Tag Archives: parenting

The big chair and the tree

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Have you ever experienced a moment in your life where, in the middle of it, you’ve heard the voice in your head say, this is it, this is a memory now? 

I have several I go back to now and again, but the recent quietly falling snow has reminded me of this one—my husband and I sitting together, squished side by side in the big leather chair with the big leather ottoman that we had purchased second hand from our landlord the year before. We had only been married a couple years, and we moved that big piece of furniture into our very first house with the level of optimism and delusion you only really get when you’re in your early twenties. And we had it big enough to think that buying a repossessed house that needed to be completely gutted to be livable was a choice that was going to get us closer to the big dream. Little did we know that gutting a house, while trying and failing to start a family, would threaten to gut us too, like the big dream getting the best of us before we even really got started. 

But at night, after coming home from full-time, adult jobs to a house full of ripped up carpet, tools on the countertops and unusable spaces, we would tinker a bit on a project, maybe I would go for a walk with the dogs, we would feed ourselves and then we would sit on that big chair together under a blanket and it would all feel manageable somehow. 

It was in this timeframe in our lives I had my first and only Christmas tree meltdown. The winters we lived in that big, broken house were relentless. The snow never stopped falling and it would drift so high up against the south side of the house that our dog would climb the bank to sit on the roof of our garage and keep watch on the neighborhood. Over those two years, we lost six pregnancies while we worked to renovate about the same number of rooms on that godforsaken house. All this is to say, those rooms and the rooms in my mind didn’t seem well-kept enough to deserve a tree, and so I procrastinated the whole thing, though my husband insisted. We needed a tree. And so he took me down to the grocery store parking lot where they bring trees in from places that can grow trees and we picked one that was perfect and alive and full and we put it in the back of my husband’s pickup and we brought it to the not-done-yet house and we moved our big chair over a bit and we put that tree by the big picture window that faced the street and I put on the bulbs and lights I bought new from Walmart. And they were pretty enough. It was all pretty enough, and sweet and what you do on Christmas. 

And I hated it anyway. Like, I had a total disdain for this tree. I remember it clearly, the sight of it made me angry. It made me cry and it made me frustrated and I tried to blame it on the ornaments with no sentimental value or the fact that it was leaning a bit even though it wasn’t leaning at all. And I remember my husband being so patient with me, but I was not patient at all. I was irrational and at the time I didn’t know why. I just thought I was going crazy in this house with endless wallpaper to peel and sawdust to sweep and this tree, with it’s stupid glass bulbs and not one single baby-hand-print-ornament hanging on it, was just standing there in this mess, mocking me. 

But that night, despite my unreasonable attitude, my husband and I sat in that big chair, his right arm under my back, my head on his shoulder, and we watched the twinkle of the tree against the window while outside the big flakes were falling under the warmth of the street lights. Everything was quiet then, even the thoughts in my head. They stopped too to tell me, this is it. This is what matters, right here squished in this chair. Girl, this is what peace is. Remember it. 

Last weekend I watched our daughters pile out of my dad’s big tractor and plop their little snow-suited bodies in the piles of big snow that had fallen on the ranch the past few days. They rode along with him as he cleared a path for our pickup to drive out in the West pasture to find a Christmas tree to cut and decorate. The sun had just come out and the sky was as blue as it can look, making that fresh snow sparkle and our daughters just ran like wild animals across that pasture while we examined the spindly wild cedars in the hills.

The sight of them, with my dad and my husband and the laughing was closer to heaven than it was to that grocery store parking lot I stood in all those years ago.

The tree we picked? Way less beautiful by magazine standards. And it’s filled with candy canes now, and homemade ornaments and it will probably fall over at some point because these trees usually do. And the years will pass and I know I won’t remember that tree, but that day? It will be with me forever.

And, well, I guess I just wanted to tell you that. I wanted to tell you that in case you needed to hear it.

Hamster Cake

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Dear Cashwise Bakery,

Please see the attached photo of my daughter’s hamster to use for her custom birthday cake order this weekend.

