Ramblings from a Ranch Wife

 After almost 38 years of being a ranch wife to a rancher, I thought I'd share a few things that have worked for me. Should some future ranch wife stumble upon my ramblings at the end of the dirt road, hopefully she'll find something useful. Of course, these days everything is shared via social media, but back when I started, I was on my own and I would have appreciated hearing about others' experiences. 

This is not advice, just a bit of an overview of my experience I thought I'd share after some recent questions and conversations.

I apologize in advance for being long-winded today. 😉

First - this is just my journey. Yours will be different. I just hope you'll celebrate the little and big joys along the way. Some days you will have to dig deep to find them, but they are always there. Even on the hard days. And there will be hard days. But there will also be magical days. Days when you gaze across the horizon and marvel at the fact that you are blessed to live this lifestyle. Hang on to those.

Embrace the dirt. Or at least make peace with it. It will be your ever-present companion. Old ranch houses leak. This is my kitchen windowsill when the wind blows and it tends to blow a lot out here.

If you're doing this for the money, you best reconsider. It's a lifestyle. Not a job. Work ethic, and lots of it, is beneficial, but I can't think of a better way to raise a family. There's no time clock and the hours are long. 7 days a week with no overtime. But then again, that's just been my experience. I'm married to a man that got a triple dose of work ethic.

I wasn't raised on a ranch, but I felt like a fish out of water until I married my college sweetheart and we began our lives together at the end of a 12 mile dirt road, 30 miles from the smallest town, managing a ranch. 

Cooking for those first crews was a challenge. I didn't really know how to cook and certainly not for a dozen cowboys. My apologies to those early crews, but they keep coming back and honestly, I love it. Cowboys are consummate story tellers and listening to the wild tales and laughter between the jingle of spurs as they shuffle their feet and the clink of ice in tea glasses warms my heart.

My mom was a great cook, but I was a tomboy and never had any interest in the kitchen. I don't know what I survived on in college because I was a broke college kid and never had money to eat out. Lots of sandwiches, Ramen, macaroni  and cheese, and spaghetti I guess. Thankfully, my MIL was a great cook and she was willing to share her recipes. Back then she also gifted me a subscription to a magazine called Taste of Home that was a gem. Many of our favorites were found between those pages. Friends and family are always a good source too. 

Gosh, we were just a couple of kids

Probably one of my most helpful tips is about prepping food ahead of time. This comes in handy for anyone raising a family. I often cook probably 6# of ground beef or chicken at once. I'll generally season it and cook it with diced onion, let it cool, portion it out, and toss it in the freezer. It's a huge time saver! Quick and easy to grab for any recipe that calls for cooked ground beef or chicken. Lots of ranch wives say their husbands won't eat chicken, but mine isn't particular about that. The only thing he ever asked me to please never make when we married was tuna or salmon casserole. 😂 Your wish is granted.

A few years back I made a word document and listed every single main dish I've ever made that we liked. It came to over 100 and I printed it out and taped it to the inside of a kitchen cabinet door. I refer to it often when I can't think of anything to fix and update it when I discover new favorites. I will admit that there have been days when I've looked at it though and thought, "Nothing sounds good." LOL. 

Lists. Do folks even still make lists or is that old school? I'm a consummate list maker. We've always lived at least 30 miles from town and I was always trying to save money so trips to town were only on a 'need-to-go' basis. Back in Texas, it was almost 2 1/2 hours to a decent sized town. My mom once sent me a book with the title, "Don't Make Me Go To Town". I say that all the time and by the time I DO go to town, I have a list a mile long.

 

I cook from scratch a lot. Lot's of cookies and desserts for the crew. Lots of homemade biscuits and rolls. At one time I used shredded cheese and have even used the bacon bits, but now I grate my own cheese and just cook a lot of bacon to chop. But I DO have my shortcuts so find the ones that work for you and sprinkle them in. 

It's more important to take the time to marvel at the ladybugs your little ones have discovered in the patch of wildflowers out by the barn, sit with them and watch the baby calves frolic on a crisp spring morning, or play in the creek with them when that long awaited rain finally arrives and that precious water flows down the canyon, than it is to grate cheese.

 I have bought the frozen Pillsbury biscuits for breakfast. I do like the homemade recipe better, but sometimes a gal just can't make one more biscuit at 3 a.m. after cooking 3 meals a day for a crew for 8 days straight with 2 upset toddlers clinging to her legs, because they wanna 'holp' daddy.

Embrace your Crock-Pot and Insta-Pot. When you and the kids are away from the house all day working with your husband, you'll all be grateful for that hot meal when you shuffle in at the end of the day. When you live out, you can't just stop at a restaurant and Door Dash doesn't deliver, so planning  meals is recommended. 

