Category Archives: The Ranch

Sewing for the Folsom Community Bazaar – 2013

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Well, my oldest niece thinks that one of my New Year’s resolutions should be to blog more often, so here we go.

Back in October, I made my annual trek to Mom and Dad’s ranch near Hermosa, SD, for the annual Community Club Bazaar. Well, unfortunately, the Bazaar was derailed by the Atlas blizzard. Instead of a fun community get-together, we had rain, freezing rain, high winds, and then a true blizzard. Many, many neighbors lost cattle in this storm. At the ranch, we were without power for five days and phone for four days. But all that gets an entry of its own, later.

Here are the things that I made for the Bazaar! Some of them ended up being sold at the (postponed and modified) Bazaar, while some of them we donated to the Soup and Pie supper at my Mom’s church. I did forget to take a picture of the afghan – this was a crocheted afghan that someone else started, and then passed on to a knitting friend of mine who wasn’t really interested in finishing it, so she passed it on to me, and I finished it and donated it to the Bazaar, where it surprised us all by selling for $95! I didn’t really care for the yarn or the color, so that was a great surprise for me – I guess if we all had the same taste, the world would be a very boring place. I found a picture showing the afghan on my phone!

Lustrous yarn afghan

Lustrous yarn afghan

Counting by Fives Quilt for Folsom Community Bazaar

Counting by Fives Quilt for Folsom Community Bazaar

This quilt started out as something else entirely. I originally intended it to be similar to this “Field of Flowers” quilt – but then I decided that there was no way I was going to get it done in time for the Bazaar.  So I hopped on Pinterest and found “Counting by Fives” – which seemed more possible.

Counting by Fives quilt
Then I had a color conundrum. I started this quilt before taking my color class. Now I realized I had some very high contrast strips in there, while most of the other strips were about the same value. So I posted on Facebook and got feedback from my friends, most of whom voted that I go with the more blended values. So that required some ripping out. I think it required some fabric purchases as well (I always MEAN to make scrappy quilts, but really, it takes A LOT of fabric to make a quilt.)

Too much contrast in some strips

Too much contrast in some strips

Less contrast, looks better, I think

Less contrast, looks better, I think

The only fabric I could find that worked with all the other fabrics as a background was lavender. This was going to be a decidedly girly, Easter-y quilt.

After getting the top sewn, I still had to quilt it. I do have a New Joy quilting frame, and a Juki TL98E machine, so, in theory, this should go quickly? Well, not if you have to rip out a full five rows because your tension on the back isn’t so good. Now I have “new needle” on the check list for each time I start quilting a quilt. I did make a great discovery, I love Aurofil thread, and will be using that to quilt my quilts unless I find something more miraculous. It worked really well. The only problem is that the quilt store that carries it in the Denver area is WAAAAAY down south.

And of course there were Barbie doll dresses.  One of these got donated to the Soup and Pie supper rather than the Bazaar, since we weren’t sure the Bazaar would be re-scheduled.

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Western-themed receiving blankets and burp cloths. Again, I think one of these went to the Soup and Pie supper.

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Horse pillowcases and crocheted potholders. The pillowcases went to the Soup and Pie supper, I already have fabric to make new ones for the Bazaar next year. My second-oldest niece also got a set of these for her birthday.

That’s all for now, more catching up on sewing/crafting in a few days!

Thanksgiving Vacation to SD

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What did I do on my Thanksgiving vacation?
I spent more time than planned in Wheatland, WY.
I made cream cheese mints.
I watched a football game.
We headed for South Dakota on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Ken had some video he needed to edit, so I drove.

I have a new car mascot. He was very happy to go along for the ride. He does not have a name yet, suggestions welcome.

20121121_100050We originally were going to stop in Hot Springs and use our friends’ wireless to upload, but Ken was done with the editing pretty early. So we stopped at the Platte County visitor’s center in Wheatland and used their free wireless, which we had located by driving around town a bit. Unfortunately it was not really enough bandwidth for what we needed. The first, short video uploaded just fine in about 20 minutes, but the next one was going to take about 3 hours. I hadn’t really budgeted THAT in my travel time. Ken walked over to Arby’s and got us lunch, and there was still like an hour to go. So I had the great brainstorm of going to the Wheatland library and using their computers. So we tried that. Unfortunately, their computers were EVEN SLOWER, even though they were hardwired. So we gave up and headed to SD, deciding that he could upload the video at my Aunt’s house when we were there for Thanksgiving lunch.
After Ken switched over to driving, I discovered that I DID NOT have the additional yarn I thought I packed for the baby blanket for the 1st new nephew who will be arriving on December 11. I am sure you could hear my anguished shriek all over Wyoming. But I did, fortunately, have yarn for other projects along, and so I worked on those.  The afghan is this one, in a different color, with a different border.

