As Far As The Eye Can See

Wer’e Gonna Have Babies

Sunday morning we were up pretty early in order to be ready for the 9am appointment we had with our veterinarian. I hated to have a full day of work booked on a Sunday, I wanted to be at church, however we had a few details come together dictating that this was our best day to tackle the job at hand. The biggest detail was Dr. Marcel was available but also we had a great weather forecast. So there we were. It meant Russ, Morgan, Laurie and Dawson being saddled up by 7:15. They left the barn just before 7:30 after waiting for the sky to lighten enough to do their job. The job of rounding up the herd out of the pasture just north of the barn and getting them into the corral was really successful, the guys were done by shortly after 8 and able to come in and have a cup of coffee. I was working through a list I had made in order to be ready for the day. By 9:30am we were rolling, Dr. Marcel geared up in an outfit that protected his clean clothes underneath, with a set of high tech goggles over his eyes that were connected to an ultrasound wand. We were “preg checking,” thats ranch talk for having a veteranarian assess each cow to see if they are bred. Its an internal exam, aided by the ultrasound wand, the outcome of these assessments helps us to make some decisions. We had over 400 cows to check yesterday, so we knew it was going to be a long day.

If you had to guess how long this procedure would take what would you guess? It is amazing how fast it can go really. Dr. Marcel’s part can literally be done in as little as five seconds per cow, when he isn’t clear on what he is seeing an internal exam using a gloved arm is neccesary. That makes it a bit more time consuming. Still our rate yesterday was about 80 cows per hour. Thats slow by rancher standards. There are some ranches that can accomplish twice as much in an hour. That is hard to imagine. We have a pretty good system. Ron, Morgan and Laurie kept bringing cows up from the corral system and getting them into what we call “the tub”, that leads directly to the alley and that leads directly to “the chute”. Dawson and I ran the alley. Dawson keeping the animals moving up and me applying a product called “Boss”. It prevents lice. We used to apply the now famous “Ivormec” but for the last couple years have found it to be losing effectiveness. Once a cow advances out of the alley and into the chute it is secured there using hydraulic controls that Jillian runs. She is calm as a cucumber doing that job. I am not. I make mistakes and swear and its not pretty. Not Jill. Once the cow is into the chute, Marcel can do his job, meanwhile Russ administers a dose of Vitamin A&D using a needle and Jill scans the Radio Frequency ID tag it has in its ear and gets the cow’s weight registered to the computer. (There is a scale imbedded in the floor of the squeeze chute). When all that is done she tucks her scanning wand under her armpit and uses the hydraulics to let the cow out. If the cow is bred its straightforward, an open cow goes to a different pen and that takes more effort and time.

There are two moments of conversation that happened yesterday that for me illumine some of the inside drama of this day. Before we started yesterday we had a few minutes of standing about while Marcel was getting suited up. Laurie was near me and I guess there was something I just needed to get out in the open, so I started a conversation by asking him a question. “Laurie, what’s your stress level like right now?” He shared that it was very low. He was kind enough to return the question. I shared that I was pretty stressed, that I always worry about injuries and that of course I am worried about the results of this day of work. What I mean by that is, “What will Marcel find?” Its a case by case accumulation of information that tells an extremely important story. Five years ago we checked a herd of 101 heifers, female calves we had kept back for breeding stock and we expected to be bred for the first time. A few of them might have been expected to be open, but 51 were open. Something had gone wrong. The memory of that experience, of Dr. Trevor doing his exam and his voice calling out “open” over and over again has definitely imprinted on Russell and I. The stress of that time was compounded by the fact that I found my mother in law the next morning, not breathing, despite CPR she passed away. So………..”preg checking” is a loaded event at the ranch. It was clear that as I named my worry Laurie acknowledged he held that worry too, but from a much different perspective than Russell and I did. It was good to get that out in the open. Maybe I opened this conversation with Laurie instead of Russell because I could sense Russ was already carrying much stress. He later told me that his worry was at an elevated level this year. The drought conditions mean that the feed situation for the cows is different, they are eating baled crops along with their usual hay, they are not as fat as usual and Russ worried that feed changes would have an impact.

It was with a heaviness of heart that we received the results of the very first cow Marcel checked. She was open. The mind goes a bit nuts. But the second was good, I calculated to myself, “okay we have a 50% rate of conception”, the third was good, “okay Kathy, 1 in 3 this is getting better”, the fourth was good, “this is a positive trend”, and so it went. I think Marcel got to at least 20 cows before he had another open one. There was a trend to be seen, it was our older cows that were mostly coming up open, that is to be expected. It appeared that so far everything in our breeding year is normal. The level of relief this created in Russell and I, and I think everybody was palpable. Like a wave coming over us. Exuberance was able to rise up, and despite a somewhat serious feeling at the chute I really enjoyed being a goofball when the times called for it. I didn’t get to see every tag as the cows passed by my station but when I did and it was a cow I am connected to I knew to be watching for the result. So when Kathy went in, I was listening carefully for Marcel’s words. It was what we hoped for, after those five seconds he so quickly could determine she had a calf and called out “good”, I sang out “Kathy’s having a baby, Kathy’s having a baby!”, and I did that when Linda went through and Liz and Tanya and a few others that I was especially excited about. I took note of Mary, she had twins for us this year, the ones you might remember me chatting about on the blog. We named them Jesus and Bob. Bob was bottle fed for a long time and then adopted on to a cow named Freckles. Jesus stayed with Mary and did very well. Jesus has not yet been marketed so is in the corral with our other heifer calves. Russell has enjoyed telling me of the walks he has through the heifers when he sets his eyes clearly on Mary’s child, he comes back and tells me, “I saw Jesus today.” We believe that God has a sense of humor and this use of names is within the bounds of respect. Anyways, good news, Mary the cow is with calf. There are a few other cows that I was wondering more closely about, hope, mercy and love are all with child, I am especially glad about hope this year. Justice, unfortunately, is open.