When I first started cooking for a crew, I bought 15 blue enamel plates from Walmart and I used those until Covid. No sheltering in place when calves need to be branded or weaned and cows and bulls need to be processed so I was still feeding men, but I started using paper plates. After all those years, it just didn't feel right, but I don't have a dishwasher and there are enough dishes to wash as is. Honestly though, it still felt like I was cheating, but that's silly because the guys don't care, but for years, paper plates were an added expense I tried to avoid. It's just the frugal side of me and I will still use those enamel plates when I have a smaller crew to feed.

For glasses, I use the tall Ball wide mouth canning jars. 

but in 2020 I used the red Solo cups and if you have to haul dinner to them at the pens, I just use those or hand out bottled water. Always water. And yes, I have washed and reused the Solo cups. 😉 I always add a little bleach to my dish water.

This place is 128,000 acres (200 sections) so I often haul the crew out in the mornings and drop them off in one or two different places and it takes an hour and a half or two before I get back to the house. So prepping as much as possible before hand is handy. I wash all the breakfast dishes as soon as I get back and start the bread. 

I almost always make the dessert the day before and on occasion, if I can swing it, I'll sneak out to the pens if they're working close by and take pictures. 

I used to make homemade donuts and take them down to the crew on the last day of branding. 8 men would make 40 donuts disappear awfully quick.

I'm not always in the kitchen. I  help DH quite a bit. Often, we haven't had any help for 6-8 months at a time and he's been grateful for a second pair of hands. I'm not very handy horseback, but when we were first married, before the kids, I'd help him horseback. I should have stuck with that because that's the fun part. 😉 But I've put in my fair share of hours behind the wheel of the feed truck and I've probably worn out a few shovels helping fix leaks and plumbing in new storage tanks and water troughs. Fencing is always an issue as well and I'm fixing to get a  Master Class in that! There's never a shortage of  that kind of work.

I do take a lot of pictures and DH has never said, but I know he's not too fond of that. Many of my pictures are taken on the sly, while I'm helping. I don't participate in social media, but I'm so glad I've kind of documented our lifestyle from behind the lens through the years here. 

We homeschooled our children. It was a huge blessing as well as a challenge, but we always lived out and the life skills and learning opportunities they gained along the way made it the right choice for us. They were involved in 4-H and were part of a homeschool group a couple of times a month an hour away and they became lifetime learners and gained strong thinking skills. It also allowed us so much flexibility when it came to incorporating 'school' lessons with 'life' skills. They built great work ethic along the way 

Ranch life isn't 'sleeping in' territory either. When we worked. They worked. 

Working together on a daily basis has been one of the biggest blessings. Take your kid to work day is a way of life and it's extra special when 3 generations saddle up together each day

And it's not all work. There was always time to throw a line into the dirt tank and catch dinner

And now that the chiddlers are grown, we still love fishing

Everyone has to find what works for them and that's not even specialized for just ranch wives. The essentials for me are:

Faith, prayer, family, love, commitment, work ethic, honesty, respect, kindness, patience, grace, and laughter (a sense of humor goes a long way). I often say that DH keeps me around for comic relief, but honestly, that man makes me laugh unexpectedly almost every day. People have no idea how funny he is, 

but maybe I'm the only one that gets to see that side of him and that's great. Not everything needs to be shared.

 Communication is another one. Spending your days working alongside your husband is a blessing, but it can also be a challenge. Patience and grace will be essential and you'll both need it. 😉 I remember spending day after day after day fixing and pulling windmills. I didn't even know what a check or leathers or what a block and tackle were when we began, but I knew an awful lot by the time we had pulled our last well. And hand signals are an important communication tool when working on windmills. When you drop that sucker rod into the pipe before it's connected and have to pull all the pipe, it's a long drive back to the house. 😉

I remember DH helping neighbors or guiding hunters and I would drive around the ranch starting pump jacks on the windmills before driving into work in town (I worked for the Agricultural Stabilization & Conservation Service until we had our first child and I've been blessed to stay home while we raised them). I  think our marriage is stronger after working on those cotton-pickin' windmills, but I'm awfully glad we don't have to do that anymore.

I've gotten awfully long-winded today, but here's a link to The 10 Commandments of a Ranch Wife post I shared a few years back that fits in with today's rambling if you're interested.

I get a little emotional when I think about the life we've built together. The good Lord's been with us every step of the way. Yes, there have been challenges, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I've learned a lot and I'm still learning. I'm not so set in my ways that I'm not open to new and different ways of doing things. Life is an adventure and I'm always up for that with this guy!