This is the pattern I then worked on, using up some sock yarn to make baby booties. They still look a little big for newborns, so I either need to try with smaller needles or reduce my stitches.

We got to the ranch abou 7:30, after we stopped to pick up pizza at Lintz Brothers Pizza in Hermosa.  I really wanted the Texas Tornado (hot sauce, red sauce, chicken, onion, green peppers, pineapple and cashews), but I couldn’t remember what it was called, so between what I remembered and what my Mom wrote down when we were on the phone, I had a pizza with barbecue sauce, chicken, and jalapenos. Which was still good. Ken had his usual pepperoni, and Mom and Dad and my uncle shared a Hawiian.
I think that was the only night I got any knitting done. The rest of the time was too filled up with everything else.

The weather was fine on the drive, other than the usual wind in Wyoming.

More on the rest on Monday, hopefully back to a regular blogging schedule.

Adventure to SD, Saigon Restaurant and School of Mines Museum, Rapid City, SD

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I made a trip to the parents’ ranch near Hermosa over Labor Day. My Dad and I had planned to tackle painting the ceiling in the main part of their house. The ceiling/roof developed a leak a while ago, and there was some damage to the paint, and it had been at least 16 years since we painted it, so it was time.

It has become tradition on my Labor Day break for me to bring tomatoes for my former 4-H leader and neighbor, because she likes home-canned tomatoes in the winter. Her daughter (my friend L.) used to live down here near Denver and we would go home to SD together, stopping first at the roadside farm stand and buying tomatoes and other veggies to take home to her Mom and other relatives. When she moved away, I continued the tradition, and then word spread to some of my Mom’s church friends, so this time I was hauling 3 bushels of tomatoes, a box of green beans, a box of peaches, and some other sundry vegetables I can’t remember. I don’t mind, because then there is a little more justification for my usage of gas to drive that far. I stopped at Palombo Gardens near Brighton for the vegetables, and then I stopped at Lauer Krauts in Brighton to have a breakfast runza sandwich. I kid you not, this “sandwich” was about the size of my head. Plus they had German chocolate brownies, again, just about as big as my head. I thought I took pictures but apparently not. The sandwich could have used some hot sauce, but since I was driving, couldn’t do that.

I stopped to see my friend Cyndi in Hot Springs. I stopped in at Black Hills Books and Treasures in Hot Springs to pick up a copy of Dave Strain’s book, “Hay Camp.” A few weeks before they had discovered a book about the early days of the Black Hills called “Black Hills, White Sky,” and then heard from another friend that they should have “Hay Camp” to complete the collection, so I stopped in there and they had a copy, the updated edition even. And then I stopped off in Hermosa to drop off some of the tomatoes.

When I got to the ranch, my dad already had a bunch of the ceiling taped, which was a real time saver. He was still working on the area that needed to be repaired, adding some plaster/fill and then letting it dry and sanding. Friday morning we got going early and tackled that painting. We made good progress, I was mostly using the trim brush and doing the edges. Their ceiling has these tiny little trim boards in a contrasting wood grain all across it, so we had to work around those. Next time I just vote to paint those white. The blue painters’ tape didn’t work for squat. Where it didn’t leak paint, it stuck to the wood. I was pulling that stuff off with tweezers for DAYS. We got done with all of the painting that day, I think, just needed to do some of the clean up. We also ran out of paint and needed some more. I also suggested that Dad get some texture to spray on the repaired area, because there were a few other areas that had some water damage, and the paint didn’t adhere really well in those spots. My dad is 77 years old and he pretty much puts me to shame in terms of endurance and working hard, so I just tried to catch up.

