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Sunday is Mother's Day, so I would like to wish all mothers a special day. Those of us who have lost our mothers realize how time spent with our mothers is more valuable than any other gift we could give or be given. I have never written a column that has been requested for reprint more than this column I wrote about my mother and our journey through Alzheimer's together. My mother, Florence Roberts, has been gone for 11 years, but sadly Alzheimer's Disease stole her from me several years before that. Every year on Mother's...
As we head into our sixth week of Covid-19 school closure, I am pretty sure a lot of parents are praying that schools will reopen sooner rather than later. Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up the first week of May, and I have a hunch there is a whole lot more appreciation for teachers now than there has been in the recent past. Here in our home school as the weather warms up, we are shifting a bit from home crisis schooling to trade schooling. Last week, we took field trips to the barn to clean calving pens, and we did a l...
Here in our calving commune on Lower Deer Creek, we are going into our fifth week of social distancing or sheltering in place. 102 years ago, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide (about one-third of the planet’s population) and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including over 675,000 Americans. It primarily infected young, healthy adults. My husband's Grandpa, Hoell, contracted the Spanish flu, which kept him from going to World W...
No one alive now will ever forget the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020 when we all stayed home to fight an invisible enemy. As I write this, we are not sure whether we are effectively flattening the curve, but most people seem to be trying to follow the CDC guidelines. As an educator of 39 years, I find myself struggling with the part of sheltering I am supposedly professionally prepared for, which is homeschooling. There is a reason for public school, and it is that home schooling is too hard. I am tasked with homeschooling my...
Even though Covid-19 is a very serious topic, I feel that my job description as a cooking/humor columnist is an essential service in coping with this crisis. I think since everyone is sheltered in place in Montana and much of the nation, we need good recipes and a chuckle now more than ever. Since most of the workforce is working from home or not working, I know there are a lot of people who have their grown children and grandchildren moving home to be with them during this crisis. If there is a windfall to this, it is...
I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee on the morning of March 5, 2020 when the cruise ship The Grand Princess came across the screen. Somehow I knew that was the ship my friends, Judy Vidack and Theresa Hopkins were on. The report said that a passenger on the ship on a cruise to Mexico prior to their Hawaii cruise had tested positive for Coronavirus so they were going to do testing on the ship. By noon that day, the passengers were sequestered in their rooms and a Coast Guard helicopter was delivering testing sup...
For those of you who are stuck at home self quarantining, I have a bit of reading material for you this week. This tale by Mark Silverstein, who ranches north of Big Timber, Montana came to my inbox with the following comment, "Your Dr. Seuss tribute poem (loved that Seussan Metcalf) inspired me to write a "Fairy Tale" of my own with similar subject matter." Thanks for submitting this fairy tale, Mark! It takes our mind off of Covid-19 for a few minutes! A FAIRY TALE --by Mark Silverstein Once upon a time, millions of...
My County School Superintendent's office is in the Sweet Grass County Annex, which used to be the old county hospital and medical clinic. Many of my colleagues are sure the Annex is haunted, but in all my years there, I have never seen a ghost. However, recently I did have two disconcerting experiences with my garbage can that have me wondering about the possibility of paranormal activity. My garbage can sits right beside my desk, but one day a few weeks back, I returned from the copy room to find my garbage can sitting right...
It is Dr. Seuss's birthday this week, and it is celebrated as a major holiday in elementary schools across the nation. Though there are those who accuse him of being racist and sexist and every other "ist" there is, he was an amazing writer whose books have taught simple lessons to at least four generations of children. His simple rhymes contained powerful messages, so I decided to honor this great children's author with a poem that I really hope carries a palatable message to consumers and those in the beef industry....
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 theory--except for the fact that I have another theory that makes more sense to me: Susan's Full Brain Theory. I believe my brain is like a computer that has no memory left. My brain is full, and my folders cannot be compacted. In fact, my brain is so full that according to the bathroom...
Several years ago, we decided that ranching for fun and not profit was not really working for us, so we decided to lop off a few acres with a view up the creek and down the Yellowstone and make money the old fashioned way--selling the rural lifestyle to folks determined to get out of town and return to their agrarian roots. Believe me, providing that opportunity is easier said than done! In the first year, we spent the $500.00 we had in our life savings account and a whole lot of the bank's money on surveying, consultant...
I share the copy machine at work with the Sweet Grass County Extension Agent, Marc King, so one day I found an interesting email mixed in with my pile of papers off the machine. It was a bulletin from MSU about a biomarker study of the effects of calving operations on osteoarthritis. Even though it wasn't my mail, I decided to read it to see what it was all about. Long story short, you can sign up to have your biomarkers for osteoarthritis checked before and during calving season during an on the ranch visit that tests your...
As the poets and pickers headed home from the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko Nevada this past week, I was sent a poem perfectly timed to the upcoming calving season. Trent Nelson is a cowboy poet who was born and raised in northeastern Colorado in the agricultural community of Yuma. He has worked in farming and ranching his whole life from the Rocky Mountains to the sand hills of Nebraska. He currently resides outside his hometown where he works on a large farm/yearling grazing operation. This poem puts cows and...
Although the Green New Deal seems to have been abandoned, there is still a lot of talk on the 2020 election trail about other brain flashes such as student loan forgiveness. I marvel at this concept. I grew up frugal and green, because my parents were 40 years old when they got around to having me, so they were children during the Great Depression. When I went off to college, I worked at every job I could find both on and off campus. I borrowed very little money, and I asked my parents for very little money. We lived...
I just love those helpful hint columns and books full of 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 remedies and helpful hints. I have actually had less than miraculous results with many of those tips. A tomato juice bath is supposed to be the cure-all for skunk spray. Do you know how much a tomato juice bath for a small boy costs? It was $92.00 cheaper and much less stressful just to...
The most challenging cooking jobs I have ever had were my many years of wilderness camp cooking in the Scapegoat Wilderness for Brett and Julie Todd. Every time I rode out of camp, I would marvel that I had kept all those people fed under extreme conditions for a week with no opportunity to restock supplies. You see, at home I am one of those people who goes to the grocery store every day. One morning while I was cooking biscuits and gravy in the Meadow Creek Camp, one of the guides recounted a tale about my camp cooking coun...
Since our son Bret bought into our ranching operation when he came back to the ranch after college, I am no longer the right hand man in this operation. I have been demoted back to assistant nobody, which is a great title. I love my life of part-time cowgirl and part-time County Superintendent of Schools. However, occasionally I come to the conclusion that I need to get a full-time job. The problem with a part-time job is that the ranch manager/CEO/husband person feels that since my hours are somewhat flexible that I can be...
