Sunday Column: Some days the Bakken ain’t so Rockin’

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

On Friday evening we took a ride through the east pasture checking cows. The sky turned from blue to pink in front of our eyes and a small storm pushed through.We caught the breeze but didn’t get caught in the rain.

We caught the juneberries and the raspberries before the birds.

We caught Pops over the hill filling his mouth and his pocket and we were caught in one of the greatest things about living on this place.

Today I will attempt Juneberry pie because Husband packed his saddlebags and the breeze is blowing nice through the kitchen windows and it’s Sunday.

This is the kind of life I like to talk about. The kind of things I moved back here for. Sunsets and wildflowers and the sleek back of horses and fat happy cattle and Sundays and family.

These are all part of my reality.

But so is the dust kicked up by trucks tending to the oil well a mile down the road and the slick mud they make when it rains.

Sometimes I get stuck on my way out of this place.

Sometimes my car breaks down and so does our pickup on the way to get it all fixed. Sometimes the price of progress means you won’t possibly make it to your appointment on time.

And sometimes, after all that, one of those big trucks kicks up a big rock and you get another big chip to add to the 27 you already have in your windshield.

Sometimes I use my middle finger and think, hell, it’d be easier to just ride my horse out of here.

Sometimes it rains like hell and I’m reminded that I’m not perfect and neither is this place.

Sunday Column: Some days the Bakken ain’t so rockin’
By Jessie Veeder
7/21/13
Fargo Forum

I’m not perfect and neither is this place.

Sunday Column: How we’re tied together

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

We built our new house below a hill we call “Pots and Pans.”

This morning the windows are open to a cloudy sky and the damp, cool breeze is drifting in the windows and tickling my bare feet. I look out on the hill my cousins and I used to scale with little legs, a weekend’s supply of juice boxes and big aspirations of adventure. Even after all these years that hill looks big to me.

Even after all these years, when the cousin’s get together, we remember the quests we would take to reach the top where a different generation had left us treasures–flour sifters, cheese graters, mixing bowls, cast iron pans and big deep pots we could use to make mud pies or sweet clover soup.

Even after all these years we still remember who got a cactus in his butt on the way up, who peed her pants, who cried when the horse flies got unbearable and who lead the charge.

Even after all these years I still climb Pots and Pans, to get a better view, to check on things, to remember and to be grateful–for my family and the landscape and memories that binds us.

Coming Home: Family is connected by land
By Jessie Veeder
7-14-2013
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com

Sunday Column: On horses and what it means to hold on

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

July is full of so many seasons out here in the middle of America. We have fireworks season, chokecherry season, lake season, running through the sprinkler season, county fair season, street dance season, grilling season, family reunion season and, of course, wedding season.

This month holds so much potential for fun and connecting with community and family that it’s one of the reasons I wait for it all year.

And one of the reasons each day of sweet July is planned, each square on my calendar is filled in with an idea and an event I cannot miss.

This weekend was one of those that has held its spot of anticipation for months. The youngest of the Veeder cousins had a date to get married and so the rest of the cousins were summoned from Western North Dakota, Eastern North Dakota, Southern North Dakota, Washington DC, South Dakota and Texas to give him hugs and cry because he was all grown up.

And so we were all together to celebrate most of the seasons: fireworks season, wedding season, grilling season, lake season, dancing season and family reunion season.

Here we are, all grown up! (We missed you Little Big Sister and your Little Man)

This past week spent with the cousins and family who used to gather in my grandparent’s tiny house tucked in the buttes of the ranch for Easter egg hunts and turkey dinner and carols by the Christmas tree has been the highlight of my summer.

And so I’ll tell you all about it when I sort through the photos.

I promised you last week and I’ll keep my word.

Can you tell we’re related?

Because you have to see these beautiful and talented people. And I have to show you a photo of what we used to look like when we ran around these hills as kids decked out in our fanny packs and neon t-shirts, side ponytails and scraped knees.

You won’t believe that we all turned out to be pretty cool in the end.

It’s true, despite, well…this…

But for now it’s back to the grind and back to life on this ranch, a place that rings with the laughter of my cousins and the adventures we made for ourselves out here when we were glued together by grandparents that left us too soon.

