Tag Archives: North Dakota

The timing of spring

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Welcome to the warm-up North Dakota. As I write this the rain is soaking the grass and I swear it’s turning a neon green right before my eyes. We had ten calves yesterday, and likely a half-dozen or so more will be born in the rain. But they won’t mind, they will be licked clean by their mommas and kept in the protection of the tall grass and they’ll wait for the sun so they can stand up and buck and kick and run, just like us people it seems. Waiting for the sun to launch us alive again.

When you’ve lived on a piece of land for most of your life, you become a part of the rhythm of things. You inherently know the timing of a change in seasons and when to expect longer light. And, like the wild things, no matter how domesticated we become, we change with those seasons too. Like, I know the first crocus is accompanied by my dad taking the first horse out for a spring ride. And then comes the first calves and no more dark morning drives to school, followed quickly by later bedtimes…

Last Saturday after spending as much time as I could outside finding things that needed to be done, I had to head in and figure out supper. Instead of frozen pizza, I picked a recipe I hadn’t made before and regretted every minute of cooking and shredding the chicken. The task and the warm, calm evening made it tempting to turn in my adult badge and join the kids outside.  They were playing with their cousins on the playground in the yard, bringing toys and dolls that had been cooped up in the house outside to get dirty and worn out in the spring sun, out in the sand and dirt. And I don’t mind about that sort of thing, because outside is where kids are supposed to be. Outside is where I wanted to be, and so I had the sliding door cracked so I could feel the fresh breeze and hear them laughing.

All I wanted to do was climb the hills and look for the sweet peas my dad said he spotted that day. Sometimes the business of my current, middle-aged life prevents me from getting there first, but I knew just where to find them: follow the two-track trail up to the field and take a detour before the gate to the hill on the edge of the tree line. You’ll find the yellow flowers poking out among the granite rocks. And just after the sweet peas come the blue bells and after the blue bells the earth comes alive with lady slippers and paintbrushes and prairie roses and wild daisies. Next come the cone flowers.  Then, in the heat, the tiger lilies follow and then the sunflowers come in with the grasshoppers and the ripening tomatoes in my garden.

And none of these names we have for the flowers are likely correct. You probably call them something different, but when it comes to wildflowers, names don’t matter.

We’ll start serving supper later and later and now, it will sneak up on us gradually until the thick of July when we come in at ten o’clock to eat hot dogs and beans. It had already begun last weekend when, at 8 pm, we took our first bites. But there was still time for me to escape to those granite rocks after helping clear the table. And so I raced the light a bit, the dogs running out ahead of me to sniff out any mice or gophers in their path while I was sniffing out sweet peas. It wasn’t a long hunt, because there they were, right where I’ve found them year after year after year. In a few more warm days, after this soaking rain, that yellow flower will fill the hillsides, too many to gather into a bouquet, but that evening I picked just a few for the mason jar on my table. I clenched the stems in my left hand and took a big whiff and headed back home to beat the dark, humming a little welcome song to the warm up and to more simple hot dog suppers…

Dakota Cowboy Interview

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Recently, on a rainy day in April, I had a chance to visit with Tisa Peek for the Dakota Cowboy show on Bek TV. We sat horseback in her arena and talked plans and inspiration, arts and music and community building. This show is dedicated to telling the story of rural North Dakota and the people who are doing good work here, was an honor to be included.

Give it a watch here or click the image below:

If you’re interested in where I’m playing this summer, or to get me on your event calendar, visit www.jessieveedermusic.com/shows

Trick rider or bronc rider?

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We headed to a rodeo in our town a few weeks ago. The blizzard that was forecast hadn’t fully set in yet, and so we put on our going to town boots, I curled the girls’ hair for under their cowboy hats and we all hit the not-yet-icy-road. This particular rodeo promised a set of cowboys and bucking horses that are the best in the country, and we wanted to watch one of our favorite cowboys ride. But Rosie, if you recall, declared confidently into the microphone to the entire pre-school graduation audience that she was going to be a trick rider when she grows up, so when we learned that this rodeo was bringing one in, well, nothing could have stopped us from the chance to see the brave woman in sparkly outfits flying around the arena completing death defying acts off the backs of horses on purpose. More commonly we find ourselves dragging off the side of a horse on accident around here, so we were intrigued. 