The second bit of conversation I referred to at the start was once again with Laurie. At one point early on, when he had come forward to the area of my station, I had the chance to follow up our earlier conversation. I turned my back on the chute and said, “Laurie, its looks like wer’e gonna have some babies!” He didn’t hear me at first. I got to say it again. “It looks like wer’e going to have some babies!” A warm smile came over him, that smile he has that tells you he cares. It was nice to see and he said, “yep looks that way.” That seemed perfect. The chance to vent some of my stress and then check in about it again when we had a good news story to consider was helpful to me. I suspect its a matter of getting the message and living the truth that we are not alone.

So in this crazy year that is full of heart stopping developments and news that causes alarms and so much hard stuff generally, we are thankful for the things that go right. For us, this year, at this point, its our preg checking story. We are starting to feel bold, starting to hope, hope is always a good thing.

I don’t have very good pictures of this day, I took a few, Jill took a few and I have given more glimpses of the crew through a couple of Liz Griffin photographs from earlier in the year.

Marcel with his gear on. There are fancy ultra sound viewing goggles under that protective bit of plastic.

An October picture taken of Laurie and Russ. Laurie excels at teamwork.

A July picture of Dawson and Russ. The focus on Dawson’s face is typical of him. He rarely makes mistakes when working with us at the chute. I have to confess there were times this work day when we were slow to get a cow up the alley. We got visiting and got distracted.

Russ with a syringe full of Vitamin A & D. He is ready to roll.

Jill getting a selfie with the cow that is named after her.

With my “drench gun” in hand, standing at my station, ready to put a dose of “Boss” down the cow’s backs. And for the record, wearing Russell’s hoodie. Just the perfect weight for this warm winter day.

Genetics

It was a pretty exciting day around here yesterday. Well not really, but somehow there was a sense of arrival in the air. Just as Ron, Russ and I were finishing up lunch, which if I may brag, included some pretty delicious biscuits, the doorbell rang. Our friend Wes had pulled in the yard, the dogs didn’t make a peep, so we were surprised by that bell. Wes had come to deliver the three bulls we purchased on Sunday afternoon. Lunch was cut short a bit as Russ and Ron scrambled out the door to see to the delivery. Russ had a pen ready for them and they got there without a hitch. The pen for the new bulls is directly across from my kitchen window, so as I puttered at a few things in the afternoon I could check up on those bulls and I did. At one point I could only see two of the bulls, I was not too worried figuring the third was out of sight just behind the hay bale. When I told Russ about it later he said, “yep, there is no way you are missing one bull, you either have all of them or none of them.” That got me thinking, “yes, right, if one guts a fence and escapes the other two are not going to be eyeing the hole in the fence and saying to themselves, ‘we better not.’ They are going to go. So, its nothing major or new but it was a bit of a reality check for me. Kindv’e like the reality check I needed at the bull sale, the reminder to keep my hands from waving in the air.

There really was a little bit of a feeling of arrival in the air. These big guys are so essential to our success, they are the Daddys of the herd and so in a sense, in hoping for the best with these guys we are affirming that this is day 1 of what we hope is a long story. This morning we did some brain storming about names. We try and link our bulls names to the ranch we bought them from. For instance, we buy a lot of bulls from McMillen Ranching, so we try and have names for them that start with Mc. We have a bull named McFlurry for example. We bought these bulls from Wes, so we decided we needed to give them names starting with W. Their tags have not been made yet but the list in front of me includes Wendell, Warren and Wonka (as in Willy Wonka but we can’t use that because Morgan has a cow named Willie, named after Willie Nelson). We need about 28 bulls to keep our herd bred, we now have that many but will need to buy a couple more for spares. In the spring they will all get semen tested to ensure they are sound for the breeding season.

The bulls and I. Here is hoping we travel a good road together.

Speaking of offspring, genetics and the like……our kids each have brought us interesting things to sort out and marvel at lately. They are all at such dynamic stages of growth.

Gina has kept in close touch this week, there is alot going on in her world. She has shared video clips from class work they have been doing and it really is something to see her in her element. She has stage presence, I can’t explain what I see or sense but those words will have to do, she has stage presence. What was a bit exceptional about our call today was the main topic of conversation, her mentorship. As a 2nd year student she has to create a piece of performance art, others at the school audition to perform that piece under her direction. The theme of Gina’s is stage combat. Yes thats right. This peace loving family has churned out a girl who likes nothing better than to perfect the art of well done combat on stage. She has a faculty advisor, a specialist in the art of stage combat and as it turns out the founder of the school. She is thrilled to be working with Jacque and told me with great delight, “I need 3 swords for the number I have created, but Jacque got 4 out of storage yesterday, so now I have four swords hanging in my locker waiting to be polished and used. I am a bit worried about sitting around the school polishing swords, that seems a bit out there.” The conversation and what she described amused me greatly. This is not something I could have predicted. I am thinking this is some of her Kyle genetics unfolding but I don’t know enough to say for sure.

This is a screenshot from one of the videos that Gina sent us to look at. That is Gina on the front left.

Jillian is bouncing back after a bad cold. She is resilient in so many ways but these days with all their weirdness have not been easy on her. One thing I love about Jill is that no matter how much she might not be on top of the world, she always always always has a space in her heart for our creatures. In the mornings when I go to make sure she is up sometimes she is just emerging from sleep, and out of that place of slumber she is always grateful and eager to welcome whatever four legged creature comes with me. Last week Jill stayed home while we went to a football party, she made supper and set the table for herself, Coffee dog and Buster. That marked the beginning of Coffee’s training to have a spot at the table and mind her manners. She is doing quite well. This is not Kyle genetics unfolding in Jill, at least as I know them, it is definitely her Bayliss side and it is lovely.

A tender, everyday kind of moment between Jill and Coffee.

As I started this blog last night, Jill and Morgan arrived back after Morgan’s basketball practice. Jill stopped into my office for a visit. I asked for her permission to post the picture of she and Coffee, Buster hopped up on her lap, she said to me, “you could include this moment.” I got it.

The picture that Jill sent us at the party, filling us in on how things looked at home. Coffee is a bit of a splashy water drinker it appears.