Sincerely,

A mom who never thought a hamster photoshoot was going to be a thing in her life

Welcome to birthday party week at the ranch. Both of our daughters turn another year older within a week of one another and this year, I’m packing both of their parties into one weekend. By the time you read this, I’ll be knee deep in parties for two daughters who are turning ten and eight, which really, in the timeline of things, is a peak time for birthday parties.

After ten years of motherhood, honestly, emailing a photo of Rosie’s pet hamster isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve done, but it’s up there with the time I found myself apologizing to the neighbor who walked into the yard to witness my oldest, a three-year-old at the time, naked and drinking from a water puddle.

“I’m glad I don’t live in town,” my eight-year-old said as we drove through Watford City the other day.

“Why’s that?” I asked, curious to hear her version of the perks of country living.

Turns out it was directly related to having the space to run naked through the sprinkler and play wild girls in the trees.

And riding horses. That was in there too.

I have to say, the eight-year-old version of me would have agreed with her wholeheartedly. And honestly, so does the middle-aged-mom version. I don’t think you’re ever too old to appreciate the sentiment around space to run wild.

And while I scratch out the birthday grocery list that includes five racks of ribs the girls requested their dad make for them and their tiny friends, I can’t help but do the thing that all moms do when facing another year—I wonder where the time has gone.

This morning, I ran into one of my high school friends, as you do when you live back in your hometown. I asked her how she was, and she said busy. And then I asked how the kids were doing, and she said it’s going too fast.

“I have a sixteen-year-old,” she reminded me. “I keep thinking, what have we been doing!? We haven’t done all the trips, all the plans I had for us! We haven’t done it all.”

To me there couldn’t have been a more relatable exclamation spoken. Could there be a more terrifying image than my oldest daughter, at sixteen, driving a car alone down the highway someday? Except that someday is only six short years away now, about the same amount of time we’ve spent procrastinating fixing that wonky, crooked board on the deck.

“I’d take a messy house over a quiet house,” another friend of mine said to me as we walked back with our Styrofoam cups full of lemonade at Turkey Bingo. She has four daughters, her youngest is now the only one at home with her for another couple years. She’s facing down an empty nest and I’m rolling out sleeping bags for little girls on the basement floor.

I think about her moment in motherhood as I hit send on the email with the hamster photo attached. My daughter helped me conduct a regular photoshoot for her pet the night before, complete with decent lighting, carrot stick bribes and my big, professional camera. Turns out getting a decent picture of a rodent is harder than it looks.

 Anyway, I suppose I could have just said no to her custom hamster cake request. Parents my age tend to feel guilt around being too indulgent. But how many years do I have left humoring these silly ideas? Isn’t that what parenting’s about in some ways? I mean, maybe I can’t take them to Disneyland, or buy her the $1,000 drone she thinks she wants for some reason, but dang it, I can get this hamster’s photo on a cake and we can invite your friends over and you can play wild girls in the trees. Now! While you’re eight and nine and ten. Hurry, drag the dirt in while you’re at it. Before it’s too late.

Cold Weather

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It’s officially the end of a season now. We often mark time out here based on our cattle
business, and last week we sold calves. Shipping Day. Weaning. These are the other
ways to say that our year of work spent caring for the cattle and their calves has come
to fruition. We spent the past few days riding every pasture to make sure every animal
was home safe. We rode through the first dusting of snow and a bitter wind, and then a
couple of really beautiful, perfectly chilly late autumn days kicking up some stray cattle
and mule deer from the draws, knowing in our bones winter is set to fully kick in any
moment now and send us for cover under our wool caps, coveralls and big coats.

When the truck came to load the calves on Tuesday we had picked out a little pen full of
heifers to keep on the place. We had done this sorting the night before to make things
go more smoothly on shipping morning only to wake up to find that of course they had
broken through the panel to get themselves mixed back up with the herd again. And so,
we did it again, sorting the calves from their mothers, and the steers from the heifers
and the best heifers from the bunch to keep. Both Edie and Rosie had picked the most
colorful from the lot as theirs to keep, a big black baldie with four white legs named
Socks and a red brockleface name Ginger who seems to be growing some horns. The
two stand out nice and dramatically from the herd of uniform black future mommas we
picked to keep building our herd and we’re all fine with it around here. It’s a family
operation, as it goes.