Rosie, who recently lost a couple teeth, was feeling grown up and rich and so she raided her piggy bank and declared that she put $32 whole dollars in her purse so that she could buy candy. Edie didn’t pack a cent because she didn’t want to waste her own cash, but was totally fine with her little sister offering hers, confirming that there are two types of people in this world and I’m afraid I’m Rosie.

But when it comes to watching a woman in sparkly spandex standing on top of two horses racing through five flaming torches, I’m more like Edie—holding my hands over my eyes refusing to watch. The empathy that girl possesses for what other people might possibly be enduring is borderline debilitating. Turns out it also translates to the boy dancing with the rodeo clown in front of hundreds of people without shame or reservation, dropping down to do the worm in the dirt no less. Edie watched the entire thing through the crack in her hands, embarrassed for the boy who possessed not one slight inhibition.

Oh, I love taking my daughters out in the world. I love seeing what they pick out to wear and I love fixing their hair. I love to watch them experience something new and how they hold my hand in the parking lot on the way in, skipping along. I love when they see a friend of theirs or a teacher out in the wild and the questions they ask. I love that we all belong together and they seem proud of that, sharing popcorn and sitting on our laps. I know soon enough they’ll be borrowing the pickup to go to rodeos or basketball games or dances on their own, and Rosie will be driving and Edie will be covering her eyes and I will know it and so I’ll be worrying…

Because listen, on the way home we were playing “Would you Rather,” and I asked the girls if they would rather be a bronc rider or a trick rider.

Edie said neither.

Rosie said both.

So if you need me, I’ll be planning our next outing. I think this knitting class looks like a good idea…

The Yellow Boat

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Winter visited us again this past weekend, but spring teased us a bit the week before, so we know it can happen. This got me thinking about spring cleanup and all the little relics that are often left behind in the draws of ranches like ours, waiting to be repaired or picked up by the junk guy, but more likely just staying there for years reminding us of the time when we were younger and it ran.

Which got me thinking about my husband’s yellow boat.

The Yellow Boat

Lake Sakakawea

A few days of warm weather will get the plans rolling. And the smell of the thaw, the sound of the water, the blue sky and sun and things uncovered by melting snow had me poking around the place, in search of projects and things I could accomplish.

And in my search I stumbled upon one of the ranch’s most unique relics. Sitting next to the shop covered loosely by a blue tarp and snow turned to ice water is Husband’s yellow boat, the one he brought with us to the ranch when we were first married.

I want to talk about this boat because it’s almost April now and it’s time to start making plans to cast a catfish line, pull on some cutoffs and grill something already.

I want to talk about this boat because I want to talk about boy I once knew who spent hours in the garage with his dad, sanding, scraping, painting and turning the remnants of an old wood and fiberglass flat bottom custom junkyard find into a 11 by 6 foot piece of bright yellow marine-time dream come true with a 40 horse Johnson, quite a mighty motor for a boat that small.

A boat they were planning on turning into a legend, buzzing around Lake Sakakawea and turning heads.

And as soon as the yellow paint dried, that’s exactly what they did.  Father and son proudly loaded it up in the trailer and headed to the big water, visions of speed and notoriety bouncing between them in the pickup before they plopped that boat in the water and squeezed in side-by-side, shoulders squished together, chins nearly resting on their knees, reaping the benefits of the many hours spent on dry land turning a relic into a masterpiece.

They pushed it to its limits, testing what it had, wondering if they never slowed down if they might just keep going forever, out toward the buttes that hold the lake in place, to the river and then into the ocean, a man and a boy in a tiny yellow boat they made together after the sun went down on their real lives and that boat turned into all that mattered between them…

But boys need to become men on their own time, so they brought that boat to shore so that boy could drive his old Thunderbird out of the driveway to the highway that would take him away and back again to live on a ranch by that lake with a girl who used to sit beside him in that old car when he drove too fast and played his music too loud.

But I never sat beside him in that yellow boat until one day I came home to find my new husband holding a fishing pole and a tiny cooler full to the brim with beer and a container of worms.

“We’re going fishing,” he said.

