On The Ranch

doing THIS again.

2009-04-09T10:24:00.003-06:00

Spring...finally?!

2009-04-07T15:22:00.000-06:00

15 inches snow + 50 mph gusts

2009-04-06T14:33:00.008-06:00

We were bracing ourselves for 8-10 inches with 40 mph gusts. But we ended up with closer to 15 inches accompanied by 50 mph gusts. It was a pretty rough storm. Especially for Adam, who spent most of it horseback, day and night. He rode through the cows hourly, so that he could get one into the barn if she was starting to calve. (It is a lot easier to get the calf in the barn while it is still inside the cow.) But if a calf was born out in the lot, he would load it onto the calf sled (basically a sled with a cage around the edges, so that they won't fall off) and bring it in. The mama will almost always follow her calf right into the barn.

Just imagine how traumatic it must be for those babies born in a blizzard - to go from the warmth of their mother's womb into a puddle of freezing fluids and chilling winds. If a calf was really chilled, we'd bring it into the tackroom and crank up the heater. We started calling it the 'sauna' because it was so hot in there, at least for us, all bundled up in our warmest gear. A couple of calves we brought in were too cold even to shiver. After an hour or so in front of the heater, they would finally start shivering and then after another hour or two they'd be up and looking for their first meal.

Over the course of that first day, the drifts went from about a foot deep, to knee high by noon, and waist deep by evening. Visibility was so bad that it was impossible to have any sense of the landscape and I'd suddenly find myself practically immobilized in a drift up my waist. I learned pretty quickly to follow Gus, as she'd found the shallowest paths between the house and the barn. By noon on Saturday the four-wheelers and pick-ups were useless and Adam saddled his horse. This storm seems to have proven that Black is an instinctive ranch horse. And a tireless one, at that - he was saddled until last night and Adam said he never really showed signs of wearing down.

By Sunday night, the worst was over, but the temps remained low through last night, so Adam kept the cows close. This morning the sun is blindingly bright and the wind is mild, so they'll trail the cows back out to the calving meadow today, hopefully for the last time. There's a good amount of moisture in all this snow and it'll be a great boost for the spring grass. Though the drifts could take a week to melt completely, the shallow spots are already starting to show patches of green grass, peeking out from the snow.

this is what a blizzard sounds like

2009-04-04T10:29:00.004-06:00

This was the morning of the first day of the blizzard, so there wasn't much snow accumulation yet. The wind is what really defines a blizzard - without the wind it wouldn't have been that cold (hovering right around 30F). But the windchill factor was MUCH lower, in addition to the visibility being absolute crap.

calm before the storm

2009-04-03T08:04:00.003-06:00

Dramatic weather phenomena arise from the interactions between air systems of differing temperatures and moisture levels. Yesterday was unbelievably gorgeous - "shirtsleeve weather", folks around here might call it. Even though I know there are still plenty of winter days ahead, the sunshine and birdsong made it hard not to start fantasizing about planting a garden and other Spring-y things. Unfortunately, this tease of Spring weather was just a passing warm front, which has by now collided with a cold blast from the north. The repercussions will begin to fall by this evening - perhaps first as rain, turning to snow flurries as the sun sets, and likely building to a full-on blizzard with 40 mph gusts and up to 10 inches of snow before it's over.

The official 'due date' for the biggest bunch of cows is April 4th (tomorrow), so the timing of this blizzard is fairly inconvenient. There have already been two bad storms over the past month, but there were very few births during either and no babies lost to the weather. Later today all the cows will be lead home, to a lot near the new calving barn. This setup will put our minds at ease, as it will be easier to check and feed the cows. Plus, we'll be able to bring new babies and their mamas into the barn and out of the weather right away.

There was a bottle calf waiting for me when I finally got back to the ranch, Wednesday night. Her mama is too old to walk back to the barn, let alone make enough (or, it seems, any) milk. She's one of Jerry's cows, so dad's been calling her heifer calf Jerrilynn, naturally. Unfortunately, she didn't get colostrum before it was too late, so she's gotta make it though these first few weeks with a crippled immune system. Luckily for her, I've been missing the ranch these last months out in Portland and am happy to focus lots of special attention on her.

cold & quiet

2007-12-06T16:14:00.000-07:00

I can hardly remember a more mild or beautiful Fall. I suppose that isn't saying much, considering this was only my second Fall in the Sandhills over the last 12 years. But I'm not the only one who thought so. The leaves actually had a chance to change colors before freezing off the trees and there were plenty of gorgeous days for doing the work of getting ready for winter. (Mowing up the leaves one last time, clearing the garden, draining the hoses, putting on the storm windows, and the like.)

A few days before Thanksgiving, the days were still climbing into the 60s. I went out to the Bay Area to eat turkey with friends and the frosty mornings out there (where there is no heat, and little insulation) were a shock to my system. But as soon as I stepped out of the airport into the dark South Dakota night, I knew that Winter had finally arrived. And I was ready for it.

We had our first snow earlier this week, wet and heavy, but less than an inch. A freak warm front hoovered around on Tuesday and melted it all. And now it is just cold - freezing, plus or minus 5 degrees during the day, dipping close to zero in the night. Crunchy grass in the morning, and white frosted trees.

All the cats have the sniffles, just a cold most likely. Luckily for them, George built a pretty fancy cat house over Thanksgiving. It's more like a 'cat condo' actually - two stories, fully insulated, with a porch on two sides and two entry/exit points. I just finished setting it up - it was fun to watch them discover it.

It is a quiet time on the ranch. It's not just less busy...there are less noises. Animals are going into hibernation-mode, birds are flying south or settling in, and the way that soundwaves travel in this cool air...I swear it is different. It seems to me that sound carries further when it is cold, but at the same time the small sounds are somehow muffled (or perhaps just not there?). The result is a sound landscape that is stark. unsettling. and beautiful.

This afternoon's thick fog has finally grown heavy and a few moments ago, it started to snow.

I lost by boots in the mud the other day.

2007-10-19T16:52:00.000-06:00

We've had nearly 3 inches of rain over the past week. It started on the 13th, which was also the day we weaned calves. The calves are SO big now that it seems ridiculous they would still be nursing their mamas. Nevertheless, they're still pretty attached and both mom and calf bawled for several days after they were separated - the 'music' of weaning-time. I took a short shakey video and posted it below so you can hear for yourself.

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The cows were kept in the corrals near the house until the 15th, when the vet came to 'preg check'. In the meantime...it kept raining, which, in combination with the cows' hoof action in the corrals, produced MUD like we'd never really experienced here before. It was over a foot deep in places!

I went down to the corrals a few days ago, to open and watch gates so that Adam could feed some hay. At one point, I had to use both hands, in addition to the attached leg, to pull my boots back out of the mud after each step. There was no way around it...so I stepped out into the cold mud, pulled my boots out and threw them off to the side, and just went barefoot. It was a little chilly, a little shitty (literally), but mostly just ridiculous.

I just walked down to the - now empty - corrals. The mud isn't quite as deep, but it's still pretty awesomely muddy:

how it's looking around here, lately

2007-10-19T10:26:00.000-06:00

the Autumn palette ripens

2007-10-11T18:12:00.000-06:00

This blog isn't the only place where a month can pass by without my attention. I was printing in my studio today and turned around at one point and noticed my Nikki McClure calendar was turned to August. I hate missing a whole month of calendar art! Alas, I flipped two pages to October and went back to printing.
Had i really not been out there since August?
It's true.

For the first time I actually have a half-way reasonable excuse for not writing here recently: my computer crashed and died. Apparently the little arm that carries the laser that reads the scratches on the discs that make (made) up my harddrive moved just a tiny little bit - less than the width of a hair, just a little tiny jiggle - and it completely destroyed everything. I know that I am technologically dependent, especially now that I live so far away from so many of the people in my life, but the extent to which a tiny little hiccup inside this white plastic box affected my life, my work, even my thought processes, was really incredible. It is 'fixed' now - new harddrive, fresh start, clean slate. Farewell to my messy OLD slate. A lot of ideas and post-it notes went down with the ship, likely never to be seen again.

I lit the gas heaters in the house and my studio yesterday. The days have been the perfect temperature, between 60 and 70 degrees, but the nights have been in the 40s, dipping into the high 30s in the early mornings. It seems like the house is just getting warmed up by the time the sun drops below the trees along the creek to the west of the house each evening. Time to light the stoves.

And time for orange. Gone are the pinks and blues of summer, with green following close behind. Now is the time for the ripening of the orange Autumn palette. I picked the last of my sugar pumpkins this afternoon. They'd been trampled a few times by pesky cows that kept getting into the yard last month and as a result the crop had been thinned out fairly substantially. So we'll only have a dozen pumpkin pies, instead of thirty. I suppose we'll manage. I've also been picking the other winter squash as they ripen and harden off. When the acorn squash are ripe, the bottomside turns orange. The dusk skies, too, are orange. And the clouds near the horizon at sunset. And, of course, the leaves provide flashes of orange, amid the warm spectrum of reds to yellows. Well, and it's football season. Since the Cody Cowboys' colors are orange and black, you know it's a game day when you see a rather ridiculous number of folks sporting orange turtlenecks, scarves, socks, jackets. Three of the baby kittens are Max-colored (yellow?), two are calico, and one...is bright orange. My nasturtiums finally decided to blossom, adding a few flowers to my orange parade. It even smells orange here now.

