Tag Archives: North Dakota

May you find what you need in this construction phase of life

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For the past six months, every time we visited our local Cenex store, my daughters would pick out a color swatch from the paint section and ask to re-paint and redecorate their rooms. I would tuck the swatches, bright purple and dusty pink, inside the folds of my purse and tell them, yes, we’ll put it on the schedule, and then dread the day they would ask again.

The task of a redo — a cleanout — always feels so daunting to me. When you live in a house long enough with children, things seem to pile up in the corners and crevices of every room, stacks of papers and tiny pieces of their imagination, creations and childhood spread all about waiting for you to come digging or looking for that lost piece of paper or the most important Lego part in the world. It takes diligence to contain it and to help teach them how to do the same. Truthfully, I’m not so good at it.

While my daughters have been on winter break, I’ve done my best to focus on them in a way I don’t do as much anymore now that they are 7 and 9 and much more independent. I used to sit with them and color. I used to coordinate art projects. I used to have to supervise every outdoor excursion, cut up every meal.

I woke up sometime this year and realized I sort of miss them in a way that feels sneaky, like it would be easy not to notice. I’m nostalgic for their baby faces and their baby voices that I’ll never hear again.

And that imaginary red thread that connects me to them, it used to be close and tight, but slowly, surely, inevitably, it’s unspooling, and I’m not sure what to do with all that slack.

I suppose these are the types of musings many of us are doing at the cusp of the new year between planning the dip for the party and undecorating the Christmas tree. I want to say something profound about how the past 365 days have taught me lessons and I’ve abided, but after I am done typing this, I’m taking my daughters to town and we’re picking up a few gallons of paint and I’m doing what I’ve done all year — the next thing there is to do.

Surprisingly, lately, I don’t feel much like pontificating.

Yesterday, in preparation for painting over nail holes, scuffs and the occasional crayon mark on their walls, my oldest daughter and I unloaded the clothes from her pink hand-me-down dresser drawers and repainted them a dusty blue to match the new bedding she picked out on a recent shopping trip. She helped me unscrew the glass knobs and sand and scuff the bright pink paint, sang along with every word of every Taylor Swift song on the speaker, and made the funniest little digs and jokes as she worked, and I thought, oh yes, this girl, like me, like her father, she likes a project.

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A project. I suppose that’s it right there, the word to sum up a year if it doesn’t sum up a life. What are we doing if it isn’t project after project?

Specifically, this year featured an album release, a music video, art classes and events, and a new retail store for our non-profit, taking care of cows and bottle calves, teaching the girls about horses, a new garden spot, fences and water system fixing, and wrapping up the loose ends of a five-year-long house renovation. I just bought the toilet paper roll holder for the new bathroom last weekend, finishing one thing so we can move on to getting that wall the right lavender color for Rosie’s room.

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Putting the floor in in our new addition

Anyway, I wanted to find a way to make this New Year’s note to you inspirational even though you are all probably running into as many encouraging quotes as you can handle this time of year.

Regardless, I think I’ve finally come to what I want to say since the winding journey from the Cenex’s paint section where we started. My husband and I, when we were young and first married and searching for where to land, or where to go next, made ourselves a life motto that has carried us through this year, and all the years since, for better or for worse: Our life is a series of choices, and you’re allowed to make a new one anytime you want. If you don’t have the tools, if you don’t have the muscle, someone you know does. Replace those old knobs. Build a new wall. Take one down. Ask for help to undo the hinges.

I’m realizing now, with my daughters growing up, that I don’t want to say “right before my eyes” at the end of it all, but more “right by my side.” That red thread, when you’re building something together, it seems to tighten up a bit. That’s always been the case for my husband and me, so of course, why wouldn’t it be for our relationship with our children?

Happy New Year to you and yours. May you find what you need in the construction phase.

Celebrating doing what we love at the sale barn

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Last week, on the tail end of the season’s first blizzard that shut down schools and created precarious road conditions, we bundled up in long johns and Carhartts to work our cattle and haul our calves to the sale barn 60 miles south of us.

There’s nothing as important, nostalgic or nerve-wracking as shipping day at the ranch. The culmination of a year’s worth of water tank checking, fence fixing, winter feeding, spring calving, bum calf saving, bottle feeding, branding, vaccinating, missing and injured bull drama, pen rearranging, haying, equipment breakdowns, and number crunching comes down to four minutes, three pens of calves and an auctioneer.