In the meantime, Mom was washing down some of her teapots and tins that she keeps up on top of the cupboard, since we had to take those down to paint around them. I got the small hand vacuum and went after the dust on top of the cupboards, so we got those good and clean before painting. I removed the jar of rattle snake rattles and suggested that THOSE be thrown away, but that was vetoed. I did suggest that we take one of the interesting jars on another shelf and put the rattlesnake rattles in there, so they wouldn’t get so dusty the NEXT time. I hope my brother is aware that HE is going to inherit the rattlesnake rattles. Or maybe his WIFE needs to be aware.

Saturday was spent cleaning up, putting things back, and getting things back in order. I grabbed the dust vac and went after the north window screens in the house, cleaning out some bugs and dust. Dad and I also brainstormed (at my instigation) how we could replace the screens in those windows without tearing the whole house apart. We put some materials for those on the list for town on Sunday.

Sunday we went to church, and then into Rapid City to go to Ace Hardware and get more paint, patching material, window screen, etc. We also met my Aunt E. and Uncle J. at Perkins for lunch and caught up.

By the time we got home, Dad wasn’t feeling well, and so we all took it easy that afternoon.

The next day, Dad and Mom took him to the Dr. (he is fine, had an infection), and I went into Rapid City to do some shopping and visiting of old haunts and a new restaurant.

Disappointingly, the antiques mall was NOT open. Since this is getting lengthy already, a report on what I did next will come tomorrow…..How about a few pictures from around the ranch?

Yes, I am sitting on the boot brush, what of it?

I am hiding in the blocks!

Whammo! I suddenly attack!

Bailey and Zippy wonder why I did not bring them any apples.

Class Reunion and Fire Day Two

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My Dad and I went out to survey the fire damage the next morning. We had three fires on our land, destroying about 250-300 acres of rangeland. This is the first time since the family moved to the property (late 1930s? Very early 1940s?) that there has been a lightning-caused fire. There was a fire just a few years ago that did get pretty close to the houses, caused by a neighbor burning trash.

In the tradition of the Forest Service, I named the fires. So we have the Wade’s Dam Fire (located near Wade’s Dam, of course), the High Hill Fire (located on the highest hill on our place), and the Far North Fire (the one that was the furthest north, burning mostly our land but also crossing over into Forest Service land.) The High Hill fire also burned some Forest Service land.

I think this is a little better picture of the Wade’s Dam Fire. That windbreak in the foreground is built around the new spring tank my Dad and brother put in the week before, where the nieces were showing me how cold that water is.

This is the same fire from the north.

After the fire, then you have to fix fence. This was two weeks ago today, and my Dad is still working on fixing fence.

I helped! I did! I got things out of the pickup for him.

This is the Far North fire in the distance, the one where Dad was fixing fence posts. In the foreground is the High Hill fire.

We are on top of the High Hill on the ranch, looking down at the Far North fire. In the distance you can see the Wade’s Dam Fire.

We have a U.S.G.S. benchmark on the top of that hill. I don’t know if I knew that at one time, but I didn’t remember it.

This shows where the High Hill Fire jumped Farmingdale Road.

Another fire started on the School Section and surrounded the school and fire hall

And this is yet another fire near a neighbor’s. Bear in mind, all of these fires were burning at once. Fortunately the volunteer fire department is well-equipped.

After all this fire surveying, we were a little late getting into Rapid City for my class reunion picnic, but we finally made it, and saw yet another friend that I hadn’t seen for 25 years. We didn’t stay to go to the bar that evening, wanting to get home both because of the late night the day before and the possibility of more fires in the evening. Fortunately, the lightning didn’t cause any more fires, although I heard my Dad get up and go up on the driveway hill to look around every hour on the hour through midnight.

We got up and went to church the next morning. Mom and Dad treated us to lunch at Lintz Brothers’ Pizza, which was excellent. We got home, got packed, and got on the road. Not a long trip but it seemed long because of everything that happened, including us hearing the news about the theater shooting in Aurora.

More Class Reunion and Fire Report Day One

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Well, as you could tell from the guest-written entry, we made it safely to SD and spent one night at my parents’ house with my brother and his three kids there. It was fun and noisy to get to see them and I am looking forward to seeing them again when I go to Iowa for the State Fair in a week and a half. (Did I mention that yet? Probably not, since I haven’t been blogging much – I found a cheap plane ticket that only required me to miss one day of work and I am FINALLY going to go to the Iowa State Fair, home to much food on a stick? More on THOSE plans later.)

