This is a guest post by Hona Backstrom, a college student doing an internship at Wild Type Ranch.

When bought directly from its maker, there is a story behind each vegetable, fruit, baked good, or steak. The farmer, baker or rancher knows each article from its creation to its consumption. They have, usually with the help of their families, set up a small farm, kitchen or ranch in order to deliver high quality produce to the public through a farmer’s market.

During a farmer’s market, members of the community exchange money for fresh local produce. In this exchange, the supplier communicates and interacts with the customer on a personal basis. Rather than the impersonal relationship one may find in the rush of the grocery store checkout line, the farmer’s market offers a slower paced and more intimate connection with the artisan. By using this method of trade, customers tend to develop loyalty to specific farmers or producers, deepening the communication and rapport between the two. The produce is associated with a face and a family rather than a brand name and a price tag. Along with healthy locally produced foods, the farmer’s market also provides a place for the populace to meet on a weekly basis, often enjoying firm friendships and strengthening the community itself.

I am fortunate to experience the farmer-customer relationship first-hand. As an intern at Wild Type Ranch, a company that raises grass fed Angus in Cameron Texas, my responsibilities include assisting with the markets as well as aiding in cattle husbandry. I am a part of the process that gets the steak to the table. Because of my work on the ranch, I can truly appreciate the effort that goes into creating quality food. I am lucky to have formed friendships with customers as well as with other vendors and I enjoy being a part of the community each market provides.  Through my adventure here, it has become important to know where my food comes from and who raised it.

The family farm is a vital part, and starting point in the path that brings locally grown food to the table. As a new member of a family farm I have experienced and observed the morals and life skills instilled at a young age upon the adolescent boys here. I myself have learned along with them the value of a hard day’s work, and reaping the gratifying benefits afterwards. Working the farm as a family includes the children in the natural life cycle of the farms animals and they can appreciate life as well as accept death. As a family unit we are forced to depend on each other and function as a whole rather than separate parts in order accomplish a full days work. This reliance forms stronger bonds and we are more intimately connected.

Our hard work, love, environmental stewardship, and artistry are ingredients in the food we produce. The food we raise nourishes not only the body, but also the spirit while strengthening the community.

If I was forced to select a single word by which to live my life, it would be “integrity”.  The night I woke up at 3 am, with the seeds of this ranch planted in my head, I pledged to live my life by that single word and to build this dream around it. My kids (now age 7 and 9) have grown up believing in Santa.  Is it integrity to teach children to believe in a myth?  Although I have a very strong spritual and faith life, I’ve taught my children that whatever religion they follow, it is only our best guess and not an absolute truth.  So, how come I’ve been so willing to live the myth of Santa?

This year, it is time to answer the questions from the 7 year old.  I’m going to paraphrase from Kids Talk, a newsletter I get through the Montessori school:

I see Santa Claus being all those people in the world, who strive to serve humankind, to make life more enjoyable, more comfortable, more magical.
In the first stage of believing in Santa Claus, when we’re little, we’re on the receiving end. When we live the secret, we are on the giving side, which is fun. Being like Santa, which is doing our jobs with cheerful intention to help others, makes amazing things happen. Once you know how Santa works, you become Santa Claus. You do your regular stuff with love in your heart, and you try to help others not expecting anything in return. Santa is people helping people.

When you are old enough to truly understand Santa, you become Santa.  And that’s when you truly believe

Dear Mom:

At Thanksgiving, it is appropriate to be, well, thankful.  All this past month I’ve tried to start each day with gratitude for some part of my life.  A group of my friends have been sharing their thanks online with each other.

It occurred to me that I ought to be sharing my thanks with the person responsible, in one way or another, for everything for which I have to be thankful: You!

As I prepare for tomorrow’s dinner, I am particularly thankful for the sense of tradition and love of family, with roots reaching deep into my childhood.  This year, it is just Ralph, Esther and I out at the ranch for Thanksgiving dinner.  With both of them being Aussies, the traditions fall completely to me.

There was a time when it would have made me sad to be without my children, siblings and parents tomorrow.  As I’ve gotten older and our family has matured, I know I am surrounded by my family, even across the miles.  As I knead Anita’s crescent rolls, wash cranberries and go out to pick tomatoes and greens from the garden, I can feel the spirits of generations around me.

Tomorrow’s dinner will be all home-grown, home-made or harvested in Texas within the last month.  I particularly want to thank you and Dad for making it possible for us to live the life we are living.  Thank you for developing in me an open mind and encouraging my curiosity.  Thank you for believing in me and for fostering the drive to succeed.  Thank you for helping me to grow up convinced that I could do almost anything if I wanted to do it and worked hard enough.  Thanks for being there when that belief in myself faltered.