In the modern days of ranching, there are plenty of different ways to sell your calves and cattle, from online sales to direct to consumer. But for decades, we have sold our calves at Stockmen’s Livestock Exchange in Dickinson, with its wood-paneled walls, steep, concrete bleachers, and familiar faces sitting along linoleum countertops eating the best hot beef sandwich in town because you’ve been gathering and sorting all morning and drove a big trailer through the breaks and you need to thaw out, which you will, because it’s warm in there and this is what we do.

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And maybe every sale barn in America looks and sounds and smells like this, and maybe every rancher or rancher’s kid who walks through the doors of a place like Stockmen’s is immediately transported to his or her first sale, if only for the moment the sharp aroma hits their nostrils. And I say aroma because we wouldn’t dare say it stinks, the scent of grit and hard decisions and risk and long days in and out in the weather.

“When I was a kid, oh man, if I could be that guy, I thought that would be the best job in the world,” my dad said, nodding toward the young man pushing calves up through the alley and into the sale ring in front of the auctioneer crow’s nest.

I sat between him and my husband on those wide, concrete bleachers, listening to the men take guesses on cattle weights, Dad coming in a bit short and Chad even shorter nearly every guess. Per tradition, our daughters got to skip school to come with us to the sale, and even at the fresh ages of 9 and 7, nostalgia took the wheel immediately upon entering the doors.

“I remember this place, where the guy sounds like he’s yodeling,” my 7-year-old declared, her backpack stuffed with markers and papers to help fill the time spent waiting for our calves to take the ring. “Let’s sit in the top row like last time so we can spread out our coloring!”

And so, we spread out the way families do here, among the buyers and the spectators and the other ranching families. I spotted a little boy with toy tractors and plastic horses playing farm beside his mom, and I said what I’ve said for the last five years or so: “Girls, when you were little, we brought you here in your pink cowboy hats and you cried so loud when you realized our calves weren’t coming home with us that I had to take you out of the building.” They laughed because they like stories about themselves and spent the next half-hour asking if it was our turn yet.

And when it was, that familiar jump hit the bottom of my stomach and did some flips as the auctioneer said our names and graciously praised our calf crop.

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“It’s not lost on me the absolute privilege I have to sit next to my dad and my husband, with our daughters wiggling and scootching between our laps, at the pinnacle of what it means to carry on a family agricultural endeavor,” .

And in these particular moments, it’s not lost on me the absolute privilege I have to sit next to my dad and my husband, with our daughters wiggling and scootching between our laps, at the pinnacle of what it means to carry on a family agricultural endeavor. It is and always has rung profound to me in a way that makes the candy bars we got to buy at the Stockmen’s Café every year when we were kids some of the most precious treats of our little lives.

Because somehow, even at such tender ages without a prayer of deciphering the auctioneer’s yodeling, we knew the weight the day carried.

And if you’re lucky and the market is good, in those moments after the sale, the weight feels lighter and you take the family out for pizza and arcade games because it’s a tradition you’ve added to the long list of little ways to celebrate being able to do the thing we love for yet another year.

Mom and Daughter in the Middle

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Today, my oldest turned 9. Here she is, wearing and holding all her bday presents. Her earbuds and baby doll perfectly depict the sentiment of a girl her age ❤️

“Mom, I’m disappointed about something,” my almost-9-year-old daughter said as we were walking out the door together after school art class.

“Oh no, what is it? What happened?” I asked, knowing it could be anything from spilled milk on her favorite crispito lunch (recent occurrence), friend trouble at school, or a bad grade on a test. When you’re almost 9, the possibilities of disappointments are endless.

“It was picture retake day and …”

“Oh no,” I replied before she could even finish her sentence, suddenly remembering something that I forgot about entirely “And …”

“And Daddy did hair!”

We said it at the same time, locking eyes, her looking at me for my reaction and me looking at her in her favorite stained pink Nike sweatshirt and long, slicked-back hair. 

Was this going to be a crying situation? I wondered in the 2 milliseconds before we both busted out laughing.

“I am so sorry!” I declared between howls. “I totally forgot!”

“Well,” she replied, running both hands through her mane to mimic the slicked-back hairstyle she left the house with. “But these aren’t going on anyone’s fridge.”

“Why did it have to be the day Daddy did hair?!” I wondered out loud to the gods of parenting. “And why didn’t you tell him you don’t like your hair that way?”

“I didn’t want to hurt his feelings,” she replied, melting my forgetful heart before her younger sister, decked out in a purple athletic tank top, grubby sweatpants and her sister’s hand-me-down cardigan, chimed in. “I’m pretty sure I blinked.”

