You can see your breath in the morning now. The grass is still green as can be out here, but at 6 am it’s covered in frost. I’m hoping the cold kills the flies soon. One just divebombed into my milk glass right as I was lifting it to take a sip. The fall afternoons warm up nice enough for them to come alive again.
And I feel that I guess.
I took my evening walk to the fields last night. The moon was coming up huge and bright over the horizon and against the pink of the setting sun. That lightbulb of a moon woke me up at four that morning, beaming through the window to wash over my face in the dark and make me restless. But, I was happy to have it following me as I made my way home in the dark. My timing of the daylight was off a bit. Supper should have been on the table earlier.
Last week we rounded up our cattle to vaccinate the calves before sale day. They were spread out in all corners of one of our big pastures and so we called in help and saddled up our horses. My yellow horse, Gizmo, was my choice for the day, and, per usual, he wanted to make sure I knew he didn’t agree with the morning’s plans by trying his best not to be caught and bridled. And then, when we were out trying to get through the brush and around the cattle moving in the wrong direction, he decided to test what would happen if he didn’t move at all. Turns out, much like my daughters, Gizmo doesn’t really care how many times I say, “Come on!” and “Hurry up for before I reeettttiiiirrreeee…” Horses, like kids, sometimes forget who’s supposed to be the boss around here and neither really like to acknowledge it could be me. That horse and I were happy to eventually be the designated gate-watchers, hanging out to ensure nothing gets by that’s not supposed to get by, a job my little sister and I have had at roundups since I was eight years old.
Anway, the calves, they look good. They’re big and healthy and shiny. Three by three we ran them through the chute to check their health and administer shots, then ear tags or medicine when necessary. I’ve always liked the assembly-line type of task that is working cattle. Everyone has a job that sinks into a rhythm and it generally goes pretty smooth, until it goes awry. And when it goes awry, as any cattleperson can attest, it usually does it’s very best to nail it. Turns out you can never have too much help when it comes to trying to figure out how to get a very stuck 400-pound calf unstuck without having to use a metal cutter on the chute.
This season, it’s over in a cool breath. In a month we’ll load these calves up to the sale ring and tally what a year’s worth of feeding and caring and gathering will have done for us. But ranching is a heart business as much as anything. I think of this as I watch my dad inspect each calf. He’s spent a lot of time watching and worrying over these growing babies.
There are two nice heifer calves in the herd with crazy markings, one is red and white and one is black and white. The look of them isn’t ideal when it comes to building a breeding program, but my daughters who sat on the top of the fence behind me that day beg to differ. “Where’s Oreo? Where’s Ginger?” These are the heifers they’ve picked out to keep back. They will become their cows because they think they’re pretty and they remember when they were born. Ok then. What a gift these little calves will be to them someday.
And today. Today the sun will burn the frost off the green grass in our yard and the black flies will pop against our windows, some trying to get in. Some trying to get out.
Next week it could snow. Or it could shine. As with cattle and kids and horses, anything can happen in October.
When I was a little girl, my favorite book of all time was “My Side of the Mountain.” It’s a classic, about a boy who finds himself living away from home in the wilderness of the mountains inside of a giant hollowed out tree. I can’t remember the exact story now or why he was alone out there, funny how those details escape me no matter how many times I went over the pages and marked my favorite parts. The parts where there were diagrams of how to build a fire with no supplies and something about a windmill and making a spear for fishing.
I still have the book buried somewhere deep in the rubble of the basement. It was one I could not give up to charity or to my younger sister. It’s sitting there among the books about horses and misfit dogs, prairie children and my other favorite, “Misty from Chincateague,” about two siblings who save money to save a rescued wild horse from an island.
I wanted to be these kids. I wanted to be the free-spirited girl who broke the free-spirited horse. I wanted to break the rules. I wanted to tame a wolf puppy, train a wild falcon to hunt, catch fish with a spear I sharpened out of a tree branch and exist in a faraway time where those things were necessary for survival.
Forget microwave popcorn and video games, I wanted adventure!
I’m sure I wasn’t unlike most kids at 9 or 10 or 11 years old. At that age most of us were lost in some sort of fantasy with little more confidence than we had experience at the real world. So I’d like to think that it wasn’t that unusual that as a kid who already lived about as far out in the middle of nowhere as anyone could live, I had convinced myself that I could survive out in the wilderness alone. Without a house. Or a toilet. Or my mom’s cheeseburger chowder.
In the evenings I would step off the bus from a day at country school, grab a snack, and head out up the creek behind our house. For months I would work on building what I called “secret forts” all along the creek that winds through our ranch. Looking back on it now, these forts weren’t that secret at all, in fact, you could probably see one from the kitchen window, but I was deep in my own imagination as much as I was in the oaks and brush that grew along the bank. I would identify just the right tree and use it as a frame to create a sort of tent-like structure out of fallen logs. And then I would begin the tedious process of locating and dragging fallen branches out of their place under overgrown vegetation and fallen leaves back to my tree to hoist them up to rest next to the last one I had managed to maneuver. And when it was complete I would lay down inside of it. And under the flawed “shelter” of fifty logs leaning on a tree and plan my next move. I would need a door. Yes. I could make it the way I imagined Huck Finn made his raft. I would need some rope. And a knife. I wonder if dad had an extra knife in his dresser drawer. I need some sort of blanket. Oh, and a fire. Of course!
I would be scouring the creek bottom for granite rocks to arrange in a fire circle when the sun sink down below the banks and I would decide I wasn’t quite ready to spend the night. Besides, I forgot to bring a snack and the wild raspberries weren’t quite ripe yet. Taking one last look at my creation and deciding to reevaluate the next afternoon, I would turn my back to it and follow the cow trail back toward the house where my little sister was likely lurking in the shadows, having found my path again, begging me to let her help next time. Begging me to let her in the fort as the sun gave off its last light and we argued and grappled until we could smell dad’s steaks on the grill or mom’s soup on the stove.
