood friends, AI’ed Posey for me last year as a belated wedding present. What a gift!

We are not islands unto ourselves, as the saying goes. Our modern, industrialized, efficient, corporatized society creates the sense of islands, isolated groups and individuals seemingly disconnected from their neighbors. We’ve created a society where we rely most heavily on people we never will know, where person is separated from person by space and perspective and interests in ways that only deepen the sense of isolation. And technology, as much benefit as it brings, as much potential for good as it has, in many ways has driven this divide, as we are no longer forced to rely on those closest to us.

But peer into the inner workings of the agricultural community and you’ll see something very different. I’m continually amazed and blessed by the interconnectedness, and it begins within the four walls of each home. I rely on Brad. He relies on me. We rely on our families. They rely on us. We all rely on our neighbors. They in turn rely on us. And on it goes.

It is especially apparent going into branding season, where the all-hands-on-deck, neighbor-helping-neighbor work is accomplished to the benefit of the whole community, as everyone sees to it that everyone’s work gets done, but it shows up more subtly as well. As the stories fly, the community gets wonderfully smaller. The excellent cattle dog that you find out was out of So-and-so’s dog. The roping horse you’re told was trained by this person. The truck bought from that person. The chaps made by this person. The saddle crafted by that person. The branding stove made by So-and-so. The barn built by So-and-so. Adventures, mishaps, and memories shared across generations, binding family to family and neighbor to neighbor.

So, I look at my rosy-golden little calf and her mama and I see a distilled-down representation of community. I see the gift of a husband to his wife in Posey. I see the connection of friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor, in Marigold herself. I see family integration and affection represented by a nurse cow who generates no pasture bill and who raises whatever calf needs a mama, regardless of its brand, in a small way benefitting everyone.

Lots of thoughts prompted by a critter so tiny.

So, I will continue to shamelessly sit and watch the sweet interactions of a mama cow and her baby, listening to the noisy nursing sounds, watching that little white-splotched tail whip back and forth, watching the bony little head thump the shapely udder, watching the merry creature skipping around in play. And be thankful for the community I get to call my own.

Ranch Wife Musings | When the Irons Cool

Posted on June 7, 2024 by Laura Lindblom under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, Writing

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on May 29, 2024

It is an exhilarating feeling, riding out in the cool of the morning with husband and family and neighbors, hearing a chorus familiar voices sing out gently in friendly conversation, the soft plodding of the horses’ hooves on soft earth, the occasional metallic ringing as a shod hoof strikes stone, watching the rolling hills fall away, the row of pickups and trailers get smaller behind us, seeing the cow herd stretched out over the entirety of a pasture. It is an exhilarating feeling, as we get further and further onto the prairie or into the breaks, and one by one, or two by two, riders are left behind until the herd is more or less encircled, and the gather begins.

It is an exhilarating feeling, to be behind a growing, moving, shifting bunch of cows, a bunch that gets joined to another, and another, until the whole herd is gathered, encircled by five or thirty horses and riders. The lowing of the cattle intensifies as they mill around, looking for their calves, and eventually the cattle trickle away from the pressure of the riders. The branding pens get nearer and nearer, and the net is pulled tighter and tighter. Instead of riders every 50 or 100 yards, it is riders every 50 or 100 feet, then every 5 or 10 feet, and then shoulder to shoulder for the last push to pen the herd.

The cattle bawl at a fever pitch, like the deafening hum of a riled-up hornet nest, as mamas and babies are sorted and separated, the calves penned for branding, and cows released back to pasture. The perturbed mothers stand at the fence bawling for the calves, the calves bawl back, and the branding stove roars to life. Soon it is an ordered chaos of activity, as each member of a branding crew is assigned a role or finds a role, and the branding settles into a rhythm, like a well-oiled machine, a rhythm of ropers and wrestlers and branders, the soft hiss of ropes dancing, the smell of smoke and burnt hair, the clank as irons are drawn out of the fire, and the crackle of red-hot iron on hide. Glints and flickers of flame, clouds of shifting smoke, dust and flinging mud. Laughter and shouts and snippets of conversation punctuate the noise, and the steady rhythm is occasionally interrupted by the sudden leaping to action of half a dozen wrestlers when a calf puts up a stiff fight. And bit by bit, little by little, but faster than you’d think, the roping pens empty, the deafening bawling of the cows dies away as they head out briskly to pasture with their calves at their sides, without so much as a backward glance. With a suddenness of quiet that is jarring yet a relief, the branding stove is shut off. In the hours that follow the rush of the work, a meal is enjoyed and stories are shared and reminiscences are savored.