Which is pretty clear when you see us all filtering into Stockman’s sale barn, unloading
daughter after niece into the gravel parking lot, each one packing some sort of tote,
purse or backpack full of notebooks and art projects to take up to the steep seats and
entertain themselves while we wait for our pen of calves to come through.

“Look, there’s Eyelee!” Rosie hollered to her youngest cousin across the seats when the
heavy set of steers came through the ring. “Remember we named him that because he
has white eyelashes?” That’s the fun part about running Herford bulls on black cows, it’s
easier to name them and tell them apart. Emma, my five-year-old niece and lover of
every cow she ever met, wasn’t thrilled to see all our babies go. I’m thinking Rosie’s
explanation about what was happening from her seven-year-old perspective while
watching the calves get loaded on the trailer that morning probably didn’t help ease her
mind. It wasn’t that long ago when my husband and I had to haul both our daughters out
of the sale barn, bawling because they just realized the calves weren’t coming back
home, but it seems they’ve come to terms with the process these days.

And it’s nothing a little trip to the pizza and arcade place won’t fix, a little tradition my
family decided on a few years ago to celebrate making it to sale day. Because nothings
says success like wining 600 tickets on ski-ball and cashing them in for a long, neon
plastic hand with a lever that picks things up and allows you to bug your little sister and
mother from at least three feet away.

Anyway, all this is to say we’re grateful for another year on this place raising happy
healthy kids and a happy, healthy herd into a new season. This time of year definitely
makes me feel nostalgic, which usually, for me, results in a song. To honor that feeling, I
thought I’d share one I wrote while riding through that bitter wind a few weeks ago
alongside my husband who hadn’t yet switched from a cowboy hat to a wool cap. The
change has been made now, that’s for sure.

Stay warm. Stay cozy. Stay grateful.



Cold Weather
Summer is over, I heard him say
The breeze isn’t cool anymore, anyway
It’s hard and it’s bitter, it cuts through the layers
Of denim and leather and good-hearted neighbors

Summer is over, my fingers are froze
The horses in pastures are growing thick coats
You put yours on too and I’ll switch my straw hat
For the wool cap and new scarf you bought me for Christmas

You get the gate and I’ll keep the coffee on
I take mine with cream, you take yours black and strong
There’s things that I know, how it rains, then shines, then snows
For worse or for better, count on me, counting on you and cold weather

Summer is over and we’re getting older
And so are the kids used to ride on your shoulders
And now they are stretched long and lean like the blue stem
That bend in the wind trying to duck out of our hands

Summer is over, the furnace just kicked on
The dew on the grass turns to frost at the dawn
The flies on the windowsill got tired of spinning
Tell me, you think it’s the end or beginning?

Hamster drama

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Ok, I’m just going to cut to the chase. I was not prepared for the amount of drama owning a hamster would bring upon our house. You’d think as a ranch kid raising my own ranch kids, I have seen it all when it comes to ways things can go sideways between animals and humans, but sometimes no matter how tight you string that barbed wire, the bull still finds a way to the neighbors’. And although I’ve never intentionally invited a rodent into my home, I figured we could handle Popcorn, a couple ounces of fluffy house pet with one eye.

I was wrong. 

And because I know some of you were making guesses as to how long it was going to take before that hamster went missing, I will tell you now that the dust has settled a bit—it took five days.

Five. Days.

And the way in which we discovered Popcorn had vanished just had to be when Rosie’s friend came over specifically to meet the pet they’ve been talking about all week only to be greeted with a completely empty cage.

