The first piece of mail that we received here at the ranch wasn’t a bill or some sort of junk, it was a thoughtful “housewarming” book from one of my mom’s greatest friends. Jeannie sent me a cookbook of recipes from an accidental country girl called, The Pioneer Woman Cooks. Gramma spent some time looking through the book the other day while Josh and I were bouncing around the prairie and she certainly was amused. She says that she’s never seen a cookbook chock full of pictures with kids, cows, and horses.

The cookbook has a lot of recipes that use all fresh ingredients, but it’s not lacking in recipes that use cans of food. I thought for sure that these wouldn’t come in handy to me seeing as I usually have maybe one can of tomatoes on hand, and if we’re lucky perhaps a can of lentil soup. But I’ve learned my lesson; our nearest farmers’ market is an hour and a half away, and the sole grocer in town has little for affordable (or good) fresh food. We end up in Laramie with bags of goods whenever we can get out there, stocking both cabinets and freezers on our return to the ranch. So this cookbook written by a woman who lives on a remote ranch all of a sudden takes on new meaning for my way of cooking.

Rummaging through Gramma’s cupboard yesterday I found a can of olives, and in the fridge some mayo. There was a recipe in the book that actually used these ingredients together. We’ll talk about that later. I’m still trying to accept the fact that I made food to eat from that combo of foods. More importantly, it’s the end of peach season here (it’s supposed to frost tomorrow) and there are cobblers and pies to make. Here’s a great one with a few adjustments I made from Ree Drummond’s book.

Peach Crisp with Maple Cream Sauce
adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Maple Cream Sauce
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
5 tablespoons maple syrup (the real stuff, please)
3 tablespoons honey

Peach Crisp
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Dash of nutmeg (I like to use fresh and grate myself)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 pound (1 stick) cold butter
5 or 6 cups peeled and sliced fresh peaches (6-7 peaches)
Grated zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

First make the cream sauce- it needs to chill before serving. Pour cream into heavy saucepan, then add maple syrup and honey. Cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until sauce is thickened and reduced by a third, about 20 minutes. Chill for at least an hour before serving over warm peach crisp.

Then, preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl combine flour, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Did you know you can make your own brown sugar?

Cut the cold butter into pieces. Add the butter to the bowl and use a fork or pastry blender to cut it into the flour mixture. It will resemble a moist, coarse meal.

Place the peaches in a bowl- to peel, quickly blanch in boiling water (about 30-60 seconds), dunk in icy water, and then slip the peels right off with a sharp knife. Add the lemon zest to the peaches, mix in lemon juice and maple syrup, then gently stir to combine. Remember to save some peaches for the cobbler- don’t eat them all. Pour peaches into 9-inch square or 8×12-inch baking dish.

Top with the crumb mixture, evening out the surface with a fork. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 15 minutes. Remove foil and bake 30 minutes more, or until the topping is crisp and golden brown. If the topping appears underdone, continue baking in 10 minute increments until it’s done. Spoon the warm crisp onto a plate, then drizzle with chilled maple cream sauce. Yes, it really is THAT good!

We used our leftover maple cream sauce on peaches with yogurt the next morning. And then we ate more cobbler. And then we forced ourselves to hunt for something to chase to end our stupor, but in the end laid in the grass under the sun with a lazy hound dog.

It seems that last week the honeymoon period here on the range had a not so smooth crash landing. My spirit broke daily from having to walk into work at a steakhouse, and Josh’s spirit desperately choked from this dusty barn that can’t quite seem to make sense yet as a shop. And these overwhelming feelings of heaviness in the brain continually reminded us that: We Need A Yurt. Stat. Winter looms, the mornings already falling below forty degrees; the frost predicting flowers that have bloomed six weeks before frost for decades and decades last week began showing their yellow blossoms. Lovely.

And then we had the opportunity to attend a conference within the Wyoming state line called Living and Working on the Land. We drove four hours over a remote and beautiful highway, eyes peeled looking for bighorn sheep (to no avail), reaching a delicious evening of acoustic music, local food, and our very own hotel room. The two days that followed were full of amazing speakers, wonderful local farmers and ranchers, and great time spent thinking that perhaps this ranching project of ours might have some validity to it after all. You know, it can be real exhausting to think to yourself hour after hour, day after oppressing day, that you are an anomaly, a being of extraordinary strangeness that will just not ever fit into this wild and rustic west. But we met others who’s eyes shine when you say the words, “diversity!”, “sustainability!”, and “rotational grazing!”. And now the real challenge comes with finding a way to remember that we are not alone, we are not being unreasonable dreamers, and that we just might be able to be successful with ranching while simultaneously bringing greater health to this soil and all who subsist on it.