We saw them off the next morning and then went into Rapid City to meet Ken’s sister and her husband and their two kids for lunch and then go to Storybook Island. The kids had never been to Storybook Island so they thought that was pretty fun. Unfortunately it was unbelieveably hot (well, typical for this summer), and so most of the slides were too hot for them to go down, but they enjoyed everything else. Then we met my high school friend, B. for dinner, it was really great to see him after 25 years! We had found each other through email and Facebook but it isn’t the same. The first get-together for my class was at Murphy’s bar downtown – it was great to see a few more people from the class, many of whom I did not know because we did have 367 people in my class. We always complained about cliques back then but I guess with that many people it is a structure that naturally forms.

We could see some storms rolling through town, there was a little rain (not enough to drive us in from the patio of the bar) and we could see lightning out east, so I hoped my parents were getting rain, not lightning, because it has been so dry this summer.

We didn’t stay too late at the bar, knowing that we had an hour drive home. We went home using the “Farmingdale” route (there are basically two ways home to the ranch from Rapid City, and they are pretty much the same mileage.) Once we got to the spot where our land meets the road on the Farmingdale gravel, (and Ken is trained to recognize this spot, because I quiz him about it every time), we saw fire trucks. We passed one truck which was extinguishing fence posts. Ken said, “Isn’t this your place?” but I didn’t think so, because we had come a little way south. Turns out, it was our place.

Further south, we came across another fire crew, and I could see these were people I knew from the community, so we got out and talked (and I checked to see if my Dad was among them). They said there were probably a dozen fires in the neighborhood that night, and that it was very fortunate it rained about .06 of an inch just as the fires were really getting going, since it was so hot, dry and windy. The rain really helped put things out, and probably prevented thousands of acres from burning. They thought my Dad was probably still out north on our land, checking burning fence posts.

So we continued on our way home, but then we stopped at the fire hall, because it appeared that the whole community was there. Dad was not back yet, but as we stood and visited with people and heard fire stories, he did eventually arrive. We headed on home to see how Mom was doing and then waited up until Dad got home to hear more fire stories, so it was a late night. Mom told us about how she had been on the phone with a neighbor who was reporting a fire at his place, and she was looking out our north window and could see a fire starting from a lightning strike. My Dad said he originally thought he could go out there and put that one out with the water sprayer on the ATV, but then he decided he would have had to have been right on the spot when the lightning struck, because the fire took off so fast.

Here is a picture of that one, more stories of Dad and I going out and surveying the fire tomorrow and many more pictures.

This is about ½ to ¾ of a mile from our house, fortunately the wind was blowing it AWAY from the house and ranch buildings.

Post With Niece Sydney’s Help

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This was written by my niece Sydney because she is tired of waiting for a blog entry.  (She is even more annoyed now that I have had this for more than a week and haven’t posted it yet!) (Notes in ital. are by Glenderella)

The Drive and Evening of South Dakota

We started off the day by waking up and finishing packing because I had to stay up last night making a tie for Ken for a commercial. I had to make it because another person is going to slash it off with a sword. Which my niece, Sydney thought was extremely cool and entertaining.

(This is Ken doing the equivalent of saying he needs a turkey costume for school tomorrow. He needs a tie for a commercial he is making that will look as if someone has cut it in half with a sword. He, of course, assumes this will be a piece of cake and “won’t take long…” Uh huh. So wrapped up the day doing that. I ended up using double stick tape, because the tie trick isn’t going to have to be done over and over for many nights, just a couple of times for the commercial shoot. I did have to reinforce the tie and make sure the inner lining didn’t show where it had been cut.)

When we finished packing and I called my Mom to ask her if there was anything I needed to bring, as I am very forgetful. She just said the socks I knitted for her and cross-stitching stuff for my niece, Sydney. Then we got on the road, as myself and Ken took turns driving. We stopped for lunch at the truck stop in Lusk. I had a hot beef sandwich. Ken had a bacon cheeseburger. We liked it, very good. (Ken liked his, mine was not very good. There was no taste to the gravy, it was just brown. It tasted like brown. That is all. Next time I will remember to have the soup and a piece of pie.)
Pictures of food:

We got back on the road and kept driving on the way we listened to the iPod and the person in the passenger seat was entertained by the flower that dances by solar power. (I have a solar powered flower on my dashboard that bobs. What of it?) (When Ken was driving, I was crocheting on my #2 Camp Loopy project.)
We were driving for a while and then we stop at a truck stop to get out of the car. Ken found some jackalope nuts that we have to get on the way home for his co-workers that asked him to bring home an interesting food from South Dakota.

