Tag Archives: North Dakota

The bull curse

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This spring toward the end of calving season I remarked about how well things seemed to be going after my father himself remarked how well things seemed to be going. And then, even though I knew better, I dared to add, “No bottle calves yet,” and he told me, quite seriously and repeatedly that I had cursed the entire ranch.  

My dad, in case you missed it, is one of those superstitious ranchers.

What was I thinking?

Fast forward a few months and we had a nice young Angus bull go missing, as bulls tend to do. Dad finally caught up with him in our neighbor’s pasture hanging out with his pretty black cows and enlisted the help of my sister to go round him up. Now, if you have any experience in the art of chasing cattle, you know that trying to break one lone male bovine away from a herd of females is not a task for the armature or the faint of heart. It usually never, ever goes well or smoothly or without cussing and sweat, prayers and thorns and then more cussing and in that order. But that evening, my dad and my little sister hit the trail horseback, miraculously found the stray bull and even more miraculously were able to walk the big guy back to the adjacent pasture so he could finish off breeding season with his betrothed cows. The plan in Dad’s head had come to fruition, things went smoothly and from what was reported there was no swearing and no praying and no thorns.

The other miracle? The fact that, after years of being traumatized in her childhood by helping Dad chase bulls, my little sister actually agreed to go along.

It was a brag-worthy experience and we all heard about it that evening. What a great bull. Can’t believe it. He worked so nicely. Went smooth. Easy as could be.

But the rancher’s dream was cut short when Dad went out the next morning to find the bull was gone again.

Vanished.

And so, this time Dad enlisted the help of my husband and me (because my sister had fled to Arizona, probably to avoid this very situation). Off we went with horses, back to the neighbor’s pasture to, sure enough, find that bull hanging out with his preferred herd of ladies. As we approached him, Dad talked through about ten difference scenarios and tactics we could employ to get this bull back into his rightful spot. Again. We could take him with a small group of cows to the pen by the road and then load him into the trailer. We could take him with the herd toward the gate and then break him off. We could go take what we could get with him to the northeast gate or we could just… ope…there he went, walking right at that bull and breaking him from the cows who went running in all directions. And so that’s the plan we landed on, all three of us pushing that bull alone, up over the hill and through a school section alley, slow and steady and easy in one gate and then another and to our pasture, all the while Dad saying, “This is great! What a nice bull. This is how easy he went with Alex. I can’t believe it. Look at how nice he is.”

And me? Well, I didn’t say a dang word. Because I knew better, having cursed the entire ranch and all. And I know from experience that, with bulls, well, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

But that experience has shown us that once you get a bull in with all the cows it is over. That’s the task. Uniting/Reuniting is the goal. And so, once we successfully achieved that, we all sort of sat back and carried on with the next mission of pushing those cows and that bull into the next pasture.

But it turns out Dad’s out-loud-positive-affirmations was going to do a number on us as I suspected, because I looked over to right to notice that bull veering from the herd suspiciously. So, I followed him with the plan of turning him back, which should have been easy, but the veering continued. I sent the dog in, which made the veering continue faster toward the kind of thick and thorny brush patch on a cliff that bulls tend to love. Cue my husband and dad flying in from both sides hollering, “We have this Jess, go watch the cows.” And so, I did what I was told but found a perch nearby to see if I could watch how this was going to play out.

It was about fifteen minutes into peering from the hilltop down into the winding, deep creek that cuts through the big brush in the corner of that pasture, the absolute worst place to find an animal or yourself for that matter, when I finally got eyes on them. My husband, off his horse on the edge of a brush patch rubbing his hand and my dad standing next to the fence staring over at the bull on the other side who was standing up to his neck in the water, staring back.

“Well, it’s over now,” I thought to myself as the two men came riding back toward me and the cows.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” my dad exclaimed. “The thing jumped off a cliff and into the water and then swam under the fence!”

“I thought I heard a splash,” I said.

“He actually went under the water!” my Dad said as we retold the story to my mom and the girls over a 10 pm supper when we finally got home. “I can’t believe it!”

“I didn’t know bulls could hold their breath,” Rosie said.

“I wonder if it was my curse or yours that will keep that bull at the neighbor’s for all eternity?” I asked my dad between bites of casserole.

Anyway, if you need us, well, my husband will be digging the thorn from his hand, Dad will be looking for that bull and I’ll be keeping my mouth shut…

Frog Crop

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I know nobody’s wondering, but the frog crop at the ranch is hopping these days. A thunderstorm every day will do that to this landscape. From the window of our kitchen I can see the stock dam and when that window’s open in the evening the croaks those little frogs are croaking fill the air with the sound of sweet summer nostalgia.

