Tag Archives: faith

Ranch Wife Musings | The Best Life We Can Give Them

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Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on January 29, 2025

Calving season on the ranch is a period of stark contrasts, a time of seeing some of the best of the best of God’s Creation alongside some of the saddest of the saddest. On the one hand, we revel in seeing mother cows birth and nourish and protect their young with such incredible maternal instincts, showcasing the best of God’s design for them; we search the pastures for newborn calves tucked away safely like little Easter eggs in long grass and sheltered places, waiting while their mamas graze or go to water; we see the fascinating natural formation of nursery groups by the busy mamas, so all calves are watched and all mother cows are fed and watered. But there is also the too-frequent reminder that we live in a broken world, the effects of which trickle down to the creatures we steward as well. Calves are stillborn or die afterwards, weather events challenge the best of our efforts, calving complications end tragically, and Nature takes its toll indiscriminately and sometimes it feels randomly.

Sometimes the bitterness and sweetness come by turns, first one and then the other. Sometimes they are mixed, inseparable. Sometimes they mix in the strangest sort of tragicomedy called a bottle calf that sticks around for weeks and months.

Granted, calving season for us isn’t supposed to start until the end of February, although neighbors of ours are already in the thick of it, or even are wrapping up. But we had a few, shall we say, incidents last year perpetrated by a yearling bull that was supposed to be a steer and wasn’t, and some dozen or so yearling heifers that he apparently found very attractive and which were not intended to be breeding animals. One calf showed up right before Christmas, and a few more showed up over the next month, one of which was orphaned more or less immediately. Of course, I had just dried up the milk cow.

Bottle calves are supposed to be a nuisance. They’re supposed to be a hassle and, given the cost of a bag of powdered milk replacer, they are a financial nuisance, if nothing else. But clearly I’m not as wise and mature as other members of my family, because I’m afraid I don’t consider the three-times-daily feedings a nuisance, and really don’t object to calf bottles and pitchers for mixing the milk taking over the bathroom, or even the faint but persistent odor of soured milk. I don’t even mind trotting down in the dark to give Beckybell (my endearing husband named the calf after his mother-in-law – isn’t he charming?) her suppertime bottle. I’m afraid I don’t mind having my toes trampled by tiny hooves or my knees butted by the bony little head, or even the milky mess she somehow leaves all over my clothes. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy being mama cow. A few days ago, Beckybell managed to escape the nursery pen and was waiting for me and her evening bottle at the house when we got back from our walk. During the cold snap last week, her little ears froze, so she’s been wearing various ridiculous iterations of ear muffs to keep them from re-freezing, and I think we saved the ears.

But as much as I enjoy this critter and having close interactions with an animal that usually is only handled from a distance, it leaves a little sore pang in my heart. She is lacking her mama. God designed her to need her mama.

 As much bad press as ranchers get from climate activists, as much as the FDA and the CDC and whatever other three- and four-letter organizations there are that vilify cows as being a blight upon the earth and an alleged contributor to global warming (or is it global cooling, I can’t remember?), or as much as PETA has gone after ranchers for “cruel treatment” of livestock, there is so incredibly much that people in those organizations do not see. Good things. Wholesome things. The best things. As agriculture as an industry has increased in size, and as the number of people engaged in it has dwindled, people have lost their understanding, yet continue to pass judgements.

They don’t see the ranchers intently watching the weather ahead of a winter snow event, heading out on ATVs with sleet biting their faces to move 100 cows into a more sheltered pasture. They don’t see the heroic and futile efforts in sub-zero weather to save a calving cow. They don’t see the careful tending during a cold snap, keeping water open and food on the ground. They don’t see the desperate attempt to warm a nearly-frozen calf downed during a snowstorm. They don’t see the careful tending of a newborn calf and the new mother. They don’t feel the defeat when a young calf dies and the cow won’t leave its side. They don’t see the bleary-eyed rancher getting up every two hours to check heifers, and they don’t hear the pre-dawn phone call up to the house to ask his little wife to bundle up and come down to the calving shed to help turn a backward calf, since she has smaller hands. They don’t see the tears shed over a failed save or the teary-eyed laughter at a success. They don’t see the miracle of a calf taking its first steps with a sleep-deprived ranching couple looking on smiling, or chuckling as an overzealous mama cow knocks it over with her aggressive licking. They don’t see the ranch wife on the umpteenth feeding of a little white-faced bottle baby, tucking the calf in for the night, sorry in her heart that there isn’t a mama cow for the little orphan.