It is a delicious time. Cozy and even a bit decadent. An "eating pie in front of the fire sitting on pillows with a cat in your lap" kind of feeling. Not that I have a fire or a cat that I let come inside, but that's the gist of the feeling right now. The fall into Winter. It does feel a bit like a fall - a letting go. Letting go of fresh tomatoes, open windows, the color green, bare feet. See you again next year, toes.

putting up hay

2007-09-05T12:00:00.000-06:00

The hayfield is where most young folk spend their summers around here. I have always been spared this rite of summer thanks to my allergies ('hay fever', quite literally). Sitting out in the meadows, performing choreographed patterns with a tractor all day, may at first glance seem like an excellent way to pass your summer in quiet meditative relaxation. There are a few other factors to consider, however. First of all, the tractor is loud and rough and probably burping smoke. It needs fairly constant maintenance throughout the day and will occasionally breakdown and grind the whole operation to a halt. As a result, neither clothes nor hands can be rid of their grease stains during this time of year. The tractor seat is mounted on a spring to temper some of the roughness, but there is no respite from the elements (dry heat, blistering sunshine, and bugs). Haying is usually a dawn-to-dusk operation, punctuated with a lunch of ham sandwiches and Bush's beans. It is my impression that there are days when everything goes smoothly and perhaps some good thinking could be accomplished, but those days don't seem to be in the majority.

Most ranches around here have a significant percentage of meadow grounds, areas where the watertable is high and the prairie grasses grow tall and thick in early summer. Haying is the process of cutting those grasses, letting them dry in the sun, and then gathering/bundling them together. This hay is then saved for feeding in the winter, when the grass will die back and often be covered with snow. Basically everybody nowadays bundles their hay into bales. Bales can be small square (a 4' long rectangle fastened with wire or twine) or big square (about 4 times the size of the smalls, but similarly rectangular), but most often they are round (cylindrical, fairly cubic in dimension, often held together with a wrap of clear plastic).

Not so long ago, however, there were no machines to 'bale' the hay. Instead it was 'stacked' into great heaping piles. My great-grandfather did it this way, using a large metal cage to hold the stack together and horses to pull the hay up and over, into the cage. Eventually, the horses were replaced with tractors, during my grandfather's lifetime. Remarkably, with the addition of a few hydraulic improvements, this is still the way haying is done on our ranch. We only know of one other ranch around here that still stacks their hay.

There are many advantages to baling, though I can only speak to the obvious ones: it goes up faster and it feeds out faster. But to me, row upon row of perfect, neat saran-wrapped bales look like some kind of si-fi nightmare compared to the old fashioned beauty of stacks - imperfect pregnant mountains of hay. Besides their superior romantic qualities, my impression is that stacks last longer than bales - we fed a few this past winter that were 3 or 4 years hold, whereas bales don't keep much longer than a year. Nevertheless, I am sure that Adam will be switching over to bales within a few years. Making the switch requires a fairly large investment in new machinery, but doing so will provide valuable time-saving conveniences.

Adam and his crew (Jerry, Layne, and Clay) spent the better part of July putting up hay. They put up over 100 stacks and today Adam is working on moving them from the meadows to the stackyards, which basically consists of doing this in reverse.

Most of these pictures were taken one late evening when George was out to help sweep. A larger set of haying pictures can be viewed OVER HERE.

the rainy season

2007-08-30T14:41:00.000-06:00

August went out with a bright yellow swoop. Considered perennial pests to pretty much everyone else, so far I've managed - despite the sneezes - to romanticize the sunflowers that line the road to my home in late summer. Such a cheerful color, so bountifully blossoming, with their faces always to the sun.

August was a month of extreme weather - dramatic thunderstorms, crazy winds, a smattering of hail, glorious amounts of rain. There were tornadoes in the neighborhood, but none touched down in my life. The lightning was another matter, however. During several of the stormy afternoons and evenings, the lightning struck close enough for us to experience the boom and flash simultaneously. It blew out our satellite internet once, and our phone line during a more recent storm. When it strikes so close, the phenomenal discharge of energy is visceral. You can feel it in your chest and it's hard not be stunned for a few moments.

Through the crazy weather, my gardens faired amazingly well. The only casualty was my watermelons, which was a major disappointment - partly because I adore watermelons and partly for more sentimental reasons. One of my most vivid early childhood memories is of my grandfather taking me down to his watermelon patch (planted pretty much right where mine were this year) to thump the melons and pick a ripe one. I was looking forward to connecting that memory to my life here now, but unfortunately they succumbed to the hail - it severed a majority of the leaves from the vines and left the few surviving melons covered in pock marks. The beans and cucumbers also sustained some damage, but have recovered for the most part. As well, my tomatoes were blown over in the 50+ mph winds, but I managed to prop them back up after some vigorious (and belated) pruning and they are producing quite well. I am rather proud of my tomatoes:

Though the storms did cause a little damage here and there, they produced a tremendous amount of rain as well. I think we had nearly 10 inches over the course of the month. That is a LOT of rain for us, and the countryside is greening-up and grateful.

beautiful vitamins

2007-07-16T14:19:00.000-06:00

My sweet corn really took off this past week. It may not have been "knee high by the 4th of July", but it made it "waist high by mid-July".

There will be a torrent of tomatoes soon - brandywines, golden yellow, red zebra, and purple cherokees. (I counted over 150 green tomatoes already set on -yowzas!)

So far we're eating: basil, beans, beets, red currant tomatoes, yellow cherry tomatoes, strawberries, yellow zucchini, and fennel.
Beautiful...and delicious.

The chokecherries are starting to ripen. I'm giving the birds a run for their money, now that I've got the bushes netted. Hopefully I'll be able to pick enough for a modest batch of jelly. Grandma Johnson (as we called my father's mother) always made chokecherry jelly and gave a box of it to each of her nine (!) children at Christmastime. Since she passed away, chokecherry jelly has become a precious commodity in our family. Nothing compares to chokecherry jelly - it is a uniquely tart, yet deep flavor.

such a long time it has been

2007-06-28T09:51:00.000-06:00

I think the uniqueness (and specialness) of this ranch life comes into sharper focus for me after spending a little time away from it. Having just returned from a perfectly fabulous week on the East Coast with nearly all of my favorite people, I am finally finally feeling like I have something to say and share here. I could use the excuse that I was "too busy to blog", which as excuses go would be fairly easy to justify, but even good excuses are lame. And I think my first observation is closer to the truth: it had been nearly six months since I'd left the ranch and I guess I needed a little trip to throw things into perspective.

It has been almost three months since my last post, so I guess I've got a little catching up to do. But I also think 'catching up' is kind of lame. I'll add a few pictures a bit later on to provide some sensation of the passage of time. And like kindred spirits, let's skip the recap and jump right back into the NOW.

The turkeys are mulling under the mulberry tree most days, gobbling up all the berries that the crazy winds have been felling. I have only picked a few handfulls for immediate enjoyment. Also to add a few purple stains to the summer patina of my hands, which I am embarassingly vain about. Dirt encrusted callouses from weeding and hoeing. A deep dark tan highlighting my little 27-year-old wrinkles. Green and purple splotches from pulling grass and picking mulberries. Dirt under my fingernails. I look at my summer hands with secret pride.

The mice have decided to move back into the house. I was hoping the 'men of the house' (of which there are now two - brother Adam who graduated from college and is back for good and our friend Layne who is working out here for the summer) would deal with the mouse problem while I was on vacation. No such luck, however, so I guess I'll dig out the traps and peanut butter this afternoon. The return of the mice coincided rather suspiciously with the recent dwindling of our cat population. I think I counted something like 15 cats at one point and now we're down to 4: Max, Mama, and the two grey kittens. I adopted out the two orange kittens, but the other cats have either moved elsewhere or met their death. I'm hoping Mama will have another batch of kittens yet this summer, but she isn't showing any signs as yet.

Adam must have remembered to water my garden for me last week because it grew beyond my wildest expectations while I was away. My tomatoes are bursting out the tops of their cages, with oodles of blossoms and a few fruits already setting on. My green beans finally rooted in and should be producing soon. The squash are covered in blossoms, though the vines are not too big yet. And the basil could probably be thinned for the first batch of pesto. The corn is only 6 or 8 inches tall - 'knee high by the 4th of July' seems unlikely, but it seems healthy otherwise. The potatoes and anasazi beans have bushed out incredibly. And my fennel is over a foot tall already. I think I'll have one or two more asparagus cuttings before I let them go to seed. It has been SUCH a treat to have so much fresh asaragus. Sometimes I eat it moments after picking, but other times I just trim the ends and set them in a glass of water in the fridge for a few days, until I have a big bunch.

I usually spend an hour or two each day, in the cool of the morning and the late evening, puttering in my garden. I set my coffee/beer on the stump and ruthlessly weed and carefully thin and tend and watch. I am so so delighted by my garden. Also proud and fulfilled and contented. Sentimental though it sounds, I truly can't wait to share the harvests with my family and neighbors.

Also, there is this very big project happening: LINK

I will say more about it in a comment. It is not really happening "On The Ranch", but it is something worth commenting on here nevertheless.

Rise and Shine!

2007-04-03T06:29:00.000-06:00

I have tried not to get too caught up in the 60-degree sunny days we've been having. But I'm not the only one at risk of getting ahead of myself - the trees and lilacs and grass and bulbs have all been going crazy. Explosions of green, pregnant buds. Ironically, this beautiful Spring weather is quite tragic: I can't remember the last time we DIDN'T have a devastating late freeze. [I keep reminding myself that there was a foot of snow on the ground when I came home for Doug's funeral last April.] The more progress things make now, the harder it will be for them to recover from a hard freeze. Sure enough, I awoke this morning to patches of white. I assumed it was just frost but my glasses revealed that it was actually snow.

Luckily, the warm days inspired me to start planning my garden. I hemmed and hawed about where to put my garden. With so many projects planned for the near future, I thought it wise to attempt to keep out of the 'path of destruction'. I finally decided to put it about where Grandma used to have her garden, in a nook between the shed and the pond trees. I can see it from the kitchen window and have spent a few afternoons working on clearing the view on down to the pond. Dad tilled the grass under for me last weekend. It is bigger than I had imagined, which will likely lead to an overly-ambitious garden. But George and Karen won't have a garden this year, so I can justify a large garden somewhat as it will be feeding two households (even though that is really only 4 people).