Needless to say, the little girls on this place are thrilled about this development in the frog department, because finally there is something in that stock dam to catch (because, no matter how they tried to imagine and finagle it this spring, there are still no fish there).

There is a sort of art to catching frogs that I tried to master myself growing up out here next to the creek. You must be quiet and quick and confident, and none of these qualities ever came naturally to me. My oldest has always had a knack for it and a real admiration for slimy, scaley creatures. I caught her once at the playground in the yard when she was around four-years-old, dressed as Cinderella and planting a big of smooch on the nose of her tiny captive frog prince. “Don’t actually kiss frogs,” is not something I thought I would have to say in my life. Also, I didn’t predict how upsetting that rule would be.

But even that wasn’t as country as having to break up two little girls in fancy dresses fighting over who got to hold the garter snake. “Snake Tug-o-War” was also not on my parenting radar.

And so, I wasn’t surprised when I looked out the window a couple weeks ago to find my daughters and their two cousins at the stock dam with a couple feed buckets and giant fishing nets on a frog-finding-mission. Rosie had been at it in the yard for a few days, searching the tall grass and puddles with nothing but stories of near misses, escapes and the report about our border collie and a snake in the dam eating two of her potential catches right in front of her very eyes, which might have been pretty traumatic for normal kids, but mostly she was just mad they got there first. Again. Country.

And I would say she was unreasonably disappointed in her lack of success if I didn’t remember being the same level of obsessed with frog catching when I was her age. I think the first poem I ever wrote was a poem about frogs. I typed it up on the computer in my second-grade classroom and printed it off with a fancy border and everything. Catching frogs at the creek was my main reason for living for one entire summer of my young life, so I understood. But I had minimal success, so my expectations for my daughters weren’t particularly high.

But as it turns out, a little teamwork goes a long way. About an hour or so in to their mission at the dam, I caught them trekking back up the road to the house, two girls holding nets and the other two with both hands slogging a six-gallon bucket. Somewhere along the journey, Rosie lost her shoes, but who needs shoes when you’ve found yourself a bucket-full of frogs.

“Rosie caught ten frogs!!” my niece proclaimed. “And I helped!”

“We’re bringing them to the bathtub,” declared Rosie confidently. “That’s where we put the toad last week.”

And look, we’re country, but a woman must draw the line somewhere.

“How about the old mineral tub in the backyard instead?” I chimed in. And they agreed happily, making a habitat and obsessing the proper amount before digging a little hole and holding a long and dramatic funeral for the one frog with the missing leg who didn’t make it and then ceremoniously releasing the lot at dark so they could do it all again the next day.

So yeah, I know nobody was wondering, but the frog crop is good out here in the middle of nowhere. And the kids? Well, they’re growing up good too.

The Lemonade Stand

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I came home from town yesterday to find that my daughters and their cousins had set up a lemonade stand on the ranch-approach facing the gravel county road. They had been there for an hour or so waving and yelling “Get your lemonade!” to the big blue sky and the wind and the cows munching on sweet clover in the pasture on the other side of the road.

They had big dreams of making enough money for each one of them to get a new pet. As if four dogs, eight cats, two goats and a pasture full of horses between the four of them isn’t enough, we need to add a hamster and a lizard to the mix. We’re dreaming big out here.  They even brought their plastic cash register.

Country kid lemonade stands are the epitome of patience and rural acceptance. There are just some things that aren’t as successful out where the cows outnumber the people by like 3,000 percent. Well-manicured lawns, rollerblading and getting away with sneaking out to a party are some other examples, among others.

Anyway, the lemonade stand, it was impromptu, as most kid-run businesses are. As a result, my sister didn’t have time to rally the neighbors to casually drive by and discover the oasis of slightly chilled refreshments, a variety box of single serve chips and four girls waving handmade signs and spouting unreasonable prices. This is when grandparents and dads on their way home from work come in handy. The girls made $15 off their family.

A text just chimed on my phone. “Ada made chocolate chips cookies. She wanted to make sure you don’t make the same thing.” It’s my little sister. Today the girls are going to head back out there, this time with better treats, bigger signs and a chance for us to call my brother-in-law who works on the oil sites out here, to bring cash and call his people.

