That One Summer

It was hot. Now the cool has come and it’s so lovely it hurts. I made a promise to myself to savor every single day in September and now it's the 25th. What?

We’ll remember this summer. The one where Seth broke his collar bone just as we were getting started. The one where Mark brought an orphan lamb home for Emma from the mountains. The year of water curtailment.

Both Anna and Leah were pregnant this, the summer of ’24. We had Ruthie, Em, Louis and Freya and our world felt complete. Then Anna and Cole’s Inez arrived 11 days early (in the car, on the way, to the birthing center) and now this is our new wonderful normal!

This was the year of Izzy, our lively apprentice. She’s tended cattle all summer on the home pastures, started her horse, Vudu, flood irrigated, fenced (both permanent and portable, barbed wire and electric), and destroyed enough weed seeds to fill a bus. She tested her limits of endurance over and over. She still claims that starting the ditches, the heavy pitching of debris carried by the first stream in the spring, was the most challenging job. I don’t know - that was before it got really hot and Izzy melts in the sun. She always has snacks with her and a giant water bottle and often some sort of hydration supplement. She’s been a breath of fresh air when things got stale and bedraggled. She has a ready smile and enough enthusiasm to get you off balance and back in a good mood. We'll say goodbye too soon and wish her God speed.

This was the summer the wind energy developers came for our range. And as a consequence we explored a conservation easement as an alternative. There’s a line in a Brandi Carlisle song: “There’s more than one answer to these questions.” We’ll keep searching for those. We know we love our land the way it is. I have a large watercolor my Mom painted of the Blackfoot River with my Dad riding Buck along the canyon. If there had been wind turbines in my Mom's time, would she have painted them in? I don’t think so. I keep pondering this.

I turned 65, and Mark turned 60 this summer. That’s enough to remember a summer by itself. Mark’s milestone birthday was not much fun. He has much to be thankful for, yes, but it’s tragic to realize he’s leaving his little sister behind. She died of cancer in December and won’t be celebrating any more birthdays with her grandkids around her like Mark did. This is heartbreak.

It’s quiet outside. The birds have mostly moved on or fallen silent. As much as I love autumn, there’s a sadness to it that hangs over the beauty. Something about saying goodbye, about moving on, about missed chances and the unrelenting march of time.   

Emma reading to Shadow

fritallary butterflies on mint, a favorite moment on the range

wild aster in September, important late season pollinator food

watching and listening for pollinators in the garden

Father's day, good Dads all

Izzy and Myrt, good friends

 

Couple Time

Mark and I rarely do couple time. You can’t count mealtime and bedtime. We’re cooking and eating on the first hand, and sleeping on the second hand. Yes, we spend a lot of time together, but we’re mostly absorbed in the routine of living and ranching.

I counted an evening last week as couple time. We drove to one of our outlying fields to check the bonfire of limbs we had burned that morning. The cattle were close by and when we got out of the pickup, Mark said “there’s my friend!” The little spotted calf that we had cared for in the barn came over to greet us. She is still attached to humans and Mark had been encouraging it by scratching her neck and back periodically as he drives through the herd checking health. The calf walked on over and of course Mark obliged.

The sun was setting, the fire had settled, the cattle were content in their new pasture. I was happy to have some quiet time with my husband on the land. The moments don’t come often enough. Well, apparently they come just often enough to keep me committed. For commitment it takes.

We come from committed ancestry. I was rolling out homemade noodles for the branding crew one morning (I never make homemade noodles) when I had a moment. I was kneading the dough and rolling it out on the counter when I had a distinct feeling of my Mom doing the same thing. It was like I was watching her hands and mimicking her movements, rather than actually knowing how to do it myself. It was strange - as if I was accessing my childhood imprints instead of my 40 some years of cooking!

Our young people don’t realize how quickly the generations flow by and how much our present day reality has to do with the actions of previous generations. They will one day.

And it’s not just within a ranching family. It should resonate, but I doubt it does, with newcomers to Idaho. Do they have any idea how our water works? About the vast Snake River Aquifer and the connection between it and the canal diversions the pioneers made in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s? How we really have only one water? And that building large homes with large lawns in the countryside have unintended consequences?

Do any of us realize, newcomers and oldtimers alike, that in reality we don’t know if this is sustainable or not. It was only 150 years ago that our neighbors, the Shoshone and Bannock tribes, lived on this land with little impacts. Now we have vastly changed the character of the land and there’s a very real possibility that the true consequences are in our future. And that change is only accelerating.

