Mindfulness

September slipped away last night. That was fast.

I read that if we want time to slow down (don’t we all?) then we need to quit rushing from one thing to another, stuffing more and more into our lives. Instead we should practice being in the moment, mindful of, and grateful for, the world right in front of us.

In hindsight that is just what Mark and I did when we drove to north Idaho to see Anna and celebrate with other aggies at the University of Idaho’s annual Ag Days festivities. It was a good excuse to give Mark’s wrists another few days to heal as well.  

The campus was wrapped in its early autumn beauty, the locusts lining sixth street in full yellow color. We attended the full slate of College of Ag activities which coincided with Dad’s weekend and state FFA competitions. Mark and Anna now have matching Gamma Phi t-shirts! We explored the pre-game event and even lucked into a couple of passes to get into the VIP box at the football game which meant food and drink and cushy seats for two.  

We planned to stay through Monday night so we set a leisurely pace. As I look back, it’s the details that come to mind. Anna brought a friend along one morning and we walked through Idler’s Rest nature preserve. It’s only 35 acres but a real gem. It’s a shady foray through cedars, pines, and firs (yes, Mark knows the difference) in stark contrast to the manicured dry farms stretching out in every direction. Both environments are majestic in their own way.  

I took in the Farmer’s Market in downtown Moscow on Saturday morning. Purple eggplants and squash of every color, fragrant basil, cheeses, something for everyone. My favorites were the end-of-season flowers.  I bought  a bouquet of everlastings to take home to our host for the weekend. Only $6.00 for a generous bunch of statice; what a buy! A loaf of artisan potato bread and berry cream cheese croissants rounded out my armful of goodies

We enjoyed the lunar eclipse on Sunday, as our hosts, Karen and Carl, prepared leg of lamb. But it was the supermoon, the harvest moon, that was even more spectacular the next night as it hung in the treetops over the rolling Palouse hills. Wow.

The drive home was mindful as well. We usually hustle home, but instead of a marathon drive we took a detour to visit the Big Hole Valley of Montana. Thirty years ago the meadows this time of year would have been filled with dozens of loose hay stacks picturesquely surrounded by pole fences. Now only a few stalwart ranchers continue the tradition. The beauty of the stacks, made more so by their rarity, was not wasted on me. We even took time to walk out across the meadows and see a beaverslide, the implement used to create the stacks and its accompanying framework up close. 

They say ranching is an art, I think they were talking about the haystacks of the Big Hole.     

Sizing up Ag

I picked apples today from an old tree in the middle of a cow pasture. I didn’t need a ladder because the loaded branches hang down to picking height. The apples are huge, a handful each. And there’s hardly any worm holes! Whatever the variety, it is a hardy one for sure. It might not win any modern taste test, but will do nicely for apple pie filling. 

We graze cattle in this pasture spring and fall. And during the winter I maneuver the hay truck around the tree feeding the herd. I think they call that “layering” enterprises. The pasture abuts a busy county road.

We live in farming country and the roads are buzzing with trucks hauling produce this time of year. This evening it was potatoes and chopped corn silage. As the big trucks rumbled by, I wondered if they noticed me immersed in my bucolic enterprise of picking apples. One might say it’s “Big Ag” meets “Small Ag.” One might also say that those two are at odds with one another, but I hope not.

I read a headline the other day, Big Food is Losing, Penberthy, E. (2015, Sept.). Sound Consumer. But as I read the article, the main point was that consumers want to know what’s in their food. Large manufacturers and mega-restaurants like McDonalds and Subway are looking for alternatives to artificial ingredients. Subway, for instance, will cease using artificial yellow dye on its sweet peppers and will use turmeric instead. (I know, right. Why not just let them be their natural color?) Anyway, I think it’s a good thing. We could all do with more real food. And yes, small farms probably do more to promote real food, but does big food have to lose for little food to win?

In our community, whether big or small agriculture, we all provide needed diversity. If you enjoy wildlife, you’ll appreciate that pheasants and partridges find brush cover in our calving pastures, and that song birds build nests in the trees along our canal. Pavement to pavement tillage provides little in the way of wildlife habitat. 

On the other hand, our community relies on these large efficient farms for economic stability. When cattle prices are low, potatoes, milk, sugar beets or wheat revenues are hopefully high, which means money still flows into our ag-based economy.