Because we care for the livestock that God has give us to steward. We hate seeing them suffer, we love seeing them thrive, and we do everything in our power to give them the best life we can give them. At no time is that more apparent than in that sweet moment when a newborn calf hits the ground, floppy eared and wet and sneezing up fluid, and mama cow turns and sees the little intruder. As she goes to work cleaning it off, instinct overriding her surprise, we watch in quiet awe, full of pleasant warmth on the coldest of days.

Ranch Wife Musings | Look Higher

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Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on January 1, 2025

There is something extra special about the first day of a new year. From the first delicious moments of the first sunrise, to the sweet last glow as the sun sets, there is something poignant and sacred about the start of a new year, and all the associated firsts. The world feels clean and unsullied. Winter is fresh upon us. The color that fades from the earth seems to infuse into the sky and the eyes are drawn up, up. Just after sunset is the most mesmerizing, when the southwesterly expanse gleams like an opal, clear and dazzling, from the brilliant scarlet and pale rose in the west, to lavender and blue above, and the sweetest green to the south, a whole watercolor rainbow. The first stars are breathtaking. It is impossible not to gaze, impossible not to look higher. Higher than the withered grasses and bare limbs of trees. Higher, to that ephemeral perfection of the new sky.

January 1, 2025. Really, no different than December 31, 2024.

And yet, it is. The new year opens up like the pages of an unread book, or an unwritten one, depending on your perspective. The old year is gone, like a book finished, and hopefully we remember what stories were told in it, the lessons learned, the joys had, the tears shed, the successes and failures, and look forward to the New Year with hope and eagerness.

So often, though, we squander this annual opportunity. The New Year and the making of resolutions is often merely an excuse to settle ourselves deeper in our own self-centeredness. (There, I said it. A little on the nose perhaps, but I said it.) A quick Google search of the top New Year’s resolutions yields a list rife with such goals as losing weight, eating healthier, money management, time management, improved sleep hygiene, improved work-life balance, reducing alcohol consumption, quitting smoking, drinking more water, and pursuing a new hobby, to name a few of the many things that fall into the broad category of self-care, that snake-oil remedy peddled for all our ills, whether physical, spiritual, relational or emotional, and which has wreaked havoc on our relationships and families.

Because do you notice what’s missing? The people are missing. And just maybe that is why so many resolutions and goals fail in about 22 days flat. Without a “why” that extends beyond self, I think goals and resolutions are generally destined to fail.

But here’s the thing about those sorts of goals and resolutions: they are 100% safe. They fuel our smugness as we pursue them, but our self-satisfaction can comfortably accept our failure. With the bar practically set upon the ground, success is semi-sweet, and reaps a few benefits, surely, but if we fail, it isn’t overly painful and no one really notices or cares too much. We set our sights so low! It is a lot easier to reflect at the end of the year with a shrug that I failed to start a new hobby, than to realize and truly acknowledge that I failed to grow in my love of my spouse, my neighbor, or God.

So, what if we looked higher? What if we took the chance, each New Year, to evaluate our habits and goals and ambitions in light of Someone besides ourself? Perhaps, the Person Whose birth we just celebrated?

The Bible teaches that we are to do all things for the glory of God. The Bible teaches that followers of Jesus are known by their love. We are instructed to set our minds on things above, not on earthly things, and to dwell on those things which are “true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and of good repute, anything that is excellent or worthy of praise.” We are to seek to outdo one another in showing love, the only time I can think of where the Bible instructs competition. We are to forgive wrongs done. We are to show love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We are to live peaceably with one another. We are to be submissive one to another. We are to have order within ourselves and within our families.

