Tall Grass Prairie

Kyle and Natalie's dad works on our farm.

Kyle is a chip off the ol' block.......

Natalie is a spitfire.

They're both good help for moving cattle.

Look at that grass behind Kyle. The platter is just about licked clean. Because our pastures are small and bovine appetites large, our cattle leapfrog around the county all summer, following the grass like ancient nomads. Only these nomads periodically have to thumb a ride with a friendly trucker.

Here they have been herded into a portable corral to await the arrival of their limo.

Cattle are naturally claustrophobic. The gaping mouth of a dark stock trailer, just to the right of this photo, isn't too appealing. Merrill's job is to tap that red calf on the noggin and redirect his thinking.

Erica's job is to count cows and calves as they offload into fresh grass. Then Kyle's job is to stand in the gate opening until we return with the next load.

Natalie's job is to be a spitfire. Lookin' good, Natalie.

Natalie's other job is to keep from getting lost in the tall grass.

I think she may be better at the spitfire job.

It's What's for Dinner

Nebraska's European roots go back to people who chipped shovels into frozen ground to bury their dead. Lacking trees, they lived in homes built from sod that oozed and slid into mud when it rained. Hail, blizzards, drought, floods, tornadoes, dust, grasshoppers, Indians.....only the strong survived, and the rest either died or turned tail and ran back to the East where there were doctors, and real glass in the windows.

Before Nebraskans had even settled enough to quit living by the rifle, BEEF was the protein of choice. It was probably as tough and stringy as the people who ate it.

I grew up in Texas. We like beef there, too, but I lived in the city, where people brazenly served chicken at social functions, or even fish or shrimp, without apology. On my first trip to Nebraska, just after John and I were engaged, his aunt and uncle took us out for a formal dinner. It was a chance to get to know me and to help us celebrate. When I said to the waiter, "I'll have the salmon," the table fell silent. "We're a little land-locked here," John's uncle muttered. I was too new to know the rules.

The same rules mean that no self-respecting seed corn dealer would serve fish or chicken at an August appreciation dinner. John's been attending these dinners for over thirty years, frequently with me at his side. No poultry or fish for thirty years. Maaaaaaybe pork, especially if the host happens to also raise hogs. But mostly.....beef.

Usually the beef is prepared by a caterer, and served alongside canned green beans, mashed potatoes, and corn. Last week's gathering was a bit more innovative, a poster child for Nebraska's love of beef.

Impale the USDA Choice on a pitchfork, and drop it into a vat of boiling tallow. If you try this at home, do not simply grab a fork out of the barn! Spend the extra few dollars to buy an implement solely dedicated to this purpose.

Four minutes later:

I hit my fat quota with the steak alone, so I passed on the sides: fried biscuits, fried onions, fried potatoes. Instead, I watched the grain elevator turn colors behind the small-town talk of farmers and friends.

Homemade Pita Pockets

If you read my post from a couple of days ago, you know that Audrey the Birthday Chef made homemade pitas as part of her celebratory meal. She found the recipe at Tammy's Recipes: http://www.tammysrecipes.com/ That links is to Tammy's main page. If you want to cut to the pita recipe, try: http://www.tammysrecipes.com/homemade_pita_pocket_bread.

Audrey's note: she cut back the cooking time to 3 minutes, from Tammy's 4-5 minutes, in order to keep the pitas pliable.

Rachel said in her blog that she had substituted whole wheat flour for half of the white that is called for, and apparently they turned out just fine.

Bon appetit!

The Last Pass

We moved cows today. It took eight and a half hours. After that, there was still hay to cut and beans to irrigate, a cow tank to fill, an O-ring to replace, trailers to unhitch, electric fence to set up.

Erica is making the day's last pass over the alfalfa. These bones are tired.

Birthday Chef

How does this girl celebrate a birthday?

Knead a little, whisk a little, stir, strain, puree, chop, mix, pare, blend, chill, marinate, preheat, season, bake, zest, and grill.

Menu for a Sunny Summer Birthday

Lamb Gyros with Tzatziki Sauce

in Homemade Pita Pockets

Fresh Pineapple and Blueberry Salad

Fresh Squeezed Lemonade

Citrus Cheesecake

Mixed Vegetables

My 1970s mixed vegetables:

photo courtesy of the world wide web

My 2008 mixed vegetables:

I hated you then, but oh, how I do like you now!

