Well, it’s the last week of April- obvious by the layer of snow, cold days with cold nights, and green tips of grass peeping out from the cracked Wyoming earth.
Here are some highlights:
1. Franny Anne was born. I love her.
2. Josh’s shop floor is officially cured. We have a concrete floor that will hold his equipment steady and still.
3. We are moving into the barn. Literally. We’re going to be living in a steel barn. Josh promises to install a wood stove and a toilet before the end of this week, and a fridge and a stove top by the end of next week.
4. Emma Gates has successfully NOT killed either Josh or myself- picture below is Emma and her calf (a heifer) Ypsi Gates.
5. Diego and I explored a new part of town, a beautiful crevasse up the Rawlins Uplift where we viewed not only the breadth of the town, but all parts north and south including the ranch. We sat on rocks, chased rabbits, and watched a buzzing world below. Typically, I don’t love being licked by my dog. I’m not sure why I look so content here…
6. We picked up a mortgage application from the bank with hopes that the yurt will be built by the end of July. Not that I don’t love barns and all, but I’m kind of looking forward to the yurt.
We haven’t quite reached what I would describe as a world of Spring here, but there truly are little tufts of random green grass coming up. I can’t wait for the cows to get there nozzles into it.
There is one heifer still needing to calve. She looks a bit bewildered at the little ones bucking and bawling around her, not quite sure what it means to be standing around without her own. Soon, very soon she too will have a teeny furry critter to play with the other five. It’s funny to watch the babies stand around, trying to snack on the alfalfa hay. The look a bit like I would munching on grass, like a goofy guy not sure how to say what’s actually brewing in the mind, straw hanging from the corner of the lips like a partially spoken statement.
Off to build a space in the barn to lay our heads….
I figure that if you were really interested in hearing about what it’s like to see for the first time tiny hooves, with the bottoms splayed white, coming out of the ass-end of a cow, you would be out here braving the wind and seeing it yourself. It is, after all, not all that interesting. There can’t possibly be that many reasons you’d want to hunch around, your knees creaking, brushing your hand up against dog shit, breathing as silently as humanly possible, all to stare through a grey and dilapidated fence. Your hushed caution comes from straight up fear that the nervous cow will just buck up and refuse to give birth because she knows that you are creepily stalking her during this sort of normal yet odd show. How would that feel, knowing that you are responsible for the hooves that perpetually peep past her tailbone, all because she’d rather not give birth with an audience? But again, if you really wanted to see these things, you’d find a way to live amongst it yourself, right?
As it turns out, cows aren’t so hot on the idea of company during childbirth. In fact, despite the fact that they are herd animals, when the time comes that a cow’s body tells her the baby is going to be arriving shortly, she quietly and stealthily excuses herself to head towards the hills. If that plan is thwarted, the cow becomes anxious and distracted and, as it turns out, pretty much lethal. That momma cow knows that she wants to have the baby in privacy, on a clean patch of ground, protected from both wind and predators. You quickly learn that in that cow’s sight, you are no longer the blessed alfalfa and apple angel, you are a predatory and stalking creature deserving a speedy death- the sooner you can be gotten rid of, the sooner that squirmy little squealer can come out of her abdomen.
So it just seems natural to let them do their thing.
The first pair to awaken to our Meadow Ranch, Wyoming (pathetic) interpretation of spring was discovered after the heifer was missing in the morning count. A cow missing in the “spring” means you might as well put on a helmet and shield before you go investigating the meadows. If you stumble upon her and her calf, you might be in for a scurry of a muddy run back to shelter. Or it might be just fine. All could be calm and the mother might just bellow at you a bit to keep your distance. That seems to be the case when you mostly stay out of the way of the whole birthing process and give the mother her space. Go figure. Our first pair was a sight to see, cuddling together against the sage brush, snow brushed on the long hair of the mother but the baby dry as a desert day. That was the first calf I have ever really had a chance to notice. And geez almighty was he a black beauty.
The next two, well, we are still bruised and battered. If only the two ladies knew our intentions were for the best- that we only stood between them and the isolated hills in case they were to need assistance during their first calving experience. Not their idea of a good idea. And they haven’t been the same since.
But wait, really, if you were at all interested in these things, you’d be out in the Wyoming wind, wading through the spring mud. You don’t need someone to tell you what it’s like to see a cow first learn of her baby… to watch her lick and caress and beg with her voice for that baby to rise and suck. And to see them the next day, together, the mama a bit slow and happy and seemingly satisfied to be curled in with her little one. I don’t think I ever even remotely fathomed what this experience would be like, or how deeply in love I would fall with this intimate connection to animals.
