Day: December 14, 2016

Sugar and Spice

Post author By Tara Davidson
Post date December 14, 2016

This month our daughter Jaime turns four years old. In several ways she follows in the footsteps of her older twin brothers but in many other ways, she is blazing a trail all of her own. To me, she can be summed up neatly with Shakespeare’s famous quote: “and though she be but little, she is fierce.”

While many of our children’s milestones are typical to those of others, there is one milestone that is unique to some ranch kids. A kids’ first solo horse ride is the milestone that gets me in the feels every time. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not quite prepared to have my kids take on such a big responsibility or if it’s their enthusiasm to do “grown-up work” that makes me a bit teary-eyed. Perhaps it’s actually my subconscious understanding that I will now have to catch, saddle, pack around, and unsaddle yet one more horse that makes me misty-eyed, but probably not, that’s a small price to pay.

We were on the second leg of trailing cows home the other day, when Jaime’s golden opportunity to ride came along. Up until then, Jaime and I had been travelling with the herd in the truck and trailer, stopping cows from going in the odd gate, but mostly staying warm, visiting, and eating all the snacks. My Other Half stopped us part of the way home and asked Jaime if she wanted to switch her brother out. I made a few feeble protests, including mentioning the fact that she didn’t pack ski pants (“she can wear her brothers,” my husband reasoned) and my concern that it was too cold and snowing too hard for a three-year-old to be out riding. Those excuses fell on many pairs of deaf ears, however. After some horse trading between her brothers, and a mutual agreement that left one of them graciously stepping off so she could take their place, Jaime scrambled up onto Betsy and rode away before I could say too much more. Not that anyone was listening to me anyway.

It was cold and it started snowing even harder, but Jaime didn’t notice. She followed the herd, grinning, and learned to ride down into the ditch to bring up the odd slow cow. She would sneakily hold her horse back a bit so she could trot just a little ways in order to catch up. Sometimes she would hang back so she could talk to me but more often than not, she would stay several yards ahead, and wasn’t too worried about looking back at her old ma. Her dad and grandpa were paying close attention to how she was doing and her brother, with his advanced age and experience, gave her plenty of instructions to follow too.

Almost three hours later, the cows arrived home, and only then could I pry her off her horse. But I couldn’t pry the smile off her face.

This isn’t exactly an earth-shattering admission, but raising kids is not easy. As a parent, I worry that we’re not hard enough on our kids, or maybe we’re being too hard on them. Maybe they shouldn’t log as many hours with us as they do on the baler, or at the corral, or hauling bales and perhaps we should give them more time to play and have fun and be a kid. But when I see them tackle some “jobs” and have so much fun while they’re at it, maybe I should learn a thing or two from them.

Regardless, this month will see our daughter celebrate another birthday and gain a bit more independence. And our ranch gains another willing cow hand, one that is made of sugar and spice, with a shot of perseverance and some grit for good measure.

Home/Work

Post author By Tara Davidson
Post date December 14, 2016

Entering into the ranching business is not cheap. It takes work, planning, mostly lots of luck, and to be perfectly honest, capital. Without money, you can’t buy grass. Without grass, you can’t buy cows, and if you want to buy cows, guess what you need? For this reason, I have almost always worked off-farm in some capacity. Lucky for me, my off-farm employment revolves around prairie management, forage, beef, and communication, which is a pretty nice complement to my on-farm life too.

I used to drive to an office every day to work full-time. This was okay for a while, but three babies later, I decided to live the dream – ranch full-time…and work from home too. How hard could it be? Other people seemed to successfully work from home so why shouldn’t I? Blissfully ignorant, and I was looking forward to achieving the elusive (and annoyingly cliched) “work-life balance.” There were some myths that I quickly and systematically busted after just a few short weeks.

Myth: you will never again have to brave 105 kilometres (one way) of slippery roads, making the trek to the office in blizzard-like conditions. You’ll be safe and warm at home and weather will no longer impact your work like it once did.