Misty Garden Morning

Cat Nap

I feel how she looks.........

......just about ready for a cat nap.

Pipe Down

Merrill is looking for critters. Critters, especially night critters, like to curl up for an afternoon snooze in the midst of a pile of irrigation pipe.

We will pick up these pipes, one by one, and load them onto a pipe trailer. Then we drive to the field and unload, stringing the pipe down the field edge, where it will carry a drink to thirsty soybeans.

As we load pipe, the girls do a critter check. Some critters don't matter much when you're irrigating--this one will just scamper away.

Possums don't matter a whole lot, either. The girls found a possom in one pipe; they just set the pipe aside and continued to load.

The next pipe with a possum sleeping inside got loaded onto the trailer....."We'll shake him out before we put the pipe together."

One person drives, pulling the pipe trailer ahead twelve rows at a time. Then she stops while the other two heft a pipe off the trailer, lock it into the lengthening metal snake, walk the span of the fresh-laid pipe, and repeat.

Time came to deal with the possum pipe. I climbed up on the trailer, to hoist the top of the 30-foot length of pipe into the air. Erica stood below, stabilizing the down end. The higher we tilted, the more tightly the critter pressed against the inside of his hideout, holding his position as we angled the pipe into the sky. At length, with the pipe nearly vertical, gravity overcame static friction, and we heard his sharp little claws sliding and screeching their way down the inside of the pipe.

What looks a lot like possum silhouetted in a dark pipe can sometimes turn into skunk when it drops out at your feet. I started shouting; Erica started running. The pipe, without its south-end stabilizer, careened wildly and cratered into the soybeans, missing the retreating skunk.

Even with the inherent risks, evicting Pepe Le Pew is the best choice. You can either chase him out before you hook the row of pipe together, as we did, or wait and let the water flush him down to the end cap the first time you turn on the juice. He will turn on his juice as he drowns, caught in the long tunnel, and you will have to deal with his putrid carcass when you pick up pipe two hot summer months down the road.

Isn't he odorable?

100% sure

Revelation: It is possible to be 100% sure of something and also 100% wrong.

We don't like to admit this, especially about ourselves. All well and good for the other chap, but could I be wrong about the things I've said and thought and believed and taught my whole life? It's humbling and it's scary. This revelation can be used to wash away every bedrock of life and to advance all sorts of agendas that are just, well, wrong.

If you can be wrong when you're sure, maybe you are wrong! How do you know you're not mistaken in your most important analyses, like who God is and what He's saying to you? How do you know anything, for sure, really? And if you can't know anything for sure, how can there be any kind of universal right and wrong, or even general standards about what's beneficial and what's not, that might apply to us all?

John came home from Bible study this morning with good answers from Romans 14. "For God is able to make him stand........let evey man be fully persuaded in his own mind........why dost thou judge thy brother? .......... for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ."

Be fully persuaded; fully enough to take a stand and make a difference for righteousness in your world. Extend grace to your brother, who may or may not see things as you do. Ultimately, we will all stand, or fall, before the Lord. Be humble enough, even after proclaiming the ship unsinkable, to climb into the lifeboat when you feel your shoes getting wet.

So if I stand let me stand on the promise that you will pull me through. And if I can't, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to you. So if I sing let me sing for the joy that has born in me these songs. And if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for his home.

I remember a time of unspeakable grief in our lives, when John and I groped for solid footing, lost in a pain-racked world that didn't make any sense at all. "I only know two things," I told him then. "I know God is good. And I know He loves me." I'm not afraid to be 100% sure.

Every summer

Every summer, Merrill grows sunflowers.

I love summer.

The Driver's License Examiner

Don't look now but...............

Erica's street legal.

Happy birthday, E.

Infrared

It's HOT here.

There is no A/C in this crowded old church, packed on a hot summer night with proud dads, and melting mamas fanning paper programs. The lonely sound of a violin stirs the heavy air.

"Hey, Barn......."

Hay Barn

I apologize for this post, which popped into my head as I drove past the barn in the photo. Somehow it wedged itself into my cerebral reticulations like a splinter, festering until I yanked it out and laid it on the cyber table. I am now free to think about something else while driving, instead of rehearsing this post in my head, chuckling my way through the miles.
Thank you for releasing me.