Tonight Husband and I will move some cows from the home pasture out east, because July is also made for ranch work. I will sit on top of a horse I learned to ride under this very hot July sun all those years ago and think about the blessings and lessons this ranch has taught me about horses and family and what it means to hang on tight.

Coming Home: Learning their language, horse whisperer or not
By Jessie Veeder
7/6/13
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com

Sunday Column: Celebrating the Legends in our family

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

If I I’ve learned anything from coming home it’s that the people in my family are some of the most fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, trustworthy, giving and talented people in my life.

This last weekend we celebrated family and community with Watford City’s annual Homefest celebration, an event that features street dances, street fairs, kids games, art and music in the park, golf and a road race, all ways for reunioners to get together and reconnect.

I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for months because it meant that our family got to have a little reunion of our own. My cousin from Texas had made plans to swing through the ranch with her two adorable kids and her mom and spend some time before all of my relatives load up and hit the trail to celebrate my baby cousin’s wedding on Saturday.

So that’s why this Sunday post is coming to you on a Monday. Because yesterday I was making breakfast and squeezing sweet baby cheeks and picking wildflowers and climbing the hill my cousins fondly refer to as Pots and Pans with the next generation of Veeders in tow.

I want to tell you how it made me feel to stand on that hill with my aunt who reminds me more and more every day of my grandmother, and my Pops and uncle and Little Man and my cousin and best friend who used to wear trails with me on this place showing her young daughter what her great grandparents worked so hard to keep for her.

I want to tell you all about it and I will when I sort through all of the photos I snapped of those sweet babies exploring this place. It was the first trip my cousin has taken to the ranch since our wedding almost 7 years ago, so to say it was special would be an understatement.

To say I’m excited to spend next weekend celebrating my baby cousin’s wedding with some of my favorite people in the world who used to lead me up those hills, pick wildflowers for our grandmother’s table and cactus out of our baby cousins’ butts is one of those understatements as well.

But I’ll tell you all about it later. Today, I want to talk about another special gathering of relatives and friends that took place last weekend on top of the badlands on a beautiful summer day where my great uncle Lynn, my grandmother’s baby brother, was inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.

As I say in the column, when it comes to family, we all want to feel like a little part of us is legendary. To watch Lynn be recognized for the work he’s accomplished as a rodeo cowboy and rancher made me proud of our lifestyle, but after the summer days we’ve spent catching up with people connected by roots and stories and blood, I believe the real legacy we leave is in the love, time and memories kept.

Coming Home: Remembering the Legends in our Family
by Jessie Veeder
6/29/13
www.inforum.com

To have this landscape serve as the backdrop is just another beautiful link in that connection to one another.

Sunday Column: Rooted

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

My dad is a man who is rooted.

He knows what he loves and he loves it wholeheartedly. He showed us how to stay planted while finding our wings. He taught us how to sing and how to ride a horse.

He taught us that sometimes the best idea is to take a moment to sit on the hilltop, look around and say “wow, isn’t this something.”

His outlook on life has been his greatest gift to me. His love for place flows through our blood.

Happy Father’s Day to a man who worked hard to make this my home.

Coming Home: Discovering history, past and future
by Jessie Veeder
6/16/13
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com

Sunday Column: More misadventures.

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

My goodness it’s absolutely gorgeous out here these days. The rain has turned to sun and everything’s green and fresh, I want to soak it all in so badly that not even the “little hangover” I caught from the Miranda Lambert concert last night was going to deter me from showing up a “little late” to get in on the action of at our neighbor’s branding.

Now I’m smelly and sweaty and sunburned and just kinda, still a little hungover.

Ah well, as you’ll read in this week’s column, I always seem to find a way to make life a little more difficult.

But mostly, really truly, seriously, pretty much I most definitely, almost always have fun. And I don’t care what you say, you can never have too much of that.

Too much to drink? Well, that’s another issue…

Coming Home: Mishaps provide plenty of stories
By Jessie Veeder
June 9, 2013
Fargo Forum
www.inforum.com

Hope your weekend was free of mishaps.

Or full of them, you know, depending on your definition of the word.

Sunday Column (on Monday): When the chokecherry trees bloom

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Well, my favorite day of the week, Sunday, got hijacked yesterday for an impromptu trip to the big town to get new tires for Husband’s pickup. And a funny thing happened on the way. He got a flat tire.