I laughed and apologized all the way to the car knowing how much it must have killed my type-A oldest daughter to be surprised by the news without the picture day ritual of the special hair-do and special outfit we’ve done every picture day before, and no time to remedy her slicked-back hair in the mirror before the big “Say cheese!” I would have felt really bad about it all if we both didn’t think it was so funny.

Because this week that type-A daughter turns 9. We’ve been planning her sleepover birthday for weeks now, the cake and the food and the sleeping bag arrangement. She asked for teenager clothes. And also, maybe for the last time, a new baby doll.

Recently, during a late-night scroll session, I ran across the term “middle mom.” 

It’s a new-age term that describes the time in motherhood when a parent no longer has a baby on her hip, but she’s not planning a graduation.

She’s in between raising the “littles” and the “bigs,” with random sippy cups still shoved in the forgotten corners of her cupboard and neglected baby toys lying low in the depths of the toy boxes. I welled up by the light of my phone screen and switched to an online search for that baby doll.

Because as much as I’m a “middle mom,” my daughter is finding herself in a similar in-between phase of her girlhood, playing with her dollhouse and requesting that her hair be done like the varsity volleyball players we watched last week. 

She’s pulled to play pretend in the woods behind our house after spending the school day navigating the cliques and nuances of friend dynamics, wondering through tears why some kids can be so mean. 

She’s the teacher in the pretend classroom game with her younger sister and cousins and she’s upset when they switch mid-game to pretend they’re mermaids.

She believes in Santa Claus, but if she thinks about it too much, she knows that it’s just because she’s holding on.

Because it’s fleeting.

Reading stories to her youngest cousin

Fashion show for a friend’s children’s boutique

Darling girl, I know it, too. Some days I wish you could stay that chubby-faced, frog-catching, blue-dress-only-wearing baby girl.

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But then you look at me and laugh the laugh of a young lady who knows what’s important and what to let go. You laugh the laugh of a girl who understands how lucky she is to have a dad who does her hair and a crazy mom who forgets things and then, well, I’m so happy to be in the middle with you.

And happy to have a perfectly imperfect photo to look back on and remind me.

Red Barns and People Get Old

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The Official Music Video for Red Barns and People Get Old has just been published. Please take a moment with this special and personal story about generational ranching and the hearts and land involved.

Thank you for listening and thank you for sharing with the people in your life who may see a familiar story in this song.

Red Barns and People Get Old: Written by Jessie Veeder
Starring: Cody Brown, Carol Mikkelson and Rosie Scofield
Special thanks to Patty Sax
Directed by: Nolan Johnson DoP Editor/Editor: Steven Dettling
Video by ‪@quantumdigital1404‬

Recorded at ‪@omnisoundstudios‬ ‬ Nashville, TN
Produced, Mixed and Mastered by Bill Warner, Engineered by Josh Emmons and Bill Warner

jessieveedermusic.com

Night worries

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This morning I dreamed of the rain.

The window to our bedroom was open and in my dreams I smelled it and heard it falling on the oak leaves still clinging tight to the branches. In our bed, between my body and my husband’s, our youngest daughter slept. Sometime during the darkest hours of the night, she wedged herself there, as she usually does, on a sleepy hunt for her father.

She is still only six. Or, she’s almost seven! She should sleep through the night on her own by now! We go back and forth on where we land with this, but in the middle of the night when the child needs someone to hold on to, neither one of us feels the need to fight it too hard. She’ll be grown soon. The bed is big enough. She won’t need us like this forever. I pull back the covers and I let her in.

I woke this morning to my alarm singing. Last week at this time, the sky would have been pink with the sunrise. This morning it was black.

“It’s time to wake up,” I huffed into the dark as my bare feet searched for the floor.

“Did it rain? Or did I dream it?”

My husband rolled over to try to wake our daughter and told me it wasn’t a dream. I pressed my face to the window screen to smell it the way I smelled it in my dream.

Even with the rain falling, my sleep wasn’t restful. My mind woke my body to worry about bills and things I shouldn’t have said and the work I should have done by now. And then enter the state of the suffering in the world, then of people I know and love, and things I can’t possibly change. Not at 3 am. Not ever.

Why is the quietest part of the night the loudest in my head?

