The Ekalaka Eagle - Your Community Builder

I have always been a Martha Stewart fan, which I believe I can admit now that she's been out of jail for a long time. I loved her shows and website, but as a backcountry cook I would like to see Martha pack everything in on mules and serve it in a...

When you live on a creek or a river, flooding is a springtime fear. It is ironic that we have prayed for rain since March, but now that the flooding has begun we are almost tempted to pause that prayer. Many areas of our state are still in severe...

Facebook and Google and email are wonderful things, but I believe we are living more fearfully because of them. Every day I receive hundreds of messages, memes, and emails. Some of them are tips from readers who would like me to pass along life...

As the primary elections loom in Montana next week, I find myself not on the ballot for the first time in 16 years. I have decided to hang up my red pencil after 41 years in education at the end of my fourth term as County Superintendent of Schools t...

With this column, I have completed my 27th year of writing a weekly humor/recipe column. Back when Linda Grosskopf hired me to take over writing "Cooking in the West" for the Agri-News, the only job description she gave me was," Just run some great r...

As an English teacher, I love to read. The problem is that I never have time to finish a book. In fact, since the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial celebration back in 2004, I have been trying to read “Undaunted Courage”. My copy is dog-eared only...

The Melstone High School All-School Reunion is looming up this June, and I find it quite amazing that I have been out of high school for 45 years. Where did all that time go? The last All School Reunion I attended coincided with my thirty year...

Teacher Appreciation Week is this week, and there are not enough words in the English language for me to express my appreciation for not only teachers, but the paraprofessionals, administrators, school staff members, janitors, bus drivers, and lunch...

I received a message from Linda Story, Chance Story's grandmother, regarding the outpouring of love and support that readers have shown to Chance and the Story family following the rodeo accident that broke all of the bones in Chance's face except hi...

This last week of moisture came as a blessing and a curse. There were undoubtedly large death losses of young livestock in the areas that were hit by days of blizzard conditions, but in some areas like here in our neck of the woods, the moisture was...

One of the advantages of writing a weekly column for 27 years is that I have a scrapbook of my life saved on my computer. This week, my grandson Alex turned 12, so I thought I would type "Alex" in the search bar to see what stories came up about...

Spring is officially here, and that signals a shift in my world. I have to shift from physical fitness activities like power walking to the break room for a snack and lifting paperclips to doing things like lugging newborn calves into a sled from...

There is a health care crisis in America that has nothing to do with Covid. My personal health care crisis involves trying not to put myself in the position of requiring health care despite my husband's ideas. I have health insurance, but I hate to u...

Calving season has begun on many ranches, and although it is an exciting time bringing all those new lives into the world, it is a stressful time of trying to keep the animals and the humans alive and healthy. This year we are calving in two...

After my column about a full brain ran, I received many priceless responses. First of all, several mathematical geniuses noticed that not only has too much information overfilled my brain, but it also made it dyslexic. It seems that I reversed the 1...

My favorite holiday of the year was this week, which was Dr. Seuss’s birthday on March 2. It has become my tradition to do a Whoville poem to celebrate Dr. Seuss and my First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Watching the drastic erosion of...

One of Big Timber, Montana's most renowned residents, Gwen Petersen, closed the gate just 5 days before her 94th birthday last week. I am so thankful that my "Ode to Coveralls" poem that referenced her ran before she passed, and her beloved friend,...

I just cannot resist helpful hints (now known as hacks) or tips on how to remove every stain known to man or cure anything from warts to arthritis with a home remedy. Sometimes though, I have to question the effectiveness and efficiency of the...

One of the few good things about winter on the ranch is that you can wear coveralls. They are called “coveralls’’ because they hide a multitude of sins like Christmas cookies, fudge, eggnog, and winter comfort foods. You can wear your...

I heard on the radio the other day that children get their intelligence from their mothers. That might explain what has happened to my brain. Perhaps I drained part of it for the first child and the rest for the second. I can almost buy that...

Out here in the western agricultural world, there has never really been a need for the women's movement. Women have pitched in to make farms and ranches work since before barbed wire, and they didn't have to burn undergarments to gain respect....

After watching four seasons of "Yellowstone", we have come to the realization that we have been ranching all wrong for our entire lives. . . or else maybe the show is not quite as authentic as co-writer Taylor Sheridan thinks it is. He is quoted as...

As I get older, it becomes harder and harder to find a winter sport that I can participate in, because I don't dare risk my knees, hips, skull, etc. So when our friends, Keith and Holly Williams from Virginia, suggested a snowmobile outing, it sounde...

This morning we woke up to several inches of snow and below zero temperatures. As I drank my coffee, I perused the posts of my Facebook friends who live in Arizona. A couple of them invited me to come down to stay with them, but I doubt if they mean...