Late Fall And Early Winter 2007

Andrea didn’t make it to Salt Lake for her appointments on November 14. She cancelled them because she had too many urgent things to do, working on the divorce problem and getting her life organized again. We hoped she wouldn’t wait too long to have her health issues checked on, however. We didn’t know how serious they might be.
My sister put Mom into the local nursing home (Discovery Care Centre), in mid-November. We knew she would find some plusses there, having more contact with people. Several of her old friends were there and even though Mom was often very confused, she still knew who we were, and knew her friends, and enjoyed visiting with people.
That winter we were trying to help Andrea get through her personal crisis and financial problems. She and Mark had a lot of debts and we set up a plan to help pay those. I worked as many hours a day as possible (doing articles and book projects) and still tried to find some time for those grandkids. I prayed that the good Lord would help me keep going a while longer.
In November I got the final page proofs checked over for my new book ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO CALVING, which was then published by Storey (the publisher who’s done most of my other cattle and horse books). I could then concentrate on getting the next book finished (on cattle health care), which had an extended deadline at Christmastime. I worked on it for nearly a year and planned have it finished sooner, but there were too many major interruptions!
It was a stressful year, with my father’s death, mom’s declining health and mental status, Andrea’s marriage ending (she and Mark divorcing and both of them going through a tough time dealing with it). All the normal ranching challenges and crises seemed somewhat incidental that year. It’s a good thing we don’t know what’s around the next corner, in life, or we’d lose courage. But the Good Lord gives us strength when we need it, so we keep going—and we sometimes find unexpected blessings amidst the trauma and heartache. One good thing about our life as ranchers—we are always optimistic. We have to be, in this business. There’s always promise of a new day, a new year, a better season. Indeed, we are eternal optimists. Like an old rancher once told me, he’d had 2 good years in the cattle business—1980-something, and next year. Yes! There’s always next year!
Lynn worked a few days cleaning up branches in the yard that he sawed off our big elm tree earlier—pruning the tree before branches crashed through the house roof. He used duct tape to attach a small bow saw to a long piece of PVC pipe, so he could safely aw the branches off from the ground or standing on our roof, rather than trying to use a ladder and chain saw.





Michael and Carolyn spent several days helping friends and neighbors work cattle. We often fed their horses (the 2 they kept here) a few hours before daylight so they could come with their trailer and get them and be at another ranch by dawn to help gather cows. They vaccinated their own cows a few days later.


Our weather warmed up briefly and rained off and on for 3 days, then froze and created a lot of ice. Lynn helped Michael haul hay for several days. Michael purchased 100 tons from a rancher at Leadore (50 miles up the valley) and he and Lynn made 2 trips a day with a couple flatbed trailers and got it all hauled. After one late trip (unloading after dark) Michael had to go home and euthanize old Mr. K (Nick’s gelding). Nick loved that old horse; they’d spent many hours riding range and in 4-H horse classes—including roping classes--but Mr. K had become old and stiff and had been retired for about a year. He had been losing weight, then developed swelling in his legs and was very weak and could hardly get up.



Michael took the backhoe up there the next day to bury the old horse, and thanks to a few days of warm weather the ground wasn’t frozen yet. In fact, it was so muddy in our corrals that Michael also had to haul gravel to the waterhole approach where the 84 weaned calves are trying to drink; they were bogging down.
Weather got cold again before December and Michael and Carolyn had to bring the last of their upper cows (on the 320) down to the fields and feed hay. Our friend Bob Minor brought his tractor and wood splitter over to our place and helped Lynn for 2 days splitting firewood—that big woodpile that Dan Watson (our friend from Manitoba) helped Lynn cut and haul.
Michael spent a few days helping his friend Don Hatch build fence, trying to get brace posts set before the weather got too bad; the ground is solidly frozen now after a week of sub-zero weather. Lynn helped them one day, so they could get finished sooner. The cold weather and ice created an ice flow across our lower fields where some of Michael’s cows are, so he took the backhoe down there and fixed the place where it was leaking out of the creek.
We had new snow on December 1, and the roads were very slippery and icy. An oncoming car slid into Andrea’s car at an intersection in town and knocked the back end of her car about 10 feet, but didn’t do much damage—just knocked the tire off its rim and it went flat, but the car and kids were ok.
We started feeding our cows hay. Their pasture was nearly gone and the new snow covered what was left. Michael and Carolyn brought their horses down to one of the lower pastures to spend the winter there. There was still some rough feed there and the horses were able to paw through the snow to grass.



Michael and Carolyn drove to Arco to watch one of little Heather’s basketball “away from home” games and we took Nick to his game here—and enjoyed watching him play. Both kids were doing very well in basketball.
In early December Michael and Carolyn deloused/dewormed their 84 calves and put them in the field below our lane where they have more room--and a lot cleaner than the corral where they were weaned. Something spooked those calves a few nights later. They knocked over 2 of their feeders and ran through the fence, breaking off 6 wood posts and knocking it flat. We hoped the wolves weren’t back again. Wolves were becoming a bigger problem everywhere in the West. One of our friends in Montana lost a 2-year-old cow, killed by a pack of wolves.
The next week, we had 3 inches of wet, heavy snow. Roads were slippery again. The fellow who hauls cattle to the sale at Blackfoot, in southern Idaho, came to pick up a bull Michael and Carolyn were sending to the sale and we helped load the bull (it was a full load with other cattle already in the trailer). Our lane was so slick the truck couldn’t get up enough speed to make it to the top when he left our corral. It spun out and slid backward down the lane and into our fence. It bent the trailer fender and tore up the fence, but that was better than sliding farther down the driveway and hitting our house.
The truck and trailer were stuck there, completely blocking our lane. Luckily we have gates in the adjacent maternity pen both top and bottom, and Michael was able to drive through it to get around the blocked lane to go get our big tractor up at his place, and Lynn was able to take the little tractor (with blade on it) that same route and get above the stuck truck--to blade through the ice to dirt and gravel. By the time Michael got the big tractor, Lynn had plowed most of the ice off the driveway. The big tractor, with chains on, and a big round bale on the back for traction, was able to pull the stranded truck and loaded trailer up the lane.
It was very slippery here for several days. Walking down the lane, Lynn slipped and fell, catching himself with one arm, tearing some of the muscle and attachments in his shoulder. It was very painful for several days, but we put DMSO on it morning and evening and his shoulder was soon doing much better. He was able to feed the hay, and also got a load of dirt on the pickup to shovel into our ditch above the house where water was leaking around the headgate and creating an ice flow down across the field where we were feeding our cows. Never a dull moment!
A couple weeks later the ditch was still leaking and creating more ice across the field, so Lynn took our flatbed feed truck down the road a mile to where the County crew was widening the road, and they put a loader dump of dirt on his truck. He took the dirt to our ditch head and hauled it in buckets (since he couldn’t back up to the headgate) to put around the leaking area and finally sealed it off.
One of Michael’s cows got injured and couldn’t get up, so they made a “house” for her with big straw bales, to keep the other cows away from her and give her shelter. They put big bales around her, a tarp over the top, and a gate panel in front. She was eating and drinking very well and seemed to be recovering—until one morning after dogs or coyotes got in there with her during the night and chewed her up pretty badly. Michael decided to put her out of her misery.



