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
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…
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…
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:
Hegotstuck…
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…
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!
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.
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…
We’re officially in the fly-swatting era of summer at the ranch. That goes along with the haying and the weed pulling and the sprinkler running and the contemplating fixing fence era, which goes along with sweating. Lots of sweating. Welcome everyone.
Last week my little sister texted to let me know that her girls had set up a lemonade stand in their yard and were looking for customers. Their timing was perfect because I just gave my husband a ride to bring his pickup home from the hay field. It seemed, by the grace of the equipment gods, that they finished up baling and lemonade sounded pretty good to the guys of the Veeder Ranch about then. Even better? They only had to pay in compliments…
Except Rosie. She likes a chance to grab her pink wallet and spend. Unfortunately her cousins’ stand didn’t take Trampoline Park Cards, but luckily she had some tooth fairy cash, which the small business gladly welcomed.
Is there anything cuter than a lemonade stand? Honestly. It might be the most Americana experience you can find. But country kids, they have to go about it a bit differently. When I was a kid I the early 90s, we used to set up shop up on the highway and wait for the sound of a pickup in the distance. We would have waited until 2010 without a real customer if it wasn’t for our moms, who I now realize were making some calls to the neighbors. I think we cleared about three generous dollars those days, but I’d have to ask my friend, the accountant. I’ve always been in the marketing department…
Anyway, these days there’s a real risk of your lemonade getting blown away by the big oil rigs zooming by, so a successful stand still requires a bit of mom-power. And never mind the random kittens sniffing at the product periodically. Or the chickens dusting themselves in the driveway. This is summer in the country, and the lemonade tastes about as strong as the coffee they sip in the basement of our Lutheran church. It’s perfectly fine and made with love.
Yes, we’re deep enough into the heat of the season that we dare complain about it up here in the North, mostly because it’s not the heat really, it’s the humidity. Could really use a breeze.
And also, are we the only family that has one favorite fly swatter that we swear works better than any other fly swatter ever invented and it’s the puke yellow fly swatter that hung in your grandma’s old farmhouse your entire life until she died and somehow, miraculously, it was left to you? And even though it exists in your house like a fossil, when you go to reach for it it’s never left in the spot you think it was left in and you can only find the stupid, souvenir flyswatter you brought from Nashville because it was shaped like a guitar and you thought it was funny after a couple drinks, but it can’t kill a fly to save a life?
Anyone?
Oh, Gramma’s puke yellow fly swatter and her bright pink lipstick, some of my greatest earthly possessions.
And summer, you’re here now in all your glory and I’m sweating but you’re so many of the things I love about being alive.
Alive and hot and watching the tomatoes and my mosquito bites get red. So you can’t leave yet, we’re still thinking about fencing….
The smell of wild onions seeps through the closed doors and windows of the pickup I’m driving pointing back west towards home. It’s the time of night in the summer where it’s too late to be light, but it is the kind of light that turns the clouds pink and gives the sweet clover halos. It’s the time of night in the summer where you wish it wouldn’t end, the day, the light like this, the colors, the cooling down of the air. The season.
I’m driving home with my daughters in the back seat of the pickup. They look out the window at the power lines and ditch sunflowers whizzing by and as they look their legs are getting longer, their skin is a new shade of brown, their hair lightened by days in the sprinkler. Little wildflowers.
I smell the wild onions and suddenly I’m a little wildflower too in the dog days of summer, digging up the sweet salty roots with the boys on the side hill over the barbed wire fence outside the yard of my country school. We’re fresh off summer break, called back to desks and times tables and drinking milk out of little paper cones from the big machine. Before that, every day was like recess.
It’s 95 degrees and the air conditioning in our house can’t keep up and I’m an adult now and I am married and so we are the ones tasked to fix it. But we are hot and it’s July and maybe we could load up the kids and head to the lake, but instead I turn on the sprinkler so the water sort of hits my tomato plants and sort of hits the inflatable pool and sort of hits my bare legs as I sit in a lawn chair sucking on a red popsicle and flipping through a magazine. My daughters splash and slide and make game after game out of the running water. And occasionally a horse fly bites my ankles, and occasionally my daughters holler about a bug in the pool, but it’s summer on the ranch and we wave off these aggravations and carry on with basking and splashing away a Sunday afternoon.