I know I’m sounding old, but I have always believed that the wisdom of the old combined with the vigor and optimism of youth was the only way to navigate our world. I was once that vigorous youth, and still feel the same way. I just need to know we're creating a future together, with full knowledge and acceptance of our place here.    

Lots of Calves and Izzy gets a Job

Last year in mid-March our community was flooding. This year the ground never froze, so the heavy snows of the last two weeks are melting into the soil. It makes calving better, but it's still been a challenge. 

We had a relatively mild winter and thought calving would be a breeze after last spring’s horrific conditions. Then it started snowing on the first of March and kept it up with high winds to go with the snow. It was a full barn, cold calves and weary humans for 12 days or so. We thought we were in a vortex repeat of last spring. But the sun eventually came out and we’re back on top of things - well, if we ever are!

Now we’re getting sick calves and Mark is monitoring for that as well as calving issues. Seth and Cole cover nights, plus we have our regular employees that keep the cows and yearlings fed every day. For the most part we feel blessed.

We have a new face, an apprentice, on the ranch for the next 8 mos. Izzy arrived just as calving was getting underway. She gets on a horse most mornings and does Mark’s bidding to fix whatever overnight brought. She helps me in the barn and is game for any task. She’s good with animals, made evident by the fact that she’s already made friends with Myrt, the puppy who is scared of most everything.  She grew up near Lake Erie in Ohio and comes to us by way of the Quivira Coalition, an organization dedicated to regenerative agriculture and which specifically promotes “new agrarians” by matching interns with ranchers. 

This morning Izzy hauled straw to keep the stalls fresh and then I helped her load dead calves into the pickup to be hauled away from the barn. No we don't save them all. She talked about how far she’s come from that girl who declined to participate when the rest of the class dissected animals.  

She meets with other apprentices for a few days next week. We’re anxious to hear how her experience thus far compares with the other newbies. Welcome Izzy!

Calving season is stressful. It just is. We’ve made it through the worst of it with everyone doing their share, and more. I’ve been tending the three little kids so Anna and Leah can move cow-calf pairs into new fields. It’s been fun to have the kids all together and it’s good for them to have to share toys and books. Getting them all on my lap to read a story is an event! They object to the other kid being too close or trying to turn the page, etc. and etc. But they have hugs and kisses for each other when they say hello and goodbye. Taking the good with the bad. Sounds like life doesn’t it?   

Izzy and Jane, a good pair

What we dealt with at the start of calving season
Seth is still in good spirits!

We've had some beautiful sunsets

For the Juncos

The juncos are flitting around my flower bed. I leave it “as is” in the fall, so there’s lots of plant material to sort through. I’ve seen the birds jump up on standing grasses, ride them as they fall to the ground, then feed on the seed heads. Let’s all let a corner of the lawn seed out next summer!

If you go on-line to find out how to attract juncos to your yard, you’ll only learn what type of bird seed to buy, not how to grow real seeds from real plants. Nothing against bird feeders, but think about all the side benefits real plants provide: roots reach into the soil to feed microscopic organisms, blooms feed butterflies and bees, beneficial insects burrow in to the stem to ride out the winter, they provide shade and cover to a myriad of species, and besides that, standing stems make a pretty picture against the snow.

There’s a new set of wind turbines on the skyline. They’re about 10 miles away. When Emma, our almost 3-yr-old granddaughter saw them, she said, “What are those spinners going round and round?” She’s the oldest, so will be the only grandchild that notices a change in the view. The others will think the windmills belong there. Beware the shifting baseline syndrome. We only know what we grow up with. And as each succeeding generation becomes accustomed to a new reality, we collectively lose. I know we need renewables, but let's acknowledge the impacts. We need to be conserving energy at the same time. Where’s the discussion? Where’s the incentive? Conservation has been unpopular since Carter asked us to wear a sweater. 

It's been a mild winter, but wet. Mark's had to take the tractor quite a lot to help the feed trucks get around in the mud. And since we're mostly sand, that's saying something. I hate to see calving season come. Winter, a slower time for us, is slipping away. I’m not like other heroic ranch women I read about that say they love this time of year. Not me. Once the calves get on the ground, it’s non-stop ranching until next winter. We wasted our off-season Netflix subscription and now it’s all over. I’d take February for a few more rounds.  

  

Watching "neigh neighs" graze the lawn

Sunday feeding crew

Sale Day at the Blackfoot Livestock Auction