Colleen, Joe and Jolly Roger

By Mary

My little sister and her new husband drove off in the early morning light last week to start their life anew in Washington DC. Before leaving they spent a considerable amount of time packing the little bubble shaped black Mazda car that they now share. From the hatchback to the front, the compact car was packed with wedding gifts as well as the remnants of what the two of them have been lugging about while essentially living out of a suitcase for the last two months following graduations, wedding, honeymoon and then the last few weeks with family here in Wisconsin. When gathering together the vast pile of wedding gifts to fit into the car, Colleen took our dad’s wheel barrow and wheeled load after load from the barn to the car. I know she was excited to pack and leave and I know her heart is now bursting and breaking in Washington D.C. as she begins a new life. She will be a wife and a school teacher far from both Wisconsin and Dallas which have been the foundation of her formation and existence the last 22 years.

Colleen has taught me so much about life. She is such a special and beautiful person both inside and out. Her compassion, loyalty and optimism never cease to amaze me. Her new husband, Joe, has also taught me a lot recently. The main lesson I have come to know through him is that the expansion of family and sharing someone who you love so dearly is not a compromise. It’s simply a growth in the love, generosity and loyalty that only makes life more rich and full.

The day after Colleen and Joe packed up their wedding bounty I mulled over missing my sister and Joe while cleaning out the barn apartment that they stayed in for two weeks after the honeymoon. After washing the last few dishes and gathering together of load of towels and wash clothes I went out to check on my goats. Seeing the goats made me really miss Colleen. Yes, that’s right, tending goats makes me think of Colleen and Joe, and this is why:

For some odd reason Colleen and Joe are just about the most interested in my sheep and goats of all the family. I don’t really expect anyone to care about them, although I always appreciate people feigning interest. However, the two of them act like preschoolers at a petting zoo around my livestock and that REALLY humors me. In fact, I delight in it! Right after they came back from their honeymoon, the first thing they did was take a walk and discover a 2 day old baby goat that was born while they were away.

While Colleen may insist that she is not naturally maternal, she and Joe literally flocked to the cute (but not overly intelligent) billy kid that was dubbed by Colleen as  “Jolly Roger”.

They spent two weeks holding him like a baby.

All he had to do was give a bleat and they would head out to check on him just to see if he was okay.

To be honest it’s really funny to see them looking enthusiastically preppy while cuddling a Boer goat of all things.

But it was a great sight to behold. I look forward to seeing them again, and in the meantime we will stay in contact. That reminds me, Colleen texted me the other day. I forgot to respond. The text read, “I miss you, how is Roger?

Patched Up

By Mary

While June may be a busy time of year, it wouldn’t seem complete without the annual round-up that is held over at the ranch. The round-up consists of a busy Saturday with a full crew of help to gather cows from the hills that are covered in mist early on summer mornings. This year my sister in law Nicole showed up as an amazing addition to the crew, to document the event in photographs. Nicole is an amazing photographer and you can find more info about her work here.

After riders bring the cows and their calves in they get sorted into corrals that hold groups of the mama cows and isolated pens of nursing calves.

Every cow is given a series of shots

and some are freeze branded with the classic ranch’s D symbol.

If the calves are bulls they get castrated and their testicles are thrown into a heaping bucket that sits out in the sun all day. Later on in the evening rocky mountain oysters are served along with a big cowboy supper for all the people who spend the day helping out. Need I mention exactly how fresh and local this entré is? Ick, is makes my stomach sick to think about. The brief description above is more or less the general outline of what happens each and every year at the round-up. This year there was a funny addition to the day though.

If you are wondering why in the world there is a big patch on the eye of a calf that has essentially a get well card scrawled across the denim patching, that’s a totally reasonable question! To fully understand why there is even a patch on the eye of the cow, I should clarify that the beef herd has been dealing with a flare up of pink eye which is a common problem in cows. Cows with pink eye need treatment to get better. The treatment can be done by administration of medication, and at times an eye patch that is put on with a square of rubber cement glue. The day before the round-up I had been over at the ranch working moving cattle. Just before leaving, I asked my sister-in-law, Aurora if she needed any help with anything before I went home for the night. Now I will clarify that Aurora is super pregnant and super exhausted these days, so she was more than happy to get any help she could to aid in the craziness of pulling of the round-up which is to be honest a ton of work and productive chaos.

Aurora handed me a heap of Patrick’s old work pants that have been destroyed from thousands of hours of farm labor and asked if I could cut out patches for the next day. I joked that I wanted to turn the task into a quilting job and that I just so happened to have fabric markers in my car. This joke tuned into serious business when kids started flocking over to “help”. I sent one to my car to get the markers and before I knew it I had a circle of kids around me who turned the task into a crafting activity and were fighting over scissors, markets and ideas.

I am a huge proponent of creativity and find great joy in sharing it with kids so it was a humorous blessing to watch them delight in drawing pictures

and sympathy cards on the patches.

Each kid has was proud of their work

and their aunty was pretty amused with the entire unexpected project the next day when watching calves burst out of the chute.

It put a smile on my face just to sit on my horse and watch patched up calves with art on their eyes charging about bellowing!