On Sunday I took my daughters to the home pasture to check on the wild raspberry crop, a tradition that can’t be skipped this time of year. But, much like a lemonade stand on a rural road, planning and timing is everything when it comes to raspberry picking. Get there too early and they’re not ripe. Get there too late and the birds beat you to them. My summers of experience and all the rain that’s fallen this July gave me the hunch that we were going to have some success in finding raspberries (and horseflies) that day, and boy, was I right. And boy, there is nothing better than a ripe wild raspberry picked out under a big prairie sky. A tiny, delicious little treasure hunt. I looked over and my oldest was neck deep into the thick brush, putting three berries in her mouth for every one she put in her ball cap to “save for dad.” As you can imagine, that ball cap was empty by the time we moved to the next brush patch and the only one saving any for dad was me, his loving, selfless wife with willpower of steel, which is what you need in order to leave any wild raspberry uneaten.

We caught up with my husband moving dirt with the backhoe on our way back to the yard and surprised him with my cap full of berries. The way the grown man transformed into the ten-year-old version of himself, popping those treats in his mouth five at a time, well, it made my sacrifice worth it.

Anyway, the raspberry-picking was impromptu, like most of the best memories are, and, unlike the lemonade stand, it’s one activity that does work best out in the hills where the cows out number us. After their dad had his fill of raspberries, the girls climbed up in the buttes to sing and throw rocks. Then, coming from another butte about quarter mile away they heard tiny voices yelling, “Hello! Hello!.”  It was their cousins of course, news travels fast out here where the wind carries giggling and chattering voices.

“Hello!” they yelled back, waving their arms, thrilled to have been discovered. “We love you! Can we come oveerrr?!!!”

“YEESSS!!! Come ooovvveeerrrr!!!” replied the tiny voices far away.

And so they did.

This is summer on backroads and I just don’t think you can beat it.

UPDATE

Since this column published the girls did indeed have their lemonade stand, but this time next to the highway for better visibility. As planned, we called in my brother-in-law and he called his staff who work on the well sites near us on Wednesdays and they showed up for these girls in waves. And so did the rest of the community traveling that highway to get to work, or an appointment or to go visiting (and the neighbor girls, who made a special trip, bless them.) They would pass by from every direction, check the center counsel or the glovebox or a wallet or purse to see if they had cash and then hit the next approach to turn themselves around if necessary.

The girls quickly got into their respective roles and routine, one at the cash register, one pedaling free cookies, one scooping ice and one organizing and putting stickers on the cups. Between my sister and I we had to go back to the house twice to refill lemonade, ice and the cookie stash!

When I tell you there’s nothing more wholesome than a lemonade stand on a hot summer afternoon, well, this experience proved it.

“What are you raising money for?” one man asked the girls lined up by the window of his pickup.

“A hamster,” said Rosie

“A lizard,” said Edie

“A puppy,” said Ada

“A big Lego set,” said Emma.

“Here’s my wallet!,” replied the man, shifting his cookie to his lemonade-holding hand. “Take all the cash out of it. It’s yours!”

And that was the sentiment for a good three hours that afternoon, before it started to sprinkle and just as they ran out of cookies.

So anyway, if you need us, we’ll be shopping for tiny pets, which may or may not be the worst idea we’ve had yet.

Thank you brother-in-law and crew and to everyone who stopped for the girls that day. You truly made a sweet memory for all of us.

Sweet Clover Season

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I wish you could smell the sweet clover out here this time of year. I step outside and I’m flooded with a wave of memories of all that I used to be, summer after summer growing up out here. It smells like work and evenings spent sliding down hills on cardboard boxes with my cousins. It smells like ingredients for mud pie and playing house in the lilac bushes by the red barn. It smells like bringing lunch to dad in the field above our house, horseflies and heat biting our skin.

It smells like my first car and the windows rolled down, taking back roads with my best friends as passengers, kicking up dust as we tested the limits of teenage-dom.

It smells like my leaving, bittersweet. My last summer as a kid here before it was time to go and grow up already. Be on my own.

And it smells like coming home, take a right on the pink road, stop at the top of the hill and look at it all before heading down and turning into mom and dad’s for a glass of wine and a steak on the deck that looks out toward the garden and up the crick bed where I used to play everyday.

This summer my daughters and their cousins have lived on this landscape, on this ranch, the way kids should. Spinning on the tire swing, hiking up to the top of Pot and Pans, trying to catch fish in the fishless stock dam, zooming on dirt bikes, pushing baby doll strollers in the tall grass and skinning knees on the scoria roads. There was a time when it was quiet out on this homestead place, back when my sisters and I left for the big towns and didn’t dare turn to look back over our shoulders, leaving my parents here to wonder what happens next to the place that has raised us when there is no one left for it to raise.

Fast forward twenty years and the ranch, well, now it’s buzzing, laughing, full of life like I remembered it when I was growing up and our grandparents were alive and serving us push-up pops from the small front porch of their small brown house. Weren’t we all just five years old running through the clover, itching our mosquito bites, begging for popsicles and just one more hour to play outside?