We met Joel Salatin, leader of all things unconventional and diverse in farming. All ears perched as the audience took in his every authentic word, spoken with the unapologetic intensity of a robed and animated preacher. Who knew in this contemporary day and age it would take a farmer to stand up and speak the truth to the connections of health, food, government, politics, family, and land values. One of our favorite topics addressed by Joel was about how new ideas and growth come from disturbance. He speaks of not only how disturbance of the soil brings new growth (thus the importance of grazing animals on the land), but how allowing our false economy to crumble, thus using human capabilities to exercise and design a higher level of ecology. Innovation will arise. Joel’s Polyface Farm in Virginia works to improve the soil while providing food to a great number of people in his local community, all while teaching and employing a substantial number of well-compensated young people; young people who will take this knowledge and exponentially touch cities and rural lands alike. And as Joel said at the conference, “We are all more similar than we are different. We all eat.”

We also were fortunate enough to have an engaging conversation with rancher and writer Diane Peavey. On an evening trip to Table Mountain Vineyards Winery, we waited in the buffet line for locally produced burgers on a stick (for real) with Diane and heard some of her amazing stories about her sheep ranch in Idaho. She listened to our bit of bitchy banter about the struggles involved when two young people leave a yuppy university town and end up in a western town with the state’s severest reputation, all while not having a very good plan for how soon and very soon a yurt will be built. She thought it was hilarious and hopeful, repeatedly saying that the best marketing any of us at the conference could possibily do is to tell our stories. Tell your stories. And ah, if there’s one thing this Wyoming family has, it’s stories. And if we can only hold on to our wacky sense of humor, oh the stories we can tell of this beginning, slightly ungraceful and definitely uncomfortable, period of learning to walk despite the badger holes at our feet and battering wind at our backs.

Gramma was full of anecdotes the other day. Living with her is somewhere between a hilarious riot, and a time warped past. Your heart ticks anxiously at the items left to be done in the present as she details stories of the past. We’re torn with needing to crawl away and be productive, and wanting to stay and absorb all she can share. She is an amazing storyteller, maintaining her sharp mind with memories from her 80 plus years. She arrived at this ranch at the age of 17, married and learning how to be a wife in a time and place without running water, fulfilling daily chores of chickens and milk cows. Her knowledge of the past and the hardships that came with the ruggedness of life bring all of us to both laughter and tears almost daily around the dinner table. When I can take the time to benefit from her old ways and knowledge, I know I must.

Sunday I asked her if she could show me how she makes her pie crust. I had gone on a peach bender Friday after seeing a stand of produce on the roadside, buying a box of the ripe and aromatic fruit. Deprived of fresh produce, everyday since I have eaten a minimum of three peaches. We used these to make the same amazing peach pie we had last year around this time… link is here.

Here are just a few of the sentences that came from that clever lady’s mouth as she made the dough, followed by her recipe:

“I saw the way Joshua was making his bisquits. That’s fine for his bisquits, I suppose, but that’s not how you make bisquits. You need lard for bisquits. I’ll show you someday.”

“I suspect this rolling pen is about as old as I am because it was here when I got here. I’ll show you how to clean it. I don’t want it washed- if you have to wash it, just use a damp cloth. They say you have to wash these things these days, but I’ve been using this rolling pen for 63 years.”

Her recipe uses lard, something our culture is afraid of in this day and age. And to be quite honest, I’m afraid of buying lard but intrigued by the prospect of having lard from the animals on this land.

Gramma’s Pie Crust:
makes two 9″ crusts

2 c. flour, sifted
1 tsp. salt
Small amount baking powder (maybe 1/2 tsp. is what it looked to me?)
Mix these dry ingredients in a bowl, then dump as a mound onto a wooden bread board (some might just use a clean counter top- Gramma thinks that to be absurd).

In another bowl place 2/3 c. soft lard. You might need to work this a bit with a fork to soften it. Add to the lard 1/3 c. BOILING water. Begin to work this quickly with a fork, and when combined push the flour mixture from the board into the bowl. This will allow some of the flour to stay behind on the board. Mix all together, handling the dough as little as possible.

Turn your pie pan upside down on the bread board and draw a circle on the board in the remaining flour dust. Place your dough in the center of this circle, and roll out the dough using a floured rolling pen. It doesn’t have to be perfect- the beauty of this crust is not only that it flakes nicely, but it repairs easily. Using a very dull knife, gently pull the dough from the board, then fold the dough in half. Lift the dough from the board with the knife, place in pie pan, and make any repairs by pushing the dough with your fingertips. There should be extra dough for any rips in your crust. Then flute the edges with your fingers and cut any ragged edges from the edge of the pan.

Rodeos. Everywhere, every town, every nook and cranny of this state. There are cowboy boots and broncing four-legged critters bursting around dusty rings with Wrangler ads plastered on the sides throughout the summer, sometimes every night in some towns. Needless to say, there is a culture about this place that mimics the old rodeo ways. The people who are from this western world tend to have stories that revolve around working with animals, be it rodeos or hunting, cow handling or predator control.

