Tag Archives: family

Ranch Wife Musings | The Little Things More than Ever

Posted on by under Uncategorized

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

Posted on by under Uncategorized

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!

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.

These Winter Days

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

Winter has been very good to us. Or more accurately, God has been very good to us in the winter He has given us. We were talking over lunch today about how different this winter is from last, how good – just good – things have been this year compared with last year, without the struggles and sense of futility of this time a year ago.

When cold snaps last for weeks, with water freezing over multiple times in a day, when snow comes and then doesn’t melt, it is hard on everything, human and animal alike. Calves struggle, cows struggle, we struggle. But when cold snaps hardly last long enough to fully unpack one’s collection of serious winter gear, when the snow comes and goes in the span of a few days, when storms are the punctuation rather than the paragraphs, everyone is happier. Chilly mornings warm to balmy afternoons, heavy jackets and gloves becoming unnecessary and getting cast aside. Critters of all sizes sack out in the sunlight, the black ones especially enjoying the ritual.

Calving has begun in earnest, without the weather-related losses we had a year ago. There is still time for calf-killing storms, but everything is better equipped to handle what weather we may get, having not been suffering in the cold for weeks on end. Cows are heavy with calf, fat with grass and hay, their summer stores still sleek on them, unlike last winter. And Posey, maternal thing that she is, is crazy for a calf, wanting to mother all the little calves that have come along so far. Just wait, little cow. You’ll have one soon enough!

The short-lived bursts of winter we have had have almost been a relief, in a strange way. Little bursts of cold and snow and seasonalness that spice things up, change the pace, bringing that fiery vigor that a good snowstorm brings, and followed closely by stretches of 40 and 50 degree days. Wonderful. Glorious, even.

And when things are well fed and fattened for winter, a little snow is hardly enough to matter. I love watching the critters, all of them, in the bit of snow we have had. Not cold enough to be miserable, not enough snow to be dangerous, and everything feels good. Nothing like a little bit of snow to get the cows and horses “feeling their oats.” The horses race around in a fiery, wintery fit, kicking up snow, sending it frothing and surging up from around their hooves. Cows, hairy backs covered with a glaze of ice, are plenty warm enough, their natural furnaces keeping up, fueled by plenty of good pasture and hay.

And the dogs – Oh, the dogs! Their antics keep us laughing. Enough said.

What a winter we have had!