Tag: ranch life
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Fall Vaccination Day
The night before we worked cattle, my husband and daughter went to the Father Daughter Ball. Working cattle on Friday turned out to be a decent day. Fortunately, temperatures were in the 40’s and the sun peeked out a few times. The temperatures on Thursday only reached a high in the mid-twenties and it snowed…
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Getting the heifers and bulls moved
Getting the heifers moved turned out better than expected. We ended up borrowing the neighbors’ panels and set them up alongside the fence instead of using the corrals that belonged to the neighboring old bachelor where the heifers spent the summer. The temperature on Friday was in the mid 20’s so the family put their…
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Bootism Disease
Bootism Diseasolumn for Oct 11-17 My family has a genetic disease called bootism. It’s a rare disease that affects only ranch families, but knowing that there are other families like ours all over the country with too many boots is reassuring. The disease can infect a person at infancy, as it did with both of my…
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A Lot of Junk Drawer Miscellanea
While escaping the craziness of opening weekend of elk season for the SD Festival of Books in Deadwood, it turns out I didn’t miss anything exciting. A few tags were filled but the report I got was that those who went farther south of Pringle to hunt down in the Minnekahta area between Hot Springs…
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What Really Counts
People who spend any amount of time around a rancher should expect to be asked to count something sooner or later. My rancher counts things like money, days, years, bales, elk and cattle. After selling culled cows at a sale barn, he counts each day that the expectant check hasn’t come in the mail. Once…
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Just Leave Me in the Dark
I’m left in the dark at our place a lot, but it doesn’t bother me. I’m comfortable there. Once my husband and I started a family, we outgrew our tiny two-bedroom home and my father in-law agreed to switch houses with us. After moving into the home where my husband grew up, the sodium yard…
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Livin’ on the Edge
Ranch work isn’t as life threatening as say, working on an Alaskan king crab fishing boat but the way my husband and I go about getting our work done could be considered dangerous. We’ve become somewhat desensitized to the risks we take. We put the thought of consequences we could suffer later out of our…
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Seein’ Stars
The story I’ve been putting together for next week is about sodium yard lights, er, the absence thereof. I thought it was such a co-inkydink (our slang term for coincidence) that I wrote about that particular topic the same time my family and I all slept outside and watched for shooting stars organically, as in…
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Ranch Life Suits A Gemini
Horoscopes seems hokey to me, but I find ranching and my Gemini characteristics perfectly suited for each other. Both are chock full of the unexpected and our unpredictable lifestyle is well-matched to my mercurial nature and penchant for adventure. Work on a ranch takes place outside and requires a lot of physical activity a Gemini’s…
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Grease Rags
Wednesday my husband had been up at the hayfield fixing on equipment all afternoon after he made a morning run to Rapid City to get parts first. When he pulled into the yard that evening I walked out to the shop to find out how his day went and if his fixit work put him…