Every April

It’s blowing from the north now. Mostly we get wind from the southwest, and this spring it's been horrid. And if it blows from the north, you can be sure it will be cold like it is today. Mostly, however, it’s not the wind that’s so bad, but the sand and dirt the wind picks up to pummel us with. Our pasture is covered with a layer of grit, as is the porch and deck, even the coats on the cows. An irrigation ditch that we rely on heavily every summer, and which follows along the north side of our neighbor’s farm, has filled to the brim with sand. How do you push water through that?

It’s discouraging. We’re only one irrigation hiccup away from our own Dust Bowl. Our community accepts the closures of the interstates north and south of us due to blowing soil as an act of God. No, God leaves plants on the ground and roots in the soil. Sometimes, when the mountains have disappeared behind a wall of blowing sand, I envision God as punishing us for our transgressions. I’m sure the folks caught up in the Dirty Thirties used that line too.

We’re on the tail end of calving. Mark has been, as usual, determined to give the herd the best care even if it means not caring for himself enough. Sometimes I have to look the other way. I help him, but it’s never enough. There’s some irony here because as I write, Mark is cooking breakfast! 

My interest in writing this blog is waning. After 10 years it’s probably not surprising. Still, the stories of a ranch need told - our struggles, my indecisions, the thrill of springtime, the agony of sick calves or weed outbreaks. Our story is fragile in a way. As is all our stories if you think about it. I often say to Mark, “What’s to become of us?” (How does one respond to a question like that?)

Will we ever figure out a successful transition of the ranch from Mark's Mom and Dad? When will the younger generation settle on how the ranch fits into their future? And in the meantime, while we’re figuring and re-figuring, the ranch work lays out in front of us like a mountain to be scaled one slow and steady step at a time. Day after day - some happy, some angry, some boring, some brimming with gratitude, some with burden.

And so I write to make it all better. This blog has always helped by turning my attention to the beauty here at home. I can be in the middle of an unpleasant task, shoveling in the heat, riding in a cold drizzle or tallying a stack of debits, and then think of writing about it! I turn my camera to the world around me, find a fat caterpillar, a pink sunrise or a fluffy barn cat and I feel better. 

a typical spring day 

Babes of March

There’s some bald eagles hanging out in the calving pasture. Mark saw up to 14 one day, many of them juveniles. They’re fun to observe, but they make us nervous that they might harass the newborn calves. So far they’re just eating afterbirth.

Birdsong surrounds us now as we go about our work. Starlings are doing acrobatics in great clattering murmurations, swooping and swelling from one cottonwood to the next. Red-wing blackbirds are making a racket in the tules.  And oh, the meadowlarks!

There’s a certain tension, a happy tension, hanging in the balance on the ranch this spring. No, not the annual arrival of a few hundred baby calves; something more profound than that. Leah and Seth are expecting their firstborn any day now. Our first grandchild.

I came upon Leah walking her puppy last evening. She said it was all quiet on the western front and asked how things were in the barn. She is quick to smile and reassure grandma that all is well.

It was early March, 28 years ago, that Anna was born. The snow was deep that year. I had been helping with the calving, what I could, then stopped abruptly to turn my whole attention to a new little life. There’s an entry in my diary a few days before she was born. “We agree that this baby coming just doesn’t seem real.” Anna would bless our lives in all ways. And the years have kept rolling by.

I had a blog written about calving. There’s always a lot to write about. But that’s not the story. Even on a cow-calf operation it isn’t. The story is happening in the little white house at ranch headquarters. The same house where Seth’s great-grandfather was born. The house where now grows a new life, tucked in close to Leah’s heart, just about to introduce his or her self to us. Soon we’ll look into those eyes, wise from the ethereal womb experience. “Oh, so that’s who you are!”

      

Hoping for Snow(pack)

I’ve been cooking like Mom lately. I’ve been bypassing the kale and avocados, cool vegies, and relying more on red potatoes from the garden, my own home-canned green beans and frozen corn from the local truck garden. Not a bad place to start. What isn’t like Mom is the absence of homemade white bread. Mmmmm. 