In December Michael and Carolyn finalized their lease on the Maurer ranch, just around the hill from our place. They also planned to buy Maurer’s cows and expand their own herd.
Andrea moved a lot of her things to Challis (70 miles away), where she was staying with a friend. Emily and Charlie spent several nights here with us so they could continue to go to school here and so Emily could go to hockey practice; Lynn took them to the bus in the mornings and picked them up in the evening. On occasion we had the 2 little girls here, too, and they enjoyed drawing and painting pictures for Grandma while I was busy working on my book (Cattle Health Handbook, a companion volume for my Essential Guide to Calving). I got the manuscript finished just before Christmas.


The day before Christmas we had 4 inches of new snow, blowing and drifting, and roads were slick. Lynn put some small bales of hay in the back of our pickup, for traction. I went to town several times that week to visit my mother at Discovery Care Center (which provides assisted living for elderly people). We drove to Challis to have Christmas dinner with Andrea and kids and her friend—a slow trip on slippery roads.
Michael had a semi-load of straw (big bales) hauled here in late December. He was getting ready for calving, since some of the cows he bought from Maurers would start calving early. Lynn hauled a few of the left-over small straw bales from last year (stacked on the upper place) to give our heifer calves bedding in the sub-zero weather.
After finishing my book project I finally had time to sort and put away a lot of things that piled up, and Lynn helped me make room for another cabinet in our dining room, so we can store more things out of the way. He also made more bookshelves in the living-room, for stacks of books. We actually got all our couches and counters cleaned off for the first time in several years!
My sister and brother cleaned out Mom’s old apartment and gave me a few boxes of things, including the drawings and paintings I did for my folks while I was in college. We hung some on our walls and I saved some to give to our children and grandchildren.
In early January it was 10 below zero and we fed our cows extra hay. We were hoping none of Michael and Carolyn’s cows would calve in the cold weather. Some of the cows they bought were getting big udders and ready to calve.
Charlie and Emily stayed with us again for 2 nights and Lynn took them to the school bus. Nick and Heather also stopped by on their way to school to borrow crutches. Nick hurt his foot and ankle and it was too painful to walk on.
Lynn took Emily to her year-end Girl Scout awards meeting, where she received her special awards for the year.


On January 3 Michael, Carolyn, and a neighbor trailed their cows home from Sandy Creek (more than 10 miles, along the back road). Lynn drove the feed truck to lead the herd, and the rest of the crew herded the cows on 4-wheelers. They did pretty well except when the cows had trouble going through the small gates by the cattle guards. One cow bogged down in a muddy gateway and several cows walked over the top of her. The 4 men couldn’t get the cow out of the bog, but fortunately Michael had a nylon rope on his 4-wheeler and was able to pull her out of the mud with that. Once the herd made it across the highway and headed up our creek road (with only 2 miles left to go) Carolyn drove the feed truck while Lynn came on home—since we had company visiting here from Canada. We’d been corresponding with Pete and Bev Weibe since 2000 when Andrea had her burn accident (Pete was severely burned a couple years earlier, in an electrical accident), but this was the first chance we’d had to actually meet them. Andrea drove from Challis to meet them, also.
The next week we had more wind and snow, drifting across fields and roads. Lynn used our tractor and blade to plow our driveway and several of the neighbors’. We started feeding our cows twice a day. We would be reducing our herd again before calving season. Michael needed more cows (to get up to the total his banker thought he needed) so we were selling him 22 of ours, cutting our small herd down again. He also went to a sale in Butte, Montana and bought 33 more cows, bringing their herd to 550 cows--to satisfy his banker.
Andrea changed schools with Emily and Charlie; it was easier for them to go to school in Challis than try to finish the year here. Em stayed with us on the nights before a hockey tournament however, so we could take her to town early in the morning to get a ride with friends. The 2-day tournaments were in various towns in Montana—often a very long drive.
Michael and Carolyn’s first calf arrived early one morning, up in the field. Fortunately the weather warmed up (20 degrees) so the calf didn’t freeze. They had 2 more babies the next day, and a total of 4 by January 12. Then they brought all the cows down to our field below the lane, where they could watch them better and have access to a barn if needed. They were preparing to camp here again in the old trailer house during calving season—where they could warm and dry any cold calves by the wood stove.

Fall 2007

We finally got the cattle moved to the high range August 18 –22, the latest ever. Carolyn was still swathing on the custom haying jobs, so I helped Michael and Nick for several days, gathering cattle. After 4 days of hard riding, my old mare Rubbie was very sore (at age 20 her stifle joints have arthritis) so I put DMSO on her stifles to reduce the inflammation. It helped her immensely, reducing the pain.


Michael’s new swather broke down again, just before finishing the last custom hay job, so instead of spending a couple days fixing it, he borrowed our old pull-type swather to finish the job.
This had been a long, hot dry summer, and the longest fire season ever, partly because we had so much grass that year. Every lightning storm set new fires. We were still suffering from dense smoke, from all the fires.
The abundant grass was a blessing, however. Even though it was dry, the cattle were doing well. Michael and Carolyn got an extension on their grazing period for our range. We usually bring the cattle home Sept. 16 but that year they didn’t fill the permit (with cattle on 2 other leased places) and the BLM gave them an extension since there was so much grass—and they didn’t have to round up their cows till October. They hauled several tons of protein supplement out on the range to augment the very dry grass.
Then it rained for 2 days, and cleared the smoke out. Our fire season was finally over. Michael, Carolyn and kids pregnancy-checked and vaccinated their cows on the place at 17 mile and Sandy Creek (they brought them all to a neighbor’s corral early that morning) and it rained all day. Even though they took several coats and jackets and kept changing to dry ones, they got miserably cold before the day was over.
After the rain we had a hard frost. Michael and Carolyn started rounding up cattle on the Baker Creek side of our range, putting them into our 320-acre high pasture. They were also gathering cattle for our range neighbor, Grant Maurer, who was paralyzed the year before in a 4-wheeler roll-over accident. Grant’s hired man quit, so Michael and Carolyn volunteered to gather the cattle and to help preg-check and vaccinate them.