Thanks for being a Mom, a Grandma, a role model, an artist, a naturalist and occasionally a goofball.

Although we won’t be together in person to raise a toast tomorrow, I hope you can feel our love as we toast you and all we have to be thankful here in Texas .

THANKS MOM!

n.b. My husband Ralph has been in Australia the last three weeks.  His niece, Esther, and I, have been holding down the fort.  Since I haven’t had the spare time for posting, I thought my letter to Mum might be a good way to get back on track.

Sometimes we need a little reminder about our “highest calling” in this life.

It’s a tough time to be in business for one’s self, and to be in the ranching business seems to be even tougher.  Sometimes, my husband and I think we’d be better off just holding the ranch as an investment in land, rather than trying to run a natural beef and angus breeding stock business.  My head is usually in the numbers (even in my sleep); budgets, breeding values, calf weights, DNA test scores…

Today, I made some choices with my time that left me behind in my “business necessities” at the end of the day, and feeling a bit overwhelmed.  What was supposed to be 2 hours working at the elementary school book fair turned out to be 4 because no one showed up to take my place.  Teacher conferences, homework, and errands seemed to take up the rest of the “business” day.

Late this evening, when I came in from packing up orders for tomorrow’s farmer’s markets and deliveries, I found the following post from fellow ranch-wife, Karen.  Karen and her husband are less than 2 weeks away from the annual breeding stock sale that makes or breaks their financial year.  Today, Karen had time for her Mom, a turtle and a young wife in need of chili-counseling.

Today, I heard from both of my children’s teachers that they are an asset in the classroom, and both are looked to as leaders by the other students.  [this is the boys’ first year in public school, so it has been an adjustment and a concern for us].

If I was still working as an executive, I’m not sure they’d be in the same place.  I’m darn sure I wouldn’t have spent the morning at the book fair. Carpe tortuga (seize the turtle)

Selling at the three local farmer’s markets is usually a high point of my week.  After three years, Wild Type Ranch has a solid customer base.  It’s like catching up with friends, as I ask about how the roast turned out that they cooked for visiting family, how the steaks cooked for the hot date, or about someone’s ailing wife who has been absent for a few weeks.

Even though each of my markets (Sun City, Georgetown and the Vineyard at Florence) is only open a few hours, participating in a market day is pretty much a whole-day event.  There is the 90 minute drive each way to the market, an hour to set up and 30 minutes to take down, not to mention the packing and unpacking back at the ranch.   Even the shortest market is an 7 hour commitment.

Lately, attendance at the markets has been dismal.  Not just for me, but for all the vendors. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, if you’ll pardon the pun.  Taking 7 or 8 hours out of a day and $25 worth of gas to sell $75 worth of beef (that probably cost $50 to produce) is not a sustainable business plan.  So, fewer vendors show up.  Less vendors, less variety and less reason for the customers to show up.

A farmer’s market really is a community function, and it takes the community to make it function.  One of the markets in which I participate is a brand-new market.  The vendors there attend, knowing that each week will likely be a wash.  We do so as an investment in the future of the market.

If you enjoy the occasional visit to the local market, make it a point to become a regular.  The benefits reach far beyond your plate.

It’s Sunday morning at Wild Type Ranch.  We returned late last night from 2 days at an Angus cattle sale in Fredericksburg, TX.  Everyone else is having a well-deserved lie-in, but I’ve already gotten too used to the summer early rising schedule to sleep in.  [Between needing to leave early for farmer’s markets twice a week and the need to get out and work before it gets hot here in Texas, our summer schedule typically starts at dawn and involves a mid-day shower and siesta]. 

While we were away at the sale, we’ve had a blessed 1.5 inches of rain.  Judging by the flattened sweet corn patch we also had quite a bit of wind accompanying what is likely to be one of the last cool fronts of the spring.  Quiet and cool are two things I don’t get much of, especially lately.

The economy is affecting us almost as much as the drought has.  Cattle prices are down, customer purchases at the market are smaller, breeding season has been delayed by poor grass and hay quality.  We’ve been making lemonade out of lemons as much as possible, but it’s still too easy to get discouraged, over-worked and lose sight of why we are here.

Cup of coffee in hand, Tess, our blue heeler, and I set off across the wonderfully wet grass in the refreshing cool breeze–I’m actually wearing a sweatshirt this morning!  A quick check of the cattle we purchased this weekend and those we brought back home because they didn’t sell for a price higher than what we could get if we harvested them for beef, shows all to be well. 

Tess and I cross into the paddock where our heifers are, to check if any are in heat (ready to be bred) or any appear by the silver scratch-off patches on their rumps to have come into heat while we were gone.  It is a well-known fact when trying to A.I. (artificially inseminate) cattle, the most likely time for them to come into heat is whenever it will be most inconvenient to breed them.  Looks like we got lucky while we were gone.  Now I park myself in the middle of the paddock, having successfully climbed over the fence with a full coffee cup, and watch. 