It’s another sunny day, so unlike a normal January. Last evening I took my dog with me to pile cottonwood limbs for burning later. The moon was out making tree shadows; an owl hooted above us. I kept having to call Dot back from stalking the horses in the pasture. As we walked back to the house, the lights shone through the windows and I knew Mark was in for the night. These moments, so simple and commonplace, fill me up. 

We’ve been together – alone – for quite a few years now. We had a fabulous time with our three kids, but this is so familiar now I can hardly remember the excitement of raising a young family. Oh, the passages of life. 

Other than getting their daily ration of hay, the cattle are mostly set until calving starts. Someone might need some individual attention, but it’s kind of quiet around here. There’s been lots of winters where Mark spends his days moving snow and fighting the cold. Keeping the equipment running and the water troughs open can occupy a rancher’s day in frigid temperatures. This year is different though and Mark has had time to work on other projects.

Though we love the mild weather, we really need more snow. It’s supposed to be cold in January, cold enough to keep things in equilibrium, to destroy pests that shouldn’t overwinter, to keep snow frozen solid, and to challenge us enough to keep us mentally and physically strong. I told Mark that feeding cows this winter was child’s play. No frozen strings, no getting stuck, no snow covered, soppy wet bales.

But, heck, February could be lying in wait for us with its talons bared. February can be like that. 

I think about the phrase I picked up in my reading this winter: “The West was built on the backs of snowpacks.” Deep snow acts as a natural reservoir. As it melts, it trickles into the soil profile to feed springs and rivers throughout the summer. It also feeds the aquifer beneath our feet. The one that we can’t see but that scientists measure, and about which officials educate, they regulate and divvy up. 

Newcomers to Idaho don’t give our precious water a second thought. The tap turns on every morning, a hot shower flows daily, and the crops they drive by on their way to work look green and lovely. But it doesn’t just happen. Those mountains, perhaps the same ones that drew them to our state in the first place, need to be white in the winter for us all to have enough water the rest of the year. 

Snow is in the forecast next week. I promise not to complain about wet gloves on the feed wagon, even if we get stuck.

perfect burning conditions

in their winter coats

The Quietest New Year

Christmas has its charms, but the part I like best is when it’s over. Too many gifts, too much chocolate (I didn’t mean that) and too many expectations. 

Christmas dinner was going okay, a bit harried at the last minute, but it always is, when Mark asked, "When are we going to eat because I forgot to break the ice on the water trough for the bulls?" Could he not see I was pouring the gravy in to the gravy boat and everything was ready? Turns out no one cared that the meal was lukewarm by the time he got back. No one but me. 

We started feeding the cow herd the day after Christmas. Grazing is more satisfying for sure, but there’s something comforting about the repetitive nature of feeding. I love my daily stint kicking off one load to the heifers, especially the part where I get to walk home and leave the rest of the day’s work to everyone else. 

We raise some of our own hay and buy the rest from our neighbors. We provide a service to our community by using forage grown on land that is best left under a perennial crop. Unlike the annuals - wheat, potatoes and corn - alfalfa fields stay put when the wind blows. The air blows fresh and clean across them, the soil safely covered with stubble and securely anchored by deep roots that stretch down in to the soil profile. 

I always love a brand new year and the long nights of winter. A kind of magic happens as the sun goes down and I rummage in the kitchen for our supper. There is finally time to read, to discuss what we're reading, and to explore Netflix and PBS for good programming.

We watched a documentary on Lewis and Clark on New Year’s Eve. I got out the atlas and followed their journey up the Missouri. I was especially interested in how the land looked before we Europeans changed everything. The narrator spoke of the Great Plains as a Garden of Eden, with wild grazers spread across a sea of grass. He spoke of the diversity of native peoples the men encountered, the peaceful Mandans and the fierce Lakota Sioux among them. It's breathtaking to consider the impact we have wrought over these scant 200 years since the Corps of Discovery opened the doors to the northwest in 1806. We see Lewis and Clark as heroes of course, but something about that image is flawed isn’t it? It was the beginning of the end of a way of life for the natives and the wild ecosystem in which they lived. 

