Tag Archives: family

Ranch Wife Musings | After the Cold Snap

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on Feb. 26, 2025

This melt-off and warmup is as good as it gets in February or early March, days full of sun and the sound of water running off everything. There is mud everywhere! Relief and contentment radiate from everything, from the mellow gaze of a cow chewing her cud, to the half-closed eyes of her baby nursing, or tucked away safely on a little island of solid ground, comfortable and lazy in the warming air, perfectly happy with the ready supply of milk and hay to bed down on. The chickens have again taken to the yard, happy to leave their coop, and the cats snooze in the sun on the piles of sweet-smelling hay, greeting me with pink-mouthed yawns and arched-back stretches, rather than yowls.

What a difference a week can make!

It was one of those frigid mornings during that brutal cold snap, when just about everything gets cancelled except for ranching. Brad, covered in snow, burst into the mudroom with his arms full of a half-frozen calf. He had found it about a mile and a half from our house, and in sub-zero temperatures it doesn’t take long for a newborn calf to chill down and freeze. She wasn’t dead, but she sure wasn’t quite alive either. Her eyes were wide and staring, her little ribcage rose and fell hectically, and the occasional moo might have been a death moan.

The prognosis didn’t seem overly optimistic, but if you hand a ranch wife a sad little animal, she will try to fix it. The calf was a pretty little thing, dark brown with unique white markings on her face, white rimming her speckled pink nose, and white hairs on her ears so they looked frosted. The calf’s mama hadn’t even had a chance to clean her off before her hair froze, so she was a slippery little critter as soon as she started to thaw out. Her mouth was cold, which isn’t a good sign, but she still blinked and moved her eyes, which was hopeful. I turned that bathroom into a sauna and ran the water heater out of hot water, and little by little, her limbs loosened up. She began moving her ears, and trying to shake her head. Her mouth was still cold but her tongue had started to warm up, and a little corn syrup in her cheek helped, too.

And then, finally, after a couple of hours, she sucked my fingers. Now, that’s a great sign.

We gave her colostrum and graduated her to the calf warmer around lunchtime, where she stayed for the rest of the day and the night, and early the next morning when Brad did a heifer check he stuck her with her mom. When I was stomping around doing my chores, I poked my head into the shed. Mama cow stared at me rather defiantly, and behind her were four little knock-kneed legs. I waited, not sure it was the right calf, but the sweet brockle face peeked around mama’s hind legs. Her little ears, frosted with white hair, were perky. She took a couple hesitant steps, and then made a little baby frisk, all four legs coming off the ground in a clumsy expression of infant playfulness. It warmed the heart on a frigid day.

Another cow had lost her calf the day before, so I let my bottle calf get hungry (a powerful motivator), then tromped down to the calving shed with her. She walked with her head right next to my knees, the way a calf follows her mom. The poor little thing, now a month old, had been orphaned as soon as she was born, so she never got to nurse, but she always would suck my fingers, and she let me lead her nose over to the heifer’s udder. No coaxing was required. God’s design in these baby critters is so evident, in the beautiful instinct that He has instilled in them, and their incredible resilience in spite of their fragility. It was a treat to see her white-tipped tail whipping back and forth as she got that first real mama’s milk, and a week later it is a delight to see her content and satiated, wandering lazily over to nurse, her chapped nose healed up now that she is no longer licking it, and her recognition of me is quiet and friendly rather than desperate and heartbreaking. The brockle-faced calf is still doing well, and another dozen calves have joined them uneventfully. Life is good.

A cold snap brings a strange sort of survival mode to the ranch, alternating between having more to do than ever and having nothing to do because nothing can be done. Sometimes all that can or needs to be done is to put feed in front of animals and keep the water open, and wait for the weather to change or for something to go wrong. Because when things go wrong, they go wrong in catastrophic fashion. But, on the other side, those things that went right are sweeter than ever. I love going down to the nursery pens and just watching. Watching the springtime hubbub of mamas and babies, hearing the warm stillness punctuated with baby moos and cows talking back. The sloppy noises of hooves in mud. The sweet rustle of mouthfuls of hay. All the little suckling noises, or a bony calf head thumping an udder. Their mamas are so patient. I love watching as a nursing calf comes up for air and stands in a milk stupor with its tongue stuck out. It is sweet to watch brand new, first-time mamas learn to mother.