At 4 a.m. one morning in early October our cows and calves in the field below the house were running and bellowing. Lynn and I went out with flashlights but didn’t see anything, but later Michael told us he’d seen a big wolf in our lower fields the day before.
The next day, I rode Rubbie to help Michael and Carolyn look for cattle in Mulkey Creek—the neighboring Forest Service allotment. Our range neighbors round up this time of year and generally drive their cattle through part of our range to take a shortcut, since our cattle are usually out of there by then; we generally round ours up a couple weeks earlier. But with our permit extension, Michael and Carolyn still had cattle in that pasture. When the neighbors went through with their cattle they were probably surprised to run into Michael’s cows. Instead of sorting them, they took those cattle along with theirs into the Forest Service allotment and then left the extras along the way as they took theirs home down Mulkey Creek. At least they were kind enough to call Michael and mention he had about 50 pair on the wrong range. So the next morning we rode to try to find them.
We rode through our middle range on the way over to Mulkey Creek, checking for any cattle that may have strayed back into that pasture, since hunting season for elk had started and gates were left open. It was raining when we got to Mulkey Creek, and we found about 30 pair on the rim of the canyon along the boundary fence, trying to come back to our range. We got them through the adjacent pasture and into our own range then went back to Mulkey Creek, dropping down into the canyon to search through scattered groups of neighbor’s cows that were still there.
It started to snow and visibility became poor and the footing treacherous on those steep mountainsides—with 2 inches of new snow on top of the mud. We found 2 more pair of Michael’s and Carolyn’s in the upper canyon and had a challenge getting them through the timber and over the mountain since they wanted to run back down the canyon. But we got them, and none of our horses fell down chasing cattle on the steep slippery terrain. We picked up 8 more pair when we got to the Withington Creek side. By then we were soaked and cold and it was too late in the day to go back to gather the 30 pairs we’d put into our high range pasture on the far side of our allotment. It was past chore time when we got home. I put DMSO on Rubbie’s stifle joints, fed the horses, and then tried to warm up.
My feet and legs were so cold, the only way I could think of to warm up fast (since our bathtub wasn’t functional at that time) was to sit on the bathroom counter with my feet in the sink in hot water, putting hot wet washcloths on my cold knees. Even though I was miserably cold, I’m always glad for a chance to get out and ride range again. We no longer run our cows on the range; we’ve been letting Michael and Carolyn use our range permit, so I’m not riding out there all the time like I did in the past—so I enjoy every time I can ride and help them move cattle or bring the cows home.


Michael and Carolyn rode again the next day and found a few more cattle in Mulkey Creek and gathered the ones we stuck in our high range, along with some that were already there. I would have ridden with them again, but my mom had another bad episode (falling down) and was in the hospital, so I went to see her.
The next few weeks, Michael and Carolyn helped some of their friends work cattle (preg-checking, vaccinating, shipping calves) and often loaded their horses in the trailer before daylight to go spend all day at these gatherings. We moved our cows and calves to the field above the house so they’d have good pasture until we sold our calves.


Michael hauled our calves to the sale at Blackfoot (a 3 hour drive) in mid-October. We put our cattle in a pen near the house the night before. We sorted the calves off into a different pen, in the dark on Friday morning, by flashlight, since our yardlight wasn’t working. Lynn had unhooked the wire to our yardlight earlier that fall, when he was sawing branches off the elm tree by our house. Part of the tree was threatening to crash down on the roof, so he sawed some big branches off, and took down the electric wire so it wouldn’t get wiped out by falling branches. We managed to get the calves sorted and loaded in the dark and Michael made it to the sale on time, in spite of a flat tire on the trailer that had to be changed along the way.
The next week I rode with Michael and Carolyn for 2 days to round up the last of their range cattle, and then helped gather their cattle and Maurers from our upper pastures (and Andrea rode with us when we brought the cattle home to the corrals). We sorted out Maurers’ cattle and took them home for him.


Friends from Manitoba came to visit for several days that fall. They were making a trip through part of the U.S. and were living in a pickup and camper on their trip. They camped in our back yard. While they were here, Dan helped Lynn get 5 pickup loads of firewood, sawing up some of the dead trees on our high range.
Dan had been reading one of my columns in Grainews (a Canadian farm newspaper) for more than 30 years; we got acquainted about 20 years ago when he called on the phone to ask advice about treating a calf with diphtheria, a calf his vet had told him to shoot since he would not be able to save it. We told Dan how we treat our cases of diphtheria (using DMSO to shrink the swelling in the throat so the calf can breathe) and he saved that calf—and several other cases since then. That was the beginning of a long-distance friendship and it was nice to finally meet him in person.
We had corresponded by letter and e-mail, and agonized with Dan as he went through the ordeal of losing his wife to cancer a few years earlier. That fall, he had a lady friend who had just gone through her own challenge of cancer and chemo. She lost her husband to cancer 14 years earlier. We enjoyed meeting the both of them. Since that time, Dan has written a book, Hitchhike to Heaven, about his experiences, and losing his wife, and it was recently published. Life is never easy, but it has its wonderful moments, and for these we are grateful. Friends and family are the best blessings.


October and November were very hectic, that fall. I was trying to get a couple books finished, and keep up a full schedule of writing articles. My editors kept giving me more assignments and at this point in our lives I’m not yet in a position to turn down any work, so I kept slogging along. I felt like I was on a treadmill, going faster and faster and I couldn’t keep up anymore, even on important things. I've always let the little things slide and I was YEARS behind on a lot of stuff, but was now getting behind on the important things, too.
My hectic pace seemed to have escalated since Dad that April. Mom was failing rapidly and confused most of the time, in a dream world—with no real line between reality and make-believe. Whenever I spent time with her, the things she talked about were like hallucinations, and I humored her as best I could. We were still trying to care for her in her own home (with people spending time with her periodically through the day and night, though she actually needed someone with her all the time). She missed Dad, and wasn’t very happy, and confused a lot of the time.
We were also facing another challenge; Andrea and Mark were splitting up. They nearly ended their marriage a few years earlier when he became hard to live with because of his drinking--and she left him for awhile. She gave it another try, but their relationship hadn't gotten better. She finally decided it was too hard on her and the kids to stay with him. His drinking was only one of a number of issues (another was financial--they were about to lose their home because they were so deep in debt) and there were many other issues and complexities involved in the failure of their relationship, as is usually the case with a failed marriage. At that point we were just trying to help them both through this a traumatic time.
We spent a week moving her things out, and getting her and the kids settled back into the little mobile home here on our ranch where she and Jim lived for 6 years. Lynn and Michael and Carolyn (with their stock trailer) and Bob Minor (the good friend who helped us during that traumatic summer after Andrea’s burn accident) made numerous trips, throwing stuff in boxes and bags and hauling it 25 miles over here (and some to a storage unit), while I took care of the kids. Lynn and I were trying to help ease the trauma on those 4 kids. The past several years had been tough on them and this new crisis was even more traumatic. So, we were hoping to get back to some sense of security and normalcy for those kids, giving them a lot of love.
One day we went for a drive in the mountains with Andrea and the kids, for a change of scene. We drive up over the Continental Divide and into Montana and back, stopping along the ridge in the forest, for a winter picnic—by an abandoned log cabin. The kids had fun and it took our minds off our problems.




