Brad was up north in the hayfield starting to move hay into the stackyard, and called me to let me know that the plum thickets in the hayfield were full of ripe fruit! I loaded up the fourwheeler with the three dogs and buckets for picking and up we buzzed, like a little mobile circus.
It turns out what Brad was seeing were actually hawthorns, beautiful, crimson berries in heavy clusters, but the plums were ripe as well, so we picked both until a thunderstorm shut us down. They were the best wild plums I have ever tasted! I’ll be going back for more.
We got home to no power, so it’ll be a cozy evening cuddled up on the sofa with my husband, watching the lightning and reading to the light of the oil lamps. “No Life for a Lady,” by Agnes Morley Cleaveland will be good company tonight.
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Strangely wonderful, strangely defeating by turns.
Exciting new opportunities have presented themselves, writing for a local newspaper and magazine, shooting more portrait sessions, a wedding. Canning like crazy with the wealth of chokecherries, zucchini, and tomatoes. Baking bread, brewing kombucha, fermenting milk kefir. Productivity and fruitfulness.
A freak hailstorm wiped out my garden a few weeks ago (thankfully my greenhouse survived). I lost four of my precious cats to poison before we figured out where it was coming from. I grafted four TSC chicks onto a broody hen and she took to them readily, only to have my nasty rooster (who is no more) kill three of them a week or two later. Those frustrating defeats.
And then days like today, when this is the bountiful harvest reaped, reset things a little. Eggs from my chickens, tomatoes and jalapeños from my greenhouse, and succulent wild plums from the road ditch.
Isn’t this a beautiful sight?
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Originally printed in Custer County Chronicle, July 19, 2023
“It is a year for the books,” a lot of people are saying. Looking down from the house towards the barn, the yard is a peaceful chaos of color and activity, a stark contrast to the dull and lifeless landscape of last year. The smell of fresh-cut hay is heavy and sweet, the birds are noisily serenading themselves, and the two roosters down by the henhouse are just full of it and sharing it with everyone else. My little flock of pullets started to lay in the last few days, adding their pretty eggs to the basket and joining the ranks of the laying hens. A robin ruffles his feathers in the spray from the sprinkler watering the flowers, and the vegetable garden is a fruitful jungle: bright yellow dill towering above the hail netting, the zucchini and yellow squash overflowing from the stock tank they’re growing in, zinnias and poppies shining their bright faces up at the sun. The little greenhouse is bursting at the seams. A few of the horses below strike up a heated conversation for a moment, and one of the puppies harasses the steer or barks at a buzzard. A delightful chaos. And there, soft in the background, is the comfortable whirr of the rake and the baler, the hayfield in the distance studded with bale upon bale of hay.
What a sight.
What a year.
This time a year ago, we were just trying to keep everything alive. A tough calving season was followed by bleak drought, the worst that a lot of folks around here had ever seen. Pastures basically stopped growing in June, if they ever really grew to begin with. Hay crops were devastatingly low, and we didn’t even try mowing half of our hay ground. Driving across the ranch or down Highway 79 left a little knot in the pit of the stomach, seeing the dust and the cured-out grasses. And if it wasn’t tough enough already, the grasshoppers moved in, demolishing gardens and thinning the already thin pastures. The summer became a game of just trying to stave off some of the effects of the drought, struggling to keep water in front of thirsty cows, and at the end of it all there was very little to show for anything. Stackyards were empty, dams were low, herd numbers were forced to dwindle, and pastures were worn out. Winter, then, was the struggle of trying to keep weight on hungry cows, and then trying to keep calves alive in the snowstorms. It was a tough year. A tight year. One of those years where the inputs and outputs were wildly disproportionate, where all the best efforts and the gallons of sweat didn’t mean a thing. Or they sure didn’t seem to.