Last week I visited a tiny town in North Dakota to play some music for a special event. In my career as a touring musician, I’ve had the privilege of learning how so many rural communities choose to bring people together, on a blocked off Main Street, in a Legion Club steel building, in an old high school gym, in parks and on patios. I perch myself up behind a microphone to tell stories to people listening intently or to a room full of folks who just want to visit, my music the backdrop to their conversations about the weather, the hay crop, the football team, the latest local tragedy or scandal. I use the word privilege because I regard the opportunity that way, even when the night is long and it feels like no one is listening. I get a front row seat to watch it all play out, who’s refilling the punch bowl and swapping the casserole dishes. Who’s folding programs and is the only one who knows how to turn on the old sound system. Who makes her rounds to each table to say hello. Who sticks around after to put away the folding chairs. Who’s kid grabs the big broom when the room is all cleared out.

Usually, I’m sent down the road with an extra centerpiece or noodle salad or a bag full of sandwiches and plenty of kind words and “thanks for coming all this way,” sometimes apologetically, as if their community isn’t as deserving of a visit as any other community in this country. 

The air feels heavy as the weight of an election year makes big waves, moving through our conversations, across our kitchen tables, streaming through our speakers, screaming in the street. I lay awake last night and wondered, after all my life experience on the road and working in small towns, why it’s easier to holler enemy than try to understand one another. We’re making rivals out of our neighbors. It’s unsettling.

If I’m being honest, I’ve written and re-written the next two paragraphs a dozen times. Because I’m not sure what to say next. Here’s what I chose: Maybe you too were up in the quiet hours of the night with a loud head and a heavy heart. Maybe you felt lonesome or helpless, even with someone lying right next to you. Maybe you stood up and walked to the kitchen to feed your body and look at the moon. Maybe you slept soundly and dreamed about rain. Maybe you didn’t sleep at all.
And maybe, in the midst of your insomnia, your daughter crawled in bed with you because she needs to be close. She needs to feel safe and loved. She needs something to hold on to.

And maybe, in the most tumultuous times, we could be brave enough to consider she’s all of us…

And the magic followed us home

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When we were growing up my little sister and I would spend every minute the weather would let us out in the trees behind our house. We’d get off the bus, take a snack break and then we’d get out there. Because the creek and how it changed with the seasons was more magical to us than anything else in our world in the 90s.  

My sisters and I are spread out pretty far in age. I’m in the middle of a lineup that puts my older sister seven years ahead of me and my younger sister five years behind me. I never got the bathroom to myself. Ever. But also, that age gap seemed to make things a little quieter on the ranch back then.

Now that my little sister and I are raising daughters close in age and right over the hill from one another, we find ourselves trying to re-live our childhood adventures with them. They’re not babies anymore, so we’re excited to take them down to that creek to follow it, wade in it, and help them float sticks and build little boats.

Just to give you a glimpse into what we’re dealing with here….

And so that’s why we found ourselves a mile or so in the back woods by a little beaver dam with all four of our daughters last weekend on a perfectly beautiful fall day. As usual, it took forty-seven years to get all four of them in their shoes and out the door at the same time because someone needed to pee, someone needed a new hairstyle, someone had a hang-nail and someone was already outside somewhere and we couldn’t find her. It’s either that or they are so deep in their own game of Barbies or Babies or Animal Doctor or Orphaned Children on the playground that convincing them to follow us into the woods takes a lot more prodding than we expected. And when we finally got them all together and moving the same direction, well, someone always has to pee.

Anyway, marching with four girls aged four, six, seven and eight out into the wilds of this place is a little noisier than when it was just me making up Disney-style songs and my little sister trailing secretly behind. Now, as moms searching for that same feeling of wonder and freedom, the two of us walk out into this magical and familiar world with our daughters and, well, yes there is singing, but think more like,  “This is the Song that Never Ends,” only with words Rosie is making up as she goes along and also, like really, really loud.

“Look at these beautiful trees,” my little sister exclaims as her youngest daughter drags her long hair through a patch of sticky cockleburs. Her oldest picks up her thirtieth stick.

We have gone fourteen steps.

My eight-year-old, Edie, who has suddenly developed a plague that didn’t exist when we were in the house ten minutes ago, sneezes and a giant green snot string dangles ominously out of her left nostril. We have now gone fifteen steps. I gag and she sort of just stands there. Rosie screams “Snot Rocket!” and I give a lesson on choosing the right leaf because no one has a tissue. She chooses a giant piece of oak-tree bark.

We have now gone sixteen steps. Rosie’s gone 345, mostly up hill.