On top of the trauma of trying to wade through the minefield of a bitter divorce, Andrea was having more health problems. She had a painful lump under one arm, under her grafted skin, with pain shooting down her arm and also into her chest. She had a doctor look at it, finally (she ignored it until the pain got really bad) and the doctor set up an appointment for her in Salt Lake for November 14. She would be going down there early that morning and coming back the next day. She also had a severe pain in her abdomen one night and went to the ER, where the doctor thought it might possibly be her gall bladder but wasn't sure. They gave her pain medicine via IV and it didn't phase the pain, so they had to give her a shot of morphine. They never figured out what caused that pain but it finally eased off so she was just going to wait and have that checked out, too, when she went to Salt Lake.
It seems like we go from one crisis to another, but with the grace of God we get through it—yet it's hard to relax and let go of the worry mode when it’s our kids we are concerned about. We never stop agonizing over whatever problems they may have. I have a little more trust than I did before the summer of 2000, knowing that underneath it all is a Love greater than I can imagine. I was reminded of this, one day that hectic Fall, when out of the blue I got 2 letters from people who had no clue what we were going through with the marathon move of Andrea and the kids and all the emotional trauma that accompanied it (Mark was drunk and making it more difficult and there were other complicating factors). I got those 2 letters from friends who felt compelled to let us know they were thinking of us and praying for us, asking for the "covering grace of God, and strength for your every movement." Yes, we needed that.
As I get farther along this wondrous detour from "normal" life (whatever that is), a detour that began in July 2000, I continually marvel at God's grace and Love. Life does not get easier, but the journey seems to polish us and knock more sharp edges and stickers off us. I am grateful for the Love that gives me strength and courage and keeps me going, and for friends who walk with me. The comfort and encouragement we give one another is priceless and precious. Our loving friends help carry me through the hard spots. Knowing their empathy and their own courage (facing their own challenges) gives me comfort and peace and also the strength of will to get up and face it all again every new morning. In spite of all the challenges, every new day is a gift and I am renewed, with strength from outside myself.

Summer Of 2007

By mid-May 2007, our cattle were finally all out on pasture for summer grazing. Michael and Carolyn turned some of their cows and calves out on our range, and hauled the rest to rented pasture 10 miles up the valley, and to another range about 20 miles away where they are renting another ranch on Sandy Creek. They were very busy patching fences and getting the irrigation water started on the Sandy Creek place. Most of the fences on that place were falling down, and they had to keep working on them all summer to keep the range cattle out.
Our cows went to pasture on our upper place and were glad to be out on green grass—and we were glad, too, since we were running out of hay.


We were also thankful for the rain that month, and the storm that put down 4 inches of snow in late May, because we were late getting some of our ditches cleaned so we could start the irrigation water. Michael fixed a few of the worst ditches with the backhoe, and pulled Lynn (on our tractor with blade) through the boggy ditch on the Wild Meadow. All through the summer Nick and Heather (age 14 and 16) helped Michael irrigate the Sandy Creek ranch. Heather got her drivers license that spring, so she and Nick could drive over there themselves.
In early June I put shoes on two of our horses and Emily (9 years old) came out several times to ride with me, riding 21-year-old Veggie. We had to lengthen the stirrups on her little saddle; she’d grown a lot since the previous Fall when she rode last. On one ride she helped me check all the cows on the upper place and we rode around the Cheney Creek pasture fence on our way home, patching places where the staples were missing.


I helped Carolyn and young Heather gather their herd of heifers from one of our pastures and we took them up the road to our upper place, gathered our cows out of the fields and took the whole group to our mountain pasture next to the range. Emily and I made several rides up there during the following weeks, to check on the cattle.



Later, when we moved the cattle down to the Cheney Creek pasture, we discovered several bulls right outside the fence, on the neighbors’ range. They had moved all their cattle to a different range pasture, but apparently missed these bulls. So Carolyn, young Heather and I herded them away from our fence and took them to their proper pasture. One of the bulls was mellow and manageable, but the other two were a challenge. One of them kept threatening to charge at us. Two of them were always trying to fight and kept running up the canyon the wrong way, and we did a lot of galloping through treacherous terrain to keep all 3 of them headed the proper direction. We finally got them to the next range pasture and put them in with the cows they were supposed to be with. During wild chases like that, we are grateful for fast, athletic horses that can safely gallop around in bad footing and rocks without falling down.
With 3 leased places, Michael, Carolyn and kids stayed very busy that summer. Young Heather and Nick irrigated their fields on our creek, using 4-wheelers, and changed sprinkler pipe daily on Sandy Creek. With cattle on 2 range allotments they did a lot of riding, as well.
Lynn and I hauled water tanks up to our hill pasture above our house, and put a pipe through the culvert under the road, to pump water from the field ditch into the tanks for our heifers. That pasture has no water, but we are able to use it by pumping from the ditch across the road. With several water tanks, we only had to pump every 6 days for that small group.


Michael and Carolyn traded in their swather for a newer model and started custom hay cutting in early July. The new swather runs faster and takes less fuel than the old one. They hoped to save time that year; Carolyn could run the swather most of the time while Michael did a lot of the irrigating on all their rented places. The unforeseen challenge, however, was that the new swather kept breaking down and Michael had to spend a lot of time and money fixing it.