I love talking to people who have been around the sun a few more times than I have, people who have seen their share of drought and storm and life in general. They have a longer perspective than I often have, a longer perspective than I am able to have. They’re the ones who can say, with the voice of experience, “It’s just what it does.” The ones who have seen the brink of disaster, but who have also seen what followed. They have weathered the worst without breaking.
Because those best efforts and gallons of sweat do mean something.
Maybe the effort felt wasted, or the sweat dried and everything was still the same or even worse, but days, weeks, months, and years of challenge and difficulty prime us for receiving the good years, or months, or weeks, or days. Sometimes, because we have stubborn hearts and blind eyes, we don’t see the good or fully appreciate it, until and unless we have something to compare it to. Last year gave us something to compare to.
So even as I take a break from chores and look down over the greenness and fruitfulness of the garden and hayfields, and see the sleek cows, well-summered, and soak in the peace that is this year, the sense of relief seeing water in Spring Creek and hay in the stackyards and water in the dams, even as I enjoy the satisfaction of a fruitful harvest without a fight, I’m thankful. Thankful for this year, of course, for answered prayers and work that is fruitful. But it isn’t just this year I’m thankful for. I’m thankful for last year, for the struggle that it was, for the difficulty and challenge that makes this year that much sweeter.
The years like this one might be the pleasantest, and they are certainly the kinds of years we pray for. But it is in those tough years where faith is strengthened, where resilience is born, where endurance is built, where the ability to cling tight to the things that matter is cultivated, and where strong individuals, families, and communities are made. That effort, that sweat, is never wasted. Those are the times that make us.
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Over the last month, I have been getting ready for my first multi-day art show, and I’m so excited to participate in Custer’s 100th Gold Discovery Days, as a vendor at their art and craft festival! The Hermosa Vendor Fair was definitely a success, so I’m really looking forward to this next event!
I have been getting displays figured out, troubleshooting my tent, labeling my cards, matting prints…I added 4”x6” matted prints, and they are as cute as can be. I’ll also have a handful of large-scale prints as well, plus the standard 5×7 and 8×10 prints, frameable art greeting cards on gorgeous matte paper that makes them look like watercolor paintings, postcards, and a random assortment of hand-dyed silk wild rags, just because.
I have sold cards and prints on and off for several years, but it has been so rewarding to pursue that with a little more intentionality (and professionalism), and to see my photography as art and an art form! As much as I enjoy photographing things, and using them in my blog, it really is exciting to see them printed. Not for this show, but in the near future I’ll be getting canvas prints added to my inventory!
Hopefully I’ll get an online store set up soon, and will be able to sell my photography in a more streamlined fashion!
So if any of you happen to be in the Custer area this weekend, stop by the craft festival and say hi!
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Sometimes I just have to pause for a minute and think about everything that is going on, and going on well. Just taking a few steps outside and seeing all the green – incredible green! – is reminder enough of how blessed this summer is. It has been wonderful. It couldn’t be more different than last year, where the grass was basically done growing by the end of June, and we ate dust all summer long. The grasshopper infestation was unreal and our stackyards stood empty of hay. The only reason the garden survived at all is because of the amount of time I spent watering it.
What a different year it has been!
The garden is gorgeous, really just thanks to the heavenly weather. My perennials are thriving, as well as some annuals I started from seed this year, and I’m already scheming to dig up another part of the yard to start planting volunteers and babies, and to rehome plants when I divide them up. A well-kept garden is almost a thing of the past, and I think that is such a loss. Beebalm and catmint and verbena and coneflowers, cosmos and zinnias and poppies…I love the color they add! Taking pride in one’s home and in beautifying the home and yard is a valuable pursuit!
The vegetable garden, though…Oh my. Every few days I’m able to harvest wonderful quantities of greens and herbs – kale, chard, arugula, spinach, lettuce, cilantro, dill, basil…We’ve been eating the most delicious steak salads! But for some reason I didn’t ever write about my greenhouse, when we first built it a couple of months ago. Maybe because I was afraid it would just be a disaster, possibly due to the fact that it blew down within three hours of initially setting it up. It really was quite heartbreaking.