And off we went on a hot July evening, the windows rolled down on the little white pickup as we followed the prairie trail down to our secret spot on the lake below the buttes. The place without a boat ramp, a picnic table or any sign of human life…

My new husband and I pushed that little boat in the water, navigating the deep mud on the banks of the lake before we jumped in and sat back-to-back with our poles in the water, the little cooler on my lap, trolling the shores for hours without a bite before the sun threatened to drop below the horizon, convincing us to call it a night.

Funny how fast night came then when my husband, in an attempt to hook up that little boat and pull us all back home, backed up just a bit too far, and, well, there we were in our secret fishing spot stuck in the mud up to the floorboards, miles from the highway, cell phone reception, or any sign of human life.

And there are many relics on this place, old tractors, used up pickups, tires and spare parts that need to be hauled away and given new life. But over the hill in the barnyard, covered by a tarp and a fresh dusting of spring snow sits a little yellow boat on a little trailer that was never meant for fishing…in fact, now that I think of it, that boat might not have been made for anything really, except to be made.

I will be playing music and telling stories March 28 at 7 PM at the Fargo/Moorhead Community Theater in The Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead, MN. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door or in advance at www.jessieveedermusic.com/shows Hope to see you there!

The good life of a good dog

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My dad lost his old cow dog, Juno, last week. After fourteen years of chasing cows through the draws, barking at squirrels and fighting with raccoons, howling with the coyotes and riding shotgun next to dad in the side-by-side, she took her last rest in her snug bed under the heat-lamp in the garage and didn’t wake up again.

Fourteen years is a long life for a ranch dog living wide open, tasked with the very thing they were bred to do. The job of moving cattle alongside the horses, chasing them out of the tough brush or keeping them motivated while moving pastures is dangerous enough, but add in the other wild and unpredictable things—a rattlesnake or a mountain lion, a truck driving too fast down our county road—and it’s not surprising that some of our dogs don’t live to be old and gray. But Juno did. And while she was with us, she was about the best dog there ever was.

I can say that, and you can believe me, because she wasn’t my dog. Everyone thinks their dog is the best dog, but everyone loved Juno and you would have loved her too. I held her tiny fluffy body on my lap in the passenger seat of my dad’s pickup when we brought her home from the neighbor’s. We had just moved back to the ranch for good and I was excited to have a pup around and just like that she belonged here the same way every animal has on this ranch (except maybe those two wild Corrientes that kept trying to run away to the badlands).

Anyway, dogs out here, they’re special, like an extension of our limbs when there is work to be done or fences to be adjusted or when things need to be checked. And so they ride along, in the back of pickups or in the backseat or, like Juno, right next to you in the cab of whatever you’re driving, bringing along the stink from whatever they rolled in and all the personality they possess.

These dogs, the blue heelers, the border collies, the kelpies, the Australian Shepherds and all the combinations there can be, they know why they’ve been put on this planet, and it’s to follow at your heels, from barn to house to shop to tractor to cattle pen to pasture to pickup to four-wheeler to horse pen to the ends of the Earth in case they can be of assistance, or annoyance, but always in the name of companionship.

Our neighbor had a big blue heeler when I was growing up named Critter. Critter’s place in the world moved up through the years from pickup box to shot gun seat until Critter and my neighbor could be found driving around the place practically cheek to cheek, the dog making a point every once in a while, to put his paw up on his human’s shoulder while watching the trail ahead as a sign of partnership and solidarity.

The other day I came home to find our two dogs in the house. We have a border collie/Aussie cross named Remi and a Hanging Tree Cattle dog named Gus. They’ve lived in the garage and in the yard their entire lives like most cow dogs do, so when they get to come inside, they’re not sure what to do but stare at my husband’s face and follow him from room to room waiting for a command. And I’m not sure why he decided to bring them in, other than he’s been working on the house addition for the past couple weeks and he just likes to have them close. When you open the door though, they can’t get out fast enough to go roll in the snow and pee on the trees and chase the squirrels and run out ahead and do the things dogs are meant to do. Honestly, I’d like to come back as these dogs in another life, to know so fully what it is that you’re made for is a gift that only humans can overthink and screw up.

Maybe we should work to be more like the dogs, more like Juno…Fluffy and affectionate, an easy keeper and ready to be there when needed (and even when she isn’t–cut to that dog showing up ten miles from home when you tried to leave her behind.)