What would happen if we set goals and made resolutions that were inherently others-oriented? What if we were as determined to cut out biting words spoken to a family member as we were to cut out alcohol or smoking? What if we strove to shed that certain contentious habit with the same eagerness that we strive to shed 5 pounds? What if 52 hikes in a year became 52 encouraging cards or letters? What if we were as intent upon a half hour or hour in God’s Word as we are intent upon our physical improvement? What if we opened our homes regularly? Loved our spouses specifically? Strove to bless our neighbor intentionally?

And what if we actually invited accountability? What amazing transformation could happen.

The end of the year can be bittersweet. I am a year older, but am I a year wiser? A year more kind? A year more selfless, or a year more generous? A year more patient? Compassionate? Slow to anger? Abounding in love? Willing to go out of my way to bless another, particularly those closest to me? Because those things have the capacity to cause a ripple effect of goodness.

So go ahead and drink more water, lose some weight, and quit smoking. Your body will thank you for it. But do it to be of greater service to others and to God. Look higher, friend. Look higher.

Spangled Afternoon

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

Yesterday was wet. Just wet. Wonderfully so. We got a little actual rain, but most of the day was just heavy mist, and we basically were inside a cloud. We couldn’t see the highway down past the hayfield, and the tops of trees were obscured, and the drops settled, all silvery, on everything. It almost looked like frost, everything was so spangled.

Spiderwebs and blades of grass, mundane on other days but be-jeweled in the mist, drops of water hanging like jewels on the fine threads of the spiderwebs. Roses and rosebuds, and spiderwort, gathering the mist, holding it on leaves and petals and stamens. And then, if you looked closely enough, the whole world reflected upside down in the drops of water, the sky, the flowers, the grass. It was dazzling.

Right now, our society is weighed down with all sorts of mental ills, and the self-care “movement,” if you will, is thriving…It would appear that the best solution anyone can suggest for the chronic anxieties and depressions and just generally not getting along well with life is that people need to love themselves more. For as long as the self-care solution has been being promoted, it is obvious that that isn’t the problem. We don’t have a problem with people not loving themselves enough. The problem is that we as human creatures are tuned to love ourselves, and to love ourselves too much. We don’t need encouragement in that vein.

We need, rather, encouragement to look up from all of our – in the big scheme of things – petty problems and look to the Creator God who loves us. Sometimes we find reminders of that in the tiniest, most mundane yet spectacular ways. Like taking a walk in a cloud. Gazing on the littlest, least-important things that God clearly cares deeply about. And then realizing that if He cares about the flowers of the field, the birds of the air, the mists on the meadows, He must care that much more about His human creatures.

Ranch Wife Musings | Which One I’d Pick

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, country life, marriage

We really don’t go on dates. We didn’t when we were dating, and we don’t married. Maybe someday we can change that, since I really do think it is a good practice for married couples, but honestly our marriage reflects the simplicity of our “dating” life. We did life together. We worked together. We cooked meals together. Picked apples together. Worked cows. And these two photos? I took these just recently, but an awful lot of our dating and engagement was spent just so, and I would occasionally sneak photos of my favorite view when I was riding with Brad to check cows, or check the calving pasture, or check water, or whatever. I fell in love looking at this view.

And it made me think of something. This particular day, I had been busy with all sorts of things, we had vaccinated cows all morning, we were having a couple from church over the next day, and I had a house to clean, bread to bake, some writing and photo editing to do…So when Brad asked me if I wanted to go with him to check the calving pasture, I could have come up with a dozen excuses not to.

But here’s the thing: Those things can wait. They 100% can wait. But I will NEVER be disappointed for investing in my marriage and in my friendship with my husband, even if it means not getting the bread baked when I wanted to get it baked, or even if it means I have to do a bit of cramming to get my writing done, or to get housework done before guests get here, even if it means I don’t get the walk in that I wanted to take with the dogs, or whatever else.

Even now, while we don’t have children, time invested in marriage is priceless and precious. And, ladies, we can be way too prone to think our husbands aren’t romantic enough, or aren’t obvious enough in how they “pursue us.” We can complain, even if only in our ungrateful little hearts, that our husband isn’t doing this or that, and why can’t he just do X?