But after my handy husband did a lot of head scratching and dirt work, he designed and executed a frame made out of old railroad ties from a corral my grandpa built, sank the railroad ties in the ground about four feet, and the greenhouse cover (from the one that blew down) perfectly fit over this frame. A lot of 2x4s and screws later and plenty of redneck flair, this greenhouse isn’t going anywhere. It has withstood some pretty heavy winds, a significant hailstorm or three, and the vegetables in it are absolutely thriving. Weekly fertilizing of the entire greenhouse, weekly strip-pruning of the tomatoes, and it is doing better than I ever anticipated. My tomatoes are taller than I am, and I’ve been having to tie the branches to the roof of the greenhouse as they’ve outgrown the cages. The branches are loaded with green fruit and yesterday we ate the first tomatoes of what should be an abundant harvest!
Gardening is so fun when it works the way it is supposed to!
The pullets started laying a few days ago, and it makes me chuckle how much I enjoy finding white eggs from my Leghorns! I am sad and not sad to say that Bernard the rooster got voted off the island a week or so ago, leaving my hens (and myself) much happier and more peaceful, with Big Boy doing all his roosterly duties in a much more respectable and respectful manner. However, Bernard may be joined shortly by Peewee, the jerk of a Leghorn rooster that was supposed to be a pullet. He is tiny, fast, and just mean. Bernard was a jerk, but he never chased me down. Peewee is a whole different story, and he’s only four months old. Yikes.
So we are finally eating meals again entirely produced on this ranch, from the beef to the eggs to the veggies and greens, and how satisfying that is! At any given time I have about a gallon of kombucha brewing, and a half pint to a pint of milk kefir. Bread baking happens on a weekly basis, give or take, whether it is a quick loaf of machine-baked whole wheat, or a carefully tended four-loaf batch of sourdough.
The hay crop is almost entirely rolled up, our fat steer is getting fatter on his daily grain ration, and in short this is just a good summer. They aren’t all like this, and it didn’t take me long being married to a rancher to figure that out…They aren’t all like this, so when we do have a great year, I will savor it. And savor it. And savor it some more. Sometimes I think a little more savoring of the good things would help get all of us through the tough times.
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One year we’re praying for rain and fruitful pastures, then simply praying for sustenance until the next spring. The next year we’re smiling ear to ear and praying for a window of dry weather to get the hay crop in.
One minute, Brad and Dave are racing like mad to get hay baled, the next minute we’re camping out in the calving shed while a hailstorm wears itself out overhead.
One hour I’m cleaning up the damage done to my garden from the golf-ball-sized hail, though thankful it wasn’t worse. The next, I’m finding a beautiful egg from my new flock of pullets, and candling an egg my broody hen is working on to find it is viable and developing!
One hour I find out that my beautiful Amelia-cat died overnight for no known reason. The next, I see twin antelope babies out along our driveway while on my morning run.
It just does that sometimes. Life and death paired. Struggle and blessing. Fruitfulness and failure. Fear and peace. Sadness and gladness. A chaotic intermingling of things that feel like contradictions.
The struggles are a reminder of our sin. “Cursed is the ground” because of our inherited sin, and natural disasters, whether small or large in scale, are a reminder of that first storm, the one that covered the earth in a flood of judgement. Death is likewise a reminder of our sin, that we don’t live in a perfect world, and this isn’t where we ultimately belong.
But at the same time, the storms are a reminder of God’s mercy, how He protects and that it is He who provides, especially when the hailstorm like we had two days ago leaves relatively little damage. And the fruit of our cultivating – be it flocks of chickens or herds of cows or a fruitful garden – are a reminder also of God’s grace and mercy and providence. And life – wild or tame – is also a reminder of God’s goodness and kindness to us, and His love for His creatures, human and animal.
“It’s just what it does.”
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