From the other side of a cold snap, it is amazing how much went so very right.

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 | The Little Things More than Ever

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Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on December 4, 2024

We cut our Christmas tree over the weekend, a cherished tradition that ushers in the Christmas season, and which brings more delight, not less, the older I get.

As we decorated the tree, the various ornaments brought to mind family members and friends, special occasions or notable years. “Our first Christmas as Mr. and Mrs.” Wooden disks with music notes burned into them from my sister. The yarn ball ornaments that an aunt brought back from her travels in South America, and an adobe Nativity ornament. The little stocking with “Brad” written down the front. There are dozens of tiny brass bells from our wedding—our kissing bells. Lace-like snowflakes remind me of the crocheted ones that hung on the tree in the sanctuary at the Little White Church as far back as I can remember, back when my grandparents were alive and we all went to the candlelight service together.

Each year of adulthood, and more so since getting married, it is the little things come to mind, always the little things, seemingly insignificant threads in the celebratory tapestry. And it is the little things more than ever.

Our cultural observance of Christmas tends to get lost in a sea of haphazard attempts to create meaning and artificially bolster the spirits, with a full schedule that empties us, a helter-skelter array of engagements and efforts that lack real significance, parties and shopping sprees and things meant to create memories but become part of a holiday muddle that everyone is relieved to see end, if not on December 26th, then for sure by January 1. Christmas becomes nothing more than a consumeristic free-for-all, spending money we don’t have for gifts no one needs trying to create a happiness no one really feels. What has fallen by the wayside or out of fashion or favor are those traditions and rituals that effortlessly made up the Christmas season, things that you did because your parents did them, because their parents did them. The repetition through the years is what creates the beautiful memories, not the novelty of them, not the monetary value or the social capital.

It is the little things, more than ever.

The cherished recipes, like the pfeffernusse my Grandma made, now a staple in my Christmas baking and gifting, a tin of which was passed around the long wooden table after every meal at Christmastime.

The old-fashioned heirlooms, like the Fontanini creche that was my Grandma’s, identical to the one my mom had when I was growing up, and is now a treasure in my home.  

The rituals, like watching It’s a Wonderful Life, the first movie my now husband and I ever watched together, or observing Advent, through devotional readings and lighting candles and special services at church.

The music, like the beloved carols and hymns, or the Mannheim Steamroller CD that we listened to a million times growing up. I found a used one last month, the same album, and listening to it takes me back to my teenage years, and the 1000-mile Christmas drive to visit my grandparents here in the Hills, crammed like sardines into our minivan, finally coming to rest at the top of a ponderosa-covered hill, where sat my grandparents’ rustic home. I can still see Grandma waving from the deck as we tumbled out of the van, I can see the lights wrapped around the railings and banisters, and can hear the precious, rather electronic-sounding carols from the bells hung above the door. And I can still hear Grandpa’s signature, “Hello, old scout!”

The simple expressions of love, like the brown paper packages tied up with strings, humble gifts tucked beneath the boughs of the tree, handmade, practical, heartfelt.

The fellowship and worship, like sitting in the glow of 100 little candles on Christmas Eve, feeling their soft warmth, gently singing “Silent Night” with 99 other voices, and being transported to a dozen other candlelight services over the years, recalling faces now absent, hearing voices long silent, feeling the shoulder-to-shoulder comfort of long drives in the dark before finding ourselves in the brightness of a celebratory church.

Those things – the trees, the favorite foods or the cherished decorations, the music, the celebration and the memorialization – mingle to create a wholeness this time of the year, and continuity from year to year. They aren’t novel, they aren’t new or unique, but those things can’t be replaced, because it isn’t about the things themselves, but how they connect us to our families here and gone, to our communities and churches, and ultimately how they draw our minds and hearts to the meaning of the Christmas season.

