Tag Archives: Veeder Ranch

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? 

To be wild with us…

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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…


Stage Stories, Home Stories

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This morning, I opened a manilla envelope I had stored in my backpack to take back from Nevada to my home in North Dakota.

A few weeks ago I was standing on a variety of stages in Elko for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering’s 40th Anniversary Celebration. I sang songs about ranch life and “You Are My Sunshine” at the top of my lungs to an auditorium of 900 elementary school students and then I did it all again the next hour. I sang my “Happy” song and charged those kids with writing a list or a poem of all the things that made them smile.

I stood in a bar with my dad and guitar player and pulled out all the toe-tapping songs we could think of while people hugged and cheered and danced and visited.

I told a story about my great-grandfather’s life and the yellow roses that still bloom in the barnyard on a small stage in front of an audience so still and attentive and close you could hear them sniffle.

I shared the stage with Carnegie Hall performers, Western folklorists, a Grammy award winner, viral music sensations and the yodeling cowboy from Montana who’s the voice of the “Yahoo” commercials.

Andy Hedges, Dom Flemmons, Dad, Seth and Katelyn (Buffalo Kin) and Mike
Watching Wylie and the Wild West from backstage
Adrian Brannon rehearses backstage before our set
Margo Cilker, her husband Forrest VanTuy and her band
Ed Peekeekoot shows us the head of his guitar he hand carved

I sat in the audience at an open mic session for kids where 50 or so aspiring performers recited, read or performed cowboy poetry or music that they wrote or memorized. I obliged when a 10-year-old cowgirl behind a guitar asked us to sing along to “Home on the Range” while she played.

Jessie Veeder listens to a young fan recite his cowboy poetry.

I met new people from all over the world curious about ranch life and eager to hear the stories. And then I swapped tales about ranch kids with fellow ranch moms and dads. I met unbelievably talented musicians and poets from across the country and reunited with those I’ve come to love over the years.

Clara Baker, Margo Cilker, Lara Manzanares

I ate, drank, told stories, shopped, talked, barely slept, and sang and sang and sang until it was time to point our car back north in a blizzard warning, slowly through Nevada, then Idaho and then Montana and then finally to our home state, where the wind sent the fresh snow skidding across the interstate.

I took the wheel in the last stretch of the trip so my dad could log into a bull sale and make his virtual bids while we drove toward the Badlands, rolling us back into our real life before we even parked the car. What a very modern-day-ranching thing to do after a week of talking about it.

Back home, my husband kept the cows, horses, kids, cats and dogs fed. He fixed a faulty furnace and wrapped up work on a big shop project. He practiced spelling words with our daughters, and when I caught him on Facetime during breaks in my schedule, he was snuggling our oldest on the chair watching YouTube videos on how to install fascia on steel buildings, and I thought, “Well, look at how much she loves him — little Edie enduring the drone of a how-to construction video just to be in the crook of her dad’s arm.”

When you’re home at the ranch the way we are in our everyday lives, you don’t think much about how most of the rest of the world is living — and that breaking ice on water tanks and rolling out hay bales in negative temperatures is Hollywood-esque to some who have never or will never live this way.

I dress up in my felt cowboy hat, pressed dark jeans and a bright pink satin blazer behind my guitar to tell the audience in Elko about the time, when I was a kid, I attempted to get the horses in by riding my sorrel mare bareback with baling twine for a bridle. They laugh at the part where I question my dad’s parenting instincts, recalling how he hollered “Bail off, Jess!” And I did, only to break my wrist and leave it dangling off my arm.

Back home, my husband is in Carhartts and a wool cap. He smells like diesel exhaust and his beard is scruffy. He packs snacks in backpacks and makes sure our daughters have snow gear for school, he takes out hamburger from our deep freeze stash for supper and stands by the stove smack dab in the middle of our decision to raise our kids out here alongside those horses, tucked into the hills while I’m a thousand miles away singing about it.

I pull the SUV into the drive and drag my suitcases and guitar inside. I flop down on the couch and lay my head on my husband’s lap. I’ve been gone a week, but there’s no big fuss about that. He gives me a kiss, then launches into the report on those spelling tests and on Edie baking cookies all on her own and Rosie’s newfound master of the stove. I notice a log burning for the first time in our new fireplace. I say a few things about the crowds and who I got to see.

We get up and take out elk for a stir-fried supper. Our youngest gets sick at bedtime and throws it all up on my husband lying next to her. Welcome home, here’s the flu.

This morning, I emptied my bag to find that manilla envelope. I thought it was going to be a big thank-you card with signatures from the kids in Elko, but it was better. Twenty or so pages from Mrs. Wine’s Southside class with handwritten reasons these kids are happy.

The big ‘ol auditorium full of elementary school kids

To: Jessie: I want to say hi to your daughters. I know one is from the name Rosey? But I want to say thank you for singing us the songs but I love how you and your dad and your friend sang it almost made me cry.

Dear Jessie, I like when I was dancing, only for 15 sec…Sunshine made me remember the old times.