(We actually saw the jackalope nuts at the truck stop where we ate lunch. I didn’t get a look at them but it sounds like they might be chocolate covered corn nuts. We were going to stop and buy some on the way home for Ken’s co-workers but we forgot.)

Once we got back on the road and driving we were almost to Hot Springs I guess we drove through a fire that is quickly spreading and is still not contained. (We didn’t drive THROUGH the fire, we could see it as we were driving, it must have been pretty early in the fire activity because the guy at the gas station didn’t even know there was a fire. This fire is called the Myrtle fire and is still burning.)

Once we got on the gravel road which means we are almost to my parents’ house well then we got stuck behind a cattle truck going maximum 25 mph. (Only for a couple of miles, though.)

When we got to my parents house the first thing I heard when I walked in the door was my niece, Sydney yelling “hooray!!! Glenda’s here!!!”. Then my mom saying ” Sydney not in my ear” as I walked through the door seeing her ironing, which she says wrong, in the 102 degree weather.(Sydney pronounces iron as eye-ron, apparently there was not enough ironing going on at her house at a formative age.)

Then Ken and I got hugs by all of them. Then we sat down and were talking as my two nieces Sydney and Taylor and my nephew Dawson were bringing in kittens showing us. Ken and I didn’t think the kittens enjoyed being SCOOPED up and tossed over there back to be carried in and out of the house. We had lots more fun and talking when we watched the news, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.

Then we had the kids look up words in the encyclopedia and they struggled with that because usually they just use there phones.(I don’t remember what set us off to look up something in the encyclopedia but the kids were kind of entertained by how “vintage” they were

We had dinner which was leftovers and talked about Ken’s movie he is filming about deaf kids learning to play basketball and at that point my niece, Taylor said they should include a cracken( check my spelling) (kraken) (kraken was ONE of the things we looked up in the encyclopedia, this particular encyclopedia did not include kraken as an entry.) and Ken said he would try to work it in.

The kids said they were going fishing with Grandpa so we stayed at the house and watched golf when they weren’t around because the kids think its boring. Sydney came in to get herself an ice pack and said its because she tried lifting the 80 pound bags of cement for the tank they built.  I heard they got around 13 fish and 3 made it back for the kitties.

We went out and looked at the tank also. Then the kids showed us how they stick there heads in the natural spring which they said Glenda! You try it too! And I said no it’s enough for me to feel with my hand. (My Dad and brother had torn out an old rusty metal stock tank. It is a spring-fed tank and had water all through the last drought. They replaced it with a tank made from an old, huge scraper tire. This tank is in the Buck pasture, for those of you who know where THAT is.)

My brother said to the kids they needed to go to bed if they wanted to show us the zip line in the morning so they went off to brush their teeth. Then Ken asked my brother how do they stop on the zip line? He responded they hit a tree. That was enough for one night.

Right as everyone was going to bed, Sydney came out and said my contact cleaned amuses and entertains her because the bubbles float up from the bottom then lights went out and we crashed.

-Sydney!!! 🙂

They showed us how they use the zip line in the morning. Their dad mostly stopped them before they hit the tree. It was much quieter after they left but far less entertaining.

Signs of Spring at The Ranch

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It has been a long week and I still have one day to go. So to give me a lift, I was looking at some pictures from the ranch. These were mostly taken in May of 2010. The SD grasslands contain great beauty, if you just get close enough to the ground to look.

Yellow johnny jump-up.

Plus, I get to go drive around with my Dad to take these pictures. He has infinite patience for me, stopping the pickup when he sees a patch of color.

Mayflowers. You need a really little vase or bowl to put these in, but Mom would always find one when we picked her a bouquet. I still pick her a bouquet, when we go out now.

Shooting Stars. I have no idea if that is what anyone else calls any of these flowers, but that is good enough for me.

Red Riding Hood, or Tomato Flower.

Prickly pear, not quite blooming.

And a solitary prairie mushroom.

We don’t really have pasque flowers, the state flower of SD, on the ranch, but I think these are pretty good.