Now we are the ones on the other side of the supper bell. As I type this my daughters are over the hill at their aunt and uncles’ lighting leftover 4th of July smoke bombs on the gravel because it rained. I needed a few minutes to collect my thoughts and it is mid-summer and the smell of that clover makes me lonesome somehow for a life that I am currently living. Do you understand what I mean? That feeling of knowing that it’s fleeting? The clover reminds us and so do the limbs of my daughters stretching up and reaching closer to the sky every minute now. The chubby gone from their rosy cheeks. How many more summers will that clover feel magic? 

All of the summers I hope.

Because I know being here like this, reflecting at my kitchen counter while our children stay up past any reasonable bedtime because it’s summer on the prairie and the light lingers, I know it didn’t come without a cost for our family, keeping it here for us…

I know that we did nothing but be born to people who know the value of the land, not in dollars, but in something that is hard for me to find words for right now.

Pride?

Work?

Home?

A place to belong?

My uncle Wade stops in on his way back to Texas and I live to hear the two brothers remember what it was like to be young out here. Young Wade always found hanging back on a roundup, eating on a Juneberry bush. Dad as a kid getting bucked off on the road when his little brother popped over the hill on his tricycle. Milking cows and riding broncs and chasing girls and growing up together out in these same hills…

How many gloves and hats and scarves have been left dangling in these trees, scooped off heads and hands of little cowboys and cowgirls rushing on the backs of horses running through the trees?

How many wild plum pits have been spit at one another?

How many mud pies have been made in this barnyard, topped off with little pieces of sweet clover.

I’ll take that clover. I’ll breathe it in, and I will remember when it itched our bare little legs in the summer while we searched for kittens in the nooks of the red barn. And I’ll be thankful it itches my legs still… because they’ll grow up too fast you know. Just like we did, out here among the clover.

Remain Calm, it’s the County Fair

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We made it to the other side of County Fair Week, but this column was written on my living room chair while we were gathering all the projects and doing the last minute packing and paperwork.

I didn’t know what to expect our first year in the livestock show ring and Edie’s first year as a regular 4Her, but had a great fair, full of lessons and fun.

I’ll tell you more about it next week, but for now here’s this week’s column!

County Fair Week

It’s County Fair week and I’m writing this at 6 am between my first two sips of coffee and before I wake the girls up to get dressed and gather their supplies and their two goats to head to town for four days of trying to convince the judges that we’ve actually practiced leading these animals around every night despite the doe’s tendency to brace up, stick her tongue out and scream. And I know that was a long sentence to start us off here, but this is the vibe right now. Screaming goat. 

After spending two hours filling out the animal record books with only ten minutes to spare yesterday, I asked my daughters if they could just erase those past few hours from their memories because, turns out record books make us all want to scream like that goat. It’s our county fair spirit animal. 

On Tuesday we brought my daughters’ projects to town. My nine-year-old, Edie, is big enough to be a real 4-Her this year, which means it’s no more rainbow participation ribbons for her, but the chance to earn a blue, or, if the buttercream frosting lands right, a pink or purple. We spent the day before decorating cupcakes and making fudge and putting tags on jewelry and drawing and pottery and photography projects. I helped Rosie put together a cute little fairy garden complete with a duck pond, a bridge and as many tiny animals as she could fit and still include a geranium and then we left it under the eaves of the house that night during a thunderstorm that drowned those little ducks and whipped the pedals right off that geranium. And so, we did that project twice. (Cue goat-like sigh). Rosie made sure to tell the judge, all about it. 

And that judge (who’s our neighbor down the road) told Rosie that her fudge was better than Gramma’s and that might have made my daughter’s life, and she’ll certainly never let my mom forget it. “Gramma, maybe you should stick to Rice Crispy Bars from now on,” she joked to her over the phone. 

It’s County Fair Week and I think our community has more kids participating than ever. More goats, more pigs, more steers and more horses in the show since I was entered in the olden days, hoping that after her only shampooing of the year, my horse wouldn’t roll in the dirt before the halter showmanship . Which she did. Every time. And yet, that event remained my favorite. The girls are going to try their hand at showing these ranch horses for the first time this year. We’ve been practicing and brushing and loving on the animals in preparation, which is the most fun part. Taking them to town is the most nerve wracking. Because there’s nothing that tests your patience more than an uncooperative animal, because sometimes, even with all the practice you could fit in, things just don’t go right. But sometimes they do, and there’s nothing better. 