Myth-buster: on beautiful, sunshiny days when you would love to be outside with your other ranching peers, you’re slaving away in your basement office tapping out your next report that is due in 47, wait… no… 46 minutes.

Myth: working from one’s home, you’ll surely be able to pop a quick load of laundry in the dryer while you run upstairs to grab a home-brewed cup of java, after which you can throw some supper in the slow-cooker. You’ll have well-planned meals and the cleanest home ever, all the time.

Myth-buster: your ice-cold coffee sits untouched until your alarm rings to go pick up the kids for music. You realize you haven’t yet brushed your teeth, so you do and run out the door, ignoring the mess in your house that accumulates because you are now in your house all the time. But hey, you got that last project submitted 3 hours before it was due!

Myth: you’ll get so much extra work done without the hassle of extended water cooler breaks and random chit chat. You won’t ever have to deal with office politics. Also, the flexibility of working from home means you can take off a bit early to get the kids to those music lessons, as long as you make the time up somewhere along the line.

Myth-buster: When you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, you realize you’re looking at the craziest woman you’ll ever share an office with. Wish you had someone to run a concept or idea by? Want a second opinion? Good luck finding a colleague that’s willing to chat at 11:52pm on a Friday evening when you’re making up for lost time.

Myth: with careful organization, you will at time create large blocks of time (during the daylight) to get a jump on work deadlines. Free from distractions, there is no reason you can’t put a good dent into your project.

Myth-buster: You’re focused. Wait…is that a knock at the door? It’s a traveling salesman, wanting to show you his wares. You send him on his way and just as he drives out, you hear the mooing of an errant bovine (or several) rambling through your yard. Once you put them back where they belong and return to your desk, the phone rings and it’s your long lost friend you haven’t chatted with since 2013. Then it rings again and you are needed out in the field. A quick four and a half hours later, you are back at your computer, smelling like diesel, but more focused than ever. Time to get some work done, people!

As the saying goes, if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. I’m lucky to love my ranch work and “home/work” and enjoy the privilege of doing both. However, I can definitely say that I continue to learn a lot about that work-ranch-life balance. Some days the grass may seem greener on the other side, and sometimes it’s greenest right under your feet.

House & Homestead Ranch & Real Life

Paradise City

Post author By Tara Davidson
Post date December 14, 2016

There has been a lot of upheaval and uncertainty around this world and indeed in our own province this last week. Rather than dwell on the unknown, I’m going to cover a topic that is as certain as death and taxes – the rancHER’s trip to the city.

Let me preface this by stating that I love to shop locally every chance I get. Groceries, parts, fuel, hardware, herbicide, prescriptions; the list of purchases I make in our two nearby small towns goes on. Prices are usually competitive, and I appreciate not having to drive an hour to buy the things we need. Plus, it’s usually friendly service with a smile with the exception of one local business that insists on addressing me as Old Lady Davidson…. but I digress.

Alas, operating a ranch inevitably requires taking a trip to the big city 100km away. Whether it’s for specific parts, banking, dental appointments, new chore clothes, or wine-making supplies (don’t judge me), eventually you have to hop into the pick-up and head off for the bright lights.

My love for lists is well known, and no list is more complex, organized, and edited, than my list for the city. The list is a “living” document if you will, continually evolving with new additions as time passes between trips. I like to categorize the list according to stops and priority. I usually aim high, and try to get everything done on my list, but as my caffeinated motivation, time, and spirits flag throughout the day, realistically there will be places that I don’t get to. I organize my list of stops made throughout the city so that the route makes sense, taking into account any closed overpasses, any Trans Canada highways that bisect my route, and of course, any stores that have potential restroom stops for my three passengers (or as every retailer predictably refers to them as, “mommy’s little helpers”).