This morning was a bit tough at our house. Frustration levels were high as time was short and contact lenses were fuzzy and it meant for some frazzled moments before everyone was out the door. As I stood in the porch holding Morgan’s lunch kit and coffee to go, I was waiting to bid him good-bye. I watched him pull on those big size 12 cowboy boots, pull on his hoodie with his last name boldly printed across the back, put on his necktube and his jacket and top the outfit with his cowboy hat. As he got close to being all ready, despite the frazzled feelings in him and between us he said, “thanks Mom.” I think I said, “you bet.” I was standing there marveling at his growing up self. I passed him his lunch kit and his coffee and he said it again, a bit brighter in his tone, “thanks Mom” and then “have a good day Mom, love you.” I could see how he was making the shift from “feeling private and trying to get my act together Morgan”, to “ready to be out in the world Morgan”. It seemed an act of resolve to be kind, positive and grateful. My heart was stirred. I wandered to the back of the house to say to Russ, “I can’t even imagine what my Dad would think of that boy. He would be gaga for him.” Russ was nowhere to be seen. Amid the hullabaloo of the contact lenses he had slipped out and said goodbye, but I didn’t hear him. So I just pondered these things in my own heart. The height that Morgan has acquired is pretty clearly my Dad’s genetics being seen in this cowboy. It is a delight for me. An affirmation that “yes, my Dad lived.” Pretty much everything else about Morgan seems to be a direct result of Russell’s genetics and leading. They have been mistaken for each other in recent times. But more than the physical stuff is the character and skill set. And then there is the coffee. Morgan has taken his cue from his Dad and likes coffee, likes it instant and likes it triple strength. Apparently today he didn’t get much coffee enjoyed on the way to school and then left his coffee in the car when they got there. He had a caffeine withdrawal headache all day. Jill chided him later, “why didn’t you come and get me, I would have given you the keys so you could go get it. ” It seems Morgan has not discovered and therefore been drawn by the joy of iced coffee, yet.

Thats Russell in front and Morgan behind. The fact that needs clarifying says alot. This is another great Liz Griffin photograph.

Morgan, Coffee and I made an incredible batch of sugar cookies a couple weeks ago. I don’t know what we did right. Morgan was fun to work with.

Genetics are fascinating. As ranchers they are a matter of business and strategy. As parents I feel like it starts with “I wonder” type statements, “I wonder what would come from you and I creating children.” It becomes statements of “I wonder if I will ever sleep a whole night again” and “I wonder if I can afford everything this child needs.” At the same time, “I wonder how I ever lived without you” and “I wonder if I could love you more” type things are in our heads and on days like today, “I stand in wonder at you.” Yesterday cousin Lynn told us, “just wait for the grandchildren, that is fun!” We live in the moment but wonder about that day.

December 8th – Checking In

Its shortly after 6am, I have been awake since 5:15am, thats the fourth day in a row of that nonsense. Day 1 was so that I could be ready to lead worship and get there on time, day 2 was because I forgot to turn off my alarm from day 1 and I couldn’t go back to sleep, day 3 was because our dog Maddie started barking for no apparent reason, today it was Coffee dog, same time, same thing, random barks starting at 5:15. I went to bed earlier last night to try and compensate for how foggy headed I felt and I am glad because I am ready for a bit of writing this morning instead of desperately trying to get more sleep.

I thought maybe I would write about a few things that have been happening.

On Friday night Russell and I drove to pick up Morgan from a friends’ place. We had never been in their home before but were welcomed in for a drink. They had a couple friends over already. The six of us, and Morgan and his friend and dogs and other kids moving in and out sat in their kitchen and had a really good visit. Do you know what didn’t happen? Cellphone activity. You would never know cell phones existed except for a story that got told about forgetting one and me getting a text I needed to check and answer right at the very end of the visit. It was so cool to experience that. It felt old fashioned and right and good.

I spent my weekend with my head deeply immersed in thoughts and stories I was exposed to as a result of preparations for the sermon on Sunday morning. I listened to a priest on youtube, his name Father Gregory Boyle, he has overseen a very effective gang rehab ministry in Los Angeles from its very beginning. He knows alot of stuff about life. While I tuned in to hear about compassion I have taken away new wisdom about how important it is that we are all connected to each other and about what needs to be in my head as I am doing my lifework. It has been a gift.

Monday morning when the alarm went off at 5:15, I grabbed my phone to turn it off quickly (with some exasperation at myself), and then noticed I had a Messenger bubble notification on my screen. I tried to go back to sleep but wasn’t successful. I checked that notification. Well then for sure I didn’t go back to sleep. Late the night before someone had sent me a video, I presume they thought I needed to watch it, seeing the title stirred feelings of anger and stirred up my brain. It was called, “why are people choosing to live in cages?” I lay there wondering if I should respond to it, I thought to myself “I should watch it” but then thought, “why?” With all of Father Boyle’s wisdom about relationship on my brain I think I was sensitized to what was going on in me as this link landed in my world. What I needed was a message to go along with the link, I needed the person to say, “Hey Kathy, I sense you have some pretty clear convictions about all this Covid stuff. Listen, I saw this video today, it made me think of you. It had a good illustration I wanted you to hear. I would be curious what you think?” If that message had landed with the link then we would be in the land of relationship. I might have then answered back, “Hey, thanks for thinking of me and taking the time to connect about this stuff. I honestly don’t know if I will watch it. I am tired and I don’t have much of a brain for conflict right now. Its Christmas, I got this grief thing going on in a different way than last year, I have lots of projects in front of me. Mostly, the title throws me off, honestly, the reality of a cage just doesn’t connect. I see what is being asked of us Canadians is because something very big is at stake. I was asked the other day, “where did you get your mask? I love it!” My answer, “Newfoundland.” I was in Newfoundland this fall. So, yeah, I am not feeling pulled by this title. I really thank you for thinking of me.”

I think I would attach this picture, just for a visual about why the illustration of a cage has nowhere to land in me.

This is an extremely corny thing I am sharing, but to celebrate our 20th anniversary we had some pictures taken with our wedding clothes on, situated on the most eastern point of the continent. In this picture the only thing ahead of us is Europe, everything and most everyone dear to us is at our backs.

Without any attempt at human connection going with the delivery of this link it was kind of disorienting. I don’t know this person well at all, what does she want of me? She started this, let her create a little context for me, I have enough miscellaneous stuff floating around for my brain to manage. So that is something I have been working on getting my head around these days.

