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Celtic Prairie Farm | homesteading | self reliance | natural wellness

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The Gamble of Homesteading, Farming & Ranching

August, 2016 by Celtic Prairie Farm 4 Comments

Gamble pin

Our ancestors were gamblers!  I mean serious gamblers.  You see, they weren’t messing around with small pots.  No nickel, dime and quarter games for them.  Nope, they were all in!

Each fall, my grandparents would plant their wheat seed, hoping for a good crop to emerge in the spring, followed by a hearty harvest in mid-summer.  Each and every year they gambled their livelihoods and future fortunes on good weather and favorable conditions.  Here on the prairie they practiced dryland farming.  No irrigation.  Even now, my neighbors do the same.  They plant in the fall, hope and pray for enough fall rain, winter snows and subsequent spring rain to make the wheat grow.  They supplement their incomes with cattle, jobs in town and whatever else can be pieced together to make the mortgage.

It’s a gamble.  For real.

 

One horrible hailstorm can obliterate and entire year’s crop.  One bad blizzard can wipe out enough cattle to devastate a rancher.  Such a storm occurred in the spring of 1968.  This April blizzard killed enough of my father’s cattle to cause him to quit ranching and take a job in town.  As a result, I did not grow up on the prairie.  Instead, my childhood was filled with job transfers every couple of years, suburbs and 9 public schools before graduation.

I did not fully appreciate the risks until I planted a very, very large garden.  I watched the thunderheads roll closer and saw the distant lightning.  I saw the wall of rain and hail approach.  There was nothing to be done.  There was no time “farmer-fix-up” some solution that would protect our 1/2 acre of plants and veggies.

The hail came.  I kid you not, it was the size of grapefruits.  The garden was pretty well decimated.   Fortunately the storm came early enough in the summer that we were able to replant some of the crops such as green beans.  And fortunately, we didn’t have to rely solely on that garden to fill our pantry for the coming winter.

But it was then that I realized a portion of the anxiety of my fore-fathers and mothers,  who relied upon weather and land for a living.  They didn’t have office jobs with 401k’s and health insurance.  They didn’t have a salary that was direct deposited each month like clockwork.  They had to save and budget and hope.

It was then that I realized that small feeling, when you understand just how helpless and small we humans really are.

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I’m glad August is over, ’cause it’s been a rough one. Let me tell ya:

Our 7 month old puppy got bit by a rattlesnake.  He survived and is now just fine, but it was worrisome for sure.

One of our Irish Dexter steers got struck by lightening.  He did not survive.   We were gone for the weekend and came home to discover “Chili” was no longer destined to be chili and would become coyote lunch instead.  The other three steers were just fine.  No toxic weeds, no danger of bloat this late in the season, no evidence of sickness.  The vet and I discussed the possibilities and given fact that we had several afternoons of severe thunderstorms, as well as the condition of the carcass, we concluded that lightning was the most likely cause of death.  That stinks.  Literally.
Dealing with a large dead animal also presents challenges, let me tell ya!

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The garden got hailed.  Thankfully, it was small, pea sized hail that was fairly soft.  The plants are recovering, but we can definitely tell some of the tomatoes were damaged. This after the problem with the possible salt issue.

The garden got frost.  No, I’m not kidding.  We had a freaky, hard frost on the night of August 19th.  That’s Wyoming for ya.  Thankfully, I saw a Facebook post from the National Weather Service in Cheyenne announcing a frost warning.  We had time to dig out nearly every single sheet we have and cover as much of the garden as possible.

Our craptastic electric range needed to be replaced.  Like now… before garden harvest. This is both good and bad.  I would much rather have a gas stove.  It’s much easier to control the heat especially for canning.  The challenge is plumbing the propane, setting up a tank, installing a new range and the unexpected expense.  Thankfully, Pop (my dad) is really handy with projects such as this and is willing to come on over, on short notice, and help us out!  So he and Will set a propane tank, dug a trench and installed my brand new stove!  And 30 minutes after installation, I had the first batch of peaches headed to the water bath canner.

Although we certainly prefer to eat out of the pantry rather than the store, I’m thankful that we don’t necessarily have to rely upon our garden to supply everything we need.  And even though lightning stuck our steer flat, ding-dong dead, we will have other sources to fill our freezer.

We are thankful for what we have,  because we know it can be lost in an instant.

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Filed Under: Ruminations

It Starts with You.