Yes, sometimes your caramel rolls win grand champion, but then sometimes they land face down in the parking lot on your way to the interview. Sometimes your steer is so tame he just lays down in the ring and you’re too little to get him up. Sometimes the chicken escapes your grip, and you have to scramble to catch it, but then you’re standing next to your best friend and the two of you get a kick out of telling the story for the rest of the week, and maybe years to come. 

Photo by Judy Jacobson

And  sometimes the two hours you spent in the kitchen with your mom trying to pipe perfect rosettes on your cupcakes creates such a sweet memory for both of you that your daughter says even if she gets a red she’s proud of herself and that makes you tear up a little for some reason, probably because it’s county fair week and the kids are growing up and now it’s 7 am and I have only had four sips of coffee and we are officially running late, per usual. 

Good luck to all the 4Hers this summer! May your bread rise perfectly, and your goats (and your mothers) remain calm. 

Kids in the Branding Pen

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Every year at the beginning of June a group of our friends from Bismarck and Dickinson load up and come to the ranch to help us brand our calves. It’s become a tradition for them to help in the pens as a way to say thank you for allowing them to hunt turkey and deer on the place throughout the years. The gesture and the help are thoughtful and appreciated, but it’s not an expected exchange. We would gladly have them out anytime for whatever reason. But every year for nearly ten years or so, they have been making it work, no matter how much or how little notice we give them. They wake up early, load up their kids and make the drive to sort, wrestle, ear tag and stand ready for whatever other task we might throw at them. And then, when the work is done, all ten or more of the kids run wild on the dirt piles and in the trees collecting ticks and dirt on their jeans, I serve up cookies and a couple big roasters of beef and then we take the kids for their favorite part: a ride on our horses. 

This year was no different. We called last minute, and our friends were there standing by the pens waiting for us at 8 am when we finally got the cattle gathered. Which means that a pickup-load from Bismarck had to leave their houses at 5 am and our friends from Dickinson cut their weekend fishing at the lake short and then, before they left that afternoon, they handed over a big bag of walleye that we fried up and devoured on Tuesday.

I was standing in the pen next to my friend who was running the ear tagger while her eight-year-old daughter, Olivia, was charged with marking the calves who received a vaccination. Her two sons were in the pens too, one spraying antiseptic on the castrated calves and the other now big enough to wrestle. My own daughters had abandoned their post of sorting ear tags and counting calves for some sort of game of pretend in the hills with the other kids and I had just looked up long enough to realize it. I told my friend that her daughter should join them. “She can go play, she’s helped plenty already,” I said, now embarrassed that our friends’ kids were busting their butts while ours ran wild.  

“I told the kids that this is our church this morning,” my friend replied. “Helping our neighbors, acts of service, this is what it’s about.”  

Her kids have been coming to the ranch for years, to help or to hunt or to play, since before her sweet eight-year-old daughter could walk and her boys were toddling around, fascinated by the trees and the wildlife, reminding us every time how special this place is and how lucky we are. At almost every visit our kids have wandered together to places on this ranch that my own kids barely frequent—the thick trees on the banks to the north of the house, the muddy patch of cattails in front of the dam, the old equipment on the top of the hill. When the boys were younger, after every visit we were left with a big pile of old bones and cool sticks and rocks as a collection on our front drive, little treasures they couldn’t keep their hands off. And when it comes to the animals, the horses and the baby kittens, and now, the goats, Olivia has never been able to get enough. She would outlast my daughters’ capacity for sitting horseback by hours, her smile stretched from ear to ear, falling in love with every horse on the place. This year it was no different, even in the heat of the day as we watched these growing kids navigate themselves in the saddle more independently than ever.  I looked at Olivia and wondered how we could fit one of these horses in her backyard in town. And if they would finally agree to take a kitten home. 

It might be the kids getting older, changing so much since the last time I saw them, that got me thinking how grateful I am for the reminder they provide us to not take this for granted. Eventually I got my own kids back in the branding pens for a bit to help, but the magic of the work doesn’t hit them the same way it does for these kids coming in from town once or twice a year. My hope is that I can raise them to appreciate it, to know how rare and important it is to care for a place like this, to stand side-by-side and share in the work, to bring out the big roaster of beef to feed our friends after they’ve put in the sweat alongside us at the end of the day, even if my youngest daughter eventually does run away to New York like she’s been threatening since she could talk and my oldest heads to the ocean. 

In the chaos of the branding pen I don’t know if my kids got the lessons they needed from us this year, but I hope they learned something from our friends about what it means to be there, to be reliable and to be good neighbors, happy to help.  

Mud puddles

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Have you ever had to pressure-wash the gumbo mud off the clothes and boots your children were wearing when they decided to go splash and roll in the giant mud puddle that had formed from a week of rain behind the dumpster in your yard? 