We stop for the youngest to pick up another piece of moss to add to her acorn and tiny stick collection. She asks her mom to hold it. She refuses. She asks me. I say yes, of course, because she’s my adorable niece.

Rosie finds a fluffy turkey feather. Edie finds another giant piece of bark that she intends on floating down the creek, but the creek is running pretty low and slow, so she’s saving it for the beaver dam. She asks me to carry it. I say no. She asks her aunt. She says yes. Because of course, she’s her adorable niece.

The breeze picks up and in the golden light of the morning the trees sway above our heads and gently sprinkle us with falling leaves and in that moment, we feel like we’re in a fairytale.  

“SPOOKY, SCARY, SKELETON SENDS SHIVERS DOWN YOUR SPINE!”  blasts from Rosie at the top of the draw.

The youngest falls down.

The seven-year-old has to pee.

We reach the beaver dam.

“Look at how the blue sky reflects on the water girls,” my little sister says as that same water spills over the top of Edie’s shoes. She flops the bark in the shallow end. It pops up and goes nowhere. She sneezes again and sits in the tall dry grass.

“I’m sick,” Edie declares.

“SPOOKY, SCARY SKELETONS SPEAK WITH SUCH A SCREECCCHHH!!!”

“Time to head back girls! Do you think you remember what way we came from? Follow the trail,” my little sister takes a cue and we watch three girls head the exact wrong direction.

Edie lays down. My sister and I look at each other and laugh weakly, hands full of sticks, we holler into the woods, “Follow us now!” and off we go, the magic and adventure follows us home…

He got stuck..

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Photo out our back window on Saturday of the Bear Den Fire raging just five miles or so to the North West of the Ranch. Chad and countless other first responders, ranchers and community members spent hours and hours in 50-70 MPH winds trying their best to battle the dangerous spread.

On Saturday we had wild fires rage across Western North Dakota. Over 100,000 acres of cropland, federal land and private ranch land has burned. Two fires, one just to the northeast of our ranch surrounding the town of Mandaree, is only 40% contained as of yesterday. The National Guard has been working to contain this one and one in the badlands to the south west of us for the past five days. Homes, pastureland and livestock have been lost. Worst of all, two lives were taken by these fires, men who were trying to fight them in the area around Ray, ND. Please send us prayers for rain. And if you feel inclined, here’s a link to help aid the ranchers who lost so much this past week.

The North Dakota Stockmen’s Association and North Dakota Stockmen’s Foundation have teamed up to support cattle-ranching families in North Dakota who have suffered catastrophic losses in the horrific wildfires. In addition to their own $50,000 gift, the NDSA and NDSF are inviting others to join with them to provide financial support to help these ranchers rise from the ashes and rebuild their herds, their homes and their hope. Checks can be sent to the North Dakota Stockmen’s Foundation with “Out of the Ashes” written in the memo, or credit card gifts can be made at https://app.givingheartsday.org/#/charity/1576. The NDSA and NDSF will distribute 100% of the money raised to the victims of the wildfires through an application and nomination process. Applications will be available later this month. The NDSF is a 501(c)3.

The latest information about the state of these wildfires can be found here

Many of you have checked in on us as this news has developed. We were lucky as the wind was favorable to blow these fires away from our homes and the ranch, but many of my friends weren’t as lucky. And with the dry conditions and hot spots still looming, we’re not out of the woods until the snow falls. Thank you for your concern and thank you to the first responders who are working to keep us safe.

With that, lets move on to a more light-hearted predicament we found ourselves in last week on the ranch. I write about it in last week’s column:

He got stuck…

Last week I looked out the window to find my husband walking through the home pasture gate in the middle of the morning, like I do when I take a little stroll except my husband hasn’t taken a little stroll in his entire life. So naturally, I could only conclude that something did not go as planned.

And probably, more than likely, the man got something stuck somewhere…

Around here, no one really gives anyone guff about being stuck, because you never know when it could be you. Because, inevitably, it’s gonna be you.

But the man, he walked almost two miles in pretty cold 50 mph winds just to avoid the call to me or his father-in-law for help. I asked him why he didn’t use his “phone a friend” option and he said a guy who gets himself stuck so stupidly probably deserves to walk a good mile or so, you know, as a sort of lesson or punishment or something.

But walk-of-shame or not, he did need help, so he rounded up another side-by-side and me, his wife, who was wearing the entirely wrong outfit for traipsing around in 50 mph autumn winds miles from civilization (which is almost always my outfit choice in times of impromptu crisis.)