There is something bittersweet about the last big branding of the season, the last time the stove roars to life, the last time it cools. Ranching, for much of the year, is a pretty solitary profession. Families hunker down in the wintertime keeping animals fed and watered, and take to the pastures in the summertime with the odd jobs that are the summer routine. Fall work throws neighbors together in small groups here and there before calves are weaned and sold, but it is nothing like the community reunion of branding season. For a solid month, branding follows branding and neighbor helps neighbor, in a celebratory frenzy of work and camaraderie.

It is when the irons cool that there is really time to reflect on that, that partnership with one another for the grand and gritty task ahead, in partnerships that go back decades and generations. No one is keeping a score card, no one is counting hours helped here or there, but everyone is pitching in because there is work to do and that is what a true community does.

This is a foreign concept to many modern-day Americans. We no longer live where we work, or work where we live, to give a nod to the author Wendell Berry. We have separated work from life, and we have lost the vitality of community that results from living where we work in close proximity to others who also live where they work.

No matter how the American culture has shifted in favor of convenience and economy and minimizing human inputs and nickeling and diming every transaction, ranching is still done the old way. And the old way requires people. Flesh and blood people. People who are willing to show up with what skill they have or the willingness to learn a new one. To give of their time without keeping a record of how or whether it was returned to them, and with this spirit the work all somehow gets done.

We aren’t made to live in isolation. We are made to need one another and to be needed, and the ranching life gives a taste of this. Even in my relatively short time as a rancher’s wife, I look forward to seeing the familiar faces, working shoulder to shoulder with family and neighbors, each week of the season sprinkled with these all-hands-on-deck, all-day events. It is the one time of year when the community is reminded in a real and tangible way of how much we need each other. We aren’t doing this alone.

The branding stove has been put away and the persistent smell of smoke and burnt hide no longer sticks to our clothing. It is a relief to have calving and branding over with for the season, and for summer work and rhythms to be settling into place. We’ll bump into neighbors over fences or at the county fair or other gatherings. But the energy and shared experiences of branding season will leave their impressions long after the irons have cooled.

Photo Roundup | April 16 – May 13

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Laura Lindblom under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, gardening

The last few weeks of pictures (okay, month) got away from me! Spring work is going strong and we have just been busy! A good sort of busy. A lot of what we’ve been doing hasn’t been super conducive to carrying a camera around either, so maybe the photo crop has been a little slim week-to-week.

The end of April wrapped up with getting our pairs worked, which is fun work especially if the weather is beautiful, which it was. The calves look great. Between that project, and getting ready for our branding, and helping neighbors with theirs, and gardening projects, and the random sorts of projects that crop up when dealing with livestock, we haven’t had a lot of downtime. The chicks down in the brooder kindergarten in the barn are getting huge, not really chicks anymore and soon ready to join the big girls in the coop. The big girls are laying eggs like crazy. Last week, we finished my greenhouse (I’ll write more about that later!), and I got tomatoes, peppers, greens, and herbs going in it. They have already grown a lot, and seeds have germinated so much quicker than I expected. I’m optimistic about this gardening year!

This past month went by with a lot of “lasts.” The last heifers calved. The last cows calved. The last pairs were worked out of the calving pasture into the branding pasture. The last square bale was fed. The last frosty morning came and went (so far, knock on wood). The last panel was gathered up from around the calving shed and moved to the branding pasture. The last piano lessons were taught for the semester.

We also had lots of firsts. The first rainstorm. (And the next, and the next!) The first pasqueflowers, and then the first of the rest of the wildflowers, and the obligatory wildflower hunting. The first brandings. The first days working calves. The first nights with the windows thrown open. The first true gardening days. My first assignment as a contributing writer for Down Country Roads, a local magazine.

These firsts and lasts are the end of one season and the beginning of another, as calving season and summer are bridged by the excitement of the branding season, the camaraderie of working with family and neighbors, the fresh and early mornings and the warm middays, seeing the sun rise earlier and earlier and watching the sun set later and later. And with all the moisture we have had, we are actually excited for summer! The daily rhythm is punctuated by plenty to keep things interesting, plenty of the things that add spice and savor and sweetness and a little bit of chaos.

It’s a beautiful life. It really is.

Today’s Trouble, Today’s Joy

Posted on September 26, 2022 by Laura Lindblom under country life, Writing

Since getting married and leaving my fulltime job as a paramedic and becoming a fulltime wife, I have found my days to be fuller than they ever used to be, busier, richer, and amazingly productive. It is a largely unplanned sort of busyness. Oftentimes it is a busyness brought about by what to other people might be considered inconveniences. It isn’t the kind of productive that puts dollars in the bank, but rather the kind of productive that leads to a happy marriage, healthy relationships, a clean and welcoming and beautified home, a vibrant church and community life, a productive little homestead, and plenty to share with family and friends. It is the kind of productive that leads to life, truly living and experiencing and feeling and tasting and cultivating and nurturing and creating and being.