I ordered seeds from the nonprofit Seed Savers Exchange in Iowa - they collect, propogate, and preserve heirloom and rare seeds. The best part about buying seeds from them is that they tell you the story behind each variety: how this cucumber was brought over from Germany in 1821 and passed down through generations of the family or how this tomato was thought to be extinct and then was found growing in a crack in the sidewalk in Philadelphia or that General so-and-so grew this lettuce and his great-granddaughter gave the seed to the Seed Exchange.

I raided my Master Gardener mother's supplies yesterday and set up some grow lights in my kitchen. I tucked in six varieties of tomatoes, two peppers, fennel, rosemary, and broccoli to start. The buzz of the florescent grow lights is a constant reminder of the stirrings under the soil - I imagine the little seeds slowing coming awake from their long nap, with a yawn and a stretch. Rise and shine! It's time to wake up! Time to get going.

these are for you, sunny

2007-03-19T12:34:00.000-06:00

cuddly kitties, originally uploaded by EMprint.

sleepy face, originally uploaded by EMprint.

patient Mama, hungry kittens, originally uploaded by EMprint.

just a few hours old

2007-03-19T11:57:00.001-06:00

George had his leg x-rayed and it turns out it isn't broken, which sure is a relief to me - I wasn't quite ready to become a full-time rancher. He and mom were out early Sunday morning and I (finally) had a bit of good news to share with them: Mama cat had her babies. She had two grey and two yellow kittens - all healthy and unbearably adorable. And the most exciting part is that two of them have bobbed tails! Which leaves no question as to who the papa is...that ol' rascal Max. I'm like a proud grandma and can hardly wait for how ridiculously cute those little Manx kitties are going to be.

just a few hours old, originally uploaded by EMprint.

hell breaks loose, part 2

2007-03-19T11:53:00.000-06:00

Saturday was another one of those days...

Dad and Jerry went to check the cows and asked me to bring out the hay rig after an hour or so. They were planning to sort some of the pairs out of the 'heavys' into other pastures. After checking cows they were going to come back out on the four-wheelers and wanted some hay on the ground to keep the cows from scattering. I waited around a bit longer than they asked me to and had a feeling I should maybe just wait for them to get back before heading out, but decided to just take my time out to the meadows. There was still no sign of them after I got out there, so I just idled down and waited. After a bit, some cows spooked at the far end of the meadow and I assumed I'd see the pickup any minute. Instead I saw two small figures that didn't look like cows - it was George and Jerry on foot. I drove over to them - they had found a cow who was breach (her calf was coming out backwards) and got stuck in the boggy meadow ground trying to get over to her. They figured it would be just as fast to walk back as to ride in the tractor, so I started feeding hay and they kept walking.

As I was loading another stack, they came back through - George on the bike (four-wheeler) and Jerry driving the tractor. I went back to the house and started some dinner. They went back and pulled out the pickup and started trailing the cow back. Once I heard them return, I went down to let them know I had dinner about ready. As I got down to the calving barn, I heard a hellofa ruckus. The cow they'd brought in was ramming and kicking the barn door and it was swinging out about a foot or so each time. The door was starting to come open, so I was heading over to shut it when Jerry came running around - he told me to stand back, then shut the door, and asked me to make sure it didn't slide open again.

So I stood outside, unable to see what was going on in the barn, and just listened to the crashing and cussing. The situation in the calving barn is terrible - if you need to help a cow with her labor, first you've got to get her immobilized so that she will remain still and can't hurt you in the process. This requires getting her into a 'headcatch', which squeezes along the sides of her neck, so that she can't move forward or back. The headcatch in the calving barn is real piece - I'm not even sure what all is wrong with it, but I know from the choice of adjectives used to describe it that it's far from ideal. The whole situtation in there is just ridiculous and it's practically a miracle if you can get anything accomplished without getting killed in the process.

I just kept listening for their voices, to make sure they were both still conscious. After one particularly loud crash, Dad's cussing went up a notch and I heard Jerry ask him if he thought it was broke. Apparently the cow had kicked the gate and Dad's leg had been hit by the gate in front and a board in back. The impact split the board in two and I could hear that he was in pain. At this point things were at a bit of a standstill, so they hollered out for me to go get the 'hotshot', as neither of them could leave or they'd lose all the progress they'd gained.

I ran and got the hotshot and went around to the back of the barn. Jerry was holding tension on a rope around her head and George was at the headcatch, ready to lock it down as soon as she stuck her head in. I went to the gate and gave her a few little shocks in the rear. She was about as stubborn as the two men trying to help her. We went on like this for a while, to no result. Then dad limped up to the house to look for something to knock her out. Unable to find the right drug, they decided to forget the headcatch and just rope her legs to immobilize her.

Her water had broken some hours before and she'd been thrashing around for so long now, that we assumed the calf was probably dead. After finally getting the cow down, they pulled (and surprisingly, she pushed) and got the calf out. Delivering a dead calf after several hours of stressful laboring and literally risking their lives was a bummer, to say the least.

As they got the cow up and out of the barn, I went in to get dinner ready. Shaping hamburger patties in the kitchen, I was struck by the connection between the raw meat in my hands the efforts we'd just made to save a cow and her calf. Though I knew the answer, I couldn't help asking myself 'Is THIS why we do this?'.

Later that afternoon, I went out to feed hay. Afternoon sun, a cool breeze, the first meadowlark song of Spring, geese and hawks overhead, majestic bare cottonwoods in the meadow with new baby calves playing and skipping around them, their mamas humming to them nearby. THIS is why we do this. The end product of this business may be steak and burgers, but for us, I think these babies are the accomplishment of our year. There is hardly anything more charming or gratifying than a pair - a cow and her calf - walking together, the new calf stumbling behind and running ahead, stopping for a bit of milk, and walking on side by side.

getting to the "all hell breaks loose" part

2007-03-16T09:54:00.000-06:00

When I fed hay last Friday, I noticed a couple of cows that looked like they might be about to calve. I relayed my suspicions and predicted we'd have our first babies by morning. Given my relative inexperience, I'm not sure anyone took me too seriously. Adam and Azure arrived late that night and the next morning Adam found 3 new babies. There have been an increasing number born each day since - I think we had about 13 yesterday. So far everything is going pretty well, but that's not to say there haven't been a few little tragedies.

Adam came in one morning and asked if I could come help him. There was a prolapsed cow and he wanted to try to get her back to the barn. Adam caught her calf and put him in the back of the pick-up. I started driving towards the house and she followed for about 50 yards before collapsing. She was probably in shock and it was an especially bad prolapse, so he decided we'd just have to work on her out in the pasture. Adam knew that there was basically no chance of her surviving, but it was probably for the best that I nievely thought we could still save her. We came back to the house to get supplies: warm water, plastic sheeting, and the medical kit. Azure came along with us as well.

I hadn't expected to have to do much other than trying to keep the cow from getting up. But before long I was gloved up to my shoulders and right in there with Adam, leaving Azure to hold the tail. We probably spent over an hour working on her. She died as Adam tied the last suture. We all three were exhausted, but as Adam said 'we made a valiant effort'. None of us had ever seen a prolapse put in, but you'd have never known that Adam hadn't done it before - he was calm and determined throughout the entire ordeal. Apparently, he'd covered this very procedure in one of his classes the week before - we were all joking that he'd have to go back and tell his professor a thing or two about how it isn't quite as easy in 'real life' as he'd made it seem 'on paper'.

We tracked down her calf and brought him back with us - a little bull, red with a white face: our first 'bucket calf'. By the time I got back from feeding hay that evening there was a second bucket calf. We think she was probably a twin, but her mother only claimed the other twin. It took them a couple of tries to figure out how to suckle the bottle, but now they are both doing really well. And of course they think I'm their mother now, which is pretty endearing.

We lost a calf last night, so they're trying to 'make a match' now. The cow that lost her calf and the calf who lost his mother a few days ago are in 'solitary confinement' together in calving barn now. Hopefully her maternal instincts will kick in and she'll adopt this other baby as her own. Since the cow identifies her baby in large part by its smell, they drapped the hide of the cow's lost calf over the orphan, to trick the cow into thinking it's her own.

coming around the bend

2007-03-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

We're starting to turn the corner, from Winter into Spring. Beneath the blanket of brown, I can feel the stirrings and stretching of green things beginning to wake. It has been around 50 degrees the last few days, the sky has been looking different (goodbye dear Winter sunsets), and it is even starting to smell fresh and spring-y.

Gus woke me at midnight last night - it was warm and raining and smelled like heaven. The spring-rain smell was gone by morning, so I'm glad (for once) that Gus pulled me from my slumber.

The birds can feel the building energy of Spring too. Yesterday a swarm of swallows were fussing all day in a big cottonwood by the pond. I could hear the hum of their chatter even from inside the house. The Canada geese which Winter around here have been loud and fiesty lately as well. And I saw my first robin - a fat lady, high up above the house, surveying the territory.

And soon there will be many more new arrivals. Not only a few hundred baby calves, but a few baby kittens as well. Mama cat is pregnant again, and looks about ready to pop. I've been letting her in the bunkhouse each night in hopes that she'll have her kittens there, since her last batch had such a rough time. We're all anxious to see who will come first - a kitten or a calf.

And speaking of new arrivals, my dear friend Azure is coming today. She will be my first real visitor since I moved here last June and she couldn't have picked a better (busier) time to visit, what with all hell about to break loose. I'm anxious to show off my 'new' life to an 'old' friend. She's a far more talented photographer than I, so there will likely be some great new photos here soon.

success!