Dear Jessie, what makes me happy is going and seeing my dogs and cats and my mom and dad and what I love is coming home and smelling supper.

Dear Jessie, my dogs make me happy because they make me laugh when ther licking me. My teacher is my first thing that makes me happy.

Dear Jessie, Songs make me happy Jessie. Things that make me happy are dogs, chicken, horses and cowboy poetry week…

And I think, same here kids. Same. Same. Way up here.

For more photos from The Gathering, click here

Celebrating doing what we love at the sale barn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red Barns and People Get Old

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

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

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

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

jessieveedermusic.com

And the magic followed us home

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have gone fourteen steps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The youngest falls down.

The seven-year-old has to pee.

We reach the beaver dam.

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

“I’m sick,” Edie declares.

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

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

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

Tangled.

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This week I revisit a little predicament I found myself in back when we were working on landscaping our new home…

Happy Hay Hauling and Fly Swatting Season. Happy September!

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Out here on the ranch there are people and animals and machinery and water and buildings and growing things and plans thought out but maybe not discussed with one another…

When you combine all the moving parts sometimes things can go kinda weird, get tangled up so to speak.

Like last week I came home from something or other to Husband pushing dirt on the Bobcat, just like every other dry summer day. We have been working on landscaping and planning for a fence to keep the cows out of yard, so getting the dirt in the right places has been the longest and first step in the process.

Anyway, so I get home and I drop my bags, shuffle the mail pile on the counter and look out the window at the hill where the horses generally graze, and then down at the plum patch on the edge of what will be our fenced in yard one day.

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Then I notice a piece of wire or string or something stretched across the edge of the yard, from the plum patch, across the open toward the dam, with no end that I could see…

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With Pops and Husband involved in this place, a few scenarios run through my mind about the existence of this piece of wire or string or whatever.

1) Maybe Husband is staking out where the fence will go, which is good, because I think he’s right on in the placement.

2) Could Husband have strung a piece of electric fence or wire or something to temporarily keep the cows off his dirt moving masterpiece?

3) But it sorta looks like a piece of twine, and Pops was out here on the 4-wheeler the other day driving up the hill to check on things. I bet a peice got stuck to the back of his machine and he drug it a ways…that’s probably it…

4) Who the hell knows…these boys never tell me anything…I gotta call Pops, I’m too lazy to try to catch Husband on that Bobcat right now…

I dial…it rings…he answers.

“Hello.”

“Hi, it’s me. Yeah, did you like, string some twine across our yard, or like, maybe drag a piece on your 4-wheeler when you went by the other day…”

“No. No I didn’t. I noticed it too. It was there when I drove past…piece of twine, goes all the way up to the dam as far as I can tell…a cow musta drug it I think…”

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“Well that’s a theory…really? Weird…I wonder how far it goes?”

“Yeah, I don’t know…”

“Well, ok, just checking…I guess I’ll go investigate…wrap it up…”

“Yeah, ok bye.”

I hung up.

Wonder where a cow picked up all that twine? Wonder where it got hooked? On her foot? On her ear? On a tooth or something?

How did she pull it all that way without a snag or a snap?

I headed down to the plum patch, which seemed to be the middle of her destination, twine strung up in the thorns and heading toward the dam in one direction, to oblivion in the other…

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I grabbed it and followed it along the cow path that lead to the dam…
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To the edge of the dam where she grabbed a drink…

IMG_4185and then literally into the dam where she must have hung out to cool off.

IMG_4187And then turned around IMG_4188Then turned around to head to the shade of the trees up by the fence…

IMG_4190Where it looked like she might have taken and a nap and detached from it…

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But that was only the beginning. because there I stood with a pretty substantial roll of twine around my arm looking for the end, which seemed to be trailing back toward my house again, up the hill and toward the barnyard, with no end in sight.

I backtracked, to find the source, coiling as I went…

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It was going to be a long trip…

Back past the plum patch, up along the cow trail that turns into the road on the top of the hill. Past the old machinery and the broken down three-wheeler and lawn mower that we need to move for crying out loud. I have to get on that.

Then down toward the shop where the cow seemed to have gone back and forth, back and forth, zigzagging in front of the old tractor and little yellow boat. IMG_4217Then up to the old combine to scratch her back or something…

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Then back up to the top of the hill, across the road, to the scoria pile we’re saving for a literal rainy day, then back down through the brush on the side hill toward the old combine again, tangling up in the thorns of the prairie rose patch somehow…

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Then over toward the barn yard…wait, turn around, not yet…back in front of the shop, hooking on every stray weed and grass along the way, but never coming undone…no…where the hell did she pick this up?

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Why did we leave a big-ass roll of twine just laying around for some creature without opposable thumbs to go dragging for miles and miles across the countryside?

Why can’t we get our shit together around here?

How long is this damn roll? How long is this going to take?

Do you know how long this is going to take!!!

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And how does this even happen?

Where did it even…

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Begin? …

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A 4-H Horse Show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And weed-eating to do.

Patch perfectly placed

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

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

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

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

These are all small things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raising them Here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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