There were tears. There was panic. There was confusion. How in the world did she escape a cage that looked completely buttoned up? It was a mystery. I turned the house inside out, flashing a light in every nook and cranny, frantically decluttering every closet, looking under every bed, behind any appliance or piece of furniture I could move, and with each passing moment sinking into a deeper depression about the cleanliness and tidiness of my home. A real adult would never leave these corners unvacuumed! A real adult would have brought this pile of clothing to the thrift store last month! A real adult WOULD HAVE NEVER AGREED TO THE HAMSTER IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

And when the searching and staying up late to listen for hamster noises in the dark didn’t yield any results, I went to Tractor Supply to purchase a couple live traps for my pantry and hoped for the best.

And you would think this would be my lowest hamster moment, baiting a loose house pet with peanut butter and nightly prayers. But it wasn’t.

Because, as of now, I must be honest here, we have not found Popcorn. I’ve concluded she’s either living her best life in my walls, or outside, uh, hibernating. And I hate it.  My mom felt so bad about this, likely from the pet Lizard Incident of 1995, that she purchased a new hamster, Rocket, for Rosie, on her way home from Minnesota a couple weeks ago. And besides the fact that Rocket nearly bit Rosie’s fingertip off in the first two days of life with us, he also posed a significant risk to our house hamster population given his presumed gender. If he escapes too, the results could be dire.

But that wasn’t going to happen. We buttoned the cage up tight. We took every precaution to check and double check when Rosie interacted with him. We put his cage in another cage at night and closed the door just to be sure. Things were going great. Rocket stopped biting and settled in to the bonding part of the relationship. Popcorn was a fluke, surely.

Until I woke up last Thursday, ready to take a trip with the girls to Minnesota, and, you guessed it, the cage was buttoned up, yet empty. Again.

S.O.S.

The panic search commenced once more and so did the guilt and the shame. This poor hamster. Our poor daughter. She did everything right as a pet owner, and yet, we’ve been duped again.  I’ve never seen my husband so defeated.

“We’re idiots,” he whispered. “We got outsmarted by not one, but two rodents.”

I packed the kids and my mother in the SUV and wished him luck.

“I guess we’re just not hamster people,” Rosie sighed as we headed east and left my husband with the search. “Maybe we should just stick with dogs and cats and goats.”

“And lizards!” Edie chimed in. “My lizard is chill.”

Now, I wasn’t going to tell this story if it didn’t have an ending we could all feel ok about. And so here it is. Two days into our trip I got a text from my husband. “I found Rocket. But I can’t catch him.” We were rolling down the road from Bismarck to Fargo. My heart skipped a beat, so I called to put him on speaker because the man wasn’t going to get away with so few words on this topic.

“Did the hamster have one eye or two?” Rosie chimed in from the back seat.

“One,” my husband replied.

“Did he look suspicious? Like he found a girlfriend?” Rosie asked.

My husband did not reply.

Turns out while we were gone, Chad slept on the couch to listen for hamster sounds, which this time he heard coming from the deepest, darkest, messiest closet in the house. And so at 2 am he wandered toward the noises and proceeded to empty our entryway closet of all of my sound equipment and supplies, merch and CDs and microphone stands plus piles upon piles of hunting gear and old shoes and boots and coats we don’t wear but can’t get rid of and then when the whole closet was empty and the entire entryway was full he Still. Couldn’t. Find. The. Hamster!

“I thought I made a big mistake,” he explained. “I thought I let him out with all the stuff.”

And so, he carefully went through all of the closet wares one more time with no hamster appearance.

It was now 4:30 in the morning. 

Figuring the little fluff ball had to still be in the closet, he put his cage back in there, full of food and water, and hoped for the best.

“Who’s the man?!” my husband texted me with the news that afternoon.

Turns out Rocket realized the err of his ways and had happily returned to the scene of the crime, all full of food and snuggled up in his bedding like a fluffy little angel that didn’t just give us all heart palpitations and sleep deprivation.

On our way home the next day we stopped to purchase a new and larger and more secure cage, bringing our hamster bill to around six million dollars to date. Girl’s gonna have to put up a few more lemonade stands.