As long as I’m living and they’re not dressed for town, I will never deny my daughters full access to a mud puddle. I stood under the awning of our entryway to protect myself from the rain and in a matter of three minutes those girls had ditched their muck boots and socks on the wet gravel and had covered themselves from head to toe in gray mud and rain water. I felt an urge in myself bubble up to go join them, remembering for a moment what it was like to be that carefree, but remembered the laundry and the supper on the stove and turned back to the house. When does it happen? When do we wake up and become the person who denies themselves a mud puddle?

As I write this my daughters are sleeping under a giant pillow and blanket fort in the living room of their cousin’s house over the hill. Summer break has come to find them at nine and seven years old, right in the very fleeting sweetspot of girlhood where you have as much freedom as your bike and feet will give you. Or, in Rosie’s case, her little dirt bike which she used to recently to retrieve a doll at her cousin’s house so they could keep the game of school going. The rest of the girls suggested that they time her on the task, so it was imperative that she use her motorcycle. And let me tell you, the sight of her in her pink helmet with the American Girl Doll poking her head out of Rosie’s backpack, her hair blowing in wind on the way down the hill was an image of my growing daughter I hope I never forget. If I let her, Rosie would take that little dirt bike all over the countryside. As soon as she’s strong enough to pull that starting cord to start the motor herself, she’ll no doubt be off. Whether I’m ready or not, Rosie always has been.

Last week my husband and I taught our daughters the Jitterbug moves we learned in gym class when we were their age. In the kitchen after chicken dinner, we danced and twirled and never successfully got the spider down. When the weekend came, we brought them to the rodeo in town. We ate popcorn and laughed at the rodeo clown and cheered on the barrel racers and bronc riders and when it was over we headed inside to listen to the band.

My daughters and their cousins have always been the first to hit the dance floor, moving their bodies with the kind of abandon they use when approaching a mud puddle, jumping and spinning and laughing and singing. I stood next to my husband, and we watched as our oldest daughter, at the brave age of nine, take the hands of a boy from her class and show him what she learned in the kitchen a few days before.  

I looked over at my husband and wondered if I was ever that confident. So many times, in the raising of them, my daughters have made me wish that I could be more like them. I didn’t know that was going to happen. 

I grabbed my husband’s hand and I pulled him out on that dance floor. I got a minute or so into the song before he was stolen by a niece or a daughter for a spin or a flip and I happily gave him up to them.

They will never be this young again, but then again, neither will I. But who makes the rules on mud puddles and dancing anyway? We stayed way past their bedtimes to dance a few more dances because the next day they had nowhere or nothing they needed to be but seven and nine under the summer sun that is all too quickly drying up those mud puddles.

Rain Goats

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“What are you doing?” I asked my husband in the dark of our bedroom. He had his face nearly pressed up against the screen of the open window at the head of our bed. That day in May had reached record-breaking temperatures of over 90-degrees and we soon found out that our air conditioning was on the fritz. We had just switched off the heat a few days earlier, but there we were, laying on top of the covers under the ceiling fan before spring had even officially arrived. 

“I’m counting the seconds between thunder and lightning,” he said as another loud clap shook the house, bringing only noise and not a drop of rain.

As a volunteer fireman for a rural department, he’s found himself dropping everything and rushing to the pickup to answer a neighborhood call more than ever these days. With the high winds and dry conditions and the things he’s seen go up in flames, he understands that it could be us at any time. 

Down the road my dad still doesn’t have a rain gauge. He spends his mornings checking the calving pasture and worrying about the status of our springs and the levels of our dams and grass. You can have everything out here, but you have nothing if you don’t have the rain. And if dad ever buys himself a rain gauge, he’s certain it will never rain again. I feel the same way about umbrellas.

And it turns out, maybe there is some validity to those silly superstitions. Because what came next has been over a week of soaking rain that has left us with muddy roads, rushing creeks, full dams, green grass and nearly five inches of moisture and counting. And, when I needed to run with my daughter a quarter mile through a busy parking lot in a sideways downpour to get to my niece’s graduation ceremony, of course, I didn’t have an umbrella. 

Dad, who usually relies on us for the rain report was likely a bit smug to find that the bottom fell out of our gauge this winter. Maybe that’s all it took to open the skies, the absence of rain gauges and umbrellas on the Veeder Ranch. Could we be that powerful? 

“A God send,” Dad sent me a text along with photos of water rushing through the culverts in the Pederson pasture and the creek swollen to the size of the Little Missouri River. My daughter and I sat happily soaked in our seats, our hairdos wrecked, a little shivery but smiling as we waited to watch my niece officially become a teacher that morning.  

