Love & Coffee served…this week at the Bar MW

Monday could have gone two ways. Either Russ and Morgan were helping friends with their pasture work or we were doing our own. The deciding factor was whether our friends birthed a baby that day. As it turned out, they were working on that! I didn’t realize that and thought when I awoke to a quiet house that I could put on my shirt that said, “People, Ew!” I was going to be home alone all day. Nope. I was wrong. That baby meant we would be working in our own pastures and our friends from Estevan were joining us. Then we got the chance to add other friends visiting the area from Regina to our lunch time experience. So, what was going to be toast for lunch for Kathy turned out more exciting. The Ross family brought dessert. This bountiful tray of donuts which Danika arranged with care and Merrick is bringing to the table, was as much of a treat as the platter of watermelon Treasure was creating in the kitchen at this moment. We don’t often have either!

Steven, Danika and Merrick on their horses to check pastures.

Tuesday meant back to school. This is Morgan before heading off. Coffee Dog might have been distracted by a bird but it looks like she is saying, “I can’t believe it has come to this, I am not even going to look at you.”

After school Morg asked me to come out to the back pen and keep an eye on him while he was working on training a horse. I enjoyed watching his process and even managed to be video taping at the part where he was able to get on this two year old.

This is a video capture, Morg was in the midst of getting on Skywalker, our Andalusian gelding, for its first time. We bought Skywalker a year ago from a friend near Saskatoon. Morg sat quietly for a bit and bent him softly both ways, he got off without incident. It made for a boring video by todays standards, but I was relieved and it made Russell happy.

A treat for me this week was having our friend Lindsay contact me saying she had a cancellation in her schedule and would I like her to come for a deep clean at our place. How long did it take me to decide “YES”…..not very long. Lindsay is great at what she does but also a wonderful person to spend time with. We used to see her regularly but circumstances changed for her and I and we had not seen her magic for a very long time.

Another thing that enriched my week was time with Dawn. She helped me out earlier in the summer and I said let me help you in the garden when its harvest time. We went to the garden to collect some fresh herbs for an amazing looking spaghetti sauce we were working on. Dawn definitely gave me the easy jobs.

Meanwhile in Toronto, Gina was going full tilt and had a week that seems to have created positive momentum going forward. She had a few extremely positive phone calls with us.

Jordanna sent me this picture. She was the biggest sport this day. She came over thinking we were all going out for supper at Chopper K . She got roped into helping with a few ranch jobs before having a very late supper at our table. At this point she grabbed a moment for us, when she and Morgan pulled into the drop off chute at the auction mart. This was the first time that Morgan delivered cows to the mart without Russ. We had cull cows and bulls to sell.

By Wednesday night we had all given up on time and dug-outs making the faint smell of skunk go away from this dog. Morg decided to give a scrubbing with pretty smelling human shampoo a priority. It worked.

When he had the chance Russ kept puttering away at the fencing job he has been working on.

A super exciting part of the week for me was getting to go out for lunch with Liz Griffin. I asked for her to meet with me to discuss a shift in the vision I have for our book we are creating with her ranch photographs. The result: full steam ahead! I have several days ahead booked off for writing and I am feeling so excited!

While all of us having been going several directions for several weeks our hired man Ron has been working on preparing fields for new grass seed. His behind the scenes work has meant I have not seen much of him for a few weeks. I don’t have a picture of his work. So I tucked in this Liz Griffin picture from two years ago. Ron spends so much time in tractors.

Friday meant Steven was back to help the guys with some cowboy work. He helped me too. I was gone over the lunch hour, he brought enough lunch to share that I had buns for Morgan’s school lunch today and lunch for Russ and I today (helpful since I blogged way too long this morning!)

This picture says 6:03am in the stats. Morg rose a little late, had just sat down with some coffee near to where I was doing my morning routine and Russ said, “we gotta go Morg!” I felt for him. However, the crew was due in the yard in a few minutes and Russ hates not being the first one in the barn.

The crew included our friend Medhi, I love the big smile on his face in this moment. He was on call this morning, but our work this day was brief and he figured out a way to be free to come for a few hours. The cows were flushed out of one river pasture and brought back over to another where due to rain the grass was good again. (“For the first time in 5 f’in years,” Russ adds upon review of this.)

The move went smoothly, for the most part, the crew arrived back at the house at 9:28am. They were two minutes ahead of schedule. I on the other hand was a bit late getting brunch on the table. There were some very light hearted moments to enjoy this morning.

This is a Liz Griffin picture from 2021. It illumines what Russ got back to this week…..more baling. He worked on straw earlier in the week and Saturday afternoon went to a field of green feed oats Morgan cut a bit ago. Russ was relieved to find they were finally ready to bale.

I led worship Sunday morning in Carnduff. It was a morning that felt pretty rich in several ways. This picture Russ took has me looking a little odd, but I guess this is me.

I am in charge of the lawn at our place. I have avoided it like crazy this summer. Several weeks without rain made that kindv’e possible. Recent moisture meant I had to conquer whatever was holding me back and get at it. I have wondered if I might be dealing with fear about fire. After the haybine hitting a rock in the hayfield threw a spark that started a fire last summer, with our shop fire this winter on top of that, I am not okay with any risks. I told myself yesterday, “you just need to do 15 minutes.” I know myself well enough to know that momentum kicks in easily for me and there is no way I would quit when the progress was so rewarding. So I tricked myself into getting going and almost 3 hours later I was almost done. (I am amused by the burr on my shoulder and Knightwing’s paw on my chest…..business as usual?)

A hard moment happened when in the midst of mowing I spotted this dark grey plume of smoke. I called Russ who was baling 20 miles away to tell him what I was seeing and took this picture to send him. He asked me to drive down and check it out. If it was a machinery fire in the field there was nothing we could do, but if livestock needed to be moved he wanted to do what he could to help. I drove close enough to discern it was in a field being harvested. I couldn’t slow down my thoughts enough to describe the location to Russ in a way that he could picture whose field it was, the firetrucks were arriving. It was an interesting thing to encounter in the midst of my own fears.

About Jill…..our Jill was quite sick this week and made us all laugh with a video of her Covid testing herself. It was negative. She is better now and has begun rehearsals as part of the vocal section for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which will be staged in Regina at Halloween. Meanwhile at the ranch, Russ caught Jill the cow on video, she is looking great and her steer calf is gorgeous.

Jill’s steer calf.

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