Still Here!

Friday morning: April 5th – With my coffee beside me I am geared up to check in.  I have hardly blogged this winter.  I have thought about it a lot of times but time has felt hard to come by.  I am hoping to do better.  The fact is, it feels like I have hardly been home and a side truth of that is that I am counting my blessings. 

Any day now our first calves will start coming.  The first shift of our visiting calving crew have already arrived.  My daughter Gina is here for another week, when I take her to the airport I am picking up Anja our friend from Switzerland, when I take her back to the airport in mid May I am picking up our friends from Nova Scotia who are coming for almost two weeks.  We have friends and family to share this whole season of ranching with.  I will be cooking a lot, I am looking forward to being home and focused.

What shaped the first quarter of 2024 was travel.  Russell volunteered to serve on a forum organized by “Farmers for Climate Solutions.”  That had me joining him on three different workshop trips, he had meetings in all three prairie provinces.  I will say more about this in another blog.   Travelling with Russ was fun but more than that it allowed me some experiences I would never have had otherwise.  The best part is we met some really nice people.  

Last summer I let my mind wander into the territory of my hopes and longings for my life.  I wrote it down.  I want to travel was one thing that emerged clearly.  I guess a person has to be careful what they wish for because for a while recently it seemed I was never home.

A quick summary of the last three weeks will give me a jumping off point for future blogs and if I never get back to them you will know that I am resting!

On Tuesday March 12th Russ and I headed west.  We carpooled with a kindred spirit from the workshops Russ was attending.  We had a very fun roadtrip that found us safely in Kananaskis by nightfall. 

Saturday March 16th had us heading home, we had the chance to give a friend from Calgary a ride to Regina, which meant our car was full and our trip home felt like a party at times.

Before heading off again I had two days at home with some church leadership and two important meetings. 

Morgan and I left Carnduff late on Tuesday the 19th in order to be on a plane out of Regina early the next morning.   After a long travel day Wednesday we found ourselves walking into the night air outside the airport in Lexington, Kentucky. 

Morgan and I spent the next four days attending an event at the Kentucky Horse Park called “Road to the Horse.”  It was an awesome experience.

When the event was over we had to get home so were on a plane out of Lexington early on the 25th.   I had booked a decent flight schedule but it got changed after booking and it turned out we had an eight hour layover in Atlanta.  Morgan and I found our way out of the Atlanta airport, got in an Uber and headed to the Martin Luther King Centre.  This was a major experience for me.  To be explored more in a future blog.

We landed back in Regina at 1:15am on the Tuesday.  I had a hotel booked and we crashed for about six hours before Morgan headed back to Carnduff on his own.   Russ came to Regina by mid afternoon, we met one of our oldest friends for supper and then attended the musical that Jill was in “The Prom.”    It was a great show.   The next day we spent time with Jill and did a bit of shopping.  We were home in time for a later supper with Morgan.

Some sad developments at home meant that my schedule filled up quickly for the first six days back.  Good Friday, Easter Sunday, three funerals and a board meeting for the music festival meant there was no down time.  Towards the end of all that Gina flew into Regina and Jill drove her to the ranch.  We had some family time.  Jill went home last night.  I am struggling with extreme weariness but I have so many things to think about. 

 

I have a personal standard for myself that a blog has to be interesting from a human or ranch perspective and/or funny.  A recitation of what I have been up to is not interesting in my mind.  Its just a list until the meaning of it can be unpacked.  I really hope to poke at the pieces of whats here and share a few stories in the weeks ahead. 

In the meantime, writing a full five days later now, I have this to say. Wow, am I tired. The demands of travel and leadership, but moreso I think just being out of routine has me feeling really disoriented and wow can I nap!

Our first calf arrived a couple days ago and there hasn’t been anything else since. Once things start I have the feeling we will be having lots of birth announcements. The first cow to calve this year was “Butter” and her calf was born on the day of the eclipse, so we named it Eclipse.

Here is a quote that fell out of my funeral notes as I put them away today, it ties up alot of what my recent days were all about.

Anne Lamott said: “Easter says that love is more powerful than death, bigger than the dark, bigger than cancer and bigger even then airport security lines.”

See you soon!