2007-03-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

After feeding the cows this morning, I headed back into the stackyard to load another stack. I am starting to get a feel for backing up the trailer and managed to get it perfectly positioned without even losing my temper. Then I got everything set and backed under the stack - practically perfectly. (Certainly not bad for my first time doing it solo, anyway.) I'm tremendously relieved.

the gear shift and hydraulic controls:

a bite of hay and a mess of hydraulics:

new work: feeding hay

2007-02-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

With calving season just around the corner and everyone up to their a** in alligators already, I offered to help out by learning to feed hay. But there were a lot of new things for me to learn before I could actually be of help. So Dad started my tutorial last weekend.

First of all, I had to learn how to drive the tractor with the loader up front and pulling the haysled behind: where to drive (and more importantly where NOT to), how fast to go (how SLOW - never more than 5 mph), when to engage the 4-wheel drive, when to lock the back wheels together (and more importantly when not to), how to use all the hydraulics. Then there is an even more complicated level of decision making: how much hay to feed each bunch of cattle, where to feed it when there is a storm coming, how to feed it when the wind is blowing hard, how to judge if I fed them enough the day before or if I should feed more (or less) next time, when to feed the 'good' hay and when to feed the 'bad' hay, and how to tell the difference between the two.

On my first day we fed everything. It took almost 5 hours. That's a little bigger chunk of my day than I'd realized I was signing up for. We've decided to feed two days' worth at a time, so that will cut down on the daily time investment considerably. And George has been working on all the gates, many of which were constructed in such a ridiculously absurd manner that it took me ten minutes to get everything just right so it would fasten. Plus, with experience I'm sure I'll get more efficient overall and might only need to spend 2-3 hours a day feeding.

But the naive excitement that I had at first is waning somewhat now. I'm still totally committed to getting good at this new job and glad to be helpful. But the anxiety, which I expect (and hope) will diminish with time, is exhausting. The dimensions of the tractor and hay sled, coupled with the incredible weight of the hay stacks is overwhelming. The setup is deceptively fragile - so many hydraulics and such tremendous loads. [Hay is a lot heavier than it looks.] I can't trust my instincts when working at this scale - all the unconscious behaviors gained from 20 years of driving experience must be forgotten, for the most part, and relearned. So far I haven't done any serious damage, but that's not to say I haven't come uncomfortably close to doing so. I'm definitely one of the unfortunate who learn best from mistakes rather than successes. Luckily, a 'close call' will usually suffice.

I'm starting to feel pretty confident just driving and nearly have a sensation for the path and movement of the haysled behind me. It has taken me a while to realize that I need to plan my movements WAY ahead of time. If I turn too sharp, or not sharp enough, it would be possible to get 'trapped' in a position that would require drastic measures to remedy (like having to take out a fence, for instance). The ground is froze hard still, and I know it will drive differently once the frost goes out. I try not to worry, but I'm nervous about getting stuck. This is our biggest tractor, i.e. if it gets stuck we're screwed, because it's going to take something even bigger to pull it out. On the up side, I don't think I'm at risk of becoming over-confident anytime soon.

The one thing I may never get comfortable with is driving on the side of a hill. I sense that my threshold for tilting sideways is much lower than most people. I used to cower under the dash when I was little and dad was driving on steep terrain. And strangely, I seem to have a much higher tolerance for tipping to the left than to the right. My fears ARE somewhat justified - the tractor is pretty top heavy and tipping over would be a disaster. But the bottom falls out of my stomach with just a few degrees of tilt and it really isn't possible to avoid such situations.

The hydraulics for the hayfork seemed a bit overly-complicated at first, but I've pretty well gotten the hang of it now. (There are three hydraulic controls for the loader up front, four controls for the hayfork. plus an auxillary switch that creates several more permutations - hydralics for the haysled and the chains.) I tend toward the (secretly) perfectionist parts of my personality in the task maneuvering the hayfork, which I really need to get over unless I want to spend oodles of extra time just for the sake of aesthetics. There are a few controls that are a bit touchy, but overall I'm pretty decent at forking off the hay. It's actually a pretty fun job, though I think I'd enjoy it a lot more if you didn't have to crane your neck around backwards to see what you're doing.

So I can drive the tractor, I can fork off the hay - sounds pretty solid, right? Except that I'm still completely incompetent in one vital task: loading the stacks. We feed about one big stack a day, so a new stack has to be loaded onto the sled once or even twice a day. I've been lying in bed at night going over and over the procedure (which I've really got to stop doing because these are not sleep-inducing thoughts, to say the least). Maybe it would help if I wrote them out.

Here are the essential steps to load a haystack onto the haysled, IF everything goes smoothly (which, at this point, would basically take a miracle):

1. Pull into the stackyard, driving alongside the stack you intend to pick up, and then pull as far past it as you have room to do.
(If you're entering the stackyard from a pasture where there are cows, you'd best make sure you can feed them some hay beforehand, so that they won't try to follow you into the stackyard. Basically, that would be a disaster - ridiculously hard to get them out again, plus then they'll be on to your stash and more likely to break in later on.)

2. Back up to a stack, being careful to be centered and squared-up with the stack and trailer both.
(Sounds easy enough, but this is my number one weakness. Backing up a huge trailer makes me feel like a total dumbass. I'll think I've got the wheels cranked the right way, but then the trailer will go the wrong way because I'm past the 'fulcrum'. I'm a mess at backing up. A complete disaster. Not only is everything backwards from the way I expect it to be, I'm also facing backwards. And if you think two 'backwards' make a 'rightwards' you'd be SO wrong.)

3. Put the tractor in park and throttle down.

4. Flip the auxiliary switch to the 'neutral' position.
5. Use the joystick buttons (of which there are three, each with two directions) to move the hayfork well out of the way - up and off to the side.

6. Flip the auxiliary switch to the 'forward' position.
7. Push the joystick forward, to change the direction of the chains.
8. Test to make sure the chains are now moving in the right direction.
(towards you, so that they will pull the stack onto the trailer)

9. Flip the auxiliary switch to the 'rear' position.
10. Use the joystick to tilt up the bed of the haysled, until the wheels just start to come off the ground.
(It is very important to leave the auxiliary switch in THIS position.)

11. Flip on the 4-wheel drive lock.

(12a. Go through the remaining steps in your head because they all happen at once, much faster than is really comfortable.)

12. Put the tractor in the A range, if not already, and the 1st speed.

13. Engage the chains.

14. Release the clutch and start reversing into the stack.

15. As SOON as you're under a bit of the stack, press the joystick ALL the way forward, to the 'float' position.
(This will let the bed tilt back down as the weight of the stack moves forward, prevent the back of the sled from digging into the ground, and reduce the strain on the sled hydraulics. Incidentally, this has so far been impossible for me to remember to do, mostly because I'm preoccupied with step 16...)

16. It will be necessary to 'slip' the clutch to keep the tractor moving back at the same speed that the chains are moving forward. If these two speeds do not match up, the stack will come apart. The tractor tends to backup faster than the chains move forward, so you have to watch the front edge of the stack and slip the clutch if you see the front bit of hay rolling back underneath the stack as you go.

17. Stop the tractor once you've got the stack completely on the haysled.
(This you just have to develop a sense for. Hypothetically, it would be possible to stop the chains and the tractor and go see where you're at, but ideally you can just intuit this without the trouble.)

18. Stop the chains once the stack is nearly to the front of the sled.
(You don't want the stack too far forward because it will get wrapped up in the PTO shaft, but you need some 'tongue weight'. This can easily be adjusted after getting out and and inspecting the situation. It seems best to move the chains/stack forward until the bed is completely flat, then move it another foot or so forward.)

19. Take a deep breath and give yourself a pat on the back. (Alternatively, have a swig of whiskey and rest your forehead on the steering wheel until you can breathe again.)

20. With the stack "perfectly" loaded, you can drop the hayfork onto the new stack and grab a bite of hay with the claw to stabilize it.

21. Switch off the 4-wheel drive and head out.
(If you are situated right next to another stack - which is nearly always the case - it is VERY important to pull out straight until the sled clears the stack next to it. Apparently, the pressure of turning too quickly - pressing into the other haystack - could be so tremendous as to BEND the haysled.)

Tomorrow will be my first solo attempt. I drove out to the stackyard this afternoon and Dad helped me load a stack (see the pictures above - not bad, eh?). After I feed the cows tomorrow, I'll load another - by myself.

coon

2007-02-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

I saw this dude meandering across the yard yesterday afternoon. I think Gus must have thought it was a cat until I came out with my camera. Then she realized this was NOT a cat and started circling the stricken coon with her fiercest bark. Even before Gus was on the scene, the raccoon was moving VERY slowly. I'm not sure if it was an old dude, a pregnant lady, or maybe it was sick? In case it was rabid, I made Gus stay inside until the coon had regained its courage and wandered off. I went back out to get another picture, once I'd wrestled Gus inside, and the coon was so still and docile that it seemed like I could have gone right up to it - touched it, even. I stayed a few feet back, just to be safe, but it was pretty cool to be able to get so close.

I woke up at six this morning and caught the brilliant colors of first light.
Still in bed, through the window screen, it looked like this:

the cows came home

2007-02-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

After eighteen years working on this ranch, Matt will be taking another job next week. We knew this was coming, but had hoped he'd be around through the summer at least. It sounds like we'll be able to hire someone on to help us through the calving season, but there will be plenty of work to go around nevertheless. I've asked George to give me the full tutorial on the new tractor and hydraulic hay-fork. I have driven the tractor before, but not very confidently (it's pretty big!), and never with a haysled behind it. The controls for the hay-fork are a bit complicated by the sounds of it, but I'm up to the challenge.

This morning George and Matt trailed the expecting mamas from the East pasture, to back near the homeplace. As calving season approaches, the 'heavys' - cows nearing their due date - will be sorted into the 'heavy lot'. Then we can check the heavy lot several times a day (AND night) to make sure everything is going smoothly. Cows having a calf for the first time can have all sorts of problems as a result of their lack of experience. Sometimes the new mother will reject her calf, refuse it milk, or even try to hurt it. As well, their labor is often more difficult - we'll occasionally need to 'pull' a calf if the mother isn't progressing fast enough on her own.