We decorated for Christmas about 10 days ago. Grandma Shirley came over and we had a day of getting at the work of pulling out the boxes, rearranging the furniture, setting up and hanging and discovering again all our old favorites. We ate copious amounts of treats, except ju jubes which got overlooked in our preparations. It almost didn’t feel like Christmas without jujubes and our favorite Christmas CD which we somehow misplaced. Christmas will come even if we don’t have the Veggietales Christmas Album on. I guess. I love the end result. As the days get dark so fast and it has turned really cold, the lights and the gentleness mean that much more.

This was definitely a time for team work.

Yesterday Russ picked up a large amount of product from the Vet Clinic as we prepare to work with our herd to delouse and deworm them. I believe the bulls are first up and that is scheduled for this weekend. I have been shopping for the gates that Russell needs, our local Peavey Mart didn’t end up having them. So, thats just a few sentences about what is percolating at the ranch. The days are more predictable, generally speaking, and I value that.

An Interesting 24 Hours

Sometimes being a ranch wife in the winter means its possible to stay put and days unfold within familiar walls and routines. I like that. Today was not one of those days. I would like to record and share the details of this different day, I enjoyed it too.

This 24 hours started last night around 10:30pm when I realized that I had missed the chance to visit with my friend Deb on her birthday. I had been working on writing a sermon and ordering gifts and I was like a dog with a bone with those things, I had neglected my friendship with Deb. Now here is a weird detail of our recent friendship. Deb brought a watermelon when she came for a visit in August. We had been having a really hard summer before her arrival and things got much better after her visit, so I decided that her watermelon, which never did get cut up, was in fact a lucky watermelon and I never could bring myself to throw it out even after its freshness had passed. It changed location eventually, and when it did it gained a costume, a tiger suit. Anyways it was holding strong as of yesterday, hanging out on our porch table. Well, I decided that yesterday night it was time to take it out to the dumpster and incorporate that action into Deb’s birthday celebration. I recorded a voice memo while standing beside the dumpster, sang Happy Birthday to Deb in the blowing blizzardy snow fall, recording the sound of the watermelon going into the dumpster and told Deb, and later Russell, “new year, new memories.” So, regular readers will have heard of the watermelon saga before, and this is the last chapter, it finally went out. I know all of this makes me incredibly weird, I prefer to think of it as quirky but honestly this stupid stuff is what makes life fun.

After a short night our entire family was up early and on the road to North Portal where I led a 9am worship service. The snow that had fallen overnight made that a hard trip but Russ drove our dually truck and we got there safely. This little town is about 85km to the west and south of us, it is right on the border with the United States. A very memorable embarrassing moment happened there for me that I cannot provide details on but will be part of our family lore for the entire rest of my life. So that was spicy.

As we approached the church we were the first ones to make tracks in the snow. Russ said, “grab a picture of this Kathy, thats a sign of a dedicated minister!”

The service went well, I was a bit flustered and had printed my sermon notes with way too small and crowded a print. I had to really concentrate to speak with my head up and keep my place in the sermon. There was great hospitality, Morgan just loved it that when he arrived he could grab a cup of coffee that had been brewing. It turned out there were people already there, they had made tracks in different snow than we did. As we pulled out of town afterwards it was rather a thrill to be so close to the customs buildings at the border. It has been so long since we have gone through customs. We made the drive from North Portal to Estevan in decent time, the roads were already alot better after snowplows had been down them. Russ dropped me at the church and then took the kids to the mall. We didn’t think it would be fair to ask them to do church twice in one day, the exact same service. Russ whipped back and slipped in a bit late. He was thrilled to be welcomed aloud and by name by several in the congregation. I had mentioned he would be slipping in late and why. I offered a sermon probing the connection between righteousness and compassion. I really enjoyed the preparation of it.

Russ took this picture of me in the pulpit in Estevan. I didn’t realize he had. It was kind’ve cool to see, like “oh, this is what I look like when doing my thing….hmmm.”

A trip to the mall followed where we met the kids at Peavey Mart. I think one of the cardinal rules of being a rancher is you never waste a trip to the big city by only doing one thing. We are in the market for a couple more gate panels so Peavey Mart was a must. Russell has been working on an ambitious re-organizing of our handling system within the pole shed. He really enjoys tinkering with our set-ups and scheming to make jobs go more efficiently and safely.

This was taken last week when Russ was trying to explain to me what his vision was for how these gates could be refigured.

Thinking we had a little more time than we actually did we went for lunch at Russell’s favorite place in Estevan and then hit the road. We had a bull sale to get to.

I was so happy to have the kids along. This shot between Estevan and Carnduff enroute home is pretty white outside the windows. It was snowing again.

The bull sale was held only about 12 miles south of our place so I dropped the boys off late to the sale, then took Jill home, changed my clothes, grabbed a farm cheque, grabbed some beer for the next thing we were heading to and I returned to the bull sale. By the time I got there Russ had bought 3 bulls and we had our quota. I got to watch the rest of the sale unfold. It was incredible how technology was used to make that sale work seamlessly in the midst of a very snowy winter Saskatchewan day. It was nice to see people I knew, including the owner of all the bulls. When we caught each others eyes during the sale we exchanged warm waves and smiles, I had already enjoyed these moments with a couple other people, but this is when Russell said to me, “Kathy, you have to stop waving at people, we are going to buy something we don’t want!” Sometimes I feel like deep down I am always going to be a city girl.

The man on the left is watching for bidders, the auctioneer is behind that desk, as is Wes the friend who is hosting the sale. There were several staff on laptops and phones monitoring online and telephone bids. The animal being bid on is seen on the screen, an identical screen is on the other side. We watched short video clips of the bulls and bred heifers filmed on a warmer day. If we had been there earlier we could have walked among the bull pens and had a good look at the animals for ourselves.

Once we paid our bill we headed out because we had a football party to get to. We joined our cousins the Connellys to watch the western final of the Canadian Football League. Our team was playing. We were late for the game but given that we are not huge football fanatics we probably got to see enough. We really enjoyed the relaxed time and the visiting, the only thing that could have made it better is if our team had won. It was very close. Dawson made a crusty cheezy baked dip that was hard to stay away from. All the snacks were good. The food at football parties is definitely a large part of the fun. We came home a couple hours ago and I decided that I would either write about all this or go to bed early. The writing won out. Tomorrow is slated to be a stay in my own four walls kind of day and i think I am going to enjoy that! Isn’t life something though? Every once in a while you get alot to digest, as if it were a six course dinner!