In between writing articles for horse and cattle magazines that summer, I was working on another cattle book for Storey Publishing (The Cattle Health Handbook), and also the page proofs for my Essential Guide to Calving, which they would be publishing that fall.
Emily spent a week at Girl Scout camp, where she enjoyed riding and learning to shoot a bow and arrow. Heather spent a week at basketball camp in Washington; her knee healed nicely after the surgery to replace the ligament she tore the year before playing basketball.
In early July Michael and Carolyn hauled their horses to the range on Sandy Creek and brought home one of their 3-year-old bulls that had gone into a neighbor’s pasture. The next day we rounded up the cows in Cheney Creek, sorted off the yearling heifers and young bull to bring down to the main ranch, and hauled their 3-year-old bull to put with our cows on the upper place. We put Michael and Carolyn’s heifers with ours—on the hill pasture—with our 2-year-old bull.
The next morning we pumped again for the heifers, very early in the morning while it was still cool, so the pump wouldn’t overheat. With twice as many heifers on that hill pasture, we had to pump every third day.
Michael and Carolyn ran out of hay for their horses, so I gave them some of mine. Nick and Heather came down with their feed truck and loaded a dozen bales every 3 days. They also planned to do our chores (feeding the horses and a bull in the corral) when we went to a family reunion near Seattle.
I finished getting some last minute articles done before our trip. Lynn put a big jar of cat food under the porch for the kids to feed to the cats while we were gone, and it disappeared! Raccoons, who come sneaking around to eat any leftover cat food, probably took it, and were probably trying to figure out how to get the lid off.


Lynn and I actually left the ranch for a few days that summer (an unusual event, for us hermits) for a fast trip to the Seattle/Tacoma area. My mom's family had a reunion on Fox Island to celebrate my aunt's 96th birthday (she was mom's only surviving sibling) and also to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the family property on Fox Island where my mom and Aunt Marj grew up. It had been 40 years since Lynn and I were over there, so we went, knowing this would be the last time we'd see some members of the family.
We left on a Friday, after getting up at 4 a.m. to do chores and drive out to Andrea’s place, where we transferred our things to her van. We went with Andrea and her 4 kids in her van, and drove straight through to Seattle, making it in 12 hours in spite of numerous "potty stops" for all the little kids. I was glad Andrea was driving; she's bolder in city traffic and has better reflexes and endurance than us old hermits!
The kids had fun on the beach at Fox Island finding seashells and crabs, and enjoyed going out on the water in a rowboat. They had a lot of fun with some cousins their age (actually 3rd cousins; they share great-great grandparents).


We enjoyed reconnecting with family, some we had not seen for many years. It was good to get back home, however, and back into our work groove. We spent Saturday and Sunday at the reunion, and drove back the next Monday. The trip was fun but totally exhausting and it took several days to catch up!
Our hay was overdue to be cut, so Michael brought his swather home and cut part of our hay before going on to his next custom cutting job. A week later Lynn baled the hay, then welded a broken tie rod end on Michael’s tractor. He’d barely finished when a lightning storm hit, and our power went off for 2 hours. I was trying to type an article, but couldn’t finish it until the power came back on (the disadvantage of modern technology! I never had this problem with my good old antique typewriters!).
I took the last few bales of horse hay out of my hay shed and hauled some to the corral for Michael and Carolyn’s horses that are living at our place. I was letting two of our horses, Breezie and Snickers, graze the tall grass by my hay shed, so it wouldn’t be a fire hazard, and to get it cleaned up before we drove in there with the stackwagon to stack the new hay.
Weather was hot and dry, and some of the water troughs on the range quit working. I rode with Michael and kids to check the cattle and troughs and helped them fix one of the troughs that needed a new pipe.


We had another thunderstorm, with lots of lightning that started several new fires. That summer was one of the worst fire seasons in Idaho. A terrible fire in southern Idaho burned nearly 700,000 acres, destroying many range allotments and killing cattle. We had a brief, hard rain July 20 that helped keep lightning from starting more fires during that storm. It also dampened the baled hay we hadn’t hauled; it took a couple more days to dry enough to stack. Most days, however, the weather continued hot—up to 105 degrees--and we were immersed in thick, heavy smoke from all the fires.
One of our neighbors called to say there were 30 range cows in his place, so Michael, Carolyn and kids rode all evening to gather and take them back to the range—and then fixed the fence that had been knocked down. They took the cattle back to our middle range pasture, clear up to the Bear Trough, to make sure they’d have water. Some of the other water sources were drying up.
While crossing the brushy draw below the Bear Trough, Michael’s horse ran into a stout branch (hidden in the thick brush). The branch caught under the saddle horn and lifted the horse’s front end off the ground. When the branch snapped up off the saddle horn it hit Michael in the stomach and flung him backward off the horse about 10 feet. He landed on his neck and back, between two huge sharp rocks. If he’d landed on either of those rocks he would have broken his back, so he was very lucky. He was stiff and sore for several days, but basically uninjured.
On another day, Michael, Carolyn and kids found 4 range cows in their lower field that had come home through the low range; someone left one of the middle range gates open. So they took them back to the range, only to have a worse problem when they got home; a friend called to say there were 180 pairs of stray cattle in their leased pasture on Sandy Creek—the pasture they were saving for fall feed. So they grabbed their trailer and fresh horses and rushed off to deal with that problem.


On August 2 Michael brought his swather home and cut the rest of the hay on our creek. That same day, one of the neighbor’s bulls from the range on the east side of our place was wandering up and down the fence bellowing and trying to get in. He was all by himself because the rest of those cattle had been moved to a different range pasture, and we hoped he wouldn’t crawl through the fence. The neighbor warned us to not go near that bull on foot, since he was very mean and aggressive.
For a couple weeks I was going to town every afternoon to stay with my mom awhile and fix her supper; she was in failing health and needed someone with her most of the time. My sister was gone for 2 weeks so friends and family members were taking shifts being with mom. We needed someone with her during the nights however, since she had fallen a few times and was unable get up. My sister got her a life alert button to wear around her neck. This notified a central office whenever she pressed it, and someone would call us, and we’d drive to town to help mom. One morning we went in at 3:30 a.m. to take her to the emergency room at the hospital because she was having severe abdominal pain.
One evening on our way home from town (after helping mom with supper and getting her ready for bed) we discovered 3 cows and their calves coming down a new lane (which had been created for a subdivision on one of the ranches near us). The cattle were almost to the highway. Lynn slammed on the brakes and we backed up and stopped the cows just before they got out on the highway. One pair was Michael and Carolyn’s. We called Carolyn on our cell phone and she and the kids came and helped us herd the 3 pairs back up toward the range. Riders had left a gate open, and the cattle had come down through the neighboring ranch where none of the fences are functional anymore because the owners were subdividing it.
There was nothing to keep the cows from coming clear to the highway! We drove home and Lynn got the 4-wheeler and went out there to try to bring the cattle up through the range gate; it was getting dark and there wasn’t time to get horses. We herded the cattle on foot and by 4-wheeler and finally got part of them into a field by our road. One calf was too wild and didn’t see the gate--and ran back over the hill in the dark. But we left the gate open, and he came back the next day and got back with his mama.
By mid-August the fire situation was getting worse. I interviewed several ranchers in Nevada and southern Idaho who were seriously impacted by the range fires. The fires in our area were also becoming more serious. Many nights the air was so smoky we could hardly breathe and we weren’t able to open our windows to cool the house.
Michael and Carolyn rode all day on August 15th to gather range cows on their Sandy Creek allotment, but were short 20 pair. They had to ride several more days to try to find them. They also needed to move their cattle on our range to the high pasture, but hadn’t had time to do it. I wished I could help them, but there hadn’t been time to tear loose from all my commitments!