So the quick trip turned into a long trip and while we were at it we thought we might as well load up on supplies to finish up the master bedroom, and, most importantly the closest.

I’m going to have an entire shelf for my shoes people.

An entire shelf.

It only took a good hour or so of discussion, planning and negotiation in the closet organizing section of Menards to come up with that plan, but it’s happening.

My life will never be the same.

And so that’s what I was doing yesterday. I was closet planning and waiting for tires and checking off the last of our supply list and sitting next to Husband as we drove home into the sunset and into the evening to unload doors and shelves and trim boards and laundry detergent and a little gift for Little Man and tools and screws and the rest of the things we need into the house in the middle of the pitch black night.

And that’s why you didn’t get my Sunday post. I know you were worried. I even got a worried email, so thanks for that.

But it was a good weekend all in all, one that kicked off with a birthday party for Pops and rolled on into Saturday where I played music for a beer festival in a neighboring college town and ended with my dream of an organized closet one step closer to realized.

And now it’s Monday and the rain is pouring down again, filling up the stock dams, sending the river out past its banks and women running from their cars to the nearest building with newspapers and magazines and jackets and briefcases covering their hairdos.

In the last month we’ve had all the rain we can handle. The grass is green and the chokecherry blossoms are in full bloom.
Everything is alive and another day more beautiful.

Another day older.

Pops turned fiftysomethingorother last Friday and this week’s column celebrates him and how fitting it is that he was born in during the best of the seasons.

Coming Home: Chokecherry blooms signal special time
by Jessie Veeder
6/1/13
Fargo Forum

Enjoy your week. Enjoy the rain, the smell of the chokecherry blossoms, and God willing, let’s enjoy some sun too.

If you need me, I’ll be picking wildflowers and organizing my boot collection…

The living room sessions

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Maybe
Jessie Veeder Living Room Session
Listen Here:

Maybe we’re supposed to be brave
I don’t know what we are but we’re not made that way
We’re meant to be broken, put together, then saved
Maybe we’re supposed to be brave

Maybe we’re supposed to hold on
when it’s hard to admit it’s gone when it’s gone
In the bright light of morning we’ll be glad we were strong
Maybe we’re supposed to hold on

If love’s not for sinners who is it for?
If luck’s not for hard times who’s keeping score?
I used to know better, I don’t anymore
These mountains we’re climbing lead to the shore

Maybe we’re not supposed to know
every leaf on the tree
every last flake of snow
Because we’re just like the wind, how we come and we go
Maybe we’re not supposed to know

Our hearts can be broken our lives can be saved
In bodies too heavy to just fly away
There’s things that I know and things that I should
Maybe we’re just supposed to be good

Maybe what we have is enough
stop fixing and fighting to own all this stuff
We were meant to be brave, to hold on and give up
For sinners like us, what we have is enough

Sunday Column: Progress

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Well, our Memorial Day weekend is shaping up. We have three entire days of rain to get the bathroom tiled, the carpet laid, the trim up and the master bedroom ready for a bed.

And if I can manage to keep from falling into the grout-water bucket today, I’ll still have a dry pair of shoes I can wear while I help push along our mission.

Because the last few weeks have been all about progress. Progress on the house, progress in the pastures and progress in a community and landscape that changes every day.

I spent last week in a strategic planning meeting addressing how to harness and mold and fix and enhance our community as we struggle and flourish in the face of an oil boom that is scheduled to last well into the future. After the meeting I came home to help Husband paint walls, cut boards and lay tile in the house while outside Pops was buzzing around on his 4-wheeler fixing fences, riding pastures and cleaning up the old farmstead, getting ready for the cattle to arrive in a few weeks.

We have big plans out here and this week’s column muses on what that means for us, in the house, in the pastures and in our community.

Coming Home: In face of progress,we can do better
By Jessie VeederFargo Forum
5-26-2013

Sunday Column: Wildflowers

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Happy Sunday. It’s a beautiful one here at the ranch. It’s raining, the trees are turning green right before our eyes, the flowers are blooming and I have my nose to the ground, inspecting, documenting and making sure I don’t miss a single bloom.