Topics for tomorrow’s Coffee Date

Our family was in Regina today, minus Gina of course. She is in heavy duty rehearsals for a show in Victoria. We were there because Morgan so badly wanted to attend Agribition. It was the only day we could make work. For those readers outside of Saskatchewan, Agribition is an annual event where all aspects of prairie agriculture are on display, rodeos and stock competitions occur and merchants get to show their products.

Ford Canada was there and that meant that Morgan got to sit inside his most favorite vehicle for a while, a Ford Bronco.

We have attended Agribition a few times over the last number of years. When Morgan started talking about going this year it just wasn’t something I wanted to do. After some deliberating and negotiating we made a plan, then when Morgan’s volleyball team advanced to provincials we revised the plan. It was on short notice that we all headed into Regina. As it turned out I would actually be spared Agribition this year because Jill needed to finalize her shopping for her grad dress. I regret that I am not wired for things like Agribition, it would make me a better ranch wife, but being honest, I just don’t like it. With diverse needs being met everyone had some interesting moments.

First off, Jill had a gift shopping spree coming to her and that was fun. We were at a store that inspired me to try on a few things. One item was a dress that when I held it up and asked Jill for her opinion she said, “it looks like Laura Ingall’s dress for going into the jungle.” That was a zippy and fun reply but fairly non committal. I figured I better try it on. Partly that was because a friend of mine recently told me that my grade 8 grad dress looked like it was from LIttle House on the Prairie. I wondered how far I could push this Laura Ingalls look in my life.

Ready for my grade 8 graduation ceremony. I am standing between my Mom and Dad.

I sent Russell a picture from the fitting room. Lets just say he was not in favor. At this point I can’t help but think something that makes me sound like my Nanny. She used to work at the Bay in Saskatoon, when she retired and still shopped there she always noticed something that could have been done better, the racks being too close together was her most frequent concern. Anyways, I looked at this dress and thought, “in my day this dress would never be put out for sale with all these wrinkles, don’t they have a steamer?” It might have looked a little more appealing minus the wrinkles. Anyways, Russell was relieved to hear I had not bought it.

At the next store we went to we had exceptionally friendly and eager help but it came in an unexpected way. I had a salesgirl ask us if we were in town for Agribition. That started a fun few minutes of conversation which included her swearing, alot, like in those few minutes the f word was used repeatedly, the sh word used and then right at the end she had a sentence that had both these words and the g d swear. My brain was processing the content of what she was saying, talking about agribition and black Friday in the same week, but it was also spinning as I asked myself, “did she really say that?”, “what if I was someone who was offended by this, how would this unfold?”, “why am I not offended by this?”, “how can she use such usually harsh words with so much smiling, they sound kinda nice”…… It was one of those moments that made me happy, being in the city, encountering people that are unique and kind, finding the unexpectedness of it funny.

Russ left Morgan at Agribition and joined Jill and I for the grad dress shopping. It was great. We had a very skilled and kind helper at NWL, Jill was having so much fun and had great options. She made a decision. We got it ordered. People who do their job so well and bring such a lovely human dynamic into it really make a difference in the world.

This felt special. It was a grad dress meeting to discuss the top two or three options and give Jill time to make a decision. We don’t often get time alone away from the ranch with one of our kids. Jill is a delight. This cafe across from the dress store is expensive but so nice to experience.

Russ and Morgan had themselves a good day. Morgan bought himself a new rope and got to hang out with one of his friends who was showing cattle. They talked with lots of different people. Russell reported that he heard a few people whining about the masks, he commented that its alot better than last years Agribition (it was cancelled) and that ended the whining. On the way home Russ said to me, “I enjoyed agribition, but I missed you, there was stuff I would like to have shown you and talked about, like the manure spreader of my dreams, you should have seen it.” So much romance in that statement. Actually there is. Its wonderful to be valued and wanted but its comical (at least to me) when romance and manure merge in the same phrase.

Our trip home is not quite complete, we should pull in the yard in about 10 minutes, the trip home has been hard, sortv’e. Jill is, by necessity, part of an online group where people feel incredibly free to say things that are very hate filled. She has processed some of that with us. It is troubling. It leads me to feel more convinced than ever that we have to keep putting love and light and love and light and love and light into the world. I am thankful for my faith. In it there is instruction, reminder, inspiration and fuel to keep tackling the worlds troubles with love and a way to confess and start again when we don’t rise to the challenge.

Five Frivolous Things

My posts can get a bit serious, I am inclined that way. However I do really value what is humorous, or light, or zany, or inconsequential. So I thought I would write about five things that are not serious at all. Ready for that?

One – I have a deep love for baskets. Wicker would be my favorite but plastic that looks like wicker is good too. I have them all over our house. I have spent time and money searching out just the right size of basket for a spot in our house. I have been quite successful. The part of me that longs for order and control in a crazy unpredictable life takes ridiculous pleasure in labelling my baskets, labelling lots of things actually.

Two – When I was in seminary, a very serious and analytical place that prepared me to become a minister, I was one of the founding members of a club that was totally frivolous, not serious, not consequential at all. We were the curly hair club. There were two of us that needed each others support and inspiration for dealing with the reality of naturally curly hair. While others roamed the halls pondering liberation theology, eschatology, Biblical languages and much more, we were pondering curl shape and definition, the impact of weather and what were the best products to use. We felt rebellious.

Three – I love gravy. I have been fortunate to receive teaching on how to make good gravy from a master, my mother in law. My first clue about my love of gravy was that I took to drinking KFC gravy as a teenager. I feel that I was on the cutting edge of Canadian cuisine because I ate poutine before almost all my friends and family. I attended a french course in Nova Scotia 31 years ago and there tasted this unique Acadian dish “poutine.” I loved it from the start. I think that gravy and I are meant to be together forever.