Remembering My Father

It’s been 4 years since my dad passed away—on April 26, 2007, on his and mom’s wedding anniversary. For this particular blog installment I want to honor him and repeat the words I spoke at his memorial service (May 4, 2007). Following those memories, I am adding the tribute I wrote about him for one of our local farm newspapers.
A Few Thoughts About My Father..
Growing up as a preacher's daughter was a unique though sometimes challenging blessing. A preacher's family in a sense includes his whole parish, and Dad was a very caring and busy shepherd for his flock. Yet I don't think that any of us kids felt deprived or that he didn't have time for us. We always knew that we were loved.


Love is the greatest gift that my dad gave me. It wasn't always spoken, but I always knew it was there. I knew that he loved me, encouraged me, wanted the best for me, and this helped me through the awkward years of growing up and beyond.
Dad touched the lives of many people, and he certainly touched mine and made a huge difference in my life. I could always count on his wisdom and fairness, his love and understanding. He was patient and kind, and a great teacher. He always took time to answer questions, or to help a struggling young person come up with his or her own answers to the toughest questions of life. He always had advice, for anyone who sought it, and he also encouraged us kids to sort things out and come to good decisions. My family will probably always remember some of his little sayings, like "Do the wise thing.” “Do your best and leave the rest." He gave us many snippets of wisdom to live by.


When I went to college I was timid and shy, and still struggling with some of the major questions of life and faith--and very, very homesick for the ranch, my horses, my family. Long distance phone calls were expensive, so we wrote lots of letters. His letters of advice and encouragement had so much wit and wisdom that I often shared them with my roommates. I still have those letters. After college he and I considered collaborating on a book we were going to call "Dear Daughter, Dear Dad". But that was one of countless projects and great ideas that we never quite got around to doing.
A wonderful gift my father gave me was the example he set, in his own life--an example that helped me as I began my own journey. His faith and trust in a heavenly Father who loves us all, and loves us unconditionally, has made the most difference in my life. Dad's preaching and teaching always pointed out that Jesus came into this world to tell people about God's love for us--to open our hearts and lives to that Love. Jesus' parables portraying God as a loving, forgiving father was something I could easily relate to, thanks to my wonderful Dad, in whose love I was confident.
This concept, of God as a loving father, made sense to me. If God was anything like a father, who always wants the best for his children, then God must indeed love us very much. Dad was a wonderful example of the wisdom and love a father can have, and since I could always trust my own father, I early on developed a trust and an awesome respect for the One who loves us most. In my early struggles to learn about God and to try to figure out what I believed--about life, love, death and all the big unknowns in this world--Dad's simple faith and common-sense theology helped shape the direction my steps took in that early part of my journey. Indeed, this was the most precious gift my dad gave me, and I am ever grateful.
Dad had a long and fruitful life, a beautiful life--doing a wide variety of things and touching people in all kinds of situations. He was a very unique and special person. And even though I miss him greatly, I am comforted by the faith he had, and by my own.
The life of someone we love always seems to end too soon; we want to keep them with us forever. There are lots more things I'd like to have said to Dad, or done with my Dad, that I'll never get to say or do. But because of that love and faith he nurtured in me, I know that this is not the end of our very special relationship. He still loves me. Our father-daughter bond and friendship is not over. He still knows I love him.
Love is always there, even when everything else in this life fades away. There is nothing stronger than love. This is God's greatest gift to ALL his children. Dad, you showed me this by your own faith, your own examples, and now, even though I'll miss you horribly--and grieve very deeply for my loss--I am also confident and joyful, and at peace with the fact that you are now enjoying the full warmth of our Father's love... and probably swapping stories and jokes with a lot of old friends and all the angels.

Tribute to my Dad (a remembrance written in May 2007)
Most of the stories, articles and columns that I write are about horses or cattle—a spin-off from my lifelong love of these animals. This interest and love began early, when I was a small child. This interest grew into a desire to be a rancher and spend the rest of my life working with horses and cattle. Much of the credit for the direction my life has taken must go to my father, Don Ian Smith. Dad passed away April 26, at age 88. I will miss him greatly, but I will always be grateful for the influences he had on my life.
Dad grew up on a farm near Rupert, Idaho, where he drove teams of horses to help his father in the fields. He started farm work at a young age, coming home after school and giving his father a break by harrowing the ground his father had spent all day plowing with a 3-horse hitch. By then the horses were tired and easy for a small child to handle. He was proud to be able to help his father, and he enjoyed working with the horses.
Growing up during the Depression, he learned the value of hard work and innovation. He did many kinds of jobs to work his way through college (Willamette University at Salem, Oregon). He and a friend spent one summer in the East as tree surgeons, making enough money to pay for their next year's tuition.
He met the love of his life, Betty Moser, at Willamette, and they were married in a little church near Seattle, Washington. Dad did his graduate work in Evanston, Illinois--to become a Methodist minister. I was born in February 1944 while Dad was serving a student church in Winthrop Harbor, Illinois.