The calf born just this evening makes five total out of six. The last baby doesn’t look to be wanting to come anytime soon. We know that of the first four, three are bull calves and one is a heifer calf. Strangely, the heifer calf is from our wild Emma Gates with the unruly horns (you know, the one that had us climbing the fences to escape from her lovely motherly instincts?). The baby is named Franny Gates, after my mother and hers. Girl calves are named in a heritage breeding scenario like ours, and boy calves are simply numbered. They’ll live a shorter yet substantial life out here with us for about two years. Then they will become part of our cyclical life cycle. They are here with us to die- and quite honestly, they wouldn’t be alive right now if they didn’t have a food purpose. Maybe we all need to realize that that is a cycle that will keep happening long after we are dust again. And none of us would be here if we weren’t meant to only pass through this world, not to stay.
Garrison Keillor with The Writer’s Almanac appropriately sent this to his email subscribers today, a Shakespeare poem. Quite lovely and appropriate I’d say:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
And of Vladimir Nobokov:
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
I’ve moved three times with this same bunch of risotto I bought in Michigan. Three times. That’s ridiculous. What could make one so intimidated to make such a beautiful and creamy food? I guess it was the unknown of something not only infamously Italian, but something as touchy as rice. Not to mention that I am not one to stand around in the kitchen, utensil in hand, having to stir my food often. I kind of like to do a million things at once while in the kitchen, whether cleaning the fridge, making yogurt, or finding fitting music from our computer. So if something requires frequent stirring, it will more than likely perish in the heat.
But last night… last night was different. Last night was an evening best spent doing things slowly and a bit monotonously. It was oh so worth it. This was a delicious dish, the risotto turned out creamy, and the locally-grown squash was brilliantly orange. When the rice and squash are mixed, you end up with a truly lustrous dish.
Butternut squash is a great way to pack in nutrient dense goodness, arming the body against winter sickness. Specifically, it is a good source of Vitamin E, Thiamin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Calcium and Magnesium, and a very good source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Potassium and Manganese. Eat it up. It’s satisfying and complete in and of itself, especially when topped with a salty just grated parmesan.
Butternut Squash Risotto
1 medium butternut squash
1 teaspoon olive oil
Salt and Pepper
8 cups chicken broth
7 tablespoons cold butter
1 medium yellow onion, minced
2 cups superfino carnaroli rice
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup grated parmesan
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Split the squash in half, drizzle olive oil on the flesh along with a sprinkle of salt and fresh ground pepper. Bake until soft, about 45 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool. Once cooled, scoop flesh from peel and puree in a food processor. If the squash is heavy with moisture, cook in a saucepan for a few minutes until relatively dry.
In a medium stock pot, bring chicken broth to a boil and reduce heat to low. In a separate large saucepan, melt 3 tablespoons of butter. Add the minced onion. Cover and cook over low heat until the onions are tender but not colored for about 5 minutes. Bring the pan to medium heat and deglaze the pot with the white wine. Add rice and stir continuously for 3-5 minutes until ou see the outer edge of the rice turn translucent. With a ladle, add enough broth to just cover rice. Slowly stir the rice with a wooden spoon every few minutes until the liquid has been absorbed. Don’t allow the rice to become completely dry.
Stirring the rice as often as possible will activate the natural starch, helping to make a creamier risotto. Repeat this process of adding broth, allowing it to absorb, until the broth is gone and the risotto is creamy and less firm to the bite. When the risotto is cooked, stir in the butternut squash puree until it is incorporated. Then add the remaining 4 tablespoons of cold butter, stirring until it is melted. Season the risotto with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve the risotto in bowls, garnished with grated parmesan.
Serves 6.
I always knew these pancakes were good, but I was totally convinced after a snowshoe adventure with Josh’s sis and a friend. We clomped through the Sierra Madres which were covered in feet of snow, our poor hound dog having to force herself to either swim in front, or succumb to following our deep tracks behind. Needless to say, we were worn out and hungry, satisfied with the work and ready to soak in some hot springs. That’s when I realized that I had grabbed all kinds of random goods from the fridge before we left the ranch, fully aware of what the cold outdoor air can do to a woman. Josh had made multigrain pancakes that morning, and I had packed up the leftovers. Sadie and Diane couldn’t have been more impressed.
It’s hard to say if they thought these were the best things in the world, well, because they are, or if they were speaking from their famished bellies. Regardless, here’s the recipe, great for a cold Sunday morning before heading out to feed the cows. Or watching cartoons. Or going to church. Or, preferably, going back to bed.