When I tell you this is not side-by-side or ATV country, I mean it. The denial of this fact is what lands us all in the sort of stuck-up-to-the-floorboards predicaments my husband found himself in that day. Because we live on the only quarter of North Dakota that isn’t entirely flat. We live where the hills drop down to form coulees ripe with springs and creeks that hold water and mud at different levels at different times depending on the season or the mood just to keep it sketchy and iffy and dangerous. And in those coulees the thorns and the brush patches thrive and twist and tangle over cattle and deer trails, letting enough light in to make you think you can make it through without a tree branch to the face, but usually you can’t, especially if your little sister or big brother is riding in front of you, scheduling that branch release to land just right.

Anyway, you can avoid the brush and the big canopy of oaks and ash trees if you keep to the hilltops, but you can never avoid the rocks and the holes and the craters on the edge of the badlands, so this is why we ride horses mostly. And, well, honestly, we’ve had to pull a good handful of horses out of thick mud and ravines in our days too…

But we forget all this somehow when we think we’re just gonna go check something quick, as if the fact that we’re in a hurry changes the landscape in some way. And that’s what my husband was doing that day he hopped in his all-terrain-vehicle and decided to go look for a missing bull, you know, real quick.

“What were you doing?” I asked him when het got into the house, cheeks flushed and a bit winded from the ordeal.

“Yeah, I’m stuck. Like, way back east.”

And I tell you, between being raised by my dad and being married to my husband and being, well, me, I have seen a lot of serious stuck-in-something-or-other predicaments and so I wasn’t surprised to find that this most recent one was no different. A classic case of “the crick bottom looks dry enough” and then, surprise, surprise, it gives way to the stinkiest, stickiest, black mud that Mother Nature makes. I know. I’ve been here before myself, I just happened to be a little closer to home.

And I tried not to say anything. I did. I stood there and took my directions as he hooked one bumper to the other with a random old calf roping rope that was in the back of the second ATV. I wondered to myself silently why on earth my husband didn’t bring a tow strap or a chain since he knew the task ahead of him. But I didn’t say anything. Not even when he instructed me to gas it but try not to spin the tires, but gas it, but try not to spin the tires, but gas it, and we went on like this not moving a nudge for a good 30 to to 60 seconds before his makeshift tow-rope snapped.

Then I couldn’t hold it. I had to ask, why. Why no tow strap? Why no chain?

Because he thought he had one.

Fair enough. Been there. But I was certain then that both of us would be walking home in no time and wished I wouldn’t have worn these stupid leggings and no wool cap like a dummy.

So then, because I couldn’t help myself looking at the cliff-like, brush tangled terrain in front of the stuck-side-by-side, I had to add ,“Where were you gonna go if you actually made it? “

I didn’t get a real clear answer on that one…

But the man is nothing if he’s not determined. So out came the shovel (he did remember that), a bit more rearranging of the rope, a bit more shoveling and five or six more “gun its” and well, what ‘do ‘ya know, we were out. 

So off we went, me following him following our tracks back to the house. It was a miracle!  I never doubted it! Sorta felt like a date then. I wonder if he learned his lesson…

And now, because I am publishing this for you and Jesus to read, I suppose to be fair, some day I’ll tell you how I got the side-by-side stuck between a tree and the dog kennel in our yard this summer. Well, my side of the story at least.

Stay safe out there. If you need me I’ll be hosing the black mud off the side-by-side and my stupid leggings…

A 4-H Horse Show

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My daughters participated in their first 4-H horse show recently. And I am wondering if there is anything more wholesome than kids showing up early to the county fairgrounds scrambling to get their white shirts buttoned, numbers pinned to their backs, horses brushed and saddled and nerves settled?

In the chill of a late August morning this was our little family bringing the horses to town. It’s my eight-year-old’s last year as a Cloverbud so I thought it would be a good time to start in a 4-H program that I loved when I was a kid, to learn the ropes a bit a refresh ourselves on all the rules. Because, and I think I’ve said this before, there are a lot of rules.

A week prior I brought the girls to the big Ag Expo arena town to an official practice and let the ranch horses get used to the area, practice walking over the little bridge and tarps and lope and trot around in circles with the other kids and learn from them too. We were preparing to enter most of the Cloverbud events like the walk-trot class, the barrel racing, pole bending, the egg race, and, my ultimate favorite, the costume contest.

