15 July 2026

Missing Buns

Cooking supper is always a challenge. Every single time I have to figure out something to cook. Something only calls for ingredients I have on hand, something everyone will eat, something that isn’t particularly difficult. It’s a terrible and difficult undertaking.
Especially since my husband complains if I make tacos more than two or three times a week.
Luckily this time I was prepared. I had dinner rolls. They are the key ingredient to a simple filling meal. Cook hamburger, make a gravy, add whatever vaguely vegetable sort of thing we have on hand. Slice the buns in half, poor the hamburger mixture over the bottom half. Put the top half of the buns on top, sprinkle with butter and parmigian cheese then back until the tops are a crisp golden brown.
It’s part cassarol, part sliders, completely filling and yummy.
I was distracted as I cooked. I’m always distracted honestly. It was raining a little. Cooking was interrupted constantly by trips to look out the door, see if it was going to actually set in and rain? Or was it going to mess around a spit a little. Spitting won out and we never did get real rain.
I toasted the bottom layer of buns, feeling particularly fancy tonight. Cooked the hamburger. Added our special home fermented, fully home raised giardiniera. This as going to be good.
My husband got home between sprinkles of rain and trips in and out of the kitchen. He paused to take in a whiff of my cooking, he declared it to smell delicious.
I pulled the buns out of the oven. Poured the hamburger, giardiniera gravy over and added part of the top layer of buns. They’re always my favorite part. This was going to be so good. I reached for the rest of that top layer of buns, but couldn’t find them.
I had been standing here at the table as I sawed the rectangular loaf of bun in half. One collection of buns had been joined back together over the meaty filling, but where were the rest of them? I searched the kitchen, no luck. Not even in the fridge or any random cabinets I might have reached into. Thinking of my trips through the house I wandered about checking shelves, the couch, tables, even the bathroom You never know about me. I tend to get distracted. If I had been holding them and started to do something else I could have set them anywhere.
Things I was once holding in my hands have been found in the most random and absurd places.
The family, noticing my wandering and muttering, joined in the search. They too have witnessed me losing things. They’ve often been told I would lose them if they couldn’t follow me. We all searched. They looked places I had already looked, over looking objects is as easy as them disappearing out of my hands.
No luck. Where could the buns have gone? They were there one second, disappeared off the face of the earth the next. This was one of the most impressive loosings I’ve managed. Half of our meal lay there exposed and naked, missing it’s best part.
Improvising I cut some hot dog buns to fit. They wouldn’t be as yummy but might make it still feel like a proper meal.
We laughed largely at me. We ate our meal anyway, enjoying it all the more for it’s unique additions. All the while our dog sat mute, watching with hope in her eyes, lips quivering with desire, her muzzle never far from the table waiting for a scrap.
No photo description available.
Category: Uncategorized | LEAVE A COMMENT
8 July 2026

Fixin’ Fence

The fence needed work. That was obvious. The exact type of work took a little more digging to figure out.
A huge post jutted out of the ground in one corner. Loose and wobbly it had never been set, just sat in the hole. No wires attached. That part was simple. I set the kids to digging dirt and tamping it in.
I left them to tamping, and complaining about the heat, and went to work on the next corner post.
It wasn’t great. The post was obviously broke, or barely holding. But it was braced into place and holding. As long as we didn’t tighten wires too much it would hold enough to keep the cows in for a little bit. The stubble of a wheat field being grazed only because of the extreme drought, not because there is much actual feed in there, it isn’t worth putting too much work into.
I stepped over the wires strewn about the ground onto the neighbors side, into their tree row, to better access the post. There was a tall metal pole sticking out of the ground next to the post on that side. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. Figured it must be a survey marker showing where the boundary was supposed to be. The neighbors were gaining a few feet of ground here.
Fence pliers in hand I stepped up to the post planning on removing the wires still attached to it. I never thought about looking down.
The ground disappeared out from under me. The post jabbed me nearly in the armpit as my leg dropped into a hole past the knee. It hurt, in so many different places. It was more than a little concerning.
Dragging myself out of the hole I looked down, better late than never.
At first I thought a badger had dug out the survey marker. I peeked in carefully to make sure no animals were going to be following me out. The hole was suspiciously square. Interesting. I wiggled the corner post I had been working on putting to use. From this angle and with the grass above that hole cleared, it was completely broken off at ground level. Oh dear.
The children showed up about then. They had grown weary of tamping. Or maybe they had secured the other post firmly in the ground. One of them leaned over and actually read the label on the ‘survey marker’. Professional tamping bar it read.
Everything snapped into place.
A job stopped completely at a random middle point. One post sat in a hole but never tamped. A hole dug but no post inserted. The tamping bar left sitting waiting for the job to resume, but no one came back for it.
I’ve been around for quite a few years now, no one had touched that fence in that amount of time. Not from this side. Those corner posts have been sitting there partially finished all that time.
It sure made life easier having a post hole ready to go. I searched the random piles of stuff in the pasture. Found a solid post. We had more tamping to do. But now we have an actual solid post in that corner. Maybe eventually we’ll even finish that job started so many years ago.
Category: Cows, Family | LEAVE A COMMENT
3 July 2026