One of the most beautiful passages of the New Testament is from Matthew 6:25-34, in which Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount spells out the cure for worry. He admonishes His listeners against the futility of worrying. What does worry accomplish for you? You work yourself to death trying to secure your future, but can you really change tomorrow? Do you trust God to provide? Can you make your life longer by worrying? Can you even add an hour to your existence? He reminds His hearers of God’s provision. God clothes the lilies and God feeds the birds. They don’t toil, and yet He provides. It really is a beautiful passage. Jesus concludes this admonition with this well-known statement: “Sufficient for the day is its own troubles.”

How true that is! But I would also say that sufficient for the day are its own joys. In fact, I would actually say that those troubles are often its joy. Trouble and joy are twins.

I think people miss out on a lot of joy because they are trying to stave off trouble (think inconvenience, nuisance, discomfort, changes in plans, something unwanted happening, etc.), or they are trying to manipulate their way into joy without any associated “trouble”. It strikes me that those “troubles” which to a self-occupied or career-centric person would be a nuisance or would be impossible demands to meet (such as one’s day getting turned topsy-turvy by someone else’s needs), those “troubles,” to a person whose life is shaped by spouse, family, and community, are also that person’s joys.

We wake up in the morning and make a plan, and give our attention to what is required of us today. Not tomorrow, not next week, but today. Obviously we have things on our schedule, weeks in advance, but the real question isn’t how best to use my time tomorrow, but how best to use my time today. Who or what needs my attention today? What joy there is in being able to live with an emphasis on those daily tasks that give life shape and meaning, allowing for the flexibility to meet spontaneous demands on my time, building those ties with my spouse, my family, and my community. Maybe it is going with my husband to find those cows that crawled into a neighbor’s pasture. Maybe it is helping with errands or being available to help with babysitting. It might be a spur of the moment picking fruit with my father-in-law, or canning tomatoes. Or jumping into our little fire rig and going to a grassfire across the highway with my husband. Or helping a neighbor work cows. Or a walk with my mom. Or helping shuttle my husband from the stack yards out in the hayfield up to the house after a load of hay was delivered. Or spontaneous coffee with my mother-in-law when taking her a couple dozen eggs on my way into town. Or doctoring an injured or sick animal, a process that always takes longer than anticipated.

We run into trouble when we spend so much time focusing on tomorrow’s troubles and trying to manipulate tomorrow’s joys that we don’t or can’t even experience what is right in front of us.

So I thank God for today’s troubles, and all of its joys.

Nothin’ more fun on dirt

Posted on August 9, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

“150 pounds of cowboy, 2000 pounds of hulking, stock-bucking bull.” And with that, the bucking shoot bursts open and out cracks the bull like a bolt of greased lightning, the lean cowboy clinging to its back by one rosin-gloved hand.

Bull-riding–Some couple dozen cowboys from South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado gathered at the Custer County Fairgrounds this evening to give their best at riding 2000 pounds of sheer strength for a mere eight seconds. Sound easy? Not so much. Sarah and I joined a crowd of cowboy-hat-wearing, freedom-loving, patriotic Americans for an evening of a dangerous sport, the most dangerous eight seconds in rodeo, and an amazing thing to watch. Those are some crazy cowboys. The excitement, the patriotism, the love of country, the community, the upholding of manliness in an increasingly emasculated society, the daring of the bull riders, the sportsmanship, the bravery of the bull fighters, the physical strength of the bulls. If you want some clean, country fun, go to a rodeo.

And in spite of increasing pressure against Christians, a rodeo announcer will still offer an unapologetic prayer to our Heavenly Father. I’m sure there were some there who didn’t appreciate that, but no one walked out.

Nothing has ever interested me about sports–The normal sports, that is. Baseball, basketball, football…golf. I understand that it takes skill, physical strength, stamina, precision, etc., to participate in those sports and to do it professionally. But at the end of the day, who cares if the ball went through the basket? What good does it do the players that the ball made it to the end zone? Why does it matter that the athlete made a home run? Does it change anything?

But then there’s rodeo. I also understand that some may have the same opinion of saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling, and bull riding, but there is an innate practicality about those events for the cowboys participating. Those events are a display of skills that those individuals use on a day to day basis (except maybe not during haying). That cowboy who can sit the bronc or wrestle that steer–no, the cowboy who will sit the bronc or wrestle the steer. In case you were wondering, natural self-preservation doesn’t lead a man to hurtle himself from a running horse onto the head of a rangy steer. Or sit himself down on the back of a bull bred to buck, for that matter. But the man who does? He’s a tough man, a tough man to beat. Maybe crazy, but tough as nails.