Oh, the horse and rider costume contest! Seriously, if they would have thought of this when I was eight-years-old I would have dedicated my life to it. It would have been my sole reason for existing. And so, you can imagine the amount of hype and enthusiasm I had in explaining it to my young daughters. We even made a special trip to the craft store to pick out ribbons and tule and everything you need to turn a sorrel horse into a unicorn and a palomino into a blue water horse.

I think my husband would have appreciated it if I moved any amount of that enthusiasm over to the task of sewing the 4-H patch on the girls’ white shirts. When I told him my plan was to just pin it (or, you know, there’s also glue) the level of disappointment thrown in my direction was so thick I could chew it.

“Scofields don’t just pin things,” he said through the pursed lips and scowl you need to thread the world’s tiniest needle that came with the only sewing kit in the house (thank God for Christmas gifts from Mother-in-Laws).

So I left him there with his judgement, Rosie’s shirt and that micro-needle. I had a costume bag and snacks to get together.

And weed-eating to do.

Patch perfectly placed

Anyway, turns out we arrived at the horse show a good four hours before any of the girls’ Cloverbud events. But that’s ok. We ate our lunch at 10 am and watched the big kids work through reigning and horsemanship patterns, we cheered them on and listened to the judge explain about bits and hand positions. We warmed up in the empty field, we played in the dirt and made some new friends. We were cold and then we were hot and then it was their turn to trot and walk and make the barrel and pole pattern. And, most nerve wracking of all, balance an egg on a spoon as they walked around a pole and back. Not one egg was dropped. It was a miracle.

And they did great. Really. They were smiling and they did it all right. 4-H horsemanship is the opposite of a race, even when it, technically, is a race. It’s about going at your own pace and learning how to better understand your horse, how to get them to work through a challenge, how to best sit a saddle and best treat your animal.

And then, of course, sometimes it’s just about tying ribbons in your horses’ hair, dressing up as Elsa and a Fairy princess and being the most adorable little duo there is. Which, maybe, if I’m being honest, was my favorite part.

Anyway, it was a great day. If you need me, I’ll be planning a 4-H horse show for adults. And, my costume. Call me if you want to register!

These are all small things

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Last week our little calico cat gave birth to six kittens on the couch in the basement. Now, there’s nothing more exciting. At the first signs that a stray tomcat had entered the picture, my daughters turned a big box upside down, painted it with rainbows, put a towel on the inside and cut a cat-sized hole for the door. Also, they wrote “Yay,” at the entrance, just in case you didn’t know they were excited about the news. They then proceeded to check on that cat morning, noon and night for three to twenty full weeks until, finally, one morning, they arrived.

Turns out the cat-shaped cutout wasn’t maternity sized and so here we are, with kittens on the couch. At least she used my nice, fluffy blanket.

Lately we’re spending our days trying to remember what names go to which of the five identically orange kittens, changing the only black and white kitten’s name seventy-five times and obsessing over which ones are boys and which ones are girls as if anyone in the history of the world has ever gotten that right in the first week of a kitten’s birth.

“We just look for the peanuts,” Rosie declares to everyone she encounters.

So the kittens, they are big news around here. School starting back up again would also be big news if I weren’t in such denial about it. I finally took the girls to pick up school supplies and some new outfits recently and had that sinking feeling that this could be the last school shopping trip that also includes their baby dolls. I’ve been transporting my two children and their two children around on errands for several years now. At one point, when my youngest was in preschool, we brought four of her babies to town with us every morning, each with a specific outfit and blankie need. On our most recent grocery run, both of my daughters got her own cart so they could have a more realistic mothering experience pushing their dolls through the produce and dairy aisles. And so, as you can imagine, plenty of times in that forty-seven-hour shopping trip I found myself abandoned with two carts full of groceries and two disturbingly realistic baby dolls sitting in the kid seats. Turns out that, a bathroom run or two, and the amount of times Rosie rammed her cart into the back of her big sister’s ankles, is actually the most realistic mothering experience you can have in the grocery store.  

Oh, I’m sure I should tell them to leave those dolls in the car. Or leave them at home. But that’s never been my inclination. If my daughters want to play pretend, I don’t consider it an inconvenience, I consider it a part of my job to give them the space to do it. The percentage of our lives we spend playing is not a big enough number…

Among all this excitement in the grocery store, my daughters insisted that they pick up something to celebrate our eighteenth wedding anniversary. That morning, I watched them walk out of the calf pen holding hands and whispering to one another, scheming up a plan to throw us a party. When Rosie admitted that they couldn’t figure out a way to cook a meal, make a cake, decorate, invite all our friends over and keep it a surprise without an adult’s assistance, I informed her that what her dad and I really wanted for our anniversary was to just hang out with them at home. Which came as a relief to her. “Well, good thing I didn’t invite all those people over then,” she declared. And then, “Can we at least get cheesecake?”