Dry ingredients
Wet ingredients
Last ingredients
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients.
In a separate medium mixing bowl, beat the eggs; add milk, yogurt, and vanilla. Mix well. Pour these wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
Stir well. Meanwhile, melt honey and butter. Drizzle the honey and butter into batter. Stir with a fork.
Heat a flat skillet or stone; melt a bit of butter on the skillet. Once the skillet is hot and butter is melted, ladle the pancake batter to form 3 or 4 inch pancakes. The batter will start to bubble. At this point, check the other side and flip when browned.
You’ll have a beautiful and fluffy bunch of pancakes, approximately 10 or so.
Variations:
Well, five months in, and we’re here, stationed at the ranch in beautiful and intriguing rural Wyoming. But at this point we have as many moments where we think to ourselves, “Where the hell are we?” as we do those moments where we look around and think there isn’t a more perfect place on earth. When my dog and I hike up and out into our never ending backyard, interrupting the quiet wanderings of antlered beasts, I look out at the openness, us perched out upon those rims and think, “Damn, this is a most magnificent arctic tundra.” There is something about facing the blowing and crooked 50mph bitter air, to fall into the arms of a protected rocky rim, comforted by the idea that this just might not be your day to die after all. But with that beauty, you have the bit of beastliness.
This western place is so interesting in that it knocks you down by its fierceness, it drops you through the snows to your knees, sucking your feet into its depths, and then it spits you out as it opens its broad chest of a sky to a view of such magnificent beauty that you teach yourself once again what it means to breathe. Life can pile up into little hills of unorganized chaos, minor landfills storing the disturbances of your world, and those walks sort of create a renewed perspective, shoving all that chaos into one solitary understanding: all that you need is really right here at your fingertips. Maybe.
After the walks, after I’ve returned from my stupor of glorious “space” into a cavernous abyss of possibilities, of what-if’s, I force myself to mentally return to these quiet hikes. I imagine the wind whipping on either side of me and pushing my pup slanted and sideways, reminding myself that the world is only as big as I need it to be. To be honest, the best part of the escape outside is that each and every time the world appears different. It’s never the same. There’s always a new critter, a new brush, a change in the horizon.
We’ve been working on accepting the fact that just because we’ve agreed to attempt to embrace the oddness of what makes this town and this little ranch tick, it doesn’t mean we are solely set to become either of these places or things. Our world has truly not shrunk, as much as it might seem.
Much has happened in the five months here, including many moments of life and death, all seemingly appropriate for some reassuring reason. This place, as we’ve said before, radiates the cycle of life on this earth, antelope and elk bones littering the ground throughout, toys left over from Josh’s early years eerily stuck in old pipelines and holes, green grasses withering and blowing stark, our oldest steer being absorbed into the earth and the bodies of scavengers. We’ve lost friends and family to illness. We’ve reintroduced ourselves to the aged grandparents living in this part of the country. We are trying to become what this place has to offer, absorbing into ourselves the history of those grasses, the needs of those scavengers, the stories and memories of what used to be.
And in all this is the physical work, the physical fighting with the wind and the openness. Josh is sore from work on the steel barn, a structure his dad and great-uncle built years ago. He is putting in a sewer line and running water, and planning the heat source, insulation, and cement floor to come. He’s dreaming and designing the walls and each and every piece of metal bending and kissing equipment. He dreams of a place to change his shoes, from snow boots to steel toes, from hiking boots to riding boots. And when that happens, I think a few pieces of that puzzle might come together. But ultimately, that all depends on if there really is water to be had for living, if life should allow us to continue on in this framework. Should it, so be it. Should it not, I don’t think I would think it to be in vain. This ranch is storied upon five generations. There’s a lot to be lived out upon that fact, and upon the notions we’ll choose to believe based on those past lives.
Grandma’s talking often these days about the stratification of the rocks and hills surrounding us, speaking to thousands of years past, to times when this was a land of water, oyster beds remaining fossilized at our feet. A book she’s reading describes this place as a failed mountain range. Strikes me coincidental, this place we have embraced maintaining stratification and layers of family, droughts, fierce cold, deaths and lives all in this one plot of blowing, sagebrush and rattlesnake infested land. And sometimes it feels like we are trying to operate a failed mountain range. But if we’re committed, what can we lose? All of the work seems to lead towards a common and functioning good for food, animals, and ground. Seems like a pretty good deal to me, overall: dirt, sweat, cracking skin, and tired thoughts that continually teach and challenge, opening up a world of healthier surroundings.