I texted our neighbor to see how much rain they had down the road, officially turning into my father right then and there. 

A few weeks ago we brought home two little goats to feed up and get ready for the fair. On the warm days we brushed them and shined them up. On the hot day we hosed them and shampooed them.

Yesterday, after looking at the extended forecast and their soggy little bodies, we decided their shelter wasn’t going to cut it anymore as the rain and chill continues. And so my husband and I arranged a goat transfer to the big barn that sounds simple enough in theory but looks like an hour of locating and moving hog panels, an unsuccessful crash course in halter breaking, two crying goats, one who just three minutes ago, successfully outran and outwitted a mom, a dad and a kid in the pen but is now suddenly unwilling to take another step, one kid standing on the road in the rain crying, one mom yelling “It’s ok! The goats are ok!” one dad yelling “Hurry up. Come here and help us!” to the other girl who, while splashing nonchalantly in a mud puddle got her boot so completely stuck that she had to take her foot out and use both hands to pry it free, which resulted in the sort of timber into the soggy ground that you can imagine before she gathered herself to sit with those two muddy, stinky goats in the side-by-side for their mile-long trip down the road to their new digs where we set up new troughs, a water bucket and a heat lamp that, oops, broke along the way, have to go get a new one, be right back…

And while I’d prefer that this debacle doesn’t make the 4H record-keeping books, I will tell you, even in the muddiest and soggiest of the situation, we never once cursed the rain. And the goats? Well, they perked up right away in that warm and cozy barn and I stand by my assertion that I’ll happily trade fire danger for goat transfer any day. 

If you need us, we’ll be standing next to the window saying things like “I wonder how much we’ve got?” and “We needed this,” like the middle-aged, superstitious cattle (and goat?) ranchers we are…

And I never wanted to leave again

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My husband and I spent a brief time living in western Montana when we were first married almost twenty years ago now. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I reach back for a memory there of us and our big brown lab who was just turning from puppy to real dog, maybe sort of like our marriage. 

We chose the mountains as a challenge to pick a spot to live and that sounded adventurous before we completely settled down at the ranch. We had been married the year before and my husband needed to finish his college degree after spending as much time as a man needed as a roughneck in the oil fields. I had been touring up and down the Midwest, particularly the interstates and state highways of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota. I would take my husband with me when his four days off aligned with my time on the road. Our honeymoon, for example, was spent in Redfield South Dakota, a tiny town of 2,000 just south of Aberdeen. I had been hired to perform at a company picnic and so off we went for four hundred miles, nearly running out of gas when we miscalculated the distance between towns. 

We could have been in Jamaica like normal newlyweds, but on our way home, we stayed at the Hotel Donaldson in Fargo to be fancy and bought a new refrigerator and microwave at with our wedding money only to discover they were much too big to fit in the tiny ranch house where were living. So, we sold them to his parents. 

Living together as husband and wife in my grandma’s tiny house next to the red barn on the ranch where I was raised when we were so young made us feel uneasy, I think, only because we wondered if it might be too good to be true. We couldn’t possibly be here already; with jobs and bills and the brown lab puppy I bought for him for his birthday. If we stayed here for the rest of our lives, would we grow to resent it? Would we blame every mistake and wrong turn and unsettled argument on the fact that we never spread our wings too far together? What if we became unhappy? Would there be a way we dared blame it on the ranch and the small town that raised us and pulled us back? 

And so, we narrowed it down to two choices. Wynona, Minnesota because once I sang there and brought my husband along and we visited a cute coffeeshop and walked along the river and climbed to the top of a bluff and we liked how it looked like a movie scene from far away, even in the ugly and brown part of March. And then we went to Wabasha and watched the bald eagles and toured the famous restaurant and places that inspired the 90s movie Grumpy Old Men. We got a kick out of all of it. And Wynona had a college with the right program.

And so did Missoula. We hadn’t been there before, but as prairie kids we romanticized the mountains and so that’s what won. Seems like the mountains always win. Who could argue with a college credit in snowboarding and professors who wore Birkenstocks before every teenage girl in the country wore Birkenstocks. We brought our dog, and I brought my guitar and I doubt we had too much else. Maybe a bed and my mom’s old leather couch. We found a cheap place to live, and I found a job and he went to school and we looked for places to find ourselves in the mountains every night and every weekend and we wanted to love it. And maybe we did a bit. But looking back on it now it seems like we spent most of our time trying to climb out so we could see the horizon and the weather coming. So we could get away from the endless swarm of people looking to be found too. 