Anyway, life won’t be the same here at the ranch without you Juno. Thanks for all the help.

Let us be bored.

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Last night while I was folding laundry, my daughters wandered out into the living room on a pretend mission to escape something. Edie, my oldest, was dressed in overall-shorts with a little toy fox stuffed into her front pocket. Rosie, well, she was dressed as a granny, complete with big glasses, a bun, sensible shoes and a stick horse as a walking cane. I listened to their conversations a bit to see where the game was going, laughing to myself at Rosie’s grandma voice and her commitment to her character. When I asked her if they could stop for a minute so I could take their picture (they were so stinkin’ cute) Rosie replied, “Well, make it quick deary, my back is killin’ me!” Which tracks, I guess, for a granny.

So did the extra pair of underwear, flashlight and cardigan that Rosie packed for their pretend adventure. But what really put the whole thing over the top was when I looked to where they were playing in the kitchen to find Rosie snoring, eyes closed, standing up. Because, well, grannies get tired.

When these girls play, I tell you, they play. And it’s the best.

Because it’s their job.

When my first daughter was just a baby, I heard one of my more seasoned mom-friends say this in a conversation we were having about parenthood. In all the expectations we have laid out for our children, the schedules and the lessons and the homework and the chores, their number one priority should be to play. It’s a sentence that runs through my head when I’m feeling overwhelmed with the variety of choices for after school activities and completing extra homework, wondering now, especially as the kids are getting older, if I’m failing them by not putting them in travel basketball or hauling them to every youth rodeo in the region. It’s not how we were raised, but that was in the olden days. What are we supposed to be doing for our children now that we have access to a world full of expert and non-expert opinions?

Well, I have an opinion too I suppose, and it’s that the very best thing we can do for our children is to let them be bored.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a scheduled play date and paid-for weekly activities as much as the next mom. There’s a place for this on the schedule too. But the most fun I had as a kid arose out of no schedule at all, just an endless afternoon stretched out before me, with nothing but my imagination to fill it. But that was back before there was a choice otherwise. We had a handful of channels on TV and, gasp, we had to watch the commercial interruptions in our 30 minute after school episode of “Garfield and Friends”. Might as well just go outside and see what’s floating in the crick.

It happened fast, in less than one generation, but here we are raising kids in a world, where, if we allow it, they can be thoroughly entertained at every turn of a moment. I mean, has anyone ever found the bottom of Netflix or YouTube? Never. It’s up to us to turn it off so they can tune into that part of their little spirit that guides them toward an interest or a passion or, heck, just the opportunity to learn how to turn inward and rely on themselves in the quiet moments. More than my daughters’ basketball career or math grades, boredom is the thing I worry about failing them most.

Taylor Swift Concert…..

Now, I’m not saying that I turned into a professional fallen log fort-maker because of all the time I spent at the crick when I was a kid, but I did hone my songwriting skills singing at the top of my lungs pretending I was in a Disney movie where I had to learn to survive in the North Dakota wilderness alone. I learned that I like making up stories. And I liked performing, even if my audience was the squirrels I was terrifying and my little sister who was following a quarter mile behind me. And I learned it meant a lot to me to be there to witness every quiet turn of the season. It taught me gratitude. It taught me how to be alone and be ok with it.

Anyway, I realize I’m reflecting on this from a parenting perspective, but maybe even more importantly it’s a reminder to do the same for myself now that I’m a full-blown adult with adult responsibilities. Because in this season of life and parenting, boredom doesn’t exist. But it should. We should demand it of our lives as much as we demand anything else. I am saying that here to remind us all. If a kid’s job is to play, who said we had to take a promotion?

In a few weeks the weather will turn and I am going to put “wander the hills” on my to-do list. Because, like my daughters last night, I need the opportunity to escape in my mind once in a while. And lucky for me I was a kid in the ‘90s, so I know how to do that.

Chad and I are working to get our “Meanwhile, back at the ranch…” podcast back in circulation now that the house project is a bit more under control. Until then, take a listen to an interview I did about music and ranching and motherhood while I was in Elko with “The Art Box”

Forever’s in the Saw Dust

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Us, in the olden days…

When my husband and I were freshman in college at the University of North Dakota, I used to
visit him in his small, stinky dorm room in Walsh Hall and he would make me tuna salad
sandwiches.