My husband’s approach to a day in town is completely different. We rarely travel together to the city except for important business transactions, family funerals, or say, the birth of our children, so I always marvel at his cavalier method of shopping. As I’m furiously categorizing my list en route (basically taking all of the fun out of a family trip to town) my Other Half casually grabs a livestock manifest and randomly scribbles a few places to stop on the back of the book. When he accompanies me, I guarantee the kids and I spend way more time waiting in the truck, we spend way more money than I anticipated, and we come home with at least one item that my Other Half deemed 100% essential to the operation of our ranch, even though up until he buys it, I had no idea it even existed.

A few weeks had passed between my required urban journeys when we ended up making a recent unscheduled trip to the dentist. I was trying my best to get organized, get one child on his way to school, and the other two packed up for a big day of adventures in town. I quickly reviewed my quintessential list, set out things that I needed by the door, and got everyone dressed and ready to go. As I left, I looked for my list and realized it had disappeared. I looked in my usual places, I looked in odd places, upstairs and down, and I looked in the truck, in case I had set it in there earlier. I had just had it!

The clock was ticking. You really only have a few brief moments between having the kids ready to load in the truck and having them decide they should have one last drink of water or wear a different outfit. What could I remember from my list? Did I have an old manifest book in the truck that I could scrawl on?

I found the list. In the deep freeze.

A bit confused, we set off for another expensive day in the city so we could come back home and keep living the dream.

Critters & Kids

It’s a Zoo Out There

Post author By Tara Davidson
Post date December 14, 2016

Most summers we try to take a short trip somewhere as a family, or at the very least have an epic staycation where we set up the tent and camp out on the prairie. This year, for whatever reason, one week melted into another and before we knew it, school started and the five of us hadn’t travelled anywhere together. Over Thanksgiving, we knew it was now or never, and we embarked on our family summer vacation.

We already knew it was a little peculiar to take a “summer” holiday in October, but the weirdness was only compounded when it started to snow for almost the entire duration of our trip. While the snow left me checking the road reports and dutifully marking several outdoor activities off my carefully planned itinerary, the kids were completely unfazed as they twirled around, trying to catch the fat flakes of snow on their tongues. (Hey, this wasn’t my first family vacation rodeo, I was prepared with winter coats and toques).

One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to a zoo. The timing really couldn’t have been better, as the heavy snow not only made the zoo animals perky and engaging, it kept scores of potential visitors away. As a rule, farmers of all ages don’t like crowds, so a nearly empty zoo that was ours to explore was perfect! We walked and discovered and walked and ate snacks, and when that was done, we walked some more. We watched the penguins munch on fish and revel in the snow and we saw the majestic tigers and snow leopards gracefully meander through their spaces. The cougars and the bears were a hit, and I couldn’t help but laugh as we viewed the flamingoes chilling out (literally) in the fresh snow alongside the mallard ducks that came and went.

My husband and I would point out interesting things here and there to the kids but they made observations of their own. As farm kids, they have a pretty good idea of how the Animal Kingdom works from a biological standpoint, and they had lots of good questions. They noted the giraffes eating hay from their elevated hay bags and the tiny Asian pigs obtain water from a spigot. The kids noticed several enclosures that featured stock water bowls, excitedly saying “they have the same waterbowls as we do!” We walked near an elaborate set of corrals and chutes set up for handling larger animals. I suspect the zoo was trying to conceal this infrastructure, or at the very least not draw attention to it, but there our kids were, peering through the bushes, commenting on the height and function of the animal handling system. The omnipresent electric fencing throughout the zoo also caught their attention. Electric fence wires, insulators, and the fencers themselves were discussed at length and one pointed out that a particular fencer wasn’t holding a charge. I guess he’s spent a few days checking fencers back at our ranch, this wasn’t his first rodeo, either.

The entire trip was good. We stayed in hotels, enjoyed water sliding, ate lots of good food, visited with friends and family, and there was plenty of hot coffee consumed by mom and dad. And, although we already knew this, we were reminded that you can take the kids off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the kids.

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