Anyway, maybe there’s still hope for Popcorn, Lord knows we have enough crumbs in the house to sustain her for a while.

In the meantime, we’ll be watching Rocket like prison wardens and, well, hoping for the best, as you do when it comes to hamsters.

Bullseye Season

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It’s bullseye season here at the ranch. The leaves start changing, the air cools down, the black flies find their way into my kitchen to make me crazy and my husband and daughters take out their targets and bows and get to practicing shooting arrows.

My husband has been into archery since he was a young kid. His most shared stories of his childhood are of him sitting alone in a hunting blind for hours without anything but those swarming flies to entertain him. The flies and the snacks and lunch he always finished eating well before noon. When the girls dare say they’re bored around here, the hunting blind stories are the stories he pulls out.

Yes, archery is a sport of patience and calm and, most of all passion. It takes a special kind of mindset to stay completely still and quiet for hours on end, often in the freezing cold or wild wind, or, my nightmare, way up high in a tree stand.

I’ve accompanied my husband on bow hunting excursions around the ranch in the past, before the kids arrived. It was one of my favorite things to do with my him because I could get out in the hills, photograph some wildlife, get some air in my lungs and get in quality time while he scoped the draws and skyline for bucks.

 And if you’re planning on doing the same with your husband, may I suggest not wearing swishy pants and only humming the song that’s in your head in your head. Turns out unwrapping a candy bar while he’s glassing the horizon isn’t good protocol either. 

But, what do you call a man who isn’t a comedian, but doesn’t take anything too seriously?  Like, oh well, you swish-swish-swished your way across two miles of pasture and scared everything wild and living away within earshot, but I’m glad you’re here and glad you wore enough warm layers and glad you brought snacks. That’s the guy I married. Turns out being married to me was just preparing him for a lifetime of raising daughters.

He’s unflappable, that man. And our daughters adore him. And I love to see it because when they’re out there shooting bows at that target with him or leading the way on a dirt-bike excursion to the alfalfa fields, it reminds me so much of the reasons I adored my dad as a little girl. The way he continued to enjoy life and pursue his passions even in the thick of the responsibilities of middle age and ranching and professional obligations somehow wasn’t lost on me, even as a kid. He liked deer hunting? I was going along, rain or shine. Playing guitar? I’m sitting at his feet watching his fingers. Training horses? Put me on the next one.  The same didn’t apply to him teaching me to drive a stick shift, but I would like to continue to repress that memory.

From the archives

We’re in the season of parenting where our kids are getting older and beginning the phases of coming into their own. When they were babies, it was fun to dream about the interests they may have or the talents they would develop, and now, here we are, watching who they are becoming right before our eyes. There have been many times in the past year or so that I have second-guessed if we are doing enough to help them cultivate their passions. We’re in the generation of parenting where there is a lot of pressure to sign kids up for extracurriculars at a younger and younger age to help them hone skills as early as possible. But if I’m being honest, my instinct has always been to try to give my kids more free time, not less. Now, all the sudden I’m feeling like maybe my almost eight-year-old and almost ten-year-old should be mastering more skills and honing in closer on their passions. Is it this age where they start becoming a little obsessed with things they love? Would they ever be obsessed enough to sit in a hunting blind for eight hours with nothing but the flies and the bag of snacks to entertain them?

I don’t know. And, honestly, I don’t know if obsession/extreme passion for rodeo or goats or basketball or archery or hockey is always the ultimate goal for every kid. Maybe for some it’s just about doing it and having fun and learning something, although I have tried to sell that concept to my youngest and most competitive daughter and it didn’t land well.

In the meantime, it’s bullseye season at our house and a reminder that the best thing we can do for our kids is to show them what it looks like to enjoy something and to work at it and how to learn and improve.

And then, when it comes time for them to accompany their dad on a hunt, I will remind them to skip the swishy pants, although I doubt he would mind, as long as they’re coming along.

And to me, well, that’s what I call a parenting bullseye.

