A Legacy of Love

"I want to take a picture. Can you guess why?" I asked Randy.

I made Randy pause during one of our calf-working sessions this week to take a photo of a particular ear tag. It took him awhile, but he figured it out. 039: Yes, today (March 28) we will have been married 39 years. When I saw the ear tag rise to the top of the pile, I couldn't resist. (Randy will tell you I don't need much of an excuse to take a photo anyway. You probably know that, too!)

For those of you who are math-challenged, the year was 1981 and the place was the Pratt United Methodist Church. It rained so hard during the drive to Pratt that my mom pulled over on the highway to wait until we could see again. A few guests coming from out of town were late because of the deluge.

But by the time we walked down the aisle, the rain had stopped. And, as I've said many times, rain for a couple of farm kids was a good omen. The sun was shining when we left the church after the reception. (Thankfully, we had brought Randy's car instead of mine, which was stashed 15 minutes away in one of my dad's sheds. Randy's FarmHouse "brothers" had put milo in Randy's car's vents. For someone with allergies as bad as Randy's, it would have been a long trip to Colorado.)

Thankfully, the weather in 1981 wasn't like it was in 2009. We woke up to almost 2 feet of snow on March 28, 2009. I don't think either of us would have gotten to Pratt from our respective farm homes. Randy grew up 2 miles north of our house on the County Line. He wouldn't have gotten out of his driveway. That's our car buried under all that snow in 2009. My Pratt County farm road wouldn't have been any more navigable.
We will work our final group of baby calves this afternoon. I've put steaks out to thaw and I'm making a blueberry pie. (Randy prefers pie over sappy cards, though he gave me one.)

For old times sake, I should wear this apron that we got at one of our bridal showers. They were made by Sue Thole, a Stafford farm wife who's still a matriarch at our church.

With the coronavirus, we won't be going out to eat or going to a movie. After a day of working together, that would have been the extent of the celebration anyway. Eating at home isn't out of the ordinary for us - Covid-19 or not. And working together in a family business is something we saw modeled for us.

I've thought about it a lot this week. We were both blessed to grow up in families whose parents and grandparents modeled a legacy of love and hard work.

 

Randy's folks - Melvin & Marie (Ritts) Fritzemeier - were married April 29, 1951, at the Stafford UMC.

We still walk down those church steps - at least when not kept away by social distancing.

My parents were married August 12, 1953, at the Byers United Methodist Church.

But the legacy goes back even further. I don't have wedding photos of all of our grandparents. My Grandma and Grandpa Neelly were married May 20, 1934, at her parents' farm home.

My dad's parents - Lester and Orva Moore - were married January 24, 1932. There was no photo of their wedding available, but my mom included these photos in a history book.

They lived on the family homestead. However, Lester Moore died when my dad was only 9 years old in November 1943.

 

Orva Moore married the only grandpa I ever knew on that side of the family - LaVern Leonard - on December 28, 1952.

Randy's grandparents - Clarence & Ava Fritzemeier were married March 4, 1926. I found a photo from the wedding of one of Clarence's sisters, so I don't know why I couldn't find one from Clarence and Ava's special day. But I did find a certificate and a bridal memory book (copyright 1919).

Marie's dad, Alvin Ritts, was a Methodist minister, so he - along with Randy's grandma Laura (Russell) Ritts - lived a life in parsonages, different from the farm upbringing of the rest of our family. I don't know their wedding date, but I found a photo from what I assume is their wedding day.

Alvin & Laura Ritts - undated

Like my dad, Marie lost her father at a young age. Alvin Ritts died from a heart attack when Marie was only 12. The family moved to Stafford, where Laura took care of elderly family members. And the rest, as they say, is history.

When I was digging through old family photos yesterday, the oldest wedding photo I found was from 1905 - Simon and Augusta Fritzemeier - married in 1905. They were Randy's paternal great-grandparents.

Simon & Augusta Fritzemeier - Melvin's grandparents - 1905

Most of our grandparents were at our March 1981 wedding.

From left: L.C. & Orva Leonard; Shelby & Lela Neelly; us; Laura Ritts; Clarence & Ava Fritzemeier.

I couldn't resist including another couple of photos I uncovered. They are practically antiques - but not quite. 

 Taken at a bridal shower back in 1981

Taken at our first house. It was "fancy." We had a dressing room. OK - the truth. The bed was the only thing that would fit in the bedroom. Even then we could barely walk in the door of the room. We had our dressers in the next bedroom.

Marrying Randy was the best decision I've ever made. I'm thankful every day for this life we live together.