This was my daily ritual for months and one of my signature childhood memories. Eventually I gave in and helped my little sister build her own fort. A much smaller fort. Across the creek. Out of site. I thought I wanted to be alone out there, left to my own survival skills, but it turned out that having company was a nice addition, no matter how stubborn and annoyingly curious that company might be. So we built a tin-can telephone that stretched from my fort to hers and brought down old chair cushions from the shed, searched for wild berries, tried to catch frogs and minnows in the beaver dam and spent our evenings planning our next move: spending the night.
But we never did it. We never spent the night. Summer gave way to fall, and the leaves fell and covered the floor of our paradise. We would pull on our beanies, mittens and boots and trudge down the freezing creek to clear out the fire ring we weren’t yet brave enough to use. And then the cold set in and the snow came, and the neighbor girls called us to go sledding and our dream of being wilderness women collected snow and waited on a warmer season.
I can’t help but think about those girls on days like these when the warmer weather finally gives in and releases the snow to flow as wild water in the draws and you can smell the dirt again at long last. I get a call from my little sister. She’s driving our daughters home from town. “Can I steal your girls and bring them to the crick? The water is running, I want to take them to follow it.”
Ten-year-old me would be happy to know it, our little sister still just over the hill, a tin-can telephone call away, still following that crick and begging to be wild with us…
Full disclosure, I am posting this from my perch for the week in Arizona, where I am performing and hanging out in the Author’s Tent at the Art of the Cowgirl event in Wickenburg. And since this week’s column is all about getting ourselves out of the deep freeze that was -40 a week ago, the temperature shift I experienced upon landing and walking out to my rental car yesterday damn near sent me into shock. Like, my body was suddenly 125 degrees warmer than last Monday. What a time to be alive!
Anyway, I’m beyond excited to be included in Art of the Cowgirl and am looking forward to performing and meeting these wonderful women, horsewomen, authors, entertainers and guests all gathering in the name of some of the best things. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hi! Here’s my schedule.
Anyway, back to the great white north, which is melting now. The girls are thrilled to be following the creek rushing as the thaw hit. One more month and there will be baby calves and crocuses and it can’t come soon enough!
How we survive the deep freeze
By the time you read this we will have pulled ourselves out of the deep freeze that lingered over us in North Dakota in February. This morning, at 8 am, the temperature on my SUV read -35. On Monday it ready -40.
I don’t recall that I’ve ever seen -40 in my life up here, but that seemed like a perfect time for our furnace to go out. So it did.
When it’s this cold, things just break. Sometimes that also includes our spirits, which seem to be dangling by a thread lately. But I tell you, my kids, they’re really trying.
On our drive to school, I heard my oldest explaining how much of a relief it’s going to be when it hits 20 degrees on Friday. Her cousin wasn’t convinced and so she reassured. “Twenty degrees? That not even chilly. That’s pretty much, like, warm. Probably won’t even need your hat.” Considering it will be a sixty-degree temperature shift, these kids up here will be coming to school in shorts.
Edie gave Rosie a spa day. Self care is important when the cold is trying to kill you.
Because they haven’t had recess in weeks, the busses aren’t running properly, water pipes freeze and tractors refuse to start. We drove by the cows and horses this morning and they’re covered in frost, sparkling and chewing and laying in the hay, surrounded by the turkeys and pheasants picking at the leftover cake. Edie thought we should build them a big dome to keep them warm, but they seemed ok laying in the morning sun. They were bred to be this hearty, as long as my dad comes every day to feed that hay and cake in a protected spot out of the wind and break the ice on the water tanks. It seems contradictory, but when snow sits on the backs of the cows, that’s a good indication that they’re retaining thier body heat, well insulated against the cold weather.
The same goes for horses and the wild animals too, like that young, orphaned deer that dad says comes in to feed with the herd almost every day.
This place seems to hold plenty of little secrets like that on survival and adaptation, in particular. That little deer, when he lost his herd, he found a new one. Those turkeys have been storing up fat all year for these cold temperatures, fluffing up their feathers to create air pockets that trap the heat and roosting in the thick and protected brush at night. The pheasants have been saving too and find shelter in the thick grass and cattails in the draws.
It’s hard to believe in a month or so the crocuses will poke their heads out to the sun, growing best in rocky soil, using the warmth from nearby stones to thrive in the early chill of spring.
I think in the deep freeze of winter is when us humans need to take a cue from these animals and lean on our ancestral instincts the most. Even with the most modern amenities and the many ways we work and entertain one another, amid a deep freeze like this, we need to simply betogether. We may not technically need this coping skill to keep one another warm (unless you’re like us and your furnace fails you) but just as importantly we need to remind each other of the promise of spring.
“Remember when it was 100 degrees are our air conditioning went out and we had company coming?” I ask my husband as he tinkered with wiring in the furnace room.
I don’t know if that was as helpful as Rosie planning our trip to Florida.
“We’re going to have to dig our shorts out of the bottom of the drawers!” she exclaimed bundled in the back of the car with a blanket tucked up under her chin.
“And we’ll go to the beach. I’ve never been to the beach!” Edie added.
“Yeah!” my niece chimed in. “It’s going to be so fun. And so warm!!”
Look at us, just like the crocuses, using the warmth of our surroundings to pull us through. Look at us, just like that little deer, relying on our heard. Look at us, like the wild birds, fluffing our feathers, pulling through…
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.
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.
“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.
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
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.
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….
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 