I meet my husband in the shade cast by our deck in the slowly sinking sun. I plop in a chair next to him and the smell of diesel exhaust and sweat and it reminds me of all the good men who ever worked out here on this place in the heat. He’s one of them and the gratitude for that, well I carry it in my bones. He sips a beer and takes off his hat, leaving a band of sweat on his forehead and the salt and pepper hair around his head smashed down. We talk about the yard and the swather he worked on today. Tractors around this place, they don’t run for long, but it’s time to cut hay and so this is the task. Alfalfa and sweet clover and all the tall grasses mixed in, we’ll roll it out in a few months when we find ourselves on a different planet, covered in white, dressed thick from head to toe to shield our skin from 20 below.
But that frozen place doesn’t exist today. Today it is summer, and the dogs are panting under our chairs and those loud grasshoppers are clacking in the tall grass and we slap at that horsefly again and discuss what to put on the grill. It’s too late to be light and we should wrap up the day, but we linger a bit longer and let the words slow between us because the breeze feels nice….
Which brings us back to the air conditioning as we watch our daughters play. We tell one another how they’ve grown as if we both haven’t been witnessing it together.
They run to us then, someone fell or someone’s cold. We wrap each one in a towel and the smell of their damp skin and the wet grass smells like our childhood too. Weren’t we just kids out here. Aren’t we still? Together under the sun, heading in. Heading home.
And now for a story I shared a few years back before we put nice gate latches on all the new gates thus releasing me from the gate-closing-rage I experienced as a young woman on this ranch…now if we could just do something about the wood ticks.
Recently I went on a walk to close some gates in our home pasture and check a couple juneberry patches.
Juneberries are a special treat around here. Like wild mini-blueberries, if they show up, they show up around this time to much fanfare for those of us who know people who make pies.
Juneberries make the best pies in the world. Probably because getting to them before the frost kills them or the birds eat them up is so rare, and the entire task of picking enough of the little purple berries sends you to the most mosquito and tick infested, hot, thorny, itchiest places in the free world, so finally making and tasting a Juneberry pie is like completing some prairie, culinary, ironman marathon.
Only better and more gratifying, because, well, pie.
Anyway, my little stroll before sunset was only mildly successful. The gates on this place were made to be shut only by Thor himself. Or the Hulk. Or some hybrid of a bear-man. By the time I grunted and groaned, used my entire body weight trying to push the two posts together to maybe, possibly, for the love of Dolly Parton, stretch the three wires tight enough to get the little wire loop over the top of the scrawny post, I was sweating, cussing, bleeding and wondering how I missed the yeti that we apparently hired to fix the gates on this place.
I called Husband on my cell phone (who was inside the house with the baby, like twenty yards away) and told him there’s no way in hell I’m ever getting that gate shut and that shutting the gates was his job from now on who do you think I am what is this all about who in their right mind makes gates that tight good gawd sweet mercy Martha Stewart.
And, if you’re wondering, the gate on the other side of that pasture went about the same way…
Anyway, on my way I did in fact locate a big ‘ol juneberry patch. But the best berries, of course, were hanging out about fifteen feet above my head at the very tops of the bushes. And to get to them I had to wade through thorny bushes up to my armpits. But some of those thorny bushes had raspberries growing on them, so that was a win.
I proceeded to eat every ripe red berry I could find, even the one with the worm on it, which I discovered after I put it in my mouth and crunched.
So that was a loss.
Yes, the raspberries, worms and all, were within my reach. The juneberries, not so much. But tonight I’m going to see if my husband might want to come with me to back our old pickup up to that bush, stand in the box, brave the mosquitos and pick us some berries.
Because, well…pie.
Anyway, when I got home I discovered that apparently wading up to my armpits in thorny brush to pick raspberries was not only a good way to accidentally eat a worm, but, even better, it’s a great way to acquire 500 wood ticks.
I came home and picked off a good fifteen or so. Stripped down to my undies, checked myself out in the mirror, sat down on the chair and proceeded to pick off at least five more.
After a shower, when I crawled into bed I wondered out loud to Husband what time of night I would wake up to a tick crawling across my face. He made a guess. I made a guess.
But we were both wrong.
At about 12:30 am, just as I had drifted into a nice slumber, I was indeed awoken by a tick, but it wasn’t crawling across my face. No.
It was crawling toward my butt crack.
Thank good gawd sweet mercy Martha Stewart, I cut him off at the pass!
I guess, if we need a moral of the story, dessert tastes better when you truly suffer for it…
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 