This seems like a silly way to start things off, but every single one of us is living in the ordinary,
everyday moments here, and February has drug on and left us with March and more routine
and I think there’s something to say here…

Recently, our little routine has been intercepted by a home remodeling project. Our plans,
homework and furniture are covered in a layer of sawdust as the girls and I help my husband
where we can between work and school, laying flooring, handing him tools, holding boards and
picking playlists heavy on the Taylor Swift. He’s been working hard to finish a project that, for
so many reasons, some in and some out of our control, has drug on through years. It’s finally
the time to wrap it up and so here we are working supper around hammers on the kitchen
table, and evening snuggles next to the table saw.

Take note of the fireplace ‘decor’

This house of ours seems to be a structure changing and growing along with our lives together.
Maybe only a poet could draw the comparison eloquently, but when it was just the two of us,
new in our marriage, it stood as a brand-new cozy cottage in this valley full of hand-me-down
furniture and the dreams we had for our lives here. I remember the first night we spent
together in this house. The waterline hadn’t been dug yet and our upstairs bedroom still had
walls to put up, so we lived downstairs in what was going to be the guest room and we just laid
there, side by side, looking up at the stars out the new window with no blinds.

Fast forward through the years and those two extra bedrooms are now home to dozens of
stuffed animals, puzzles, games, art supplies, night lights, baby dolls, twenty to twenty-five
Barbies, a couple Kens, one Christoph and their dream wardrobe/house/barn/car/camper.
When we were in the planning phases of this house, we didn’t have children and I wondered if
we would regret the staircase or the hardwood flooring if they arrived. Then my friend
reminded me that they would only be babies for a blink of an eye, and that you make your
space what it needs to be along the way. And so here we are taking that phrase quite literally,
adding an entryway to catch the mud, cow poop and the occasional bottle calf at the pass. And
we’ve added a pantry too, because out here so far from the grocery store you need to have
more on hand.


Which led us to where we are now, expanding our living and dining room so we
have more space to host gatherings and holidays, putting our bedroom back on the main floor
and turning that old bedroom loft into an office space for all the paperwork that piles up when
you find yourself smack dab in the middle of middle age.


It seems ridiculous and over the top when I lay it out here, our little cottage in its first form
would have worked perfectly fine for us through any stage. But looking back, I doubt we could
have helped ourselves given my propensity to dream and his to make things. And that’s how
we’re in what is turning out to be, after all these years, a quite beautiful sawdust covered
predicament.

Which brings me to the tuna-salad-sandwich my husband made last weekend during a break
between laying the floor and me taking the girls to 4-H. I sat at the kitchen counter and talked
with him about grocery lists and schedules and mundane things you only say out loud to
someone you’re married to because they listen in a way that’s sort of not listening and that’s
just what you need sometimes. While I chattered, he made his way around the kitchen
gathering ingredients and carefully chopping and mixing—the tuna, the celery and then the
onions, followed by the mayo, the mustard the salt and pepper and some other things I’m sure I
didn’t catch. I looked up and joked, “you sure make a big fuss over a sandwich,” to which he
replied, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.” And it was that ordinary moment
in the middle of February in the middle of marriage in the middle of our lives that flipped the
mundane to affection and then to deep gratitude.

He handed me a plate with two slice of toast, and offered, as he always does, for me to serve
myself first before he stirs in the jalapeños and I guess what I’m trying to say right now is that
sometimes we look for love and forever in heart shaped boxes when maybe the best of all of it
is hidden among the years of tuna fish sandwiches and saw dust.

That’s all. That’s all I wanted to say. If you need me I’ll be sweeping and then vacuuming and
then sweeping again…

Us, these days…

Thank you for listening

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Happy New Year from the ranch. And happy longest month of the year in North Dakota. Or is that February? I can’t remember. Winter up here sometimes is like childbirth, you forget the horrors when you’re in the middle of those beautiful June days.

I sent my daughters off to school for the first time after their break and now I’m alone with my thoughts for the first time in weeks. And so it seems like a good time to announce that my new album “Yellow Roses” is set to release everywhere on January 11th. I think it’s a proper way to ring in a new year, with new music.

