We have departed the great town of Clark, with sadness and with excitement for the soon arrival home. We’ve been so busy that keeping up with the blog has been quite difficult. Rather than tell you about the rest of our time, I think I’ll show you in photos and videos with short explanations. Then, I’ll share some lessons learned and observations made in the following blogs. I’d call this a phlog (photo-blog) if the name were appropriate, but it isn’t, so I won’t. 

A quick update, if you’re interested. We explored the Black Hills for a couple of days, seeing all the main attractions like Wall Drug, The Badlands, Bear Country USA, Crazy Horse (Laser show), Mount Rushmore, bison, donkeys (The donkey below is sleeping, not dead), and my all-time favorite golf course- Hart Ranch.

Quick side note: I recently learned that there is no such thing as “buffalo” in North America. The burly, bearded beasts we refer to as buffalo are all bison. Bison are defined by the large hump on their back, their shorter horns, and their thick beards (read more here).

After the Black Hills, we made the longest day-trek of our trip, reaching 800 miles, to Bigfork, Montana. Caitlin Smith joined us, which made the trip all-the-better. Bigfork was a great launching point for exploring Glacier National Park, where we saw beautifully carved peaks, mountain goats and a moose, swam in Lake McDonald, and motor-boated Two Medicine Lake. I think I’ve realized that spotting wildlife is my favorite part of any outdoor excursion.

It was the perfect way to end the trip and be reintroduced into the mountainous west. Now, we’re home! 

Topics I’ll cover in small detail. Dog friends, fencing, dead cow, semen testing, thunderstorms, the neighbor cows, and raking and rowing. 

We made three friends on the farm named Fred, Robling, and Blue (a.k.a Tinky Winky). Fred is the best dog, Robling always greets your arrival with a shoe in his mouth, and Blue has enough energy for all three of them. The dogs joined us on trips to feed the heifers and horses and earned a frisbee toss and free corn (really they stole it) for their toils. They’re hunting dogs, so they have to stretch their retrieving muscles regularly. 

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We finished a fence! Dean and Thor helped- by helped I mean they did most the grunt work- but we did it! And we could replicate the process if we wanted to! We would only need wood posts, metal frames, hand tools, power tools, a post-pounder, and one or two tractors. That’s all. 

One of the pastures on the way home from the farm was the home of a cow in very poor condition. Footrot caused her to hobble until she broke her other leg, making her stagnant in the middle of a tree-less pasture. A handicapped cow has no way of getting water so Dean would bring pales of water to it daily. One day, he asked Jessie and me to start bringing the pales of water to the cow. She was a miserable sight, skin hanging over bones, and she was panting hard in the hot sun. We gave her water and sprayed the flies that infested her coat. The next day we brought the pales out to her, she was lifeless.

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We were sad to observe the end of a slow death, but feel it is important to see and share death. We live in a culture that likes to forget about death, but farmers can’t escape the exposure to it, and I can imagine that’s an impactful spiritual practice for them- for us all. I think there’s some freedom in the reminder that someday I’ll die no richer or more powerful than a dead cow. A guy named Job said in the first chapter of a book about him, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” He said so after excruciating hardship. Man, it’s hard to believe that I didn’t earn everything I have and it’s even harder to believe that someday it won’t matter at all what I have or don’t have- death levels the playing field. We say death is a downer but I’m learning that it frees us.

I think it’s fair to follow up an excerpt on death by talking about new life so let’s talk about semen testing. The time came for the bulls to be released among the cows to procreate. Roughly one bull to thirty cows. Quite the ratio. Before farmers release the bulls, they want to test their semen to be sure they are fit for the task. Watching this was disturbing. I wrestled with which images to share because I did not hold back with the camera. Below is a picture of the contraption used for testing. Don’t look too closely.

Thunderstorms! Many of them. Some were very intense. Almost all of them happened at night. Here are my favorite pictures and videos. 

Kathleen Norris quotes a young girl who moved from Louisiana to western South Dakota:

I think she’s right about the Dakota sky.

Anna and Dean live right next to a pasture. Some mornings and evenings, we were able to share some corn with them while they shared their good tidings. One morning I had something I felt that I needed to share with them and they were very interested to learn. 

Dean entrusted Jessie and me with the task of raking and rowing hay on multiple occasions. In short, the hay gets cut first, and then, once it’s dry, it needs to be raked into windrows so that it’s easy to bale and able to dry out. There are two types of rakes: a side rake and a v-rake. Observe below. After raking and baling occurs, the bales are placed into rows of seventeen. I’ll unpack haying more in the next blog (Can you wait for me to expand on this topic?!). For now, I want to demonstrate the activity. 

Well, that’s a very brief summary of a wonderful stay. I’m sitting on our back deck at home as I write this and both grateful to be here and sad it’s all over. Memories, lessons, and relationships travel with us from this adventure and for that we are filled with gratitude.

It rained in Bellingham in August! WTF?