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Ekalaka Public Library has received several new books recently. Some of these are: "The Cornwalls Are Gone" by James Patterson, "That Churchill Woman" by Stephanie Barron, "The Forest Lover" by Susan Vreeland, "House of Thieves" by Charles Belfoure, and "The 18th Abduction" by James Patterson. The library is receiving lots of books from community members and Mr. Ed Solace. Solace lives near Kalispell. Last week he brought the library several boxes of books. Along with the new...
We have waited for weeks for our garden to dry enough to till, only to have more rainfall. Lawns were mowed quickly between showers. Yes, it is nice to have the moisture, but when can we plant? Our forecast for the week was warmer and drier. On a Monday, Brice planned to till the garden; he cleaned the tiller, getting it ready to go to work. He pulled the rope to start the engine and it remained silent. Additional pulls did nothing. After nearly thirty years of reliable service, it deserved retirement. Brice purchased a repla...
Hello God, it’s me, Mara: You know, Lord, here’s an interesting thought: what we are is more important that what we do! No matter what, there is always going to be someone in our ‘class/group’, with as much “smarts” and education as we have, doing what we want to do – only they are doing it better. That’s life. That part isn’t the important thing, though. One’s life is not a cold resume of facts. One must build character, a life, learning that we are NOT the center of the universe. Our job is to show up, to really listen, t...
To continue the Mumedy family history, I will move on to Leona as she was well qualified as clerk for the different attorneys in Carter County and went on to Missoula, Montana to work for an attorney and also for the CCCs. She reported that in 1941 she was transferred to San Bernardino, California to be secretary to the Commanding General of the Mira Loma Quartermaster Depot. Remember, World War II was in progress and this base supplied all the merchandise for the Los Angeles port serving China, Burma, India, and other...
Hello, A lot of ranchers have gone to May calving. Calf your cows out on green grass. Like the deer and the antelope do. It will be fun they said. You won’t have to fight through the mud and the snow. It will be fun they said. Your calves won’t get scours. You won’t have wet, cold calves in the house. It will be fun they said. Last week on Tuesday it was 82 above. It was hot and windy. On Saturday it was in the low thirties and a blizzard. You couldn’t see a quarter of a mile. Cows and baby calves were bunched up along t...
Hello, Shirley and I attended our oldest granddaughter’s high school graduation this past weekend. I don’t feel old enough to have a granddaughter that will be going off to college next fall. I’m sure many of you have had, or will have, that same feeling. Harding County is always about the kids. I’ve told you that before. From the local newspaper to the county fair. The kids come first. And that is the way it should be. The graduation ceremony was wonderful. Carrol Comes was the keynote speaker. She was injured in a horse w...
Hello Dog, it's me, Mara: You know, Lord, reading about Psalms 23, written by Philip Keller (long years ago) along with a peaceful picture of sheep, suggested several subjects. That lovely picturesque country scene reminded a friend of her growing up years near her grandfather’s sheep ranch. She shared with us all about shearing and lambing, herding and shipping. She even told us about some of the peculiar personalities of several of their sheep herders and, of course, all about the pet bum lambs that she loved. She also r...
I bought calendars late in December for my husband and a friend featuring hot peppers. What would I get for myself? I decided on herbs, assuming they would be familiar herbs we grow outside our back door. Some were: rosemary, sage, chives, oregano, thyme, and garlic. Some of these have appeared, but I was surprised by others. The month of April featured dandelions. My grandmother collected tender leaves from first dandelions of the season. Of course she was teased mercilessly, but that didn’t phase her. The recipe the c...
Hello, Happy seis de Mayo! Seis de Mayo is the day after Cinco de Mayo. Not many people celebrate it, but I do. It is one day closer to the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale. Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo. They don’t celebrate it much in Mexico. It’s a minor holiday. But here in the states, it gives you an opportunity to drink margaritas and eat heartburn food. Last year we branded on Cinco de Mayo. This year it snowed all day and by evening the ground was white. This morning, on seis de Mayo, it is 32 with a wind chill of 28. Sno...
Hello God, it’s me, Mara: You know, Lord, as Mother’s Day approaches, we remember Mom and her hands which were always busy. They were wrinkled, shriveled and maybe a bit weak having been ‘tools’ she used in her life to reach out, grab hold and embrace life. As our Moms age, their hands became lined and yellowed with age; it happens to all of us. After our Moms pass on, ‘we’ may spend time with wonderful older women who doled out large ‘servings’ of wisdom, guidance and love, but there’s no substitute for our own special M...
Sunday was Cinco de Mayo (May 5), a holiday meant to commemorate the Battle of Puebla, fought between the Mexican and French armies in 1862. In Mexico’s history, it’s generally considered a minor event. But a century and a half later, it is still celebrated in the United States (even when people don’t know why they’re celebrating). I just think it’s a good day to eat our version of Mexican food! One thing my husband does is make chorizo, Mexican sausage. I remember being in Kansas years ago, at my aunt’s house, when the answe...
Montana's rivers are running high, wide and muddy right now and things typically won't improve much for maybe two months. That all depends on rainfall and snowmelt. A cool, wet spring will prolong runoff into mid-June; a hot, dry period will clear up rivers and streams faster but not bode well for fisheries later in the summer. So, what's an angler to do to catch fish? Better yet, what's a fish to do to find food? We might give up dry flies and switch to worms. Fish will...
