Month: August 2010
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A Ranchwife’s Poems
The book club I’m in meets every month, and oftentimes the summer book club gatherings aren’t well attended because people are busy or gone. At July’s meeting, a few of us met along the shore of Stockade Lake, east of Custer just inside Custer State Park. The host for July’s book club meeting chose poetry for our reading selection….
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Roads Less Traveled
On the road trip my daughter and I took while my son was at camp, I experienced some lost and found moments. My daughter and I spent our time getting lost and making discoveries. I intentionally picked rural routes to travel on in order to get acquainted with other farm and ranch communities in South…
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Fair Enough
Participating in our county fair is fun but sometimes I can turn into the Wicked Witch of the Fair when it gets down to the wire. The weeks prior to Achievement Days, I have to look at or walk around posters and displays propped up on unused spaces during their varied stages of completion. It…
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Cowboy Logic Camping
My husband told our kids once, A campground is about as close to living in a city as you can get, when they mentioned how much they liked staying at a campground. Considering the way we choose to live and the idea behind camping, I had to agree with him. Experiencing the outdoors and connecting…
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Birde Lover
When I saw a bumper sticker that said, Have you hugged your kid today? I couldn’t help but think that’s a no-brainer but did consider whom I haven’t hugged lately. After contemplating those I’ve neglected, I realized the kids’ babysitter needs a lot more appreciative squeezes from me. I don’t know of any ranch family…
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Our Summer Tradition
For most of the summer, my kids have slept outside. It’s become a tradition my son started a loooong time ago. Once the nighttime temperatures in the Black Hills hovers around 50Ëš or higher that’d generally be around the end of June I join my kids. Luckily, the mosquitoes haven’t been a major problem this…
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Amy’s South Dakota/Life in the West Recommended Reads
I’m open to reading a variety of different books, but am most drawn to non-fiction. I’ve read some excellent fiction, but if it’s a really good story, it’s disappointing to me in the end if I have to remind myself that it’s not true. I enjoy history, especially about women, but overall, I just enjoy…
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A Working Ranch/Marriage
The column “What I’ve Learned,” about my sixteenth wedding anniversary evolved while trying to come up with material based on an idea I had to write about things I’ve learned since my husband and I got married. During my free-writing session, I created two lists; one that went into my column and another that was a list…