We ranchers benefit from our farming neighbors by purchasing wheat straw, an affordable feed source for cows, on off-years in potato rotations. When the dairies can't use rained on hay, the beef cows clean that up as well. 

Small hog and sheep producers put great 4-H livestock in the pipeline and provide quality local meat for the community. We have a couple of fantastic local truck farms where I pick my own freezing corn. Stopping by Grove City Gardens with your kids to gather vegetables for supper is an honest education for everyone.

Community Supported Agriculture doesn't only mean a box of vegeys a week, it means a community thankful for the many attributes the diverse world of agriculture provides

Can we decide to set aside food fights? Big or small, industrial or artisanal, local or imported, they all have their attributes and their drawbacks. Let’s keep the conversation where it needs to be - sustainability, soil health, clean and healthy food, strong economies and education.

Sounds like a good discussion to have over pie!

Heroes

The last of my hero uncles died last week. Wallace, at 86, was the youngest of five brothers who lived their lives within 10 miles of one another and had their own mutual admiration society.

Wallace (Wally) lived a short walk from us. He was a happy, friendly sort and the most outspoken of the five sons born to my grandparents. He was a farmer and a rancher like his dad. He lived with vigor and passed with honor.

Eldro (El), the eldest and a dairy farmer, lived the furthest away and we didn’t see him often, not near enough to suit my Dad. Eldro wore a small mustache and had the tall carriage and warm manner of his brothers.    

Vincent (Vin) lived just a mile away. He was a dear man, a little more fun loving than my dad and could be counted on to pull our sleds behind his pickup on snowy winter days and even when he was an old timer in our eyes, actually got in the pool with us on our annual Downata Hot Springs excursions!

Douglass (Doug) was equally dedicated to family and having no wife or kids himself, he cared for our grandmother Mimi until she died at age 89. He was a man of the land as his brothers were, but showed it by growing flowers instead of crops. He alternately teased and spoiled us.  

My Dad was the quiet one, devoted to Mom and us kids, he passed his unobtrusive ways on to my sisters and me.  

They were all tall, dark and handsome. They loved us dearly and we cousins (there were 18 of us) grew up in a cocoon that we didn’t fully appreciate until much later when we were making our way in the world.   

When my husband Mark learned of Wallace’s death, he said, “and then there were none.” And none seems forlorn indeed. My cousins and I look at each other now, a little shell-shocked, to consider that it’s our turn. How do we measure up? Do we accept the mantle of family leadership with any semblance of the respect we had for these men?  

I’m not sure, but I think I can see marks of their integrity and honor in my cousins and siblings. Cindy showed her calm and resoluteness during the final days of Wallace’s life and throughout the funeral. Ginger fusses over the extended family with love, handing out heaping doses of guidance. Paul is soft and kind, putting others ahead of himself. Janene, my oldest sister, is a model of service. And that’s just for starters.

We’ll do okay, we had good teachers.

Doug, Wallace, Vin, Eldro, Fred
Movie star quality - right?

Sharing a laugh at their childhood home
Fred (my dad), Wallace, Vin and Doug
already missing Eldro

Simply September

The change is upon us. Cooler weather is here to stay.

During the summer we leave our windows open all night. We close everything up tight by 8:00 am and the house stays cool all day. But by August’s end the windows stay shut. One chilly morning seeing Mark frying bacon in his winter coat was the last of that!

Am I the only one who has a running love affair with September? Hardly. But that’s what it feels like - a ranch wife's month of treasures. It’s the time of year when the contrast of green and gold is our world. Irrigated pastures with their shiny leaves of regrowth lopping over in rich clumps, abutting mellow cured-off grasses along the perimeter.  

The wind blew all day yesterday. Afraid that the ditches might be filling with tumbling mustard plants, I made a run just at dusk to check the pipes for clogs. As I walked the ditches carrying my pitchfork, the sky over the Blackfoot River Mountains streaked pink, then lavender, then as quickly faded to gray, just for my viewing pleasure.  

The bright yellow blossoms of tansy that line the ditch banks are turning to rust. The garden is overrun with weeds. The first spud harvester of the season hogged the roadway on my way home. Rabbitbrush dot the sandhills with color. It must be fall.

Mark and I spent a day in the mountains checking cows and monitoring the stockwell. The word “shameful” came to mind seeing all that grass and knowing our ranching neighbors in Western Idaho are suffering the effects of wildfire.