The truth is, I didn’t think I had another album of original music in me. I’ve been at this since I was sixteen years old, writing songs about the people and landscape of a place and life pretty obscure to most of the world. My last original release was over eight years ago, songs written before motherhood and performed and released when I was pregnant with my first daughter.

It was a time in my life that held so much hope and promise, tangled up with no guarantees in that complicated way that hope and promise always seem to be.

And it feels like all our real life has been lived in that space between that last album and now. Between working on raising babies and cattle, we’ve faced the near loss of my dad, a job layoff, a new business endeavor, keeping a non-profit afloat and my cancer diagnosis during a pandemic and my slow recovery figuring out how to live a life with pain that just won’t let up. And we’ve put that all up against the promise to love each other forever and make sure our young kids don’t figure out too soon that life can be scary.

Pregnant with Rosie, playing “Sunshine” with Edie

I’m looking back at that list right now and am fighting the urge to delete it all. I don’t want to be the person that lists the struggles, mostly because I can’t carry on there. I prefer and thrive in the spaces in between: the slow walks to my sister’s with the kids stopping every few feet to pick up a rock or dig in the dirt, the quiet times at night laying next to my husband and telling him the funny things Rosie said, my favorite horse and teaching the girls to ride, wildflowers on the kitchen table, new calves trying their legs in the fresh green grass, watering my tomato plants, walking a cattle trail, the way the evening light hits the Blue Buttes, watching Edie catch and love all the frogs, a small stage in a small town, making you a cup of coffee while you tell me about the old days, sitting in the passenger seat of the pickup while he drives…

These spaces in between, that’s where the songs are for me. And that’s what this album is. It is a finishing up of the ideas that have been sitting in pages on the shelves for years and it’s the songs the tall grass knows that I can finally hear. It’s the retelling of old stories to a new melody. It’s the sound of kids growing up and the generations before us and the weight of the holding on. It’s the hum of April blizzards and frustration and potential of changing times. It’s the sound of Nashville players behind the words of a ranch kid all grown up now.

And so on January 11th, I hope you’ll take a listen. I hope you’ll find these songs wherever you are and I hope you find yourself in them somehow, even if it’s just in the rhythm of your toes tapping. People like me, for whatever reason, live our truest lives by telling about it. Thank you for listening.

Watch for tour dates coming in early spring, where I’ll take the songs to you.

Buy a signed “Yellow Roses” CD at www.jessieveedermusic.com today, pre-save it on Apple Music and get three of the twelve tracks right now or get the full album on January 11th wherever you get your music.

Thank you for listening.

The Magic of Christmas

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Greetings from under the giant Christmas tree where Rosie and the Elf on the Shelf are laying because both got the three-day flu for Rosie’s sixth birthday and I’m feeling the impeding sense of doom that comes with knowing I’m probably next.

My husband just walked in from hauling hay in the balmy 50+ degree December weather and I know I’m supposed to feel grateful, especially this time of year, but I am also feeling a bit overwhelmed. I told him, after spending my entire morning moving between promoting a new music release, meeting a deadline and trying to decide if I should take my daughter to the doctor, that my creative energy is running low.

And I’m feeling like I’m falling a foot or two short at about everything I’m working at right now. And he said, “Well, why don’t you write about that?”

So then, because I was in an honest mood, I confessed that two nights ago I might have wrecked the spirit of Christmas for our oldest when she caught me scrolling through “Elf on the Shelf Ideas for Parents” on my Pinterest feed.

“Mom,” she piped up timidly, surprising me in the quiet. “Does the elf move itself or is it the parents?”

Oh no…oh no…oh no.

“What do you think?” I asked softly.

“Well, I saw what you were looking at on your phone. Now I think it’s the parents.”

Oh no again.

In my defense I thought the child was already asleep while I scrolled and snuggled in the dark of her room. And also I forget that she can read now. She is eight but I forget that sometimes too. Because it all goes so fast and in my mind she’s still three and pudgy and twirling in that oversized quilted blue dress she wouldn’t take off for a year.

Eight? Is that an age where a kid might stop believing? She has been skeptical of this Christmas magic Santa thing since she could express it. She’s a practical kid and the details of a man who delivers presents to every child in the world in a flying sleigh pulled by an animal that doesn’t even fly in real life just doesn’t line up with the things she’s come to know about how the world works. And so that’s why we told her that to believe is part of the magic.

