Tag: ranch life
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Driving to Work is The Fun Part
It’s been a year now since I got my jeep. I had wanted one for years. Jeeps just suit my outdoorsy, adventurous and four-wheel drive personality. My dad had a 1950’s Willyz Jeep he’d bought when he was in high school. It stayed on the farm for several years and eventually he brought it home…
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Raising Country Kids
Kids raised in the city get street smart. Kids raised in the country get to work. One of the first things my husband and I did to raise our kids in the country was train them for the outside world. Potty training for the outdoors was necessary since a lot of our kids’ time would…
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The Ranch Wife Chronicles: A Fellow South Dakota Ranch Wife’s Blog
At the Women In Ag conference this past fall I met a new friend Robyn, who lives in the opposite direction from where I live, and since we met we’ve stayed in contact through technology. Robyn and her husband live on a ranch in a more remote location than I do, yet she and I…
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Branding 2011
The day of our branding was a déjà vu experience. It was a blustery Saturday with 40 mile an hour winds and bouts of snow spit-balling riders helping us as we rode out and faced the blasts of wind to gather our herd and push them toward the barn. It was definitely not a cowboy hat-wearing…
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What Happens To Kids Who Don’t Get TV Time
When you deprive a child of television, they’ll end up doing stuff like this with their time: This is an example of what my son can do with free time, camouflage duct tape and black electrical tape when there’s no television programming to watch. Evidently holding his water bottle in his hand isn’t as…
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Saving Bales and Then Some
The secret to the success of our marriage and our ranch among other kinds of work is baling wire. Between my husband and me, it takes a lot to hold a ranch together; mostly a lot of baling wire. We fix the majority of our problems with this ranch necessity. We have an old square…
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Everyday is Take-Your-Kids-to-Work Day for Ranch Kids
(Technically this should be posted on Thursday, since April 28th is “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day,” but since Tuesday is the day I post about all things family, I decided to stick with my schedule.) One of the things that my husband and I love about our two kids is their help….
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A Very Taxing Job
Being a bookkeeper for our ranch is not one of my strong points. I would rather spend my time outside dealing with cow-related problems but the IRS won’t let me use that as an excuse. Much to my relief, my husband and I recently got our taxes done and it will likely be another year…
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Binoculars: Our Buddy at Calving Time
Having binoculars is a handy way to check on a cow from a distance that’s calving but we never used to use binoculars much at calving time because we were too cheap to get a good pair. We had several cheapie ones but every time we tried to use them they just frustrated us. They…
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Baby Fix
I don’t miss changing truckloads of dirty diapers, feeling half comatose all the time, and smelling like a dairy barn everyday, but I do occasionally get baby pangs. Spring calving is my oddball way of getting my baby fix. Unlike my husband, I’ve always enjoyed the newborn stage when our kids were tiny and dependant…