Four – I was so relieved when Gina was born and she was a girl. I was scared of boys. I only had one brother and he was 6 years older than me. I didn’t know alot about boys and especially country boys. When Jill was born I was thrilled, for several reasons but partly because I didn’t have to face my fears just yet. Deciding to have a third child was a decision. By the point of delivering that baby I was open to boy or girl, I don’t know what had shifted. Somehow I wasn’t afraid anymore. Morgan has been a gift. I didn’t need to be afraid. Okay I have this written and I think it suddenly is not so lighthearted. Shute. I can’t help myself, I swing serious. A lighthearted ending………..Morgan was the most unusual looking baby, Russell and I looked at each other and agreed, “he s kind’ve an ugly looking fella isn’t he?” Within months he was as beautiful as any baby could be.

Five – When I was in my early 20s I discovered Payless Shoes in the U.S.A. Every time I made a trip there I would scout out their size 11 section (non existant in Canada) and select flats in whatever colors I loved. As a result I had the most beautiful colored shoes and I would match my shoes to my dresses and outfits. I felt so swanky. I have become so boring, now nothing makes me happier than my brown or black knee high dress boots.

One more – because I haven’t mentioned the ranch and this is a ranch blog. I really love making cow tags. The chance to make them nice and neat and put cool and meaningful names on them just tickles my fancy.

Rare Opportunity

I wrote this first part of this blog almost six days ago, on Tuesday morning.

I am wading through my first morning home after many days away, reckoning with how weird I feel, both physically and emotionally. Last Wednesday I drove the 550km that took me to Saskatoon where I got welcomed by my sister Linda and her husband Stu and we hunkered in for some days. Linda has a gift for hospitality and I was treated like a queen. My sister Jan flew in from Vancouver and stayed with my sister Margie and her family. Together the four of us, with help from my cousin Jodi tackled boxes and boxes of my Mom’s photo albums and some boxes of miscellaneous photos. I feel like what we did in wading through a lifetime of memories in their fullness is pretty rare, not something people get to do more than once in their lifetime if at all. From this rare point of view I want to report back on some of it.

The two things that I can’t stop thinking about are humor and love. Humor because it bubbled up often and allowed us to be real about what we were dealing with and yet not wallow in self pity or sadness. That meant for example that when Ella Fitzgerald came up on the playlist crooning about heaven, Janet, in split second creative humor, neatly revised the lyrics to address our situation. It meant my tears about reviewing pictures of our last happy party when my Dad was still a little bit well turned to laughter, as Linda looked over my shoulder and said, “and we weren’t even that happy.” It was true, dementia was taking its toll on all of us. There was something about the vantage point we had, more than 20 years later, that had us all laughing at her comment and pretty hard. We reviewed albums and albums from the 1980s which made it so inevitable that one of us would say something about hair, it was Margie, who with her very deep and sincere faith intact said “Why did no-one tell me that my hair was so god-awful?” It all just struck us so funny. Most of the things we laughed at are not typical knee-slappers, they might not strike you as funny, but it’s the mystery of humor, how it illumines our lives and helps us cope.

I got that far with writing then stopped. Now I am back at it, Sunday night. I have just spent much of the last hour looking at some of the pictures gleaned from our work bee. A word about process seems appropriate here. We set up in Linda’s living room, it was an invasion of sorts. Four big tables set up, the dining room table turned into a laptop and scanner station, for four days Linda’s space was pretty much turned upside down. Margie, Linda and I peeled pictures out of albums and sorted the content of the boxes, Janet received our sorted piles and using a high speed scanner we had purchased she did the painstaking work of scanning and catalogueing these pictures. Thru the wonders of modern tech we now all have access to all the pictures we handled. Can you even guess the number that Jan scanned? It was 6,700 on the nose (thats a prairie expression which means “exactly.”) Our discard pile was almost as big as our keep pile, so we looked at alot of pictures over the days.

Sitting here tonight I wonder about what makes humor possible. Definitely our stage in our healing work was part of what made us light hearted enough to laugh more than we cried. Perhaps it was the way that we had to keep a loose grip on reality because it was always changing. One minute being drawn back to 1981 and then 1939 and then 2002, all found in a combined box of pictures. Do you have one or some of these? I didn’t know my Mom had so many. I saw pictures I never saw before. Reality is a little more loose under those conditions and that loose-ness maybe encouraged humor. Maybe too it was about something kind’ve major. A kind’ve major truth, a truth that bubbled to the surface for me as we were preparing to start and discussing process. There was some anxiety rising to the surface…..what if we mishandle this and lose out on something special? We agreed we would look through the discard piles before they were garbaged in order to assure each other that we had all we wanted. It hit me then, this kind’ve major truth, I said, “girls, we have survived being orphans for a whole year now, we have lived without these photos and without our Mom and Dad for a whole year and we made it. What this represents now is the icing on the cake. We know we can make it, so everything here is bonus.” Its true. With that as our underlying truth it seemed like it was easy to live with a sense of gratitude for every one of the thousand moments our hearts smiled to see a familiar face, place, and item. With those smiles on our hearts the humor was more able to flow. In the end we never reassessed our throw aways we just let them all go.

I mentioned at the start that love and humor were on my mind. Perhaps the biggest reason that humor could flow is that each of us came to our time knowing we were loved and we are loved. Our parents loved us well, that is our most profound blessing in life. We all have taken into our hearts the faith our parents started in us, that tells us that we are beloved children of God. We all have established our own families, we have spouses, children and pets that welcome us home. That is major.

I have a few pictures to share with you. I am not going to make them orderly or chronological. It will give you a glimpse of how our minds were spinning thru these days together.

This is my Grandma Kyle. Since I wanted to write about humor I looked for pictures reflecting joy or laughter. This one was a real find. (My brother Bob in the background.)

Here is Gina and I in the summer of 2002

I saw this picture before it was scanned and couldn’t stop thinking about it. I looked for it in the files and was glad to find it. Jan catalogued well. That is Kathy Kyle feeling safe and loved in her Dad’s lap.

This is captioned on the back as the first hour my twin sisters were home from the hospital. I turned two the next day. Look where I got to sit. On Mom’s lap. She always got it, what people needed to feel seen.

I have seen this picture many times over the years but not with a growing teen boy in my house before. Tonight I looked at it and said, holy smokes, my son looks like my brother. I had never seen it before. Bob is 23 in this picture, a university graduate.