June, 2015 by Celtic Prairie Farm 6 Comments

It you were hoping for a post about knitting or gardening, or cows and kitties, this isn’t it.   But read on… because this post is about you and what you can do to make your life better. This is an essay about our culture… our problem… and how to fix it.Its not about gun control.  Its not that simple.  Our problem with violence is bigger and more pervasive than simply signing and attempting to enforce legislation.  The problem is much bigger and more pervasive than one person with a gun. The problem is the culture acceptance of violence to begin with.  And until we collectively realize and deal with that…we will continue to witness events like mass shootings and bombings. 

This is a post originally written over two years ago, but the recent mass shooting in South Carolina makes it just as relevant today as I was when I wrote it as a reaction to the school shooting in New Town, CT.

Today I want to talk about violence. We’re seeing violent behavior in increasing levels in our young people. I realize humans have been acting violently toward one another since the beginning of time, but I don’t think you can argue that violent acts are certainly more commonplace and more socially acceptable now than ever before.  Its acceptable in our main stream culture to watch people bomb one another, shoot each other, rape each other and kill each other.  We do it everyday… on our screens.

We have one of the most violent cultures in the world. Our media is filled with images of death, murder, guns, fighting and sex. We buy it and we support it. When you watch an action adventure movie on cable, you support the culture of violence. When you watch a new James Bond movie or Son’s of Anarchy episode, you’re supporting violence. You are.  You’re condoning violence.  You support a culture that has become callous to hurting each other. Then we all shake our heads in dismay and wonder why kids take guns to school. And don’t even get me started on the sexual component. As a collective culture, we have accepted the violence, even thrived on it. So why are we surprised when someone takes a gun to a mall and shoots people? Well, slap your forehead and say “duh.”

I truly believe that we make choices every day, that contribute to our children’s futures. I say that collectively: Our Children. While you may not be a parent, the children will grow up and affect you. While your children may be grown, today’s youth will make decisions and choices that impact you. So when I say “our children,” I mean it. You need to take responsibility too. We all do.What can you do? Turn it off. Stop watching. Stop buying the video games that contain fighting, war and guns. Stop buying magazines and movies that contain violence.

If you wouldn’t want to see it happen in front of you in real life, then don’t watch on the screen. It really is that simple.

We vote with our dollars. If we all stopped going to violent movies, the movie makers would stop making them. If we all stopped watching TV shows about murder, they wouldn’t make them. It starts with you. You control what goes into your brain. And you know what? Witnessing a murder isn’t okay. According to parentstv.org, “It is estimated that by the time an average child leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed 8,000 murders and over 100,000 other acts of violence. By the time that child is 18 years-of-age; he or she will witness 200,000 acts of violence, including 40,000 murders.”

About 4 years ago we realized that TV wasn’t such a great influence in our home. We were noticing commercials for erectile disfunction on major networks in the middle of the evening. Seriously! Thankfully our young daughters weren’t in the room at the time, but I really didn’t want to have to explain the purpose of Viagra to an 8 year old. We were noticing previews of crime shows during “family” shows. The previews were sometimes scary and graphic. Then we got DVR thinking that we’d record the shows that we wanted and zip through all the commercials and other nonsense. So we tried that for a while but it was expensive and we realized that we’re still voting with our dollars. We were still paying for all of it whether we watched it or not. So we canceled the whole entire thing. And we haven’t missed it. We order exactly what we want from Netflix or we watch exactly what we want on Hulu Plus, or we pick something from our own DVD library. We pay a whole lot less and we know exactly what our kids are watching.

Please think about that. The problem isn’t gun control. Gun control is only a fraction of the problem. The problem is the callousness of our culture, our widespread acceptance of violent acts. The issue of gun control is simply a distraction by those who don’t wish to deal with the root of the problem… our own choices.

The problem lies with you and me. But so does the solution.  I really think we can all try to be the change we want to see. You can make better, more wholesome choices with your TV remote, your movie tickets, the DVDs you buy. You can end the cycle of violence. Don’t read it, don’t watch it, don’t buy it.

Don’t you owe it to yourself? Don’t we owe it to each other?  Make a better choice.

Violence on TV Research

Filed Under: Social Commentary

Too much to say

April, 2014 by Celtic Prairie Farm 2 Comments

I had another post in mind today, but this video came across my internet path today and I felt compelled to share it. The other post can wait. There is so much to say about this video, this child and what it all means that there aren’t words enough to get past the emotion. Its all too much.
So instead of trying to dissect is.. I’m just gonna share it. I hope you will too.

Filed Under: Everything Else

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