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It is branding season, which is the season when it is fun to go to another ranch's brandings but not nearly as fun to host your own branding. As a veteran of many years of branding, I offer the following tips--especially for aging ranchers: #1. As you age, so do your friends, and older people are not the most desirable branding helpers. Cultivate friendships with young people who are good ropers or will make good wrestlers. You can still invite friends your age, but they will expect an easier job like vaccinating or more...
In these times of crazy inflation, everyone is looking to save a few bucks or find more efficient ways to do things. I love household hints, so I have compiled a few that tickled my funny bone even if they are not legitimate. (Disclaimer: Do not actually try these household hints at home—yours or anyone else’s!) 1. When you receive your bill at a restaurant table, fill in the blank for tip with the negative of the amount of the bill and put $0.00 on the total line. (Bonus tip: Do not plan to eat at this restaurant aga...
There are a lot of sleep deprived ranch families trying to function at this time of year, because calving happens 24/7. I loved this story written by Tucker Luthan about his wife Andrea. The Luthans run a cow/calf and farming operation in Idalia, Colorado, and this story is priceless! “A True Story from the Rafter TA” by Tucker Luthan Cold wasn’t a strong enough word to describe what the mercury was trying to say. The wind had swept up snow in its rage and thrown it wherever it thought handy the way a misunderstood presc...
My mother had an old medical reference book that we called “The Doctor Book.” Any time we or anyone in the neighborhood for that matter were ailing, she would get it out and disseminate remedies. I think I have become my mother--except that I have discovered WebMD. Using WebMD is much easier than looking things up in the doctor book. With just a couple clicks, you can find all the maladies alphabetized. They also have a wealth of information on everything from whitening your teeth to the benefits of doodling to improve you...
These last ten days have been among the toughest 10 days of calving that I have seen, and I am old! Most of south central Montana received two to four feet of heavy wet snow during a three day storm. Much of it came down horizontally, but it piled up, crusted, and made a terrible back drop for the busiest calving weeks of calving season for many of us. We felt lucky if we could find the calves in the deep snow with low visibility. We had calves in our vehicles, houses, tack rooms, and ATV’s every day and night for several d...
A couple weeks ago at the Sweet Grass County Chamber of Commerce Banquet, rancher, Chuck Rein was named Ag Person of the Year. Chuck ranches and runs an outfitting business with his wife Pam and his son Charlie and his family on one of the most beautiful outfits on the planet in the shadow of the Crazy Mountains west of Melville, Montana. Chuck wrote this poem several years ago about riding colts with his son Charlie, and he shared it at the banquet. This poem sums up why ranchers ranch especially during times like this past...
Now that Saint Patrick’s Day is over, my Easter decorations are calling me from the closet, but I am trying to ignore their call. It doesn’t seem worth it to drag out all of those tubs of decorations if they are only going up for a couple weeks, so I guess I should answer the call to optimize the decor time. Instead, I find myself checking out Pinterest for decorating ideas. I absolutely love Pinterest, because I can spend hours pinning and admiring thousands of cutesy ideas and avoid getting out the ladder and tubs and get...
I will have been writing a weekly column for 27 years this June. The best part about being a columnist is reading my mail. Sometimes I get “fan mail” that I use to fan the fire in the wood stove, but usually I get really nice comments and fuel for my column instead of the fire. Two such pieces of mail arrived recently. One sweet letter, which came from T.J. Cheetham of Cloverdale Ranch in Redstone, Montana, sorted itself to the top of the pile by explaining that he and his wife of 58 years totally relate to my stories. His...
We just celebrated Dr. Seuss’s birthday, so it is time for what has become my annual tradition—my Dr. Seuss Whoville poem. Probably every generation feels that the overall moral and ethical state of the world is declining at breakneck speed, but we have two choices. We can either sit and wring our hands, or we can speak out against and fight it! The Whoville State of the Union: The Whos down in Whoville are led by Joe, A man who is senile, incompetent, and slow. Yet Joe has great vision for the masses. Looking through his...
The thermometer reads 17 below this morning, but I am in a wonderful mood, because I am fleeing from the tundra of Montana for a few days in Arizona. My torn hamstring has healed enough from doing the spilled dog water splits four weeks ago, and we are sunshine bound. We had previously been banned from going anywhere right before calving, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that the warm up is coming and no calves will come early. The pre-calving travel ban was put into effect five years ago by our son, Bret, who had a...
This year for the first time in 41 years, I will not be a participant in inducing trauma in children. Since I have retired as an educator, I will not be involved in the spelling bee. All across the country, kids are being traumatized not by cyber bullying or the Pythagorean theorem, but for another reason--they are good spellers. Yes, in preparation for the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. in June, almost every county in every state is hosting a chamber of horrors for their best and brightest. Most adults have a tale...
During this last month before calving begins, we are enjoying normal dinner hours and having an actual bedtime as we count down the days until calving starts and that all changes. I love calving season now, because I am pretty much a second string player in the calving barn. Since we have an adult son as a partner on the ranch, I don’t often get called out in the middle of the night or during a blizzard--unless for some reason they are really hard up for help or really tired. Primarily my function has become providing f...