You probably will not understand the significance of this picture unless you read a previous facebook or blog post, not sure which but here is “Gina in Buster’s highchair.”

Me working on my piles. They started to feel overwhelming after a while.

I have a picture of my Dad holding me on this day but had never seen this one before. My Grandpa Tubb was a photographer, he came over to take pictures of me the day I came home from the hospital. There were several beauties that were taken this day. It would be his last official shoot.

Great hospitality was extended to us working women by my brother in law Stuart. We really appreciated it.

Jan was what I would call “courageous”. The mental power she used to accomplish her task might have finished me off. She said she had it good because she only processed the keeper pictures. I’m not convinced. It looked hard to me.

Margie at her work station, evidence of her mischievous and playful self is in this picture. She left some lingering humor for Linda to find after we all left.

November 20 2021 Ranch News

We are celebrating with Russell today. He had a big job on his hands and its done. In July we contracted with a farm family in the Alameda area. They had a winter crop that was very compromised by last winters unusual conditions, crop insurance was writing it off, would we like to come bale it? The answer was yes. The offer was an answer to prayer. I don’t like bossing God around with my prayers but I do think I am invited to be deeply real with God about what I want and need. So I had been praying like this, “God, I want to feed and water these cows.” The feed part of it, thanks to two grain farm families and drought relief support from the provincial government has been addressed for now. The water part…..well it remains to be seen how that will all pan out. We move forward. Anyways…………today Russell hauled the last of the bales home. We baled 687 bales in early August and they sat until three weeks ago when Russ began bringing them home. Under normal road conditions it was about a 50 minute trip to get to the field. He could bring home 18 at a time. Needless to say he has spent a lot of time on the road! I have made a few of those trips with him, to keep him company and have some pal time. Today Jill and I both went, we stopped for brunch in Oxbow, had a coffee with Foster, paid him for the bales and then went and loaded the last load. Jill then drove the tractor home and I took the victorious last run with Russ.

Russ driving the last load of bales home.

Jill hopping out of the tractor after arriving home, greeted by our pup “Coffee.”

There are a few threads of this story that could be teased out a little bit. How do you bring home 18 bales at one time when each bale weighs about 1245lbs? With a flat deck trailer. We have always had one of these however ours only held 12 bales. After we made the bale deal with the Warriners Russell did serious pondering about the logistics of getting these bales home. We began to talk about a bigger flat deck. A friend of ours scouted out a used one in Estevan, it would be $8000 to bring home. Jill and I had to be in the city so we got designated as the shoppers for this trailer. I have to tell you, this ticked me off. We were so devastated by the drought conditions, we didn’t know how we were going to manage everything, we didn’t yet have word of the support from the government and I was being asked to get used to the idea of spending another 8000 bucks for the privilege of continuing to ranch. It was with some relief that I had a good look at the trailer and decided it was too rusty for my liking.

Jill grabbed this picture of me doing that shopping back in the summer.

Whew, 8000 bucks saved, except, we still had that hay to get home. I am an intensely practical person. As much as having to shell out more dollars was disturbing me it was also disturbing me to think about the time and gas wasted making one third more trips over that 60 km span. So…….I percolated as I sometimes do. Russ gently needled me to do some shopping online. Before I knew it I was making phone calls and learning the specs of flat deck trailers. Here is where the sadness of my year of being an orphan gets transformed a tiny bit (I know orphan talk is dramatic and truly inaccurate, but I am giving myself permission to be this way.) Being an orphan sucks, but my Mom’s estate was dispersed and I had some money to work with. My Mom loved Russell and found her way clear to celebrate and support the work that we do. My Mom was also a very practical person. I came to terms with the possibility that it would make my Mom happy to be able to step in and do something so concrete to lower our stress and increase our efficiency. So, Mom provided us with a 34 foot flat deck trailer. In a million years I can’t imagine that she would have predicted part of her legacy on this earth would be a flat deck trailer, but there it is. So that’s one part of the living through a drought story.

Home with our new trailer and I got a free hat out of the deal. Russ says these hats and bonus things we get with big purchases are some of the most expensive clothing we have.

I am thinking about another dimension to this. To give credit where it is due. I feel like we have a good news story to tell. That crop we baled was one that when assessed by Crop Insurance was considered borderline. It could have been written off but it was also just about good enough to be considered worth harvesting. However, the adjuster was encouraged to make his decision about the crop through the lens of this drought and the ranchers in need. Given that direction from his boss the adjuster wrote it off and gave Foster the go ahead to find a rancher who needed it and then sell it. Receiving the phone call where the offer was made was a game changer. The shift in morale was unmistakable and Russ is not ashamed that he needed to wipe away tears more than once. The hard thing is that all this crop we bought to bale, from two different families, is extra cost. More expense than we already have, and we already have enough. It was therefore rather stunning to learn that all cattle farmers would be given a per cow benefit through government crop insurance to help them make it through the year. One hundred dollars per cow doesn’t sound like much but it does add up and paid a part of our extra feed bill this year. All of this reminds me of my blog name, about being seen. Maybe I am too easily soothed but it means alot to me that our role feeding the world, the vulnerability we face and the sustainability we hope to secure are all things that seem to be seen and honored. I am feeling really thankful for this. So is Russ. Its another thing that brings tears.

So that was today on the ranch. A huge job checked off the to do list, a big bill paid, good coffee and wow Foster makes amazing biscuits.