All the questions that will never be answered

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“Have you ever accidentally brought your ranch dog to town?” I asked the lady getting out of her horse trailer next to me at our county fairgrounds. I had just arrived to enter the girls and goats in their very first open livestock show and when I got out of the pickup, I realized that the goats weren’t the only animal that hitched a ride to Watford City that afternoon.

“Well, ugh, no, my dog just comes with me I guess,” she replied sort of confused while I realized that she was the entirely wrong audience for this self-deprecating banter. She probably had a corgi. Our eleven-year-old cattle dog, who has only been to town on vet visits, stood at my feet just staring up at me as confused as I was as to why he was there. His tail was wagging so hard it moved his whole body, because, while he knew he had made a mistake, there were also cattle here. And kids. And pigs and goats and sheep and all the interesting things he didn’t expect when he chose to leap into the back of the pickup on our way out of the yard, thinking we were going to do some ranch work.

“Well, his trip wasn’t planned,” I laughed and then dialed my husband to see if he had any ideas as to what to do with the dog now. “I’ll come and get him,” he replied, totally unphased but knowing the disaster this dog would be around fancy animals.

Photo by LG Photography (Look how fancy they are)

Have you ever received a text from that same husband on a sunny Sunday morning when you thought everything was going just fine so far, but then it quickly wasn’t? Because the text read, “You wrecked my pickup.”

Turns out pulling a little bumper-pull horse trailer with the tailgate down doesn’t end well, even if you were just moving it a few feet out of the way of the garage so you could go deliver the kittens to new homes in town before we leave on vacation in a few days.

Have you ever finished a complete two-hour set of music on a patio on a beautiful evening only to look down during load-out and realize the zipper on your jean skirt was down.

Was it down the entire time? Like, all the way down? Was my guitar at least covering it please Jesus? Did anyone notice?

These are questions that will never be answered, but they can be re-lived for the rest of my life at 3 am.

Have I reached a phase in my life where I’ve been the supervisor for so long that I’ve forgotten to supervise myself? Like, I forgot that I am the one who needs the most supervising, and that didn’t change necessarily with motherhood. But the responsibilities are greater. And the pickup, well, it’s a little more expensive.

I’m not going to lie here, when I assessed the tailgate damage, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I cried anyway. My level of being distracted is a bit out of control lately, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this working-mom-in-the-summer situation.  I think adding the cost of a new tailgate to camp fees and snack bills might have just sent me over the edge. I faceplanted on my bed. But I couldn’t stay there long because I had a gig in Medora that night and I had to get myself together (note to self: quadruple check my zipper).

On my way my little sister called me. “I have some bad news,” she declared. “Rosie had an accident on the trampoline and she broke her arm.”

“No!” I yelled in the Jimmy John’s parking lot.

“No, I’m just kidding,” she laughed. “The girls put me up to it.”

And then I laughed too. I guess it could always be worse.

But girls? We need to talk about what’s an acceptable prank around here. This mom’s nerves are shot.

The best of times, the worst of times: At the county fair

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When I was a kid I used to spend a week each summer down on the border of North and South Dakota on the ranch with my aunt, uncle and cousins during their preparation for the county fair. Now, my cousins didn’t do the lite version of the 4-H experience. Their version was a deluxe version of showing steers, sheep and horses, plus executing baking demonstrations, sewing projects and entering meticulous projects as static exhibits. My cousins won trophies. All-around titles.

Anyway, I’m thinking about this now because I have just completed my own experience being a mother of 4-H kids with livestock and horses and projects at the county fair. The entire four days I was in the livestock barn I was thinking about my aunt Kerry with a greater understanding about why she pulled my cousin’s braids so dang tight in the kitchen every morning before the fair. Because here I was,  doing the same to my oldest with a quiet, overwhelmed rage, running perpetually behind and trying not to pull her eyelids to her hairline in the process. Let me tell you, this 4-H stuff can be a county fair roller coaster, a lot more dramatic than the one you find at the carnival.