Children are eager for Christmas morning, for obvious reasons, and would I think happily skip from now to Christmas Day. But age teaches you something. It teaches that it is the little things that give the meaning and the joy and the delight to the season, as to life itself. The little things, because they remind us, over and over again, of the true meaning, the Person to whom this season is owed, for Whom this season is celebrated. It is the little things, more than ever.

Ranch Wife Musings | Shepherd’s Lantern

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

It is hard to do justice to the bond between a rancher and his cow dog. Until you’ve worked livestock with one, until you’ve seen the ease with which a 30- or 50-pound dog commands the respect of an ornery cow, until you’ve seen their agility traversing a slope that would be dicey on a horse and impossible on a four-wheeler, until you’ve witnessed how much they accomplish, pound-for-pound, it is hard to grasp their importance. Although there are some people who have a close bond with the horses they ride, for many ranchers horses are a valued tool, but fall short of partnership. But that’s what these dogs are: partners. Extensions of their people. Not all ranches utilize working dogs, but for those that do they are vital. But, just like the ranchers that utilize them, they are not without their quirks. Peculiarities. Idiosyncrasies.  

Our signature cow dog, by choice or happenstance, is the border collie ranch mutt sort, mostly border collie with a little bit extra to keep it interesting. We love their demeanor and their instincts, and there is just something about their glossy, jet-black fur and white markings, the blazes and collars and stockings and speckled feet, and, of course, the joyful white tip of their tails, their “shepherd’s lanterns,” as they are known. We have three border collies: a 6-year-old female, Pearl, and her almost-2-year-old daughters, Bess and Josie. Josie is my dog, very particularly so.

Her sister, Bess, as sweet as she is, and as capable as she is, isn’t quite the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Simple. That’s a good word. For example, Brad can’t let her hang out in the shop with him if he’s welding, since she’ll stare at the welding torch, mesmerized.

That’s Bess.

Josie, though, is a little different. She is smart – Maybe too smart? From roughly 4 weeks old and on, she has been extremely agile, very cowy, an escape-artist, rather melodramatic, and quite accident-prone. She could fall off the back of an ATV going downhill at a gentle 2 miles per hour. And for some reason she selected me to be her person. Brad likes to remind me that a dog reflects its owner, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. But then I remind him that it isn’t my dog who is fascinated by the welding torch.

The pups were 5 months old in the thick of our spring cow work, and we would lock them in the horse trailer while we worked, largely to prevent self-deployment. Those aluminum trailers, like oversized tin cans, have an inspirational echo, and the pups took full advantage, howling soulfully whenever they heard us “Hep!” the cows in the nearby pens. One morning, during coffee break, Josie was distinctly off. She was lethargic, slinking around, trembling, showed none of her usual interest in whatever I was eating, and honestly appeared acutely ill. I looked her over for snake bite marks or signs of injury. Maybe she’d been kicked, or got into something poisonous. She moaned a little when I felt her belly, and lay in my lap with her head bobbing pitifully. It was bizarre, and we were not too far from taking her to the vet. Thank goodness we didn’t. I finally put two and two together – She had gotten her feelings hurt when I locked her in the trailer. She was clearly thinking, “How COULD you?! I thought you LOVED me!”

That’s Josie.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, we had the black-and-white circus out on a walk and all three disappeared on a rabbit hunt. It isn’t entirely unusual, and they always catch up with us within a quarter hour. But this time, Josie didn’t come home. We took the ATVs out, calling and looking, walking ravines and then checking the house in case she’d made it back home. Occasionally I heard her bark, and would have sworn she was on the move. I heard coyotes in the same general area and my hopes plummeted. Something bad had to have happened. Finally, after hours and hours of looking for a little black dog on a black night, we had to call it quits. (Vaguely, I recollect sobbing to Brad, “How COULD she?! I thought she LOVED me!”) After waking up every hour to whistle for her or see if she had come home during the night, I went out as soon as it was light the next morning, fully expecting the worst. But I hadn’t been at it for long when I heard a single muffled bark, and wondered if my ears and the landscape were playing tricks on me. Eventually, I found myself in a deep little rock ravine, right next to the trail, carpeted with oak leaves and thick with twisted, young hardwoods. About 20 yards ahead, I saw a little flash of white.