Emmy Lu, one of our heifers, comes up for a scratch.  Evangeline, her full sister (they are the product of embryo transfer, so were born of foster mamas at the same time) can’t stand to be left out and gives my knee a lick before Tess decides I need protecting.  A game of tag ensues between Tess and Emmy Lu, neither taking the other seriously even though they usually take on the roles of predator and prey. 

It’s Sunday.  I’m lucky to make it to church once a month, since our church is 80 miles from the ranch.  Sometimes I feel like this life I chose, expressly to live in line with my values, leaves me little time to reflect on said values.  This morning, I’m feeling a part of the web of life.  I feel that deep sense of peace that comes from believing that things will work and that I’m in the right place. 

I’m thankful to my parents, both devout Catholics, who were wise enough to teach me that sometimes the most holy thing you can do on a Sunday morning is to go sit in your garden, or go take a walk.  I remember a sign that was posted at the entryway to their wildflower garden:

The kiss of the sun for pardon

The song of the birds for mirth

One is nearer God’s heart in the garden

Than anywhere else on earth

Namaste

Life has been pretty hectic at Wild Type Ranch lately.  My husband has had to make two emergency trips to Australia since the beginning of the year, each time leaving my boys (ages 7 and 9) and I to take care of the ranch while attending school an hour away.  Considering spring is our calving, breeding, embryo transfer and gardening season, we’ve been a little harried.  Add to that attempting to get our “in town” house packed up, cleaned up and ready to sell in preparation for moving out to the ranch full-time at the end of the school year, and you can see why the blog posts have been few and far between.

Y’all have been on my mind, though.  I’ve written dozens of posts in my head while making those hour-long commutes between town and ranch.  I’ve also realized this is a kind of therapy, so I’ll stick with it for a while if you will….

I had a guest at the Farmer’s Market today.  I’m not sure she was really thrilled to be there, but she did manage to lay an egg nonetheless.

Saturday’s market starts at 8:00, which means leaving the ranch well before sun-up.  I usually get everything loaded and my car hooked up to the freezer trailer, so all I have to do is unplug the trailers and drive off about 5:45 am.  On Friday I knew I would be getting home after dark, so I left the lights on in the workshop where the trailer is parked, so I could easily back in and hook up.

Apparently, one of our more mechanically inclined hens had been hanging out in the workshop.  Because the lights were on, I suspect she didn’t realize it was night, and didn’t return to her coop for the night.  When I came home, hooked up and shut up the workshop, she was now trapped in the workshop.  This morning, I drove off in the dark with her nestled down on the trailer, between my two big beef freezers.

Once I got to market, I kept thinking I heard chickens, but figured I’d been spending too much time alone out at the ranch.  An inquisitive 8-year old  spotted her just before market started.  I knew I had to get her caught and contained before she recovered from her shock at being transported 75 miles in the early morning dew.  I had visions of having to let her loose inside my car.  Since we just went through a bout of stomach flu involving said car, I figured this was just the final sign that it was time to have my car detailed.  Fortunately, I remembered I had a milk crate full of bungie cords on the trailer, so we caught her and kept her in that for the day.

I’m not sure she was exactly happy, but she was safe.  And she did manage to lay an egg.  She’s back home and happy now.  My dilemma is what to do with the egg.  Given it’s trip to town and back, I don’t think it meets the 100-mile “local food” limit for the market…

Amanda, over at Beef Daily Blog, is hosting a discussion about ranch chores, which got me thinking about my own chore philosophy.

I can’t say I was a big fan of chores as a child.  Now that I’m a Mom, I have come to the conclusion that a good chunk of what’s wrong with our society, our economy and our food/health status could be fixed if all children grew up doing chores.

My boys go to a Montessori school where there is no homework.  Instead, parents are asked to pledge they will involve their children in daily life activities, such as laundry, grocery shopping and cooking.  I am convinced that, if a parent does so consciously, the children learn more of value that way than any amount of homework can teach them.  It is especially so out on a ranch, but true enough in any home.

When children are responsible for helping take care of their environment, they are truly a part of the family. Face it, especially when they are young, having children “help” often just isn’t much help.   It is tempting to do it yourself.  BUT, if you are taking the time to teach them or to work beside them, they are gettting serious “quality time” from you.

I think we unconsciously teach our children to be passengers when we take care of all their needs.  Without participating in life chores, how can we expect them to suddenly be competent parents or responsible adults once they leave home?  Chores teach children responsibility.  Perhaps as importantly, when children inevitably fall short on their responsibilities, they can experience the consequences in ways that are sooo much cheaper than learning that lesson later in life.

