So far the cows on our place reproduce the old-fashioned way. We don’t at this time use artificial insemination. The herd bull, 44, services them, and 9 or so months later, if all goes well, a healthy calf is born. We don’t interfere much, and nature takes its course. But sometimes the course nature takes is not the one you’d hoped for. A couple of weeks ago Glen and I spotted a newborn calf dead in the pasture. A little girl, likely stillborn. She was a big calf, and with greater size come greater birthing difficulties. Carrion feeders had gathered. Glen was dressed for work and running late, so I urged him to leave and let the vultures and caracaras […]

Hi, my name is Susan, and I’m a procrastinator. In a number of unbeneficial ways, I am not my mother’s daughter. Her motto, which she tirelessly tried to drill into her children’s heads, was “Do it now.” My motto has always been “When I get around to it.” I said it so often that one Christmas some jokester gave me a blue circle of paper with the words “Round Toit” printed on it. I was young. It struck me as humorous. Mistakenly, I still thought I had time on my side. My mother, on the other hand, was adamant in her conviction that there is no time like the present. Seize the day, clear the slate. Do it now. She […]

The drink I’m about to describe to you came about because of a character flaw. I’m rarely capable of following a recipe as written. Sometimes this leads to good things. One of my favorite bread recipes began life as Sour Cream Bread in James Beard’s wonderful book, Beard on Bread. I’ve baked from my hardback copy of this book so many times that the cover has fallen off. But I never did bake his Sour Cream Bread, because the first time I went to make it, the closest thing to sour cream in the fridge was whole milk yoghurt. Did I run to the grocery? Nah. I subbed in the yoghurt ounce for ounce, and a lifelong favorite, Yoghurt Bread, […]

The short answer is yes, apparently. (And I ask you—who keeps tabs on these things?) But what I really wanted to know is if there are INSECTS on that continent. Turns out the answer to that question is also yes. Originally I’d been thinking about the inevitabilities of death and taxes, and wondering why I never hear insects added to that list. You can’t argue with the death part, but I feel certain that somewhere in the world there exists a happy place free of the tax burden. I figured insects had to be more universal, hence my quest for knowledge, and the resulting misunderstanding with my “smart” phone. (If it’s so smart, why does it willfully mishear me? My […]

Greetings, all, and welcome to the inaugural entry of my blog! I’m happy to have your company! To kick things off I’d like to give you a little background. I’m a writer of poetry and fiction and a gifted procrastinator. I never met an anxiety I couldn’t internalize. My husband Glen is a real estate broker, welder, engraver, all-around fearless man-of-action and an absolute failure at procrastinating. After living in Austin, Texas for most of the 3-plus decades of our marriage, the two of us moved out to the country in 2015. It was one of those now-or-never moments, so we sold our city house and took the plunge. Glen had a lifelong dream of owning cattle, I did not, […]