Oh Hail

The wheat is ripe and ready for harvest. Stunted, it has matured early after a dry winter, a dry spring, and a dry summer, never ending dry it seems.
While most fields have been droughted out, the few small patches here at home look good despite their diminutive stature. A month or more before wheat is usually ripe and ready for harvest it is already brittle dry.
It’s only a few acres. But it is a few acres of crop that has made it through the drought and is viable. Little enough has survived this past year. We need to cling to those things that have. They spent the afternoon changing concaves in the combine, getting ready to harvest.
There is a storm to the north. It blew up out of nowhere. We watch the ominous cloud grow. It is going east, we wont get anything from it. No rain, but also none of the hail that keeps setting the weather radio shrieking. We’ll take the bad we know for now and are grateful to stay dry, missed by the hail.
Then the cloud turns south. It hits town with a blanket of snow. But it will stay north of us.
The wind hits first. Stirring up clouds of dust on the horizon. The first drops of rain rode that wind. They hit the house sideways. Then it never stopped. For the next hour, two hours, it began to look like it may never stop, the rain kept coming.
The radar still showed it mostly missing us. It would be done soon. But more came. Hail began to hit the house. The first stones with pointed ends, cone shaped instead of round. Then bigger, and smaller again, but never stopping.
At first there was hope. The garden we had spent the early morning hours weeding and cleaning up could still be fine. Corn can take a bit of a beating. The wheat, brittle hard and dry, was lost immediately. The husks shatter and burst with the blow from the hail sending the fruit to the ground. But as the hours went on and the hail kept coming we had to admit it was unlikely that anything would escape without damage.
I finally messaged my husband. Would he like me to come get them? Surely they would have called for a ride home if they weren’t busy working on equipment. He easily gave in and accepted my offer. I was soaked in the short run to the car. Once everyone was loaded we went for a drive before coming home. Down the driveway, completely water covered, flooded, water rushing down the hill. The corn hung limply, leaves shredded. Hail broke against the windshield.
They always say it rains after a drought. I guess that’s true. They never do break easy. We stand and stare out the windows listening to the hail stones beat against the house. The harvest over before it began. The garden pummeled. Tired of the noise, tired of the never ending hail. This storm is breaking so much more than just drought.
Category: Farming | LEAVE A COMMENT
1 July 2026

Hide And Seek

I sent the children off this morning on their horses. They rode to somewhere. Although I know the general direction, the exact destination is fun to conceal. It’s their secret that they share. Knowledge they can hold against their parent, against authority.
When they get back the morning has already turned hot. A rare perfectly still day to make us almost miss the constant howl of the wind. Almost, but not quite. The mares have worked up a slight sweat. Just a square to show where the saddles sit. It can’t be too hot then. Not as hot as we let ourselves believe as we swelter under the hot sun.
Or it could be the very leisurely pace the never default from.
Saddles off I let the old girls loose to graze. They deserve a little extra treat. They deserve it for taking care of the kids, for going out on their morning ride. They deserve it for just being them.
Jerry, the color of a newly minted penny, bright copper orange, has a temperament that matches her color, bright, cheerful, interested in everything that goes on around her. She may be aging but she vibrates with curiosity. Time hasn’t taken away her interest in all that is going on around her. Delicate, tippy ears perked forward to investigate any potential treat.
Lady is more reserved. She is zippy and alert. No old plodder here. But she carries a suspicion of people, never sure that we are something she wants to associate with. She can be hard to catch and lacks Jerry’s interest and determination that whatever we have it is going to be wonderful for her.
Both of them are light and responsive, energetic without being hot. They deserve a break from the two obnoxious young horses they are forced to share a pen with. Time alone to enjoy the green grass.
They do a good job of staying out of trouble, for the most part. The occasional foray into the alfalfa just outside the yards boundaries keeps me from getting too relaxed while they enjoy their graze. There are no fences to force them to comply. Instead we rely on their good nature, and the other two horses being confined. Surely they wouldn’t want to leave without the whole herd.
I went to check on them this morning and they had wandered. Wandered away from the place I had left them, the place they were last seen. Not a big deal, there is plenty of room for them to roam without getting into trouble. I checked the close places on foot. No horses there. So I grabbed a 4-wheeler and made a lap around the yard. No horses there.
Now I was starting to get concerned. If they damage the corn I’ll be in trouble. If they wander to the middle of the alfalfa they’ll be in trouble along with me. I watched the whole time for the horses still in the corals. They’re the best guide to finding wandering horses. They will stand at the fence like pointer hounds directing me to my prey.
They weren’t out in the big corral, so the mares probably hadn’t wandered that way. Finally I spotted them up by the barns. That was where I had looked for the mares already. Odd.
Trusting them to guide me I drove up to where the big grey horse stood, as the tallest he’s easy to spot. Getting closer I could finally see the shorter horses standing around him. Three. There were three shorter horses.
The mares had been quietly standing at the gate back into their pen the whole time. I had searched everywhere, in the opposite direction. Never once had I turned to look behind me. Behind me where the mares stood waiting wondering why I was running around instead of letting them back in their pen, where they wanted to be.
Category: 8, Goblin Child, Horses | LEAVE A COMMENT