I’m reading Irrigated Eden, by Mark Fiege, the story of Idaho’s Snake River Valley and the farmers that diverted its waters to grow crops starting in the late 1800's, not so long after Lewis and Clark made their journey. The book talks of a now disturbed hydrologic cycle and the unintended consequences no one could have foreseen. It describes the romance of green, flood irrigated fields surrounding tidy pioneer homes, a vision that hits very close to home here on Pratt Ranch. It tells the story of farmers, when water supplies drew scarce, banding together as partners to store, distribute and share the precious resource. This message is more important now than ever. As Idaho's population grows, the climate shifts and agriculture must respond, it's obvious that it will take all of our wits, science, and collaborative efforts to navigate the next hundred years of irrigation policy.  

Long winter evenings are for adventuring. For learning new things, pondering old things, and conjuring the vision of a new year. 

a typical morning

still grazing before Christmas

2021 begins

a christmas story

We got the cows home. It feels good to have them on good feed and water after their long walk down from the range. And even though they’re working on pastures and heading towards the haystack, it’s nice to have them close by again. I put the lunch cooler, the walkie-talkies and the travel thermos away for the winter. After traveling up and down on washboardy roads all summer, we’re happy to stay put for a few months.

We had beautiful weather in the mountains, sunny and cold, no wind. I had the pleasure of a long leisurely walk behind the herd with my dog keeping the stragglers caught up. Not so leisurely, however, when we got near home and the cattle spread out on fall grain. There was much running, hollering and dogging before we got them lined out again.

When we got to the valley we put the herd in "Lorin's corral," a sturdy set of pipe corrals built by a good cowboy and neighbor who's been trailing cattle in Heaven for some years now. He lives on in perpetuity for all the ranching outfits that use his facility when heading to and from the range. We put them through the pens, sorting off the young cows expecting their first or second calf and anybody that wasn’t bred or that needed attention. The older cows went to one pasture, the younger cows to another. 

Mark is amazing. He knows these mothers so well. Better than he knows his own wife. They’re so much easier to read and understand! Each one has a unique ear tag so we can all identify them, but Mark's presence means something more, much more, as each one gets the attention they need. That will be Mark’s legacy, a set of cows that got the best of care.

The kids came home to get Christmas junipers last weekend. Leah, who as a kid enjoyed fresh popcorn and hot cider at the local tree lot, brought these two treats along for us all. How fun is that? She's in for it, though, because now it's a tradition. Callie stuffed two trees in her PT Cruiser to take back to Boise, Cole and Anna got two as well, one for Cole's Mom, and Seth and Leah chose a small one for their cozy home. Mark and I always get a big tree over my objections - too tall to decorate. And here it stands, waiting for him to lug in a ladder to get the lights on. He's in charge of watering it, by the gallons, he says. 

Our tree feels and smells so familiar. My folks always had a juniper at Christmas time. The trees were free for the cutting and beyond plentiful in the mountains, even seen as invasive now. Mom had blue lights with star-shaped reflectors surrounding each bulb. And those little carousels hung nearby that twirled from the heat. Remember them? And real-life socks hung on a real-life fireplace. Oh, but the magic of it all. 

But here's the deal, wasn’t it just Christmas a few weeks ago?

      

three years makes a tradition

 

winter quarters during the homesteading era

off the bluff while getting trees

on top of my world, no cows up this high

starting towards home

It Could Happen!

I had a blog all started about the mild November we were having in the mountains. How I had walked a tributary of Meadow Creek looking for brook trout spawners and, not finding any, had decided it had been too warm and sunny yet. And how, at the spring, the water bubbled up sending concentric circles out in a delicately repeated pattern. Then it all ended abruptly with snow and high winds. We've been in the hills every day since, gathering stragglers, breaking water, convincing cattle that there was indeed grass under the snow and to go eat it already!

Yesterday we trailed the herd to a lower pasture and will get another couple of weeks before walking them down to the home ranch. I checked the cabin before we left and discovered someone had broken a window out and put a big hole in the card table. Luckily the window was a slider so I brought it home to get fixed. It takes two weeks to get a replacement and I doubt if the roads will be passable by then. I hate to think of the window being out all winter. We have a saying for this kind of disappointment in our fellow humans: “people are the worst.”