Our son, Seth, spent a couple of weeks working from home at his new agriculture consulting job and helped us on his off-time. He helped me gather cockleburs in the Gardner ditch one evening, joined his Dad and Grandpa working on a new water project, and came to our rescue when we desperately needed his young, strong muscles to clear a plugged irrigation pipe.

He loves September as I do and hated to leave to head back to South Carolina where he’s based temporarily. We made a quick fly-fishing run to the south fork of the Snake River one evening. I read a book on the bank and he lost himself on the river. Quiet and oh so Septemberesque.

Maybe “shameful” isn’t the word for it after all, maybe “blessed” will do.  

cocklebur bouquet

a tough clog

tansy, cures everything from worms to gout! 

rabbitbrush in bloom

  

a cowboy and a fisherman

Couple Time

We thought when Mark got his cast off it would mean he could use his wrist again. Nope, not so lucky. The doctor put on a splint and gave him explicit instructions. “No loading!” I had to ask him,  “What about shoveling? Pushing? Pulling?” Nope, it all counts as loading. Mark looked askance at the doctor and said, “but that’s my life.”

And it gets worse. His other wrist needed a splint too with the same accompanying instructions. The doc thinks it’s a partially torn tendon and may not heal as well as the other fractured wrist, especially if he isn't careful to “not load” it.

Then to top it off, Jesse got bucked off a few days after Mark and broke three ribs! Groan.

So anyway, we’re getting by. The biggee this time of year is flood irrigating. I've been going with Mark on his route every day and am getting pretty good at setting dams and pulling ornery tins. I do exactly what he says. (For a change!) Each ditch has a different character. Some are silt and you can just tuck the edge of the dam in with a dull shovel. Others are flat and wide and pure sand and you need to dig all along the edge and place shovelfuls of sand on top of it. Some are too deep to stand in and you have to straddle them. And to replace the tumbleweeds of this spring, we've now got tumbling mustard that collects in wads that need pitched.     

It’s obvious the job is geared up for a strong man, not a woman. At least not a woman of my bench pressing ability. I'm sure the newly anointed women Rangers could do it without a hitch, but not me. I get it done, though, with some cheaters along the way. I can usually use a lever apparatus of some kind to get the tin headgates open. To haul dams I hoist one end on Mark’s shoulder and put the other end on my shoulder. That works pretty good.

I enjoy most of it. Flood irrigating is such healthy work. It's an obstacle course - jump ditches, climb sidehills, lift with your legs, tug, pitch, shovel - and lots of walking. There's pheasants to flush, deer to spy, weeds to pull and abundant grass to wade through. We took a walk through one of the windbreaks one evening eating buffalo berries. It's a great way to see the ranch.

It’s been an eye-opener for both of us. We depend on Mark’s physical abilities to run this ranch. What would we do if he had been hurt worse? What will we do when age becomes a factor? It makes you feel pretty vulnerable. Of course everyone who gets hurt or has other health issues finds out the same thing. We take our health for granted.

Mark is realizing (I hope) that some things he puts up with need a design change. Maybe he could re-do the concrete checks so that someone of lesser strength could operate them? Maybe a makeshift lever on every sticky headgate would be a good thing. Maybe the dam poles don’t need to be so “dam” heavy!

The other thing that weighs on my mind is the number of hours Mark puts in doing physical labor. He’s got so many gifts to share with the world. Is shoveling for hours a day worth the cost? Is our old-timey method of irrigation still viable? It's lo-input yes - on everything but the operator. These are tough questions we grapple with, then fall comes and the urgency fades until spring.   

I know it’s been hard for Mark. He walks around in a gloomy state, but mostly I’m feeling blessed. He didn’t get hurt worse. His concussion has healed. What if his wrists hadn’t taken part of the brunt of the fall? What then?

We got this.

yes, it held

Back to School

August is an annual reality check. All those projects you had planned for the summer? Well . . . they probably didn’t get done and by now you know they won’t. Does it really matter?

On the other hand, some things do matter. Mark and I have a goal of “wine at nine” on the terrace. It doesn't happen often, but it’s grand when it does. We look at Higham’s Peak in the distance and watch the willows sway against the breeze. We might hear the squawk of a rooster pheasant or the scree of a hawk. Last night a great horned owl swooped down and gathered herself onto the limb of a cottonwood. And if we stay late enough we'll see bats dart under the eaves.