And so that’s what I told her the night I got caught planning that felt elf’s next move. I told her I think she could still choose to believe. And then I added something stupid trying to explain the Pinterest feed, like the pictures were of other families’ elves that moms share for fun. And the kid, bless her, I think she just pretended to buy it.

Now that I think of it, it was the same way I pretended to buy it was I was about her age, old enough to know better, but aware of what it meant to choose reality over magic. To me it seemed too close to the fire of adulthood, and I was still young enough to know I wasn’t ready for that yet.

So that night I tiptoed out of Edie’s room and moved the elf to the windowsill, wrapped her in a little washcloth and propped her up against a bottle of cough syrup in solidarity with the youngest member of the family who hadn’t lifted her head off the couch for 24 hours.

On the long list of things to worry about, the idea that my oldest daughter might become wise and ruin the magic for our youngest didn’t occur to me until it was time to locate that sickly little elf in the morning. But Edie woke up surprised and happy to see the elf and Rosie was still sick and I had a deadline and appointments to reschedule so I could stay home and care for her, and my husband had a calf to find and hay to haul and Edie had a computer test she was worried about and it was just another day in reality, the way the days come at all of us regardless of the season, the traditions or the size of your Christmas tree. Except on Christmas especially, it’s nice to have a little magic help us along. Hopefully that magic is currently working as a disinfectant…

Stay healthy out there!

Listen to the new single “Whiskey in the Winter. New full length album out everywhere January 11!

November at the Ranch

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November is a busy month at the ranch. Not only are we getting ready for the impending (or continuing) winter, but November is the month for roundup, working and checking our cattle and selling our calves. It’s one of my favorite times of the year because it’s one of the rare times that I allow myself to drop everything and focus on the ranch.

One of my jobs is to make sure that the people (who also drop everything to help) get fed. And that there is hot coffee and cookies out in the pens so we all have an excuse to take a few minutes to break between tasks. This is about as important to me as anything because it forces a slowdown during a moment in time that makes everyone who owns these cattle a little anxious. Because a day like shipping day is the culmination of all the work the family has put into caring for these animals–rolling out hay in the winter, fixing water tanks and fences in the spring, watching for and tending to trouble during calving season and keeping them on the best grass in the summer, free of hoof rot and pink eye.

This year we lucked out with a couple nice weather days where you could only see your breath until about noon and then we could take off a layer or two. My sister and I keep our daughters   home from school on the day we ship and sell calves so they can be a part of the grand finale. They ride along to the sale barn with a bag full of coloring sheets and snacks to sit next to Papa and our old neighbor and watch our calves go through the ring. I wonder what they’ll remember more, the sale or eating the pizza buffet and playing in the arcade in the big town after?

Unfortunately, for Rosie and everyone around her who she scared to death, it will be falling off her pony during roundup, an unpredictable incident that left me questioning all my parenting decisions. Things like this don’t happen to kids who live in the suburbs. And kids in the suburbs don’t go to the arcade smelling like the sale barn.

Maybe all we’re doing when we bring them along is solidifying the idea that marrying or becoming a professional YouTuber or a computer programmer is a safer life choice. Because is there a YouTuber or computer programmer in the history of the world who makes small talk with the community vet for two hours while he puts his arm down the backside of 120-some cattle to confirm they’re bred and then invites him over for lunch only to discover that your new kitten has somehow got herself stuck INSIDE THE WALLS OF YOUR HOUSE!!!??

Not a good look for that specific house guest.

But seriously. Anyone ever had to cut open a wall in your house to retrieve a live animal? I don’t want to admit this, but in the history of my life on this ranch, it wasn’t the first time.

Turns out that kitten was just after the dead, rotting mouse that had somehow also discovered the secret wall portal. When I tell you that feline stunk, I cannot stress it enough. And when I tell you that squirmy little barn cats don’t like baths, I also, cannot stress it enough.  

Yes, life on the ranch is messy and volatile and this time of year can make us as grateful for it as we are anxious about it. Because we can control the calf market about as much as we can control the weather and that pony trotting across the field with his reigns dragging…

What are we doing here? Well, all I can say is we’re doing our best, and learning plenty of lessons along the way.

Next up? December and keeping that kitten off the Christmas tree.