I grew up in the Sun River Canyon northwest of Great Falls and thus Malmstrom Air Force Base. All the years I was growing up, a nuclear war with Russia was an ever-present threat. Our friends, the Mergenthals, who lived right by Gibson Dam had a warehouse full of dry food provided by the USDA in the event of a nuclear war. The Glory Hole (dam overflow) was a bomb shelter. I grew up thinking that some day there might be an alarm that sent us into the Glory Hole of Gibson Dam with all that food in the warehouse to keep us...
I will have been retired for one month this week, and somehow retirement is not working out like I thought it would. Perhaps the reason is that I retired from the only job where I actually received a salary. My bosses at my other jobs have not acknowledged my announcements regarding retirement. In fact, at my County School Superintendent retirement party, my husband gifted me with a state of the art rechargeable high powered LED spotlight so I will be able to illuminate the entire barnyard while night checking the heifers....
I have gone on record as a proponent of global warming--especially when the thermometer dips below zero. Following December’s storm dubbed Storm Elliott, which brought record low temperatures to Montana and Wyoming, I am starting to wonder if global warming activists like Greta Thunberg, Al Gore, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are so full of hot air that they have mistaken their core temperatures for global warming. We just survived the coldest December temperatures on record with a record low of negative 50 degrees in Elk Park...
This past weekend, I attended a natural cheese making workshop presented by Allison Cooley Agee, and the take-away for me is that cheese making is extremely labor intensive. There are so many steps and so many pitfalls to avoid that my cheeses would have to sell for at least $20.00 per pound to make it a profitable venture. I applaud people like Allison who make amazing raw milk cheeses, but since I am basically lazy, I think I will just stick to buying cheese instead of making it. The experience did remind me of an old...
Technology never ceases to amaze me! Not only have they invented cars which drive themselves (something I am going to need very soon, and my family might argue that I need right now), but drones are going to change the way we live and play. They now have drones which will deliver beer from shoreline bars out to ice fishermen in their huts. The beer is ordered and paid for using an app, and quicker than you can burn your bratwurst on the hut barbecue, your cold beer is delivered right to your hut with the aid of GPS! Long...
Every day a few minutes after we posted the daily lunch special on Facebook, the phone would ring. Caller ID would announce, "Call from Cole Drug," and we would answer the phone by saying, "Hi, Paul!" He would usually order the special, but we knew if he wasn't impressed with the special, he would order a Rustler roast beef sandwich. We would have it ready at 12:30, because it took him a couple minutes to walk from Cole Drug to the Crazy Peak Boutique. Like clockwork, he came through the door every day at 12:32 p.m. almost...
I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas filled with feasting as part of the celebration. Even though intermittent fasting and the Mediterranean Diet seem to be the rage in diets right now, I hope you will enjoy this little Christmas rhyme I wrote about the Keto Diet. As a special Christmas treat this year, my recipes are contributions from the “Western Ag Reporter” (WAR) staff as they join me in wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas! Special Bulletin From Santa —by Susan Metcalf 'Twas the month before Chris...
Every year I find myself in the same predicament as I look down the barrel of the Christmas gun. Every year, it is as though Christmas sneaks up on me out of the blue. So with just days left before Christmas, I am in my usual pre-Christmas panic caused mostly by procrastination! I started off the month with the best of intentions, as I made several batches of my favorite fudge, but I made them too early, and we have eaten or given it away already. No problem! All I have to do is go to bed 15 minutes later each night to whip...
Since I am retiring from my County Superintendent of Schools job at the end of this month, I am trying to clean out file cabinets and computer files. Some days I don't get a lot accomplished, because it is like taking a 41 year trip down memory lane in my career as an educator, and there are a lot of things to read and reminisce about. One of the treasures that I found was this essay that my daughter Brooke wrote for a college "sense of place" essay in an advanced composition class. My father, Glen Roberts, died right after C...
Next weekend, we will again be cooking for the Sons of Norway Christmas party. Although I have been doing it for several years, I still feel like a poser when I am cooking Norwegian food for a traditional dinner. Although it has not been confirmed by Ancestry.com, I have not one drop of Norwegian blood flowing through my veins even though I have lived in a Norwegian community for the past 41 years. When I was first hired to cook for the annual Norwegian Christmas party, several years ago, Carol O'Dell, the chief organizer,...
Every year right before Thanksgiving back when I was teaching English, I would ask all of my junior high students to write poems entitled, "I Am Thankful For..." I always modeled a few lines of an example poem for them, so with a very straight face I would write, "My two delightful children, Bret and Brooke." This line was easier to write without smirking if neither of them had been in the sheriff's report or the principal's office in the past week. Recently I was moaning about my failures as a parent/grandparent to my...
We have been enjoying a beautiful fall, but suddenly Mother Nature decided to turn on us with prolonged snow and cold these last couple weeks. We old timers well remember the horrible winter of 1978-79 which followed a really nice fall right up until November 9, 1978 when winter hit and did not leave until March 1979. As I sit in my warm house by the fireplace, I remember one particular hunting camp experience when winter hit with a vengeance before we were ready in the backcountry. Diary of a Hunting Camp Cook: Day #1: It...
We shipped our calves this week, which generated lots of material for a humor column because funny stuff happens when you combine a bunch of cattle and horses and cowboys and elk hunters and things that break down at inopportune times. But, somehow, when I sat down to write, another topic weighed in heavier. A look at the calendar reminded me that Veteran's Day is Friday, and my thoughts turned to veterans. One of those people we can always count on to help us work cattle is Casey Talkington, who did two tours in the sand....