It was Josie’s tail – her shepherd’s lantern – waving furiously when she heard my voice. She was entirely underneath a huge slab of rock halfway up the ravine wall, likely having chased a rabbit under it, with her paw wedged tight in a crevice. I don’t know how many times we had been back and forth mere yards from that spot, but all that was visible was her shepherd’s lantern. It didn’t take much to free her, but it took a good while to get her back to normal again after her incident. And I probably would say she milked it.

There’s just something about a cow dog. Quirks and all.

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.

Ranch Wife Musings | March Madness

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

So I really don’t know what March Madness is, other than it has something to do with sports, I think. But March is a crazy month. The winter sleepiness is shaken off and everything wakes up. All at the same time. The garden, the cows, the weather, the schedule, the chickens, everything.

There are babies everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

A little cold snap over this last weekend accentuated that, with little baby calves and their irritable mamas stuffed in every corner of the yard, with all available indoor space occupied by doubles and triples, and cows with slightly older calves getting shuffled into sheltered corners of the yard to keep them out of the wind and driving snow.

So far there have been two sets of twins, and both extra babies were shuffled successfully onto two cows who had lost calves–Good saves, on both counts, and the two lost calves were just part of the percentage of unavoidable losses, rather than the rather staggering losses of last spring, due to a collision of weather and luck of the draw. Posey got to try being a nurse cow for a week with one of the extra twins, until a mother needing a calf turned up. Posey was not impressed. Some nurse cow. We’ll see how she does when she calves, I guess.

Seedlings are going nuts in the brightest window in the house, around 120 tomato seedlings, some herbs and greens, and of course my elderberry cuttings. Bread baking and some jelly making and some sewing projects and some continuing ed for my paramedic license and a dive into spring cleaning have kept the days full. They seem to end as quickly as they start. And yes, that is a seed starting mat under that bowl of dough! Another use for those handy things, especially when you keep the temps low in the house!

And then yesterday happened. Or rather, Yellow Cat happened yesterday. We knew she was ready to have kittens at any time, and I complacently assumed, this being her second litter, that she would be competent. Boy, was I wrong. I went down to do chores yesterday morning and found a pile of three kittens that appeared dead, in just about the worst place Yellow Cat could have had them. She was unconcerned. I honestly thought they were dead and rigored, and when I picked up the two that looked the most dead, they were unresponsive and stiff and cold to the touch. She didn’t appear to have really cleaned them, their fur was matted down, and I really mean it when I say they appeared dead, and I have seen plenty of dead animals to know what I’m talking about. This isn’t an “I’ve never had chicks before and one is stretched out luxuriously under the heat lamp and I think it is dead” situation. They looked dead. Very dead. One of the kittens, though, moved a little and made the tiniest sound. It looked pretty hopeless, but I can’t stand to walk away from something like that. I almost left the two most dead looking, but gathered all three up, stuffed them inside my vest and ran up to the house with them. In the back of my mind was the paramedic mantra, “They aren’t dead until they are warm and dead,” and after a mere few minutes under a heat lamp and on top of a (you guessed it) seed starting mat, they came alive.

Baby animals are incredibly resilient but also incredibly fragile, a strange dichotomy, and even as they warmed up I felt that it was probably futile, but I gave them a little milk replacer laced with corn syrup, enough to wet their dried mouths, and two of them did try sucking it off the cloth I was using. I finally rounded up Yellow Cat from down by the barn, who was sauntering around like she hadn’t a care in the world, and locked her up with them. Long story short, the three kittens all nursed, she had two more, and all five survived the night with their mother in the bathtub and are doing just fine. I am still pretty mad at that cat, though.

It is hard to believe that April is just around the corner. April, the first month of long days in the saddle pairing out the calving pasture, the first real month of springtime although snow is always a possibility. There is always something going on!