It’s a monarch butterfly year. And hummingbirds! They love the coneflowers and salvia. The songbirds are dwindling for the season. That makes me sad.   

I’ve been canning green beans. Mark and the kids love them. They’re comfort food in our house and make beef and potatoes a real winter meal.   

Our hired boys - young men I should say – have gone back to college. We hated to see them go. Anna came and went, only spending about a week at home.  

I remember this feeling.

It happened every year after the 4-H fair. We had been super busy helping the kids with their steer and horse projects. They had been leading their steers, grooming and bathing them, feeding them twice daily. They were working their horses regularly. The saddles had been soaped and oiled, the blankets washed. They had gone round and round the arena practicing for the horse show. Then the fair was over and the steers were gone and the horses back in the pasture; their shiny coats and blackened hooves dusty once more. School was just around the corner. A few more days to relish . . . and cherish.

Mark helped Anna change the oil in her car before she left. Someday hopefully a good man will do it for her, but for now she’s learning about self-reliance and the value of maintenance – to secure the drip pan before she loosens the plug, to write down her mileage for future reference.

Then she was off. Headed down the gravel lane once more. 

It's not that August is necessarily melancholic. Bittersweet is a better word. It's abundant and rich with the season's bounty, but poignant in its transition between now and what comes next.  

The next day Mark and I spent the day in the hills, just the two of us. We didn’t have much to talk about, pretty quiet. We brought two bulls home, put out salt and marveled over the amount of feed in front of the cows. We came home to rain.

There’s a line from the movie On Golden Pond that fits August pretty well. Katherine Hepburn is talking to her daughter Cheltzey, played by Jane Fonda. She is scolding her, admonishing her (a woman of about 50 herself) to finally forgive her 80-year-old ailing father played by Henry Fonda. Hepburn makes it clear that she needs to grow up and leave her childish behavior behind. 

“Time marches on, Cheltz. I suggest you get on with it.”

Re-reading grandma Mimi's 1958 self-help book 

I love seeing these guys

green bean extravaganza

sans coveralls

it's quiet all right

July Photo Opp

The weather continues to be unsettled - thundershowers, hail, or like today, sunny, muggy and warm. We’ve had nothing as hot as the first week of July. And of course these lovely Idaho nights are cool and comfortable.

We’ve been focused on Mark for the last week since he got bucked off Jane in the mountains. She touched a hot wire with her nose and went ballistic. Mark couldn’t get a good hold on the reins and scared her further by being in and out of the saddle while she jumped. A concussion and one (maybe two) broken wrists later he is healing little by little. Our hired boys only have a few more days with us so Mark's getting all the good out of them he can.

Before Mark’s wreck we had a quiet day hosting a photographer from our marketing cooperative, Country Natural Beef. Lynn Howlett, http://www.lynnphoto.com, showed up one afternoon while Mark was cutting hay. Not thinking swathing was much of a photo subject, I sent him over anyway, only to have him get some great shots of Mark holding a baby meadowlark that had flown out of the hay. Mark picked up the youngster and tucked him in a windrow a few rows away and under cover from the circling hawks. His mother was chirping nearby.

Then the next morning Lynn accompanied us to move the replacement heifers to a new paddock. We stopped at grandma Bonny’s on the way to get a generation skipping photo. She’s a good sport, even though at 96, not exactly excited to pose for a photograph. 

What we ended up with was a typical ranch day's smattering of images. Cattle and horses, grass, a little wildlife and some simple folk that live on the land. Images made memorable by the hands of a professional. I wasn't so sure to begin with though.  

Mark has taught me (is teaching me still) that good enough is good enough. His favorite line is “things are seldom ideal.” Might as well get on with it. And that’s how it was with the photo shoot. I would have preferred the kids were home as they make such beautiful, youthful figures on horseback. I would have preferred to travel to our range ground to get some spectacular scenery as a backdrop. Of course I would have preferred looking twenty years younger too, but that didn’t happen either. Still, the photos are fun, and in 10 years when the faces of family and our animal helpers have changed, they will be priceless.   

When we finished, I grabbed Lynn’s camera and did a turn-around on him. He called it “a gift” because he’s always on the other side of the lens.