My folks moved back to Idaho when I was 4 months old; Dad served as pastor of the federated Methodist-Presbyterian church in Salmon for a couple years, and then served a Methodist church in Burley, Idaho. During those years at Burley, he took care of the family farm at Rupert and I often went out there with him (when I was 3 and 4 years old) to check on the steers he'd bought to graze the ditch-banks. I clearly remember the steers--and the electric fence I was warned not to touch. Those 6 steers summered well, and when Dad sold them he made enough profit on that venture to buy mom her first automatic washing machine.
[photo – me at age 4 on fence, on Rupert farm]

My fascination with cattle began in those years; I loved to go with my Dad to check on his steers. Also, my little brother and I stayed with a farm family on several occasions when our folks went to church conferences, and I loved to sit in the hay manger feeding the milk cows.
Dad came back to Salmon in 1950 to build a Methodist church, and I started first grade. I'd wanted a horse from the time I could walk, toddling around with a stick horse. My favorite toy was a little stuffed horse named Shorshay (my baby word for "horsie"). That little cloth horse soon became threadbare from being loved and lugged around everywhere I went.
When I was in third grade my dream came true. We got a horse, and Dad bought a small acreage up Withington Creek--where we lived for 2 summers--and we had a place to keep the horse. Then he started buying the adjoining ranch. Unlike most Methodist ministers who move every few years to serve different churches, Dad put down roots and spent 18 years at Salmon. I was grateful for this--being able to have my own horses, and starting my own small herd of cows (for college money) by working on the ranch. Irrigating, digging post-holes, riding range--these were tasks I thoroughly enjoyed. I wanted to spend the rest of my life involved with livestock.




Dad was also instrumental in my becoming a writer. As a child I was shy--often at a loss for words when talking to people. I had trouble expressing myself vocally, but I could put the words on paper. Because I loved horses, I often wrote long, rambling stories about them. When I was 12, Dad suggested I write a shorter story, and he helped me send it to Trails for Juniors, the Methodist Sunday School paper. It was accepted and published, and I received $10 for it. After realizing I could actually earn money for something I loved to do, I wrote more stories--first for children's magazines and then for horse and cattle publications. By the time I went to college I'd sold dozens of articles, and my writing helped pay my way through college.
I went to University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, and graduated in 1966, but during those years I was terribly homesick for the ranch. I didn't want to live in a city. When Lynn and I were married we spent our first summer on a dairy farm at Gooding, Idaho, then came back to Salmon--where we'd both grown up--to start ranching in 1967. We eventually purchased my parents’ small ranch and the adjoining one.


Dad's love of the land (and of horses and cattle) was a big factor in shaping my life, and his understanding and appreciation for rural people helped shape his ministry. Though he later served several other churches and built a very large church in Boise where he served for 14 years, a part of him was always rooted in the land. The simple wisdom and practicality of his faith shone through in all of his sermons and writings; his inspirational books (By the River of No Return, Wild Rivers and Mountain Trails, Sagebrush Seed, The Open Gate) have been very popular because they are very down-to-earth and many people can relate to the stories he tells and the message within them. When he finally retired for the third time, after serving several small churches that had no pastor, he and mom came back to Salmon in 2001 to spend the rest of their years among old friends and the mountains they loved.


Dad, you'll be greatly missed. But I want to say thank you for your wisdom, advice, and for providing an opportunity for me to travel a path that I have truly loved. I couldn't have done it without you.

Spring 2007

Our cows were scheduled to start calving in mid March that spring, but Rosie calved early, On March 6. We had just put the cows in the maternity pen and put out straw for them to bed on because the ground was muddy—due to several inches of new snow the week before. We were about to go to bed that evening when I looked out the window and saw a new calf. Rosie was licking it, but she had a lot of help—some of the pregnant heifers (ready to have their first calves) were very curious and trying to smell and lick the calf, too. So we spread straw in one of the smaller pens and put Rosie and her new baby in there, so they could bond and not be disrupted by the other cattle.
One of the heifers (Magnolia, a daughter of Maggie) calved the next evening. She calved fast and easy, but the sac around the calf’s head didn’t break and I ran out to the pen to get the sac and fluid away from the calf’s nose so he could breathe. We have our calving pens next to the house so we can watch from the windows (with yard lights at night) and get out there quickly to save a calf if we need to.
We had a lot of wind that spring, so we put more tarps along the side pens as windbreaks. If the newborn calves can be out of the wind they don’t get so chilled.


A few nights later, however, it was very cold when Cub Cake (daughter of Cubby, granddaughter of Cinnebear) calved, so we put the baby in our big plastic sled and pulled him to the barn, with mama following.
Some of the older, experienced cows prefer to calve in the barn when weather is nasty, and it’s easy to tell when they’re in early labor, even if they are not obviously showing signs of labor. For instance, Rishira came down to the gate one morning at chore time, wanting to come into the calving pen so she could go to the barn. She showed no signs of labor all day, but by evening it was obvious that she was calving, and she had her baby at 9 pm.


We had a busy spring, because even though we weren’t calving in January anymore, some of the weather in March and April wasn't very good, and we still had to keep close watch at night and put some cows in the barn.
Michael and Carolyn finally finished calving their 280 cows; the last slowpokes calved in early May. Our smaller herd started in March, and all but 3 had calved by early April, but those last 3 kept us checking on them at nights during nasty weather. The last two calved during snowstorms, so they had to go in the barn.


We had a lot of problems with coyotes and wolves that winter. Michael and Carolyn lost a total of 7 calves to predators--2 calves were killed and eaten; the others were young calves that got trampled by cows when predators were harassing the herd. The cows were stampeding around and bellowing, and on 5 different occasions this resulted in the fatal trampling of a newborn calf.
We had a wolf in our field above the house one evening at dusk. We'd just eaten supper and heard the cows bawling. We ran out there and the cows and calves were running around the field bellowing. Two people on 4-wheelers were parked up on the road, watching. I ran out into the field to "talk" to the cows and they finally calmed down, and the guys on 4-wheelers drove into our driveway to tell us that when they came around the corner above our place they saw the cows chasing what they thought at first was a large gray coyote. But coyotes don't go into that field with the cows, because there's netting on all the fences and it's hard for coyotes to get in. A wolf, on the other hand, can easily jump the fence.
In early April Michael and Carolyn branded their big group of calves, with the help of some of their ranching friends. The next weekend I helped them and their kids brand and vaccinate their 2 smaller groups. Young Heather’s knee was healing after her surgery, but she still had to wear the knee brace. Nick and Carolyn did most of the calf-pushing to get the calves into the little chute for branding.
[[use several photos—Nick (2 photos), Heather (with knee brace),