Normally somebody is assigned to 'night calving', to check on the cows through the night. Since we have very few first-timers this year, we may decide to let them fend for themselves through the night. I've volunteered to check them at least once during the night. I think I could sufficiently identify a problem, but I wouldn't be competent enough to handle it by myself. If need be, my parents might move out to the ranch during calving, so that George would be at hand if anything went wrong.

It feels a bit like the calm before the storm. Soon there will be fewer hands on deck, yet more oars in the water. It is a bit daunting, but I look forward to the bustle of activity and the bawls of the newborn calves.

thaw

2007-02-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning it was just below 0ºF when I went out to shovel the sidewalks. Several nights this week have seen temperatures as low as -10º F. But the warm air arrived with a crash, quite literally, this morning. I was awoken by what sounded like the roof falling in. It was just the ice and snow falling off the tree branches and eaves. A brilliant blue sky was peeking out behind the barn and trees in small patches early this morning. It was 40ºF by 8 AM this morning and the thaw is dramatic as a result.

Though this beautiful weather is a treat, if is there is more cold and snow in store, I would just as soon Winter got it out of his system now. In a few weeks, calving will begin. Temperatures like we've had this past week are so hard on the babies. Imagine suddenly going from your 90º womb to the -10º snowy ground. Our new neighbors have been calving for a few weeks now - I bet those babies are glad for this relative heatwave.

On another note, I have some very exciting news: I had satellite internet installed! 525 Kbs!! Wireless!! I'm always connected - no more modem sounds, and I can even be on the internet and phone at the SAME TIME. It only takes me a few moments now to upload my pictures to Flickr or put up a new blog post. It's miraculous.
I'm back.
It is very exciting.

depth of brown, frosted now

2007-02-14T22:39:00.001-07:00

It is definitely still winter. The depth and vastness of brown is profound. January was a relatively dry month - draining every last drop of color from the hills. But the barren dormancy is actually kind of a relief. And already I can feel the Spring building underneath the brown facade. The anticipation of that eventual explosion of color and life is exciting. I've always appreciated the anticipation as much (and sometimes more even) than the result.

Snow and freezing rain and well-below-freezing temperatures have done a great deal this past week to cover the brown landscape. Every surface of every thing is frosted white and it is blindingly bright outside when the sun finds its way through the clouds. We drove home from Omaha during a snowstorm on Monday. There had been an ice storm the night before and the trees, bushes, power lines, were drooping under the weight of the ice. But it looked SO amazing.

The one flash of color everyday is at dusk. It only lasts for 30 minutes at most, but the blue pink yellow orange blue is a beautiful flourish to end each day.

a pond walk

2006-12-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

Since returning from my last trip, I have made a daily ritual of walking down to the pond. It is frozen now, at least on the edges. My first day back the ice was gloriously smooth and it was such a thrill to slip around on it. I didn't trust it to be frozen clear across, so despite my very strong inclination to run to the other side, I remained near the edges. I thought about carrying a long pole with me, so that if (when) I fell through, hopefully the pole would not and I could then use it to lever myself out. But I decided I should probably just wait until there were some people around to save me.

The normally murky pond, frozen smooth, was crystal clear. Specimen of leaves and tree branches and little fishes were preserved so beautifully by the ice. And trapped air bubbles gave a clue to it's depth, so that I could step confidently. A day or two later, a dusting of snow curtained my frozen window down into the pond, but I am still compelled to walk there daily.

Another snowstorm passed through this week and put down several more inches (enough to close the school for three days!). I have been loving this winter-time immensely. It is a shift of perspective and sensibilities that I haven't had for SO LONG.

The muffling of small sounds by the snow-blanket and the echoing of big sounds by the frozen pond. The contrast between the white and the dead brown, new shapes exposed by the way each branch and stem catches the snow. The soft crunch of each step.

Snow makes me more cavalier - regardless of what may be hiding underneath, I trust the snow to soften my fall and so my movements become more bold. Old paths are covered over, and so new ones are tromped out, via more direct routes, former obstacles now hidden.

Today, the eaves are dripping from each icicle and where the animals and I have stepped, the snow is nearly melted to the ground. The sun is doing it's best, but I think we will still have a white christmas this year.

the [not quite] blue state

2006-11-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

I can't imagine that many people outside of western Nebraska have heard of Scott Kleeb. He works on a ranch in western Nebraska. But apparently he grew up in Italy and recently finished his PhD at Yale on the history of cattle ranches. A gypsy cowboy Democrat - Hallelujah!

And he came very close to becoming Nebraska's 3rd District Representative. He would have been the first Democrat to represent the 3rd District in over 50 years. A few days before the election, I had the dramatic realization that if Kleeb won, I would be truly proud - for the first time IN MY LIFE - of the person representing me in Washington. I can't help wishing that I'd paid attention to the local races earlier, so that I could now feel like I'd done all that I could to help get Kleeb elected.

Here is a link to Scott Kleeb's Declaration of Independence (from special interest groups).

I guess local politics are a deeper level of really living in a place - a level that I hadn't really gotten to until I heard about Kleeb. And the fact that a candidate I was really excited about was nearly elected makes me wonder if I have more in common with the folks I call neighbors now, than I had thought. Perhaps I'm not such a liberal outlier around here, afterall.

snow

2006-10-18T14:15:00.000-06:00

We were dusted with 2 or 3 inches of snow last night. It started around 6 pm and slowly accumulated through the night. I drove home last night after it had been snowing for a while. Snow had already drifted over the hood of the vehicle and stayed put until I reached the state line (and thus the end of the asphalt). Once I hit the washboard gravel road, the snow on the hood started to dislodge. A spray of snow would whoosh over the windshield every few moments, like a distant flash of lightning out of the corner of your eye. When I pulled into the place, a nice young buck deer was standing in front of the bunkhouse. A deer in the headlights, quite literally, he stood for a moment and then ran through the yard towards the pond.

I have been looking forward to some eventual snow, having missed the last eight winters out on the west coast. Nevertheless, I could have enjoyed a bit more autumn than the measly three weeks we've had so far. And considering that there was snow on the ground last April, this could be the beginning of six months of wintery weather (which is a little more than I had bargained for, frankly). Then again, it was 85 degrees on Sunday. I spent the better part of the day taking off the window screens and putting up the storm windows...in a tank top. It seemed a bit ridiculous at the time to be preparing for winter, but such is our wildly unpredictable weather. It really is true what they say: "If you don't like the weather in the Sandhills...wait ten minutes."

I put on my boots and coat, while I was waiting for my coffee to brew this morning, and went outside. I had forgotten the silence that follows the snow. All the noise around you is muffled and you feel so pleasantly alone in the world. The only sound is the soft cadence of your own breath. It felt nice, as did the cup of hot coffee awaiting me inside.

the owl, the coyote, and the star-crossed procupines

2006-10-17T19:05:00.000-06:00

Have I mentioned that there is a Great Horned Owl living on the place? She is so big and so beautiful. Hopefully she'll find a mate and stick around for a few years. Towards evening, she starts to stir, calling and swooping around the yard. Many nights she'll perch on the radio tower, just a few yards from my open window, occasionally ho-ho-hoo hoo hoo -ing as I sleep. Whenever the owl is out, the kitties know to stay hidden. The owl has such an arresting presence - my jaw drops in awe every time I encounter her.

I've also been crossing paths with a coyote lately. I usually see her near the road in the afternoon when I go to get the mail. We both stop and then we'll just sit and look at each other. A couple of times, she was only 8 or 10 feet away. She doesn't seem scared of me, just a little unsure. Once, after a good long stare, she just circled around and laid down in the grass. I try to snap myself out of 'dances with wolves' fantasies, but regardless I consider her a neighbor and feel a bit protective of her.

Driving home late one night last week, I encountered another unexpected neighbor. As I turned over the auto-gate, onto the trailroad, a bushy fluff was bobbing down the road. Once the porcupine heard me coming, her formerly-relaxed needles shot up. I chased her around the pasture for a few minutes, trying to get a good picture. Not having much success, I let her be and headed towards home. But then not a mile down the road, yet another porcupine was wobbling down the trailroad. This guy was about twice as big as the lass by the gate. He was very intent on getting out of the path of my headlights and seemed pretty exasperated in general. In trying - yet again in vain - to get a picture, I managed to chase him off course. Afterwards, I realized that if I hadn't intervened, the two porcupines would've eventually found each other that night. I felt a little bad for thwarting their romantic fate.

And the surprise visitor tonight is...SNOW!!!

first frost

2006-09-24T18:10:00.000-06:00

The last few days have kept me in the warm kitchen, amidst the sweet and spicy smells of Autumn. We had our first frost in the wee morning hours of the 19th of September. We knew it was coming, from the still chill of the air and cool colors in the sky AND the weather report, so the garden's bounty was picked (or covered) to save it from icy death. Most of the garden in town was surrendered to the frost. I picked all the tomatoes and now have a countertop covered in green ones, slowly ripening [stems down is apparently the proper way]. I also cut most of the rhubarb and mom pulled up the green bean plants, to pick inside where it was warm. I wasn't ready to lose my little caprese bed, so I covered it with blankets the night before.

The next morning was chill and sparkling. The spots of grass where the sun had yet to reach were crunchy underfoot, our steps leaving green footprints on a field of frosting. I love these kind of mornings. As all the green turns to brown over the next few months, the white frosted mornings will become even more special, turning the dull brown world into a bright and shimmering (temporary) fairyland.Luckily, I'd picked apples a few days before, or we'd never had gotten everything picked in time. I harvested apples on a warm, windy afternoon - a perfectly Fall activity that was extremely satisfying. The apple trees in town were just LOADED this year and despite numerous batches of applesauce and chutney, I've barely made a dent in their abundance.