We started the weekend in Cody, a town bustling with visitors that want to experience the wide open, rough and tough land of Wyoming. Every night of the week July-August there is a rodeo in Cody that is packed with onlookers. We ended up camping for a night in the Bear Tooth Mountains over the border in Montana and didn’t make it back for the rodeo in time. So I have yet to attend a Wyoming rodeo, despite having passed through a dozen towns hosting the festivity. Perhaps this next week during Carbon County’s summer rodeo?

We left Cody and headed over the Big Horn Mountains, chugging our little Honda up and around the 1,000′s of feet of elevation, eventually heading through the town of Sheridan and on east to the small town of Arvada. We were meeting a couple of skilled ranch workers at the Arvada bar to follow them in to a really beautiful and large ranch, Powder River Horses. The Arvada bar is one of a few places in the town- where the paved road ends and the dirt roads to the working ranches of the town seem to begin. Walking into the (fairly gritty) bar, cowboy hats strewn around on the strong faces of the locals sitting at the circular bar, cans of domestics in hand, we were faced with trophy heads of antelope, deer, etc. and some tried and true cowboys.

After following Rich and Sarah out to the ranch, they introduced us to some amazing people and beautiful horses. Rich, a former rodeo rider, hopped on a couple of horses and demonstrated how the horses did with ropes, rifles, and directions. It was inspiring to learn about the horses and their history, to talk with the people on the ranch about the work they do and the integrity of their working ranch. The ranch family works organically, raising long-horn cattle, weed eating goats and geese, and naturally maintained grasses. They focus on breeding quarter horses that are genetically sound, strong, and brilliantly colored. The horses originate from the Hollywood Gold and the Hancock lines, both strong western horses that handle the rugged miles of the west and know how to tightly turn and move cows. The experience of meeting these ranchers only made us more anxious for horses on the ranch and excited for the potential in focusing in on the proven strength in these historical breeds of horses.

The horses we saw really were beautiful and brilliant in color and form. But we were so engaged in the experience that we didn’t manage to take one picture- not one of the people, the horses, the cows, the geese, the grass… so instead the pictures below are the horses that were here at Meadow Ranch most recently, the horses that were broken by the family here, ridden to work cows, and sold after there was no one here to ride them. They are missed dearly… below are pics of Trof, Frosty, Sassy, Missy, & Principessa.

Productivity. It’s all I ask for in a day. And finally the other day we actually physically seemed to get something done.

Fences are a pretty big deal out here. And when you see a Smith fence, it’s more than likely that you are looking at a century or more old fence. A common phrase around here is, “That’s older than your grandfather.” And Josh’s grandfather passed away thirty years ago at the age of 70. I’m still trying to grasp how the plots of land out here work, but they basically are set-up as a checkerboard, squares being divided between the Bureau of Land Management (federal), the railroad, and private. We don’t have lots of land, but we are able to lease from the feds and the railroad. With that we potentially should be able to run about 100 head of cattle. The wide open west is just that, cows roaming and then rotating within these patches.

Josh and I went out to check the miles of fence line and make sure that other ranchers cattle weren’t in our sections that we’ll be using for late summer and winter feed. Lo and behold, 30 or so cows were in the School Section (Smith land), having meandered straight through a downed fence. Here are a few pics of us repairing fence and trying to communicate with Diego about how to appropriately move cows, not just tease them.

You can see how I like to discuss with her on her level, pointing out the cow we are going to push into another area. She mostly was focused on the rabbit that just might be to her right. Or left. Or really just about anywhere. I seemed to do most of the running on foot, encouraging her to “Push ‘em”, “Get ‘em”, or signal to head a certain way. She seems to think her job is to chase rabbits, but only because she doesn’t think she’s allowed to chase cows. She’ll figure it out one of these days. She’s real smart. But until then, I really want a horse. All that running wore me out.

Have we already mentioned our to-do list? I told Josh last night that I just want to revel in our naivete a little longer, or at least as long as possible- to take those long evening hikes, looking out at the sunset, and see beauty not work. To see a coyote silhouette hanging on the high rim framed by the night sky, know its ominous presence but feel the power in its beauty at dusk without feeling the need to have a rifle. I want to keep climbing high into the rocks, looking down hundreds of feet at the open grass, jagged rocks and muscled elk on the horizon without seeing the poison weeds or the fence desperate for mending.

Nonetheless, the work is omnipresent. The place we are is certainly romantic but crumbling all around us. There are barns with buggies and antique horse gear. There are bones and corpses from the rotting of life. There are views touched with scampering wildlife. And there is this growing to-do list. We’ve only been here since July 1st, though, and in that time we have seen some amazing Wyoming country and taken care of the nitty gritty efforts from relocation. We’ll take in the rest of this one dusty bit at a time, and hopefully with a couple of good horses at our sides sooner than later.

Check pastures- grass, water and fences of all pastures

Rebuild the corrals

Fix squeeze shoot

Rebuild, clean out and organize barn

Write our business plan

Find and buy two horses

Research cross-breeding

Get a loan and figure out grants for new and younger farmers/ranchers

Finance, buy and build yurt

Train a cattle dog

Find winter hay