My favorite hiking spot was the bald face of a mountain outside of town where nothing but prairie grass grew and the trail was cut like a switchback the way the cows and deer and elk would do it at home. There were no surprises there. I could see the sky. 

I lost my first pregnancy in that little condo in Missoula. My husband had already moved back to North Dakota to take a job offer and I stayed behind with the dog and nothing but an air mattress and a suitcase left in the space. It wasn’t time for us to be parents. We were not ready. But it didn’t feel that way when I was alone and wailing. My dad came to get me, my husband couldn’t leave. I protested. I’m like that lab, when I’m hurt I want to hide out under the deck and be alone. 

And that was that. We gave it a year for the mountains to enchant us. But nothing compared to the place that loved us first. After the long trip home, I climbed to the top of my own hill. It wasn’t a mountain, but the view was better. I cried the cry of someone who had lost something. I cried the cry of relief. I cried the cry of uncertainty. I cried the cry of being loved. I cried the cry of being home. 

And I’ve cried that cry a thousand times since, but I’ve never wanted to leave again…

 

Spring things

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We’re in the thick of calving these days on the ranch. Little black specks on the hillsides and in the draws are arriving like little beacons of hope with the crocuses. 

For several years we have calved mostly pure black animals, but with the addition of Herford bulls in the program this year we have more black-white-face babies than we’ve had since I was a kid.

My dad, who is out in the pastures several times of day keeping an eye on things, will occasionally text me photos of the new arrivals proving that he’s as delighted as the children are about the speckled faces and, also that you can be an almost-70-year-old rancher and still be enamored with the process. He took my daughters out for a side-by-side drive through the herd and gave them an in-depth genetic lesson about color patterns and recessive genes. They catch on quickly to those sorts of things, their little minds like sponges ready to memorize. I wish I had retained that skill, mostly to remember all the names they have given the new arrivals. Because when you have black-white-faced calves instead of the standard pure black, you can suddenly tell most of the babies apart! And so, naturally, they all get names. 

And so we have “Tippy” because he has a white tipped tail. And “Goggles” because he has two black rings around his eyes. And then “Patch” and “Spot” and so on and so forth. 

This weekend we will be building a little pen close to the house, down where my failed garden used to sit under the shade of the oak and ash trees. The girls are getting a couple of goats to show at the county fair, and we know nothing about goats except what we learn when our friend Brett comes over for a beer. We’re entering into real 4-H territory these days as it’s my oldest daughter’s first year being what we call a “real 4-Her.” No more Cloverbud rainbow ribbons. We’re pulling out the big books now and learning the rules. 

For her first assignment, before the goats arrive, she and her best friend are doing a demonstration on how to make homemade Play-Dough. They’ve spent a couple days after school making their poster board and rehearsing their lines. And, thanks to her friend’s mom, they will also be dressed the same–in matching t-shirts with the signature 4-H clover. And if you know anything about 8-year-old girls you know that the matching is the most fun part.   

Anyway, I saw the run-through last night and it’s the cutest thing, honestly. Key rural kid memory-making right there. We’ll see if they maintain the same level of squirrely-ness and giggles when there’s an audience present. 

Spoiler alert, they got a purple ribbon!

After the presentation is complete Edie will then move on to the most uncharted territory of all: The Clothing Review.  And if you don’t know what the Clothing Review is, don’t worry, neither do I. But I know it involves sewing. And modeling. Two things I am not built for. 

Because I have experience in the horse show, and I have wood-burned and latch-hooked and picked and identified every wildflower on the ranch in the name of a 4-H ribbon. I even completed an entire information board about beaver habitat that won me a trophy and sat in the office of soil conservation for a bit. But I have never touched a needle and thread without it making me want to bang my head against the wall. It’s only natural then that I gave birth to an aspiring fashion designer. So we’re making an outfit. From scratch, like we’re in Project Runway or Little House on the Prairie, depending on how it all turns out. And when I say “we” I mean Edie and her Nana Karen, who I cornered on Easter at the ranch, right before she was walking out the door. I had Edie ask her, “can you help me sew a skirt for 4-H?” And I’m so glad I was there to see the reaction on my mother-in-law’s face because it was clear that sewing a skirt with her granddaughter was absolutely the very thing she wanted to do most in the whole world.

“We could do a top too!” she responded immediately before declaring that she’s bringing over a sewing machine. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to give it to you!” 

If you need us, we’ll be at the fabric store. And the feed store. And calling Brett with goat questions. And up in the calving pasture naming new babies. A text just came through from my dad, we had a red one this morning and he is glorious. Wonder what they’ll name him?