My grandma taught me to make applesauce her way (the right way) in this kitchen, on this same old stove that love. She never cooked the apples so long that they became complete mush - and heaven forbid that nonsense about using a food processor to puree the sauce. I detest store-bought applesauce with it's perfectly even consistency - yuck. So I cooked up a few batches of applesauce, using the apples soon to spoil (partially worm or bird eaten), and canned most of it to enjoy later.

Grandma Blondie's applesauce 'recipe':
1. Peel (at least partially), quarter, core, and chop apples into large cook pot. [Note: if you use a fancy apple-peeler - which is a simply fabulous invention - the slices are fairly thin, so don't chop them up too much. maybe only halve or quarter them.]
2. Add 'just enough' water to the apples. Adding water until you can just just barely see it through the apples is a fairly good rule of thumb. Fresher apples require less water, in general.
3. Place on medium heat and cover the top with sugar. I suppose a reasonable ratio of sugar to apples would be 1:5. But remember, you can always taste it later on and add more, so definitely err on the side of too little.
4. Cook apples at a simmer (or a boil if you're impatient like me) until they reach the desired consistency. This could be anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. My preference is to put on a pot full of apples and then once they have reduced by about a quarter or so, I add as many more freshly chopped apples as I can. This way, though the majority of apples may get good and mushy, there will at least be a few that are left more or less whole and comparatively firm. In my opinion, you should cook the apples at least until they become somewhat transparent.
5. Grandma seasoned her applesauce with only cinnamon and sugar. I could imagine that orange rind or allspice might also be nice. Perhaps you have other ideas for inclusions.
6. To can the applesauce, pour the still-hot sauce into sterile jars, [top with a teaspoon of lemon juice, to prevent browning], wipe the rims, place the seal, screw on the cap, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
7. If you can't bear to let anything go to waste (or you're just a food preservation over-achiever) you can save your apple peelings, boil them in a minimal amount of water for several hours, strain out the solids with a cheesecloth, and save the liquid to thicken other jams and jellies with natural pectin (a thickening agent). When you add this pectin to blackberries or huckleberries or whatsoever you wish, you won't have to use as much sugar to make a nice thick jam. [The 'Joy of Cooking' informed me that most of an apple's pectin resides nearest the peel, so this seemed like a nice way to Use Every Last Bit.]
The other hurry-and-harvest item was the grapes in Mom and Dad's yard. We had hopes of making ice wine with them by crushing frozen grapes, extracting only the intensely-flavored sugary parts of the grape and leaving behind the watery frozen parts. It takes a tremendous amount of pressure to accomplish this type of crush, and ice-wine presses being restrictively expensive, we finally decided to just make wine (the regular way). After de-stemming and crushing them all by hand (only about 10 gallons, but still!), I decided that a crusher/de-stemmer would be at the top of our 'Necessary Equipment' list for next year. Since we picked them so late, the Brix (sugar content) is pretty high and they are not as acidic as you'd like. Next year I plan to test the sugar and acidity of each variety continually as they ripen, so that eventually we'll be able to pick each variety at the moment when these two factors are most optimized. I bet there are old-timers who can 'test' for these factors simply by tasting the grapes. I guess that would be the way to turn this 'science' into more of an 'art'.

So far, the Autumn harvest has stocked my pantry with: 11 pints applesauce, 3 pints rhubarb, 1 quart strawberry-rhubarb pie filling, 7 pints apple chutney, 4 pints tomatoes, 1 pint frozen pesto, and 10 gallons of soon-to-be wine
Being in this house this time of year is flooding my everyday moments with memories from my childhood. I guess that I'd never really spent much time in the house during the warmer months, so most of my memories in this house are of the Fall and Winter. Sitting in front of the heater when it clangs to life, turning rotisserie-style to get all warmed up. Planning meals to utilize the oven as much as possible, in order to keep the kitchen nice and warm (I'm discovering a new respect and delight for casseroles...go figure). Sudden enthusiasm for indoor projects like sewing and cleaning. Though I've been living here for four months now, I think this weather will coax me to finally MOVE IN to this house.

Most noteable change in the last two weeks:

2006-09-10T16:50:00.000-06:00

Before I left, we were still having 100-degree days and Fall was just a whisper under the wind. Now the wave of Autumn is breaking all around - it was 40 degrees yesterday, cool and misty. I even had to get out my boots, as my trusty Chacos were just too chilly for my toes. And a sweater and a coat, for walking outside. I am ready for the fall, but regret to have missed the moment of tipping from one season to another. I'm sure we'll still have a few summery days yet, though.

News:

2006-09-10T16:48:00.000-06:00

Max gained about 4 pounds while I was gone.

I harvested a mountain of basil yesterday and made a giant batch of pesto (sans parmesan) to freeze.

The good (not crab) apples have disappeared without a trace - probably the deer ate them while I was away.

The crab apples are ready for jelly-making.

Wild plums are deliciously ripe now and I think I'll start some wild plum wine tomorrow.

cement work

2006-09-10T16:11:00.000-06:00

Before my recent trip, one of my projects was to frame out a new sidewalk and steps from the garage to the back step. It was important to get a sidewalk in before winter, so that we'll be able to scoop the snow off and keep it from getting slippery and sludgy. Cement framing doesn't need to look pretty, in general, but it is important to pay attention to the slope so that rain and snow melt will run off the surface, instead of pooling precariously in spots. The hardest part was driving stakes into the hard ground to attach the runners to.

The cement truck came while I was in California. I stepped back onto this:

Now I'd like to mortar some bricks onto the edges of the steps, to make them more noticeable (and pretty).

here is something fun

2006-09-09T13:35:00.000-06:00

Check out Mike's September 8, 2006 blog entry.

long time

2006-09-09T13:25:00.000-06:00

I am in Omaha. Today I will drive back to the ranch. I have been out in California for the last two weeks, for K & B's wedding. I miss Max and Gus and am worrisome about my basilico and tomatoes. Also there were a few new arrivals just before I left:

Their mama kept putting them in inconvenient places, so I had to keep moving them around. She seemed pretty settled in the bunkhouse until the day before I left, when she moved them to some new mystery location. When I last saw them, they didn't even have their eyes open yet. I am anxious to find where mama has them now. It would be nice if I could get them comfy with humans while they are still just small.

Also Gus and Max found this little guy the night before I left:

If I hadn't been leaving, I probably would have tried to save him. Instead I had to just take him out back in the trees, likely to be eaten.

The intersection of 'nature' and 'civilization' is sometimes so tragic. I am learning the hard way not to meddle too much with the natural course of things...you know, like the Food Chain and the Survival Of The Fittest. I am gradually giving way to certain aspects of the wild - spiders in my bathtub (ok, fine), snakes on my front step, mice in the kitchen cupboards (alright, that's where i draw the line) - but it requires a certain detachment from the fate of the creatures in my neighborhood. It is a different sort of detachment than I experienced living in an apartment building in the city and not even knowing my neighbor's names. It is a respectful distancing, recognizing where an injured, abandoned baby rabbit fits into the scheme of this community - and respecting his role as someone's breakfast enough to keep from meddling.

for lack of a clothesline...

2006-08-14T09:33:00.000-06:00

...an apple tree works just fine.

relief, finally

2006-08-14T08:17:00.001-06:00

I'm mostly pretty optimistic in general, but as each day passed without rain, my hope was drying up. The first day of relief was Tuesday. I was cleaning my studio and noticed a funny little cloud to the East, so I grabbed my camera and went out to take a picture.
Then I turned to the west and saw the thunderhead moving in. The light turned yellow and green and glowing. The towering dark formation was such a contrast, moving in on the blue sky and scattered white wispy clouds. Oh, it was dramatic and wondrous! The first drops of rain were sparse but gigantic. It briefly turned to hail and then settled into a nice downpour.
As the storm passed on, the wind started blowing out of the East and the storm clouds were splendid, lit by the setting sun, luminous in orange and pink.
Mom and dad pulled in just as the rain was stopping, with the new chute (it will get its OWN blog entry). Mom took one look at me and said, "I knew you'd be drenched!". I just can't bear to take cover from the rain - it seems ungrateful somehow.
It has sprinkled every evening since, and though the week's worth probably doesn't even add up to an inch and is hardly going to turn the tides of this drought, it sure as hell feels good.

catastrophic

2006-08-14T08:14:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago the word, for what is now clearly more than a dry spell, was 'catastrophic'. The first time I heard the word, it was almost in a whisper, as if the naming of it would make it more true. Then I started hearing it more often, still not spoken with ease, but with a sense of 'facing the facts'. At one point dad said that if i could conjure up two inches of rain, I could probably retire - he thought he could probably put together a few million dollars from the farmers and ranchers around here who'd give anything for just a couple inches of rain.

The small ponds and lakes around this country are as low as I have ever seen them - many are dried up altogether. Ranchers are working Plan B, preparing for Plan C, and have Plan D in the waiting. The main issue is feed. In a good year, cattle could graze the pastures of the ranch until winter, at which point they'd start feeding the hay that was cut during the summer. With the drought, the pastures don't have enough grazing to last until then. Also as a result of the drought, the hay harvest was smaller than usual. So ranchers have some tough choices to make - buy hay to start feeding earlier (but as a result of the obvious supply and demand, hay prices are sky high this year) or lease ground to move their cattle on once their own grass is gone or work with a farmer to plant a field of feed (turnips are one possibility) to tide the herd over for a few months, or sell cows now and hope for more rain next year. All of these options will result in a considerable loss of profit for the rancher.

The calves were 'preconditioned' last week, which means they were given a round of vaccine to prevent respiratory problems that they're prone to during weaning. Normally, we'd wean in October but waiting that long will be too much stress on the cows, so we'll probably be weaning around the beginning of September. The cows are already carrying their next calf, while still nursing last year's (isn't that incredible!?). The lack of grass could have repercussions into the next generation if we don't cut them a break and wean early.