I’m loving it at home as the days get shorter. This time of year a homemaker’s thoughts turn to tending the wood stove, comfort cooking, and wading through all the domestic jobs we neglected while the weather took us outdoors. But the outdoors still beckon. I took the dogs for a walk tonight and smelled the sweet fragrance of damp cottonwood leaves and tromped through lots of sumptuous stockpiled grass. The buckskin and browns of the horses mirror the now muted colors perfectly.  

I keep thinking about a CD that Mark and I listened to as we traveled back and forth to the mountains. It’s a book called Outwitting the Devil by Napolean Hill, which was written in 1938, post WWI and in the midst of the Great Depression, and while Hitler was gathering power in Germany. The author is interviewing the Devil. It was chilling to listen to the Devil explain that the ability to think for ourselves is his greatest enemy and how through propaganda the public is manipulated thereby creating a perfect void for his influence.

As a counterweight, I just finished the book, From What Is to What If, by Rob Hopkins. It’s a hopeful book, so fitting for today with a pandemic upon us and an election under threat. The author admonishes us to cultivate our sense of imagination, and that it is, in fact, the only way to find solutions to complex, nagging, seemingly insurmountable problems.

It applies to our world, our local communities, and right here at home on the ranch. How does it look and feel if, as Hopkins describes, “it all turns out OK?” Well, for the ranch it looks like a great quality of life for us and our kids AND the work getting done. For our community it looks like neighbors protecting neighbors by using Covid spread prevention practices without a fuss. For our world it plays out with a united front against climate change which reduces fossil fuel use AND leads to better land management that cycles carbon in healthy ways.  

I wrote a quote from the book that encapsulates this crazy notion that what we can imagine, we can create. I wrote it on our whiteboard in the kitchen, “I bet it can be done, though.” 

November colors

good grazing on fresh feed

This grass fills me up

2020 Friends

Yes, I feel apprehension before the election. And I’m concerned and feel compassion for those who will be affected by the outcome more than me. But meanwhile the sun is pouring in our south-facing windows, I just dug some gorgeous carrots out of the garden, and the calves are home on green grass and staying healthy. Today I'm content. 

We weaned the calves in a two-stage process. Mark set up corrals and a chute in the mountains and put a crew together for Sunday. First we separated the calves from the cows, then one-by-one worked the calves through the chute to give them a vaccination and a multi-vitamin shot, and put a plastic flap in their nose to keep them from sucking. We let them back out with their Moms to stay together but get weaned off milk for four days. Then we went back and hauled the calves home in time to get the flaps taken out by dusk. They were put straight out on pastures with abundant drinking water nearby. 

Using nose flaps is rare in our area. It’s our third year of trying it. Most ranchers wean cold turkey like we did for many years. It's really dependent on each ranch's set up and what works for them. Remaining curious and willing to learn new things is always a good idea and we like the results so far.

We couldn't have done it without an army of friends, our faithful employees, and lots of family. The kids came home to help and Anita prepared beef soup for lunch. I heated the soup in a cabin nearby so we could get out of the wind to eat. And wind there was. At the end of the day we looked horrible. Our eyes were gummy and part of the crew still had a long drive ahead of them before starting their work week on Monday. I made a note to round up some goggles for next time.    

We say thank you to our helpers, but it always seems so inadequate. Our friends give up their free time to essentially do slave labor for fun. Good grief.  

I had "none jobs" (a kid saying) after lunch, so I cleaned the cabin with a squirt bottle of cleaner someone had left behind and a couple of random paper towels. Lots of sweeping of flies from the carpet. I could watch the crew working cattle, but be inside where it was quiet and warmed by the wood stove. 

I usually worry a lot before big cattle days like this, but managed to stop myself this time. I just put my trust in my husband and went with the flow. After nigh on 30 years of marriage and working together on the ranch, I’m sure Mark just shakes his head. What he doesn’t know is how many crises I've averted by worrying ahead of time!

Trust, faith, calm - such good attributes to keep in mind as we enter a winter with a pandemic raging, civil unrest simmering, and an election where 70% of people think that if their guy loses doomsday will ensue. If you’re worried, my best idea is to do something that fills you up today. Contribute to your community. Get outdoors and revel in autumn. Think hard about your principles, write that letter to the editor, attend your next zoom call with a smile, and get on with it.   

our dream team

a dirty windy day