That spring I got a long letter from Liz. Her son Ty was doing well, working at a food store and writing/playing music, seeking his own path in life and trying to find his way. Like Andrea, life has not been easy for him in many ways, but they both gained strength and perception that will stand them in good stead whatever comes. In some ways these two young people have gained an emotional maturity that most people take years and years to find (and some never do). Liz and I had confidence in their ability to "land on their feet" regardless of whatever buffeting gusts and storms come their way.
Liz also sent me a copy of the letter she wrote to Laurel in early March. Our continued communication meant. I felt a strong and beautiful connection with these two women, even though I’d never met either one of them face to face. They were like sisters to me, or soul mates. The 3 of us are very different, yet we share something so deep, so important, and very special. I still cherish these friendships and am grateful for each of them; we've all been a great strength and help to one another through a challenging but wondrous journey (that I could hardly believe was nearly 7 years along, that spring, in its progress).
This "net" of love has been a godsend. It helped sustain me many times. Sharing the pain, the struggle, the spiritual growth that blossomed from it--this sharing has been very special, very instrumental in how my own journey evolved. I hate to think what those past 7 years would have been like for me, without it. Having this network, knowing that Lynn and I were not alone in our journey, knowing that there were others who understood exactly what we were struggling through, and finding hope and comfort in that knowledge--and in turn trying to help Liz and Laurel through the tough times--this was one of the biggest factors in making those years a blessed journey of discovery and of love.
Liz’s letter to Laurel was so full of "life" and it beautifully expressed the emotions surrounding a part of life that is hard to embrace--the death of a loved one. Liz’s mom had passed away that spring. Losing a parent is something we all expect, but it's never quite real until we do. I very much appreciated those comments and feelings, because I had just lost my dad. He had been in failing health, gradually becoming less functional--and his disabilities were more than mom could handle. He was near the point of needing full time care, but his independent spirit would never have tolerated that, so I was thankful he was able to die at home.
He passed away the morning of April 26, 2007, after some serious episodes of failing health. He had been in the hospital a few days the end of March because of congestive heart failure. He wasn't able to breathe very well and the doctor put him on oxygen for a while in the hospital. Then he was doing a little better and went home again.
A few weeks later on a Thursday he and mom were walking over to the hospital (just across the street from their apartment) for a doctor appointment for dad, and he tripped on the curb by the hospital and fell, hitting the back of his head and knocking himself out. Several people rushed out there, and one of them started mouth-to-mouth breathing. Then a doctor gave him CPR; Dad still had no heartbeat and wasn't breathing. They finally got him going again, and the doctor was amazed that Dad wasn't brain dead. They put in a trachea tube to assist his breathing, and it took him a few hours to stabilize, but he came out of it.
He had a sprained/broken ankle, a concussion, and some cracked ribs from the CPR, but no brain injury and he looked a LOT better by the next day. I had really good visits with him that Saturday and Sunday in the hospital, and he was his old self again. He was able to go home from the hospital that Monday. He was in pain from the ankle and the cracked ribs, but able to sleep better in his own bed.
A couple nights later he fell again, going with his walker to the bathroom. Mom couldn't get any response from him and called 911. The EMT's came and took him to the ER again, where they put him on oxygen and then sent him home. He slept pretty well the rest of that night and was doing better. The oxygen helped. But the doctor told mom that it was just a matter of time and that he might have 2 more days or 2 months. His old heart was giving out. He was on oxygen full time after that, but the oxygen machine had a long hose and he could get around the house and to the bathroom and to his rocking chair in the living room--and had some wonderful visits with family and friends who came to see him.
But he collapsed again Wednesday night; my mom and sister had a hard time getting him into bed. The next day was Mom and Dad's 66th wedding anniversary and he hung on until then; he died early that morning in my mother's arms. He didn't want to end up in a nursing home, and he got his wish, dying at home, surrounded by love.
The doctors were amazed that he didn't die from the effects of his fall a week earlier, but I think the main reason Dad didn't slip away from us then was that he was hanging on for some very important reasons. It was like the door was open, and he could see it was open, but he wasn't quite ready to go.
There had been a tragic rift in our family and he hadn't had much interaction with our son Michael (Dad's oldest grandson). Dad hadn't seen his 2 oldest great-grandchildren for 6 years. Michael visited Dad once, the year before, and wanted to reconnect and continue having a few visits, but hadn't taken time to do it. When a person is young, he thinks there's always another day. Michael visited Dad in the hospital after his fall, and promised to bring his kids to see Dad--and Dad was looking forward to that, very much. He also wanted to hang on until his wedding anniversary; many times he kept asking mom and my sister what day it was, and when their anniversary was.

Those last days, Dad had several wonderful visits with friends and family, including a great visit the evening before he died--with Michael and Carolyn and their kids. Those kids (age 14 and 16 at that time) hadn't talked to their great grandpa since they were 8 and 10 years old. They now have that wonderful memory and will always know that their great grandpa loved and cared about them very much.
Dad collapsed later that night (another episode of passing out and not breathing for awhile), and mom and my sister had a struggle getting him into bed. But he rallied and had a pretty good night. In the morning when mom got up, dad was awake and aware, and she played their music box for him. It played their special song (from their honeymoon 66 years ago), and he knew it was their anniversary--and then he had another passing-out episode and she couldn't get him sitting up so he could breathe, and he died in her arms.
Life throws lots of curve balls at us, and we're still learning how to play the game. As we get older we try to learn how to go with the flow and take each new development as it comes along. It's not always easy, and I am glad that the Lord gives us the strength we need when we hit the various potholes and detours in the road. I was glad for the opportunities to spend a little more time with Dad during his final week, and that several other family members were able to visit with him; he had a really good day, the day before he died. It was like God granted him that extra week to say good-by, and to do some things he needed to do. There were some wondrous family healings that took place in those last days--and in the following days as family came together and planned the funeral. Some bridges were made and I think Dad accomplished, in his death, some things that he couldn't do in life (such as getting my sister and my son and kids speaking to one another again and hoping to go on from there with the past behind them).
The funeral was Friday, May 4. All of Dad's grandchildren were there, even my brother's son who was living in Australia. It was a wonderful get-together and celebration of Dad's life. A fitting touch was his old saddle, next to the coffin, surrounded by wildflowers from the hills of our ranch—the lupine and balsom-root blossoms that he loved so much—that Lynn and I picked that morning in a very wet snowstorm. At the memorial service we laughed, we cried, we sang, we prayed, we rejoiced, we grieved. It was a very, very special time. We knew we would miss him, but we also knew it was time for him to go.
Family is precious and special, and we are grateful to have our kids and grandkids living nearby. Because of some of the tough times our family has experienced in relationships, Lynn and I try even harder to make sure that communication glitches don't occur in our immediate family. I guess that's the up-side of bad experiences; you realize how precious the good things are, and work harder to maintain them.
Lynn hurt his back that spring and I was grateful for the help of family. For several days Grandson Nick (who had just turned 14) and I loaded the hay bales after school and fed the cows, and Nick split our firewood. After about a week Lynn was doing better and was able to feeding hay again, but we still had a little help from Nick when loading the heaviest bales--which we saved until weekends. We (and the cows) were very glad when there was finally enough grass to quit feeding hay!