We have been fed a cultural diet of personality studies and love languages and other semi-worthless psychoanalytical drivel–“worthless drivel” because it is wielded as a weapon against those closest to us, rather than employed as a means of understanding our own quirks better so that we can moderate those quirks better, or understand our spouses better so that we can love them better. Those semi-worthless personality studies and the love languages garbage are used as a way to find fault with our spouses and families, rather than as a way to seek personal growth and maturing.

Have you ever heard someone say (or maybe you’ve said this yourself), “I know he’s trying, but it just isn’t my love language?” Talk about damaging. That way of thinking is poison.

So, when our husbands invite us to join them in their tasks? When they express enjoyment simply of having our company? That is showing love. That is investment. That is pursuit. And it is priceless. It might not look like a fancy restaurant and a bouquet of roses, but aren’t those things a little predictable and overrated? Be thankful for your husband, and look for the ways he loves you. And be willing to set your preconceived notions and prejudices and preferences aside to allow him to love you the way he knows best. It might come in the shape of a dozen roses, or it might come in the shape of riding double on the fourwheeler checking calves.

I know which one I’d pick.

The Stirring

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

Originally printed in the March/April 2024 issue of Down Country Roads Magazine

Something new is stirring. It is the in-between, that elusive time when seasons collide and blend and bend and break. Not yet spring, but no longer truly winter. A few more storms may be all it takes for winter to wear herself out and peacefully subside, a few more days and nights of wild wind and heavy snow, waking to a transformed landscape.

We aren’t yet done with frosty mornings that nip the nose and fingers and rosy up the cheeks. We aren’t yet done with heavy coats and encumbered action. We haven’t seen the last of the delicate flowers that frost the windowpanes. We haven’t seen the last of the iced-over backs of the heavy cows, or broken the last ice on the dams. There may yet be a little more of that.

But we have tasted the springtime in the warming air; we have heard the sound of water running from rooftops, and have smelled the earthy perfume of a thaw. We have sunk into the softening earth, and felt it yield to our footsteps. We have felt those telltale warm breezes, and seen the first of the springlike clouds, even ones dropping hopeful rain, virga, somewhere higher than the earth. We have felt the sunlight later, and seen the sunrise earlier, and we know—we know—that springtime will come. Winter is long in the Hills. But she never lasts forever.

The silver frost gives way to a hint of green like dew. Trees are ready, waiting, buds setting, hopefully not over-eager, and some of us begin our annual hunt for the elusive pasqueflower, that earliest harbinger of springtime. Once found, springtime is inevitable.

There is pandemonium in the yard, as new calves make their appearance daily to new mothers, bewildered heifers inexperienced in this unexpected role, confronted with a confusing and helpless little creature that seems to belong to them somehow. It is a comedy of errors, a chaos of learning and unravelling mistakes. But the older cows, wily and woofy, equipped for motherhood, birth their calves in solitude out in the brakes beneath Potato Butte, hiding their new calves away for safekeeping, like Easter eggs to be found, curled so small they appear like kittens. At a few days or a week old, nursery groups of a dozen calves or so, under the careful attention of two or four cows, slumber in the warm sun, drunk with sleep and sunlight and their mother’s creamy milk, blinking in confusion but not yet knowing fear.

And mud! Every little melt off creates more mud than would seem possible, somehow finding its way into the house and the kitchen and everywhere until, at some point, it is tempting to give up and just let it stay.

Spring is waking.

The horses are hale and hearty, sleek with a few months of ease, hair like velvet, winter thick, and they are eager to go to work in spite of themselves, willing to take the saddle and bridle. A little vim and vigor, a little fire, and they are ready to partner for the work ahead, long days combing the breaks, gathering in the crop of new calves and their indignant mothers.

The first sprigs of green in the winter brown landscape emerge as always, and are met with the excitement of man and beast. The livestock taste those first shoots of new grass and their appetite for hay vanishes. The first flower, that first pasqueflower, is hunted for jealously on the piney slopes and grassy hillsides, and is greeted as an old friend. A melt-off sounds like music to ears accustomed to winter silence. From tree to tree, new voices of birds echo sweetly out of sight, and finally the meadowlark, yellow-breasted, trills in the hayfield, the best song of them all. The strange, ethereal cries of the sandhill cranes ring above as they make their way north once again, as they do every spring. Their otherworldly flight always dazzles me and I strain my eyes to see them, so high as to be almost invisible.