At our ranch, our boys are part of the food chain all the way through.  They are there when we artificially inseminate, help name the calves, go with us when we take beeves in for harvest and they really love a good steak.  In fact, we joke that at our ranch, we know our beef “from semen to sewer”.

Children don’t need to be on a ranch, though, for chores to contribute to an appreciation for where their food comes from.  Chores such as gardening, cooking, grocery shopping or going to the farmer’s market help promote healthy eating habits.  It’s amazing what vegetables children will eat when they grow them themselves.  Especially if you get some of the cool varieties, such as purple ‘green’ beans, rainbow chard, purple carrots, zebra striped tomatoes or blue potatoes.

All this adds up to self-esteem.  And it’s a lot cheaper than therapy, martial arts classes or reform school!

I’m trying something new:  Once a month, I’m going to attempt to outline an entire day here at the ranch, no holds barred.  Here’s the last day in February at Wild Type Ranch:

We woke up to howling winds and a drop of 50 degrees from yesterday’s unusually warm temps of 85 degrees. The winds here blow with gusts to 25-40 mph, sometimes stronger, and if you spend a day out in them, your ears hurt for another day.  Today the wind blew the door past where it should comfortably go on the new tractor.  My wonderful husband, Ralph, spent an hour welding up a suitable repair, in the middle of too much other work.  [note to single women–if you are planning to live a rural life, I strongly recommend finding a husband who can weld AND cook].

My first chore (before coffee!) is to check for heat in our yearling heifers.  Nothing happening, but I note a case of pinkeye, so that changes the entire day’s priorities.

After a cup of tea and a discussion of the day’s battle plan, we begin to move cattle around.  We were planning to “synchronize” our heifers for breeding starting next week, but the pinkeye outbreak means we have to bring all the heifers up to the barn to check them out and treat the affected ones, so we move that plan ahead by a week.  In retrospect, it works out, as we were hoping to be able to go back to Illinois for my sister’s annual Christmas caroling party, and to do so, we need to avoid calving between Dec 18th and 28th, which means avoiding breeding between March 12 and 27th. We take duties as stewards of our animals’ welfare seriously, and check our cattle at least twice daily during calving season.  Consequently, vacations are planned a year in advance.

Before we can work with our heifers, we need to free up some space in one of our smaller paddocks.  We have had a few older cows out with our bull for 30 days.  These girls didn’t breed last spring, but were put in with a young bull, so it may not have been their fault.  Each one of our cows is an individual–it’s hard to make the decision to cull them, but we also have a responsibility as producers of registered stock to make sure that the genetics we are selling are sound in every way.  We decided to give them one more chance before we let them go, but if they aren’t bred now, they will have to go to the sale barn.

Next, we gather our heifers, weigh, check for pinkeye on each one and move them to the paddock outside our kitchen window, so we can detect estrus if they are ready to be bred.  To help us determine which heifers are ready for breeding, we put a patch on them so we can detect any “mounting” when they come into heat. The patches are kind of like scratch-off lottery tickets, with a silver coating over the brightly covered base.  One of my boys used to tell me “look Mom, that cow won” when he would notice a rubbed patch after a cow had come into heat.  We A.I.  (artificially inseminate) most of our cattle in order to get the best genetics into our beef and registered Angus and Red Angus herds.

Once the heifers are moved and patched, I water the 250 feet of potatoes we planted yesterday along with the rest of our spring garden (mostly greens, peas and carrots and the first rows of beans) while Ralph cooks up a quick lunch to get us through the afternoon.  Breakfast was a piece of toast with vegemite, so lunch is really welcome!

I’ll ‘fess up to taking a 20 minute nap on the couch after lunch.  After that necessary refresher, it’s time to sort off the cows that will be having embryos implanted on Monday and Tuesday.   We work closely with Dreamcatcher Ranch on embryo transfer and selling our bulls.  Ralph puts out big round bales to the various paddocks in advance of tonight’s expected freeze.  Cattle need full bellies to stay warm in windy or wet weather.

Once cattle work is done for the day, we start on the other end of the production chain: beef.  We picked up beef last week, but because the local farmer’s markets haven’t started for the year, our freezers are unusually full.  We’ve got a few orders and a quarter to fill, as well as inventorying what we have on hand before markets start April 1 (we sell at the Georgetown Farmer’s Markets all season).  That takes both of us the better part of 2 hours.  Ralph leaves as the sun goes down to cook us up a wondeful supper, while I finish reorganizing our portable freezer trailers for next week’s delivery points and orders.

I come in after dark, and am glad to find that Ralph has gathered the eggs (usually my job, if I am here) and has a glass of wine waiting for me.  18 eggs today! Spring is definitely on its way!  Supper, a much needed shower and e-mails back to family in other parts of the country and world finish out the day.