I can't help but wonder if this is just the beginning of the catastrophe. Is this the beginning, not just of some dry weather, but of a dry climate? It wouldn't take long, in the scope of things, for these fragile prairies to dry up and blow away, taking this way of life with it. Hopefully this it is just a little blip that we must bear and everything will be greener next year.

just a flower, part 1

2006-08-06T15:07:00.000-06:00

Belamcanda chinensis broke my heart.

My grandmother grew so many beautiful flowers. But the heyday of her gardens was about 15 years ago. Then she started "cutting back" - digging up plants and distributing them about the country to friends and folks just getting a flower garden started. Her flowers are scattered all over the Sandhills. But not a single flowerbed on the ranch has been tended (watered, weeded, or noticed) for at least 5 years. So every time I find a flower blooming, it is a little miracle.

And this little lovely was tucked over in the corner of the yard, in the shade of the lilac bushes.
It is called a 'Blackberry Lily' (or Leopard Flower), though it is related to neither blackberries or lilies. If you break open the seed pod, you find a tiny cluster of shiny little black seeds that looks like a blackberry. The flowers and foliage do resemble a lily, though their petite delicacy reminds me more of an orchid. Apparently, there is new DNA evidence that suggests that Belamcanda chinensis is closely related to Iris.

Wind Makes Water

2006-07-24T18:17:00.000-06:00

In the Sandhills, wind makes water.

Beneath these sandy hills, there is a vast ocean of water. The Ogallala Aquifer. Windmills pump the water up for the cattle to drink. Several new windmills were put in on the ranch this summer. Drilling wells is relatively simple here, because there is water underneath us everywhere, sometimes only 20 feet below the surface. But each well needs a tank to hold the water - and building tanks is a bit more laborious.

I went out to help put a new tank in yesterday - the farthest well from the homeplace. It wasn't the hottest day, but there was hardly any breeze, and not a scrap of shade to be found, so there wasn't much relief. The first task was for the tractor: tearing out the old tank and clearing a spot for the new one.

Each thirty-foot tank comes in twelve sections. Each joint is positioned on a block, all of which are painstaking leveled, as it is important that the tank be level. The leveling process was actually pretty ingenious: using the fact that the water level in a hose of water will be of equal height on both ends, the height of each block was matched to a control height, using a clear hose of colored water. The tank sections were edged with a strip of super-sticky watertight goo and then loosely bolted together.

Once all twelve sections were in, the generator was fired up to power the drill. Once all the bolts were tight, we double-checked our levels and made a few adjustments.

Next, dirt was dumped in and smoothed out, to bring the ground level up to the bottom of the tank.

Bentonite was spread over the dirt floor of the tank. Bentonite helps expedite the formation of a mucky impermeable layer of slime. The overflow pipe was set in, so that water wouldn't spill over the edge and erode the 'bank' around the tank.

Then giant single sheet of plastic was laid down, to keep the water from disappearing down through the sand, until the Bentonite sludge forms.

And then the dirt started coming in - to keep the plastic from getting damaged by cattle tromping around in the tank. About six inches of sand was spread around and then more Bentonite was mixed in. Meanwhile, the tank was banked in all around with the loader-tractor.

Ta-Da! Time for a beer.

pretty lights

2006-07-12T09:26:00.000-06:00

We really like pretty lights here in Cody. Christmas lights and fireworks. Both shows get a little bigger every year.
When I was a kid, Ronny, who owns the gas station, had the best fireworks in town. When people started coming over with their lawn chairs to see his show, he decided that we might as well join forces. In the early days, everyone would gather at dark behind the grocery store (which is now the fire hall), bringing whatever fireworks they had, and we would light them all off together.

Nowadays, there is a can in the gas station for donations to the fireworks. Everybody contributes to the fund and Ronny puts together the show. Everyone gathers in the park beforehand for a potluck picnic and then heads out to the football field for the fireworks. My parents' house is on the edge of town, right next to the football field, so we have a front row seat in our own yard. I heard that last year they even had the whole show choreographed to music on the local radio station.

A few years back, Ronny decided to start making some of his own fireworks. So far, so good, I'd say. There was only one 'oh shit' moment this year, when a bouquet of screaming red rockets launched into the air, except for the ONE rogue rocket that went straight into the crowd. No one was hurt, though the fire truck did drive around to make sure everything was alright.

A few highlights from this year's show:
Maybe not too spectacular in the scheme of things, but not bad for a village of 150 folks, in one of the darkest little spots of night on the globe.

Max the Minx

2006-07-11T17:42:00.000-06:00

A new arrival on the ranch:

A little bobcat (or Minx, rather).

I heard him whining at my parents' house in town as we were leaving for our family reunion. So I put some food for him in the garage and told him if he stuck around til I got back, I'd take him out to the ranch with me. He was nowhere in sight when we returned...but then later that evening, mom and dad and adam showed up, with Max.

He and Gus went a few rounds that night and the next morning Max was nowhere to be found. I had heard him howling out in the trees in the middle of the night and figured he was gone for good. But then this morning he was outside whining for attention. He is pretty fierce, can definitely hold his own, but is absolutely starved for attention. Now I have two animals underfoot, following me everywhere...it is kind of cute.

13 days later

2006-07-04T10:56:00.000-06:00

13 days, 20 iced coffees, one white sand Florida beach, one heck of a sunburn, and two grueling days of Greyhound busing later...

My tomatoes have taken root and are starting to look promising. My sweetpeas have emerged in the boxes at the front step. The mulberries are winding down, but still there are a few berries worth picking. The cats are wary of me again. The heat of the day is getting more intense. The grass I 'excavated' before I left, attempting to save it from suffocating under the piles of dirt leftover from all the trenching and construction, has made a glorious recovery.

Gus was uncharacteristically subdued when I got back on Saturday. Then the next day she started coughing. I could tell she was feeling pretty rough, so I sent her in with my folks and they took her to the vet. She as a lung infection. She can't run or swim until she's better, so she has to stay in town for a few more days. I miss her.

With Gus away, there have been a few more visitors about the place. I have seen the wild turkeys every morning, making their way through the yard, with a pause under the mulberry tree. Also, this morning while I was still in bed and before I had my glasses on, I saw a big yellow cat and thought for sure that I was finally seeing the bobcat. But then I saw his long tail and realized it was just a barn cat - a GIANT yellow tom cat. He walked across the yard with hyper-alertness, the sound of my taking a deep breath stopped him dead in his tracks.

And there have been a few other visitors as well - our cousin, his family, and a friend of his. It has been reinvigorating to have six kids running about the place. I've been doing my best to get them covered in dirt and mulberry stains and a few scrapes and bruises, for good measure. We carried an old tank to the edge of the yard, for them to swim in. And put together the old swing-set that was my mothers and then mine.
This is a really good place for children.

out of the romance, deeper in

2006-06-22T08:04:00.000-06:00

A little over a week ago I was likely bit by a brown recluse spider - three times. It looked really bad for a few days there, but now it is starting to get better, so I'm hopeful that my leg isn't going to fall off.

Then last week, a f*ing huge bull snake came into the yard. Bull snakes aren't aggressive or venomous, but they look a heck of a lot like a rattlesnake and can sure scare the crap out of you. [Especially when they are 6 or 7 feet long and as big around as my arm!] Grandma used to always say that bull snakes come in pairs, so I keep expecting to run into the OTHER bull snake.

There has also been a garter snake (or two...or eight?) lurking around the front door. We crossed paths about 4 times on Monday - once I nearly stepped on her with bare feet. I've decided to just start thinking of garter snakes like toads. I wouldn't want to step on a toad with bare feet either, but if I did...oh well.

And then on Tuesday, I was picking mulberries in some pretty crazy wind. Well, technically, I no longer 'pick' mulberries so much as 'make fall' onto sheets spread on the ground. I was climbing up in the tree to shake some of the higher branches and I was being very careful, because the wind was nearly strong enough to blow the ladder (and me with it) over. Safely back on the ground, I was adjusting the sheets and putting rocks around to keep them from blowing away, when the ladder fell...on me...knocking the wind out of me - from behind...and doing a real number on my spine. It pretty much hurts a lot.

Also, I'm at battle, in the kitchen, with MICE. There is some crazy mutant mouse that has started eating plastic and wood - all the wood handles on the knives have been chewed on, the spatulas are basically un-usable and the measuring cups have substantial nibble marks. That's not to mention the foodstuffs they've been getting into...and all the 'tracks' they've been leaving in every drawer and cupboard. So I got out the traps. The first morning after setting them, I was kind of hoping that I hadn't gotten one. I had. But also, one of the traps was clean of it's peanut butter and hadn't been tripped! That was when I started to feel less sympathetic. The second day, I got another mouse. And a different trap (set in the same place) was yet again clean of peanut butter, but no mouse. That little trickster is gonna get it...eventually.

It has also been really hard to be a letterpress printer out here, thus far at least. My studio isn't quite set up and I no longer have a paper guillotine, which has led to a few fiascos already. It has been a little frustrating to try to integrate my letterpress-life with this new ranch-life. And I think I am a little resentful of the printing projects that I have looming -- I need to be planting tomatoes and putting on the window screens and making mulberry jam. I think this place is going to necessitate changing the type of projects I take on. The cottonwood fluff and bugs and dust fly through my studio and I LIKE IT, but I imagine fancy folks won't want cottonwood fluff marks inked onto their wedding invitations.

So yeah, it's not all sunsets and berry-picking and adorable canine companionship. I haven't stepped completely out of the romance. But I have dug in a little deeper this past week or so. Deeper into the muck and darker spaces.