Soon. Soon it will be spring, truly. With color for our winter-weary eyes. Warmth for our chilled hands. Sunlight for our pale faces.

Winter’s sleep is being shaken off. Everything is stirring.

Ranch Wife Musings | Well Wintered

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

Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on March 6, 2024

The longest part of the year is officially over. And it flew by. Just yesterday it was October and the trees were losing their leaves, and then it was November and Thanksgiving and we were shipping calves. Now we are standing on the brink of springtime, watching the first calendar day of spring approaching from not even a calendar page away, and the first 50 calves are already skipping blissfully through their short first days of life. We are ready for springtime.

There’s a saying I heard from my father-in-law, that has stuck with me: “Well summered is half wintered.” In other words, livestock that have had been through the summer with plenty of good grass and good water have a healthy fat layer and ample energy stores and are well equipped to face the coming winter. Half the struggle of winter is already taken care of. If, however, cows struggle during the summer, with stricken pasture and bad water, they will continue to struggle and the hardest season will be even harder. They will be bags of bones halfway through January.

2022 was a rough summer, with too little rain and too many grasshoppers, resulting in incredibly poor winter pastures. We were not well summered. Cows looked rough and rougher still as the winter wore on, and the extraordinary cost of feeding hay to get the cows through the winter added up. Cattle prices in the fall just added insult to injury. This time last year, calving season was getting off to a not-so-great start, with a number of odd and unpredictable losses, with a cluster of birth malpresentations and birth defects compounding that. March came in like a lion, indeed, bringing much needed moisture but in the form of calf-killing storms. So, we looked ahead to the spring and the summer with a sense of foreboding. Another summer like 2022 would have been devastating. Springtime was anticipated with dread.

“Well summered.”

I have pondered that saying a lot, actually.

Because it really doesn’t have a lot to do with the hard seasons themselves, but has everything to do with what leads up to those hard seasons. It is so tempting to coast during the easy times, so that we are less than equipped when things get tough.

We do that in marriage, by failing to put in the work to build up our marriage when things are easy and then being taken completely by surprise when our marriage struggles hard when life gets hard.

We do that physically, taking our health for granted while we are healthy, neglecting it rather than working to preserve it, and then being surprised or devastated when our bodies give out.

We do that spiritually, starving our souls, failing to feed ourselves through God’s Word and fellowship and solid teaching when life is easy, and then being shocked when our faith falls apart when life falls apart.

And there are a million other examples. What we do in the good times matters, and it changes how we handle the bad times.

But there is also another facet of this illustration: Sometimes the anticipated rough seasons aren’t as rough as anticipated, or perhaps the preparation was sufficient to offset the challenges. Maybe both. That’s when things are just extra, especially good, and the future is anticipated eagerly.

What a difference a year can make. Going into this winter, we were incredibly well summered. In spite of some wild weather events, the pastures were green and lush leaving plenty of forage for winter, dams caught quite a bit of good water, we actually had a hay crop and full stackyards, and the cows were sleek and fat as winter approached. And they are still sleek and fat. They could have handled much worse of a winter than we experienced. But God was an extra measure of kind, and the winter we had was the sort of winter that would make South Dakota too expensive a place to live, if that was our normal fare. But it was still winter. We still had cold snaps that put stress on the livestock and their keepers, stretches of days that made us extra, especially thankful for being well summered, but also extra, especially thankful for the winter we were given.

And here we are, standing on the brink of springtime. Winter isn’t over yet, and we can get snow until June, but what is generally the hardest part of winter is behind us. There is a bit of green starting to show under the cured grasses of last year, and a few brave little things are poking up out of the soil in the garden. The calves are thriving in the gentle weather, their healthy and maternal mothers unusually capable for first-time mamas, and a new season is just ahead, just around the corner.

Springtime coming looks sweet.

We were not just well summered. We are well wintered. Well wintered, and ready for spring.