thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com
the pastoral muse: Moonwalking
http://thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com/2015/06/moonwalking.html
Thursday, June 25, 2015. We should all be more comfortable with questions and not so quick to spout our opinions. After all, we know less than we think we do, especially about the biological world. That’s one thing Jack and I share, the joy of questioning. We both like a question that hangs comfortably in the air, causing contemplation, not the rush to an answer. Jack and I sparred over the health of the grass community. I was convinced that the (what I call over-rested) plants would benefit from per...
thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com
the pastoral muse: December 2014
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Monday, December 29, 2014. It’s been great having the kids home. They got in on vaccinating heifers one day and have been helping feed cows. The cattle are in several different groups so we load two trucks and divide and conquer each day. We hosted Christmas dinner with a giant 4-H ham, garlic mashed red spuds from the garden, Becky’s famous corn casserole, and six kinds of pie. Seth gave me a book called Beef, The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World. And of course each life is pr...
thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com
the pastoral muse: November 2014
http://thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com/2014_11_01_archive.html
Monday, November 24, 2014. Same Trail Different Generation. But, still, they were the last holdouts of the neighboring herds, and at the highest mountain pasture, nearly 2000 feet higher than the valley floor. And now they are here, safe and sound, and so are we. Or is it particularly so on a family ranch that the generations seem so close, almost side by side, separated only by the thin thread of time. Monday, November 17, 2014. We knew they needed to come down part way, and it’s not much fun to d...
thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com
the pastoral muse: July 2015
http://thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com/2015_07_01_archive.html
Monday, July 27, 2015. Labor is always an issue on a ranch. Our ranch seems especially so since we do a lot of labor-intensive flood irrigating, put up our own hay and run back and forth from our valley operation to tend cows on our summer pasture in the mountains some 45 miles away. One thing we know for sure, there’s lots to be learned from working on a place like ours. Gary says they should pay us. For the first six months. So with that idea in mind, Seth had a friend in his fraternity that was intere...
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the pastoral muse: August 2015
http://thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com/2015_08_01_archive.html
Monday, August 24, 2015. 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! 8221; I had to ask him, “What about shoveling? 8221; Nope, it all counts as loading. Mark looked askance at the doctor and said, “but that’s my life.”. Then to top it off, Jesse got bucked off a few days after Mark and broke three ribs! What will we do when age becomes a factor? Maybe a makeshift lever on...
thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com
the pastoral muse: Fresh Bulls
http://thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com/2015/07/fresh-bulls.html
Wednesday, July 22, 2015. The rain we had in May means a spectacular grass crop in the mountains. Gary says in his 60 plus years of ranching he’s never seen anything like it. We spent two days this week in the hills and I’d like to spend every day there, soaking in the abundance of it, stowing it in my memory bank for dry years to come. A gorgeous grass year. After scratching in the sagebrush, he calls to the herd. Not exactly eager to be back with the ladies. One captured, four to go.
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the pastoral muse: March 2015
http://thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com/2015_03_01_archive.html
Sunday, March 22, 2015. Seth and Leah spent their spring break at the ranch. Yesterday as we were riding horses through the Wapello sandhills, we joked about their choice of destination during their week-long college vacation. “There was sand, maybe not beach sand . . . but still! They're grappling with those difficult career, educational, relationship decisions that all young people face. Seth graduates in May and then what? I wish we could reassure them that even though next steps seem life altering, m...
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the pastoral muse: Perfect, perhaps
http://thepastoralmuse.blogspot.com/2015/06/perfect-perhaps.html
Monday, June 1, 2015. Mark and I are catching our breath after moving cattle here and there for the last couple of weeks. We’ve had lots of rain and our world is a verdant paradise. After a mild winter and dry March, the moisture came out of nowhere and just keeps coming. Then Anna was perturbed when I had a different idea of how to get some straggler calves to cross the creek. Somehow my long experience with cattle herding (while they gallivant around the countryside) carries little weight in my kid...
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the pastoral muse: May 2015
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Friday, May 22, 2015. We had a lovely weekend in Moscow to celebrate Seth’s graduation from the University of Idaho. The northern panhandle of our state is breathtakingly beautiful. The rolling farm ground of peas, lentils, grain and alfalfa is bathed in shades of green this time of year. And interspersed here and there are standing pines and meticulously kept farmsteads. The “breaks” of the Clearwater River provide the backdrop. Looking over the university feedlot pen of cattle. Saturday, May 9, 2015.
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