But also...
Yesterday, two of the cats let me pet them. And the toads came out of hibernation and started making their way into the yard (with a little encouragement from me). And soon I'm heading to Omaha, to see my brother, and then to fly to New Orleans! I'm excited to see Sarah, but I really don't want to leave this place and Gus and my baby basilico and the ripening mulberries...or even the little garter snake. By the time I get back, the sweet peas will have sprouted, the tomatoes will have blossoms, and mulberries will be about finished for the season. Everything moves so fast, this time of year.

THESE clouds

2006-06-19T08:30:00.001-06:00

Sunday, June 18th, 9:43 AM

Mulberry Jam

2006-06-17T22:59:00.000-06:00

'The Joy of Cooking' says, "Purple-fruited mulberry trees are best suited, in our opinion, for varying diets--and flexing the muscles--of marauding schoolboys." Cute, Irma, but I'm not so high-faluting as to deny mulberries the effort of jam or cobbler or pie.

I can remember, when I was too small to reach even the lowest branches, climbing up on the fence and balancing precariously to reach the most perfect berry that was just out of reach. They look sort of like a blackberry (no relation), but have only a mild tartness to them. And a different texture. The seeds are more tender and the green stem is actually kind of tasty. The purple mulberry is closely related, but not to be confused with the white mulberry, which is the tree that silkworms feed on. More romantic, but less tasty.

Not all the berries ripen at once, so it takes some work to pick enough to do much with. But I couldn't help myself today...I just reached up for a snack, but then one thing led to another and the next thing you know I had the big ladder out and an ice cream bucket draped over my arm...

I picked about a gallon of berries. There is a real art to picking mulberries. If they fall, they pretty much squish and aren't so awesome anymore. But if they are really ripe, then they will fall off the tree so so easily. So you have to get good and judging which berry is most ripe - and be ready to catch the ones nearby that are also ripe enough to fall when you brush by...I think the next time I pick mulberries, I'll just put down a sheet and shake the branches.

Despite "the Joy's" admonition, I decided to make mulberry jam. I saved a few back for tomorrow morning's pancakes and put the rest in a big pot. Then I covered them with sugar, until none of the berries were showing. (mulberries are pretty sweet, so you don't need to use as much sugar as you might for blackberry jam - maybe half as much volume of sugar as berries) Then I squeezed in the juice of three lemons. I had a couple of oranges to use up, so I grated the rind of one orange into the pot and also a bit of orange juice (honestly, I couldn't resist drinking most of it). I boiled it for maybe an hour. The longer you cook - the thicker the jam will be. A neat trick: put a plate in the freezer, then when you want to know how the jam is going to set up, drizzle a little on the cold plate. After a short bit, the syrup will be cooled down enough to get a sense of how thick it will end up. Once I was satisfied with the thickness, I funneled it into just-boiled jars, wiped the rims, and put the tops on. A little over a half-gallon of mulberries made 3 and 1/2 pints of jam. They are cooling right now. I SO love the 'pop' sound of canning lids sealing down. I have my music turned down low so that I will be sure to hear them pop once they've cooled down enough.

THIS morning

2006-06-15T07:13:00.000-06:00

I don't have a clock, really, except on my computer. I am getting pretty good at knowing the time, when I wake up in the morning, from the way way the light looks. But this morning had me fooled. I figured it was around 6:00, maybe a bit earlier...it was 5:15. When was the last time I got up that early because I was actually awake then and WANTED to?? Um...kind of never.

I went outside to feel the morning, and this is what it looked like:

monday, June 12th, evening

2006-06-15T07:05:00.000-06:00

my neighbors and friends

2006-06-12T15:16:00.000-06:00

Monday, June 10th, 6:48 PM

Gus is my dog. Well, my parent's dog, but she lives out on the ranch with me now. She mostly follows me around. Finds a shady spot to keep watch. At night she defends our home from wild beasts with her fierce bark. (Which is why my parents sent her out here actually - more on that in a minute.)

There are also a dozen or so cats around the place. All descended from our recently-deceased siamese, Sara. They are all beautiful cats. One mama had kittens over Eastertime when I was here to visit. Now they are wild, as barn cats should be. But I'm doing my best to warm them up to me. Slowly slowly they are inching closer. I doubt they'll ever come jump in my lap to cuddle. But they may eventually let me pet them. We'll see. I take them a little cat food and food scraps everyday. And a little sour milk when I have it. I always say "kitty kitty kitty kitty" when I go out there. In that tiny little voice that is reserved for kittens and babies. Hopefully they'll start to associate "kitty kitty kitty kitty" will milk and stop being so damn skiddish.

The other day a box turtle trundled into the yard. The hired man's idiot-dog wouldn't stop barking at it, so I moved him over near the pond. He was pretty shy, but peeked his head out while I was carrying him. He'd probably never covered so much ground so fast before.

Other animals I see everyday: horses, cows, deer (though I haven't taken a picture of one yet, a young doe has been waltzing through the yard in the mornings and I took a picture of her tracks)...

...and mourning doves. I think there are mourning doves all over the United States. But they sound a little different everywhere. Just like humans do. I always notice their cooing, whenever (wherever) I hear it, because it is a sound that I associate with this place so much. I remember mornings in Berkeley waking up to the sound of mourning doves and being transported here - in my hazy waking mind I would half expect to open my eyes to cottonwoods, instead of palm trees. The way the mourning doves sound out here on the ranch is particularly unique. Particularly soothing. I used to think that they were "morning doves" and was always confused about how they got their name, as they were just as often singing in the evening, as in the morning.

There is one other animal about the place that I have yet to see in person: a bobcat. The day before I got here, my parents came out and found the screen to the entryway window all tore up. After talking to Matt, the hired man, it seems that something tore off the screen and drug it across the yard. The window had been left open and the big bag of cat food was knocked over. Luckily Matt noticed that the window was wide open without a screen. He walked through the house to be sure whatever broke-in wasn't still in here. A raccoon would definitely be capable of smelling cat food through the screen and ripping it open to get to it. But there is no way a raccoon could have drug that heavy wood-frame screen across the yard. I guess Doug saw a small bobcat one morning a few months ago, walking out of the barn. So that seems the likely culprit. A bobcat isn't likely to attack a human, unless they are cornered or otherwise provoked. The only worry is that I might not see him and could inadvertently make him feel trapped by my presence. But Gus will let me know when the bobcat is about, and protect me if it gets too close. Good ol' Gus.

magic rain

2006-06-10T09:50:00.000-06:00

Saturday, June 10th, 6:57 AM

The first thing I did this morning (even before making coffee!) was go check the raingauge. Three-tenths of an inch. It doesn't sound like much, but rain is far more valuable than any amount of watering by sprinkler. I got here on Sunday evening (the 4th). There hadn't been rain since I was last here - at Eastertime. That's almost two months! And these sandy hills just don't hold water, so things were really starting to look worse for the wear. As we were slowly creeping over the trailroad with my trailer-studio in tow, I reassured my parents that I would conjure the rain. I had been concentrating on it for a couple of days already and felt sure that rain was on its way. I had imaginings of creating big fires to have a rain-dance around (well, and also to send up condensation nuclei for raindrops to form around). But instead I just unpacked my things and went to bed in my new home. Before I had fallen asleep, the thunder started rolling. The wind came up and lightning lit up my room, light as day. It felt so f-ing good. So good. The best thunderstorms happen HERE. And I've missed them about as much as anything, these past eight years on the west coast. The wind was blowing raindrops through my window screen, but I couldn't bear to close it, so I just let blow through and dampen my pillow. And it felt like a crash-boom-flash welcome home serenade. My first night on the ranch, alone, miles from another human being, I fell asleep so so happy, to the vibrations of thunder and the fine spray of rain on my face.

It has rained here every night since. Sometimes just a quiet sprinkle. Last night with even more dramatic pomp and flash than my first night here. My dad said it was a little spooky - there hasn't been any rain forecasted - but I kept saying it was going to rain, and I haven't been wrong yet. A couple of nights, it seemed as though this was the ONLY place that got any rain. It still hasn't rained much in town, 12 miles to the southeast. And even some of the closest neighbors haven't had rain every night. It is magic rain - that is for sure. And it is doing such good work.

Though I'm not religious, a few morsels of spirituality remain tucked away, from all those years of Catholic Mass. Anyway, I sometimes feel like this magic rain is being sent by my Grandmother. She is pleased that I am here and proud of how I'm sprucing up the place and giving me the most precious gift of rain to help. I'm sure that Grandpa and Doug are also glad that I'm here - and that Adam will be soon. But my mother noted that, though they're just as dead as Grandma, it's the women who have the power. And I agreed with her - if this magic rain is being sent to us, it is being sent by Grandma. She was a strong, artist, nature-woman. And rain was the most precious precious thing to her. Yesterday, dad and I were sitting on the porch having a beer and the flies were biting me. Grandma and I used to sit out there together a lot. And when I'd say "The flies are biting.", without fail, though I'd heard it a thousand times before, Grandma would counter "That's a sign of rain." Sure as hell is.

Mom and I pulled an old table out of the bunkhouse yesterday, to use as the new computer desk. When my parents headed back to town last night I asked them to put it inside, because it was going to get rained on. "It's going to rain" is the new joke around here. Because, as improbable as it is, I just keep being right. And dad said, "I hope so. Let it rain and rain and ruin the damn thing for all I care. More rain!". I expected to see it still on the lawn this morning, but I guess they believed me and put it in.

My dad just called. "How much rain did you get?", he asked with muffled excitement. I guess they got some rain in town too, finally. A big storm swept the whole region. It was Glorious. And silly and self-righteous as it seems, I have a faint sense of pride. As though my unwavering faith in more rain was somehow the condensation nuclei for the raindrops to form on.

Placeholder Posting

2006-05-24T11:06:00.000-06:00

I can't really start blogging on this blog until I've moved out On The Ranch...and reformatted this boring template. I should be ready-set-go in a couple of weeks.