During Edie’s first hour in the show ring with her goats, we went from an experience where I entered her animal in the wrong class, resulting in a red ribbon for a goat who sealed the rough experience by leaping, jumping and flopping her way through the show ring.

Photo by Judy Jacobson

We got back to the pens and everyone was crying, including me. I felt terrible. But after a big hug from our goat show expert friend, there was no time to dwell, because it was time to show the whether, and my goodness if that little goat didn’t earn Edie a purple ribbon in her class, clearing up those tears pretty quick so that she could skip off into a full two hours of carnival rides with her best friend on a high note.

It was the worst of times and then it was the best of times and so it went…

Because our time in the show ring didn’t stop there as we continued the next day with the sale of that little whether, something I apparently hadn’t adequately prepared my youngest daughter for because she proceeded to go into a full-on sob for around an hour declaring to the entire livestock barn that she didn’t want the goat to become hamburger. I sent her up to the bleachers to sit on Papa’s lap for the rest of the sale and, well, guess who bought the goat? Edie exited the ring, and her friend called her over. “Edie, Edie, your grandpa bought Hulk. Now you can keep him!”

It was the best of times.

Rosie showing Hulk. Photo by Judy Jacobson

After the sale we had to rush home to beat the impending thunderstorm to scrub and detangle three ranch horses who didn’t know what to do with all the attention. We got them into the barn before the first raindrop hit. It was a 10 pm bedtime and  5 am wakeup call for the horse show the next morning and if you’ve ever tried to get a half delirious child to listen to instructions at 7 am about staying out of the dirt in her white shirt and watching the judges and setting up a horse without touching it while simultaneously keeping your cool when your child responds with “I know!’” when they clearly don’t know, well, then, we can talk about it over a drink at the Legion later. Because the kids don’t know. But by day three of the fair they are about as sick of hearing your voice as you are.


It was the worst of times.

But we weren’t done yet! Edie had one more task in the arena to show the judge how much she did know about showing her goat, which turned out to be more than I thought. A big smile and a blue ribbon later and we were back on top of the world with Hulk the goat. We were so thrilled it was all over we became delusional enough to think we should head to the state fair next month. I mean, we could keep the goat after all.

(Goat photos by Judy Jacobson)

But here’s the thing, we talk about all the lessons that the kids learn from an experience caring for animals, the heartbreak and triumph of competition in the show ring and the life lessons of selling them, but I think as a parent, I got just as many lessons in patience and perseverance, time-management and tongue-biting out of our first big county fair experience as my children did. Maybe more. Mostly, I learned that saying less is better and that our biggest and most important allies are other parents who have made the same mistakes before and the big kids at the stalls and in the ring leading by example and lending a hand (and a halter and baby powder and horn shining spray…) and showing them with patience and coolness about how it’s done. And then demonstrating how to smile and shake hands when it doesn’t go your way. And how to be humble when it does.

Photo by Judy Jacobson
Photo by Judy Jacobson
Cheering on the winner!

At the end of the week, I stood outside the ring and watched as all the 4-H kids gathered to line dance and two-step and play Red Rover while a DJ played music and helped them celebrate. Every single kid kicking up woodchips that Saturday night had overcome a challenge, helped a friend, wiped tears, and cheered for themselves or others at some point throughout the week. For all of them, there were highs and there were lows, tough competition, underdogs and heartbreak. But at the end of the day, well, they were dancing together. Some of them even danced with their moms, evidently forgiving them for the tight grip on their hair earlier that morning.  I looked over and witnessed a big kid putting down his crutches to demonstrate how to two-step to the younger kid standing in front of him. A teenage girl put my seven-year-old on her shoulders. My friend spun his wife around in a fancy jitter bug move I’d never seen them do before. A thirteen-year-old girl danced with her baby goat. Someone brought their bunny. The steers stood sleepy at their pens. The goats, sheep and pigs fell asleep to the drone of the music. I grabbed my daughters and husband and we swung each other around. The music played until midnight.

And we may not have won the trophies, but boy, it was the best of times

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. 

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.

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?