Inside the Head – Nov 19/21

Thursday afternoon, once we were home from selling our steers and Russ had his outside chores done we found ourselves settling into a couple of very comfy chairs in our living room. We each had a mug of tea and a blanket. It was about 4pm. There were a couple things going on. Most immediately, Russ was fighting cold symptoms and was feeling chilled. He wanted this warm up time and invited me to join him. Also we are beginning our transition into winter schedules. This means more down time to catch our breath and do stuff that isn’t urgent. We are both so ready for this. It was interesting for me to note that I was fighting a little fight, or maybe doing a little dance, with the reality of guilt. It was four pm and most of my friends were still at work. But not me. My hubby and I were having precious moments to be still and cozy and to breathe a bit deeper. Its kind’ve weird to catch oneself waging this war with guilt. Where does it come from? Was it justified at all? Did I need to feel guilty? No I don’t think so. So why did I? The answer to that requires some reflection and maybe it is a bit too personal for the blog. But here is where my thinking went next, almost in an effort to defend myself I think, “this is our trade off for the long work days that are part of our summer.” I was referring to the weeks where there are no weekends (all of them), the times when you open facebook to see that it appears that everyone else is having a ball and you are staring at your ringing phone willing it not to be a problem that needs your action or sympathy. The evenings that never seem to end as the haying machines run til the grass gets tough, and I find myself cooking the last meal of the day closer to midnight than the supper hour. As I write this a lot of feeling goes with it, a sense of just how unpredictable and trying a ranching summer is and what a feeling of victory goes with just getting through it. If I am to report back to you who live beyond the ranching community, relaying what it is to be a rancher, what it is to be a ranchers wife, than part of that is to say that we have some different seasons around here. While the darkness and the cold of winter is hard, hard on our animals and hard to work in, when the darkness falls the days work is usuallly mostly done. Meals happen at good times, the light over top of the dining room table sheds a cozy glow against the darkness, time is available for a little bit of our hobbies, maybe a movie together. Its nice. Its really really nice. Its pretty easy. And for some dumb reason, when things are easy, I feel a little bit guilty.

I sense that I am not the only one.

Isn’t it weird to talk about things being so easy that guilt should arise? Life is not easy for anyone right now. Perhaps the feeling of guilt is a flag of sorts, alerting me to the things that feel really good amid the trials of these days. Maybe, just maybe, Russ and I should, with a deep sense of gratitude, bundle up in blankets, with mugs of tea, every day, knowing this is the good stuff, the stuff that translates to ease for our weary bodies and minds.

Thats what lives in the head of this ranch wife this week.

As I wondered if there was a picture to post these summer pictures came to mind. They give a glimpse of the machinery and people power Russ is managing and remind me of the weather worries and pressure we felt to make the feed that will keep our bovine girls going all winter.

A birds eye view of the rake and baler at work in the field. A photo captured by my niece Brodie Sollid, she has an aerial photography business.

Russ on the job running the baling tractor. He broke his own personal record this summer when he baled for 31 hours straight. The weather conditions were right and he was motivated. Part of this summer’s stress was needing to purchase a tractor when one of our trusty good ol ones cratered on us. This used John Deere was a blessing when it came across our path. (Liz Griffin Photograpny)

I wonder what we were discussing. (Liz Griffin Photography)

We are going to get through this together. (Liz Griffin Photography)

Liz Griffin has the ability to make a difficult reality look kind of poetic.

Stormy Ranching

It was a big day at our ranch today, not as big as yesterday though. Our annual crop of steers was auctioned off at Chopper K this morning. This is a couple weeks early but we understand the market is looking risky by December so we dove in and got it done. That meant we had to get all our cows home late Tuesday, then yesterday we brought them into the corral.

Russell, Morgan and his friend bringing up the rear and heading straight into the wind on Tuesday’s after school ride.

The mane and tail whip in the wind like a flag while Russ perseveres, they were almost home and done at this point.

Wednesday morning, after getting started in the dark to bring the herd from all over the home half we separated the Moms from the babies and also separated the steers from the heifers.

Cousin Dawson at his gate, a new group had been pushed up into the sorting area by Morgan and Laurie.

The steers got on a truck right away and headed to the Auction Mart. They sold well today, not as high as previous years, but we were relieved that the market had not tanked given how stormy the whole world feels right now.

The work Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning was certainly made harder by the extreme wind that had all of Saskatchewan in its grip. Where we are located our snowfall was almost non-existent compared to a few hours away from here. That likely is what made it possible to even be out working as the wind gusts approached 100km/hr at times. There was something that made this work easier though too. We have these amazing family members and a brave friend who came when asked, got on their horse and got those cows where we needed them to be. That anyone would voluntarily endure that wind is almost beyond my ability to comprehend. We are blessed by these relationships. Wednesday morning as we sorted the herd I had a really active job and actually worked up enough sweat that I shed a layer by mid morning, Morgan on the other hand, on horse back the entire morning, looks to have windburn on an eye lid, his contact lenses don’t offer the same protection as his old spectacles did.

Three layers on my legs, two pairs of socks, and six layers on top….I sweat a bit as I trotted up and down the alley pushing the calves to their gates.

As the boss of the steer gate Jill did more standing around than me as she stayed ready to open her gate and let her fellas in. It seemed smart to transplant my extra warm stuff onto her. Here she is tucked into the pole shed getting wind relief.

We went to the auction mart this morning and watched the calves sell.

Some of our calves going through the ring.

Its so weird to have something so consequential unfolding before one’s eyes. Just how will things balance out? The moment by moment bidding is determining that and most of the time its hard to understand what the auctioneer is even saying, but I’m getting better at it. We have goals for the cattle we bring to market, it seems we are reaching those goals. Two of the buyers advised Russell today, after ours sold, “don’t change anything about your program, those are beautiful calves.” I’ll tell you, after the journey we travel with those creatures, first setting our eyes on them when they are so little and vulnerable, saving some of them by bringing them in our house and warming and drying them. After working so closely with them in our chute to give them tags, immunizations and more, getting them trucked to pasture for summer, walking them home in the fall, dancing with them in the corral as we get them all separated and market ready and then seeing them enter the ring, well……..its like they are your kids in a small way, and we are proud of them and we are thankful for them.

Ranching is stormy right now. We are in for a tough spell of holding tight and hoping and praying for what we really need. All around us the world seems stormy. We are thankful for good days. We are thankful for today.

One last thing……I have been absent from my blog for so long. I can’t really explain why. I have missed a whole season of ranching and of being Kathy. I think I am trying to figure out how to do this. How to share what is on my mind and heart, how to share the goings on of a ranch, and while sharing keep reasonable privacy. I also get affected by the way that my stuff is received, I want to post things that people like, which is understandable, it’s the way the world turns, but maybe I let it shape me and even silence me too much. I feel like I am at a new stage with this. Maybe a little more ready to let the ranch do the talking and not worry about posting only the best content or things that amount to alot. We shall see. However, I wanted to acknowledge that I have been missing in action.