So we did. And we ate steak and played charades and went to bed too late and our daughters declared our anniversary exactly what they hoped it would be. And we couldn’t have agreed more.

Anyway, that’s the big news from the ranch these days, which is big to me maybe because it’s all pretty small. And who could ask for more than that these days?

Also, call me if you need a kitten. You have your choice between Clementine, Rebel, Jack, Tiger and Creamsicle. Just don’t ask us which is which.

Raising them Here

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For five months the girls and I have been feeding bottle calves. It’s a long story, the way bottle calves’ stories usually start, because first we had one, a twin, and then we had two because if you have one you might as well have two. And then we found the first one a new momma, so then we were back to one. Her name is Midnight (guess what color she is) and we moved her closer to home so my girls have the every morning and night chore of mixing bottles and walking over the hill to feed her. And you’d think it would be a simple task, something that takes no time at all if you didn’t understand the inner-workings of six and eight-year-old sisters.

Just getting the right outfit alone takes 7-10 business days, Lord help me.

Anyway, recently, neighbors found out we had one bottle calf and thought we might as well have two, so now we have two again. The new calf’s name is Oreo, but not because he’s black and white. He’s just black. These are important details to some of us.

These little chores are so good for kids, but it takes reminding. And helping. And prodding and poking some days. Because no matter what–the weather, the mood, the late night– when you have a bottle calf (or two) you have a chore to do, something you’re responsible for and counts on you.

I type these words as I’m feeding my daughters a 4 PM hotdog lunch because somehow the summer day got away from us. I guess kids can be more flexible than bottle calves. Well, sometimes. Until they’re laying down on the mini-golf course in the heat of a Medora day because the night got too late and the morning too early and I left too much time between breakfast and lunch and, surprisingly, they’re on hole five and neither one of them got a hole-in-one yet. Which is quite unbelievable considering that was the first time in the history of the universe that either one of them has ever picked up a golf club. But still, how could it be?  

But I digress. What I came here to talk about is how a ranch upbringing can teach kids responsibility and discipline, but I’m feeling a little like a fraud right now. As I type, I’ve just reminded my kids for the thirty-seventh time in the last twenty minutes to sit down while they eat. Which only resulted in more wiggling and a spilled lemonade.

So maybe what I want to say is that it doesn’t come as easy as that. Just raising a kid on a ranch doesn’t automatically make them a responsible, disciplined human being. It takes a good load of parental discipline too, and some days we do better than others. I’m thinking about this a bit more lately as we get ready to enter our girls in their first 4-H horse show. Just looking at the book of rules brings back that four-leaf-clover-shaped butterfly in my stomach from a hundred years ago. There. Are. So. Many. Rules. And there is so much to know about how to properly care for and ride your horse. Which I remember from all the practice I put in in the stubble field above our house with dad, a rancher and self-taught horse trainer trying to explain lead changes and seat placement to a sort-of nervous and timid ten-year-old.

The Legendary 4-H Photo, Little Sister and Me taking it Seriously.

And so there I was this morning, in dad’s shoes, with him standing next to me, trying to explain the very same things to my daughters, who, in turn, said the very same things I said to him, back to me. Like, “I know,” (do you?) and “I’m trying” (Ok then) and “You look like a gramma when you cheer.” (Ok, I’m pretty sure I didn’t say that to my dad, but seriously.)

At my daughter’s ages anyway, the hours our kids put into something they want to master directly correlates to the hours we put in as parents. And this summer has been especially busy for me professionally and so I find myself wondering lately if I’m doing enough to help them hone skills and build good solid roots on this ranch when one hand is tied up in town or on the road and the other is thinking I should probably sweep the floor once-in-a-while.

But just last night the three of us went down to the barnyard once again to feed those calves and my daughters grabbed each other’s hands and laughed and talked sweet to those babies as they sucked their big bottles and head-butted and chased the girls for more. And they laughed and they checked the water and they got slobbered on and they ran for their lives to the gate to avoid a two-calf-stampede. And then they got up and did it all again the next morning because no matter what, those calves need to be fed.

 And that might not seem like a big deal really, but then you might not know the nature of six and eight-year-old sisters…