Hello, Do you ever think about boards? There are a lot of boards. Oh, not the 2x4 or 2x6 boards. But like the barber board, the hairdresser board, the board of animal health…the list can go on forever. I didn’t realize how many boards there are until I was in the legislature. I remember Claude getting mad at me about the barber board. Claude was our hometown barber in Watford City. The barbershop was, and still is in many communities, the center of the world. You could argue politics or the best breed of cattle. You cou...
Hello God, it’s me, Mara: You know, Lord, it’s a glorious bright sunny morning that dawned a few hours ago. We just heard about a ‘test’ so let’s see how the Sunshine Test works? It probably ‘works’ best after a bit of rain for then the whole scene from the window looks scrubbed and clean, it’s lovely out there as the evergreens trees almost sparkle; why, even the few clouds that are sailing above look fluffy and white and freshly washed. The sun shines brightly through the windows, but – oops! Those windows just bare...
The forest behind our second house in Ekalaka was a source of great enjoyment to me. I spent a lot of time in it either alone or with others. We called this forest the short pine hills and the forest further south and east we called the long pine hills. I knew every inch of the short pine hills up to about seven miles back. We used to live in what we called the Opeechee Park place and it was seven miles from Ekalaka. Since then, Jesse LaBree called it the Kinsey place. I loved that place, I lived there when I was four. In tha...
As I continue my articles about the Mumedy family, I will add a little more information about Andrew and Margaret written by Leona, their daughter. “The Mumedy family came to Carter County from Dodge, Nebraska in the early 1900. They homesteaded two miles north of Ekalaka and lived in a sod house during the early years.” This information came from Shifting Scenes Vol. II. In Vol. III she shares more:. “My father was a fine musician and played the trombone in the Dodge Cornet band. He came to America as a young man to live...
I’ve been thinking about this article for weeks, watching the grass green up everywhere I looked. Brice reported seeing the beginning of buds on our old apple tree. I hope it doesn’t bloom too early, only to have blossoms frozen leaving us with no apples yet another year. We only have one unopened jar of applesauce, made in 2015. Brice and our neighbor mowed lawns last week, wanting to get ahead of any precipitation. Some of the grass was very thick and long, requiring slow mowing and frequent stops to clean out the acc...
Hello God, it’s me, Mara: You know, Lord, grass is turning green in our corner of the earth again. It’s been said that grass is the least pretentious of this world’s everyday plants and the most important to mankind. The young blades are simplicity itself, not the simplicity of unicellular life in stagnant water, but specialized simplicity unmatched in the fields. It’s been written that all the grasses, be they corn, wheat, barley, or oats are perfection, having eliminated nonessentials, but we know it is Your gift, Lord, uni...
My sheep herding experiences started at a young age. At probably age 9, I went out to my Grandparent Coons ranch on Boxelder near Belltower and stayed there all summer. I worked and they paid me something though not too much. This lasted through age 14 after which I began to work for others for real money. I will write more about that later. In the later years especially a lot of my work consisted of herding sheep. The sheep had a bedding ground at the base of a hill we called Palmer Hill on the Briggs place just north of...
It wasn’t too long ago that Brice spotted a robin sitting in our apple tree. It wasn’t much longer before he saw another. Where are the chickadees that used to come before the robins? Maybe they will be coming soon. Robins are nice. They make nests, mate, and lay little blue eggs in those nests. I don’t remember seeing juvenile robins, but I’ve seen lots of pieces of those eggs. Shortly after the robins came the grackles, the black bird with iridescent heads that look green or blue as they turn their heads. I don’t like grac...
Hello, We have cows. We have some good cows. We have some bad cows. Everyone that has cows has some good cows and some bad cows. Everyone wishes they had all good cows. Many ranchers strive to improve their herds to have not only all good cows, but all great cows. Our red roan cow is not a good cow. She is not even a bad cow. She is a terrible cow. She has a bad bag. She is wild. She always has a roan calf that the buyers cut back because it is small, narrow, and off color. So you wonder, why would you keep an awful cow for 1...
As you read this memories article, you will discover that it is a little different from past articles. When reading through some Shifting Scenes, I became interested about the Mumedy family from an article written by Leona Mumedy Miller who begins with her father and mother, Andrew and Margaret Mumedy. She wrote this information in 1981. It includes information about her family, homestead days, school, daily activities, court house clerk for different attorneys, and up through her time at state and federal government...
Hello, We haven’t had it too bad. In fact, since we started calving, it’s been exceptionally nice. If you remember last year, April was a cold son of a gun. We were checking cows at night and grabbing any new ones and keeping them in the tack room overnight. Then in the morning, trying to get them to mother up. If you attended any cattle sales since last fall, you saw a lot of calves that had their ears froze off. And they were the lucky ones. But if you go a few miles south, it has been a trying and often times deadly spr...
Hello God, it’s me, Mara: You know, Lord, reading 1 Corinthians 15: 13, 14, 20 (TLB) might just help us to understand that You, Lord, are the Lamb of God as it says: “For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ must still be dead. And if He is still dead, then all our preaching is useless and your trust in God is empty, worthless, hopeless… The fact is that Christ did actually rise from the dead…” Long years ago, [date is unknown]; Billy Graham wrote an interesting thought about a faithful witness. Here is h...
In 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote his famous quote, saying the only things true in life were death and taxes. If you were alive on Monday, April 15, 2019, your taxes were due. When we lived in Billings, I did our taxes one year and decided we were due a refund. Armed with that information, we attended an art auction. There was a small watercolor painting I wanted: The Flat Cat, by a Miles City artist. I decided on a bidding limit and was out bid. Lucky thing; we actually owed taxes. Brice has done the taxes ever since. He does...