From the combine, wheat harvest, June 2019

Ag Day 2019: Working Together

Today is Ag Day 2019. It's a day set aside to celebrate agriculture's role in American life.

Most of my blog posts tell about our efforts on The County Line to provide food, fuel and fiber for American families and consumers throughout the world. As I've said before, it's Ag Day every day around here.

Of course, we believe agriculture is important. We wouldn't be the fifth generation of farmers in our respective families if we didn't believe in agriculture.

As our society moves away from its agrarian roots, fewer people seem to recognize the value. Sadly, one of the members of a Facebook Farmers Wives group posted this message on Tuesday:

People never cease to amaze me! I was told today that we didn't need farmers!! So I am guessing that person doesn't need to eat either.

As organizers of Ag Day say:

We know that food and fiber doesn't just arrive at the grocery or clothing store or magically appear on the dinner table or in our closet. There's an entire industry dedicated to providing plentiful and safe food for consumption.

• Each American farmer feeds about 165 people. Agriculture is America's No. 1 export.
• New technology means farmers are more environmentally friendly than ever before. 

As the Ag Week hashtags and Facebook posts have been showing up on my social media feed this week, I've been thinking more about the importance of rural communities - actually being a community.

This week, a community matriarch and business owner in our small town died after a long illness. One of her grandsons posted a thank you for the expressions of sympathy given to their family - everything from cards to prayers to meals.

And, on the other end of the spectrum, two of our community's veterinarians had their first baby. He lived only two hours. A Meal Train is filling up quickly, and a fund to help them pay for medical and funeral expenses has already exceeded the original goal.

Helping out a neighbor is second nature to rural communities. It's demonstrated over and over and over again. Those are just two of latest examples. It wouldn't take me long to come up with a dozen.

 

For more than 100 years, each of our families has had pasture lands as part of our farming operations.We are caretakers for other pastures that have had a similar legacy in our landlords' families.

For grazing to be abundant, a pasture requires several different species of grass - from big bluestem to little bluestem to Indian grass to brome to Forbes (just to name a few).

These grasses all have different heights. Some mature early; others later. Those different species end up working together to keep the soil in place, reduce erosion and provide nourishment for grazing animals.

It's like that in a community, too. We're all different. We all have different abilities and interests and God-given talents. But it's that "hanging together" that makes a healthy environment.

 

That symbiosis is demonstrated day after day, week after week, year after year in a rural community: It may be helping an ailing neighbor harvest a crop. It might be baking a pan of cheesy potatoes for a funeral dinner. It could be working at the Food Bank. It might be serving on a church or community board.

That's not to say that rural life is idyllic. It can be just as stressful as that job in the downtown skyscraper - and probably not as profitable most years. Challenges come - no matter your address. As I've written this the past two days, the wind has been howling with 50-mile-per-hour-plus gusts, and we've had another 1.10 of rain we don't need. Believe me, there are challenges.

But those trials can strengthen us and our resolve, too. It's kind of like a Flint Hills pasture in the spring. It won't be long before "smoke signals" will drift into the Kansas skies from controlled burns on Kansas pasture lands, especially in the Flint Hills.

We think of fire as a destructive thing, and it certainly can be. But it can also be a vehicle of rebirth. One spring, I stopped at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve south of Council Grove - a detour as I came home from a convention. I could see the remnants of a prairie fire in the charred grasses and scorched branches.
But from the charred earth was green regrowth and vibrant prairie flowers lifting toward a vibrant blue sky.
It seems counter intuitive. Why would fire - which seems such a destructive force - bring this new life?
Yet as ranchers light fires to clear the dead grass and small brush, it makes way for a new carpet of green just weeks later.
And the cycle of life begins again. The Flint Hills are part of the tallgrass prairie, which stretches from Canada to Texas. Ranchers have a saying: Take care of the grass and it will take care of you. Burning pastures has been part of caring for the prairie even back to the days of the Indians. It's an age-old partnership with cattle, birds, wildflowers and the grasslands.

The same can be said of our rural communities. There are challenges and tragedies and things we must overcome.

But figuring out how to survive those things and come out on the other side stronger together is the true mark of community. And, in my experience, the ag community does that as well - or better - than any.

Happy Ag Day!

Passing On the Traditions: Part I - Yeast Rolls

I am not a quilter. I'm not a proficient crafter like Marie, Randy's mom. I don't have my Mom's talent with the sewing machine.

But I do like to cook and bake. Kinley and Brooke came to visit the week before Thanksgiving. Kinley didn't have school all week, so it was Grandma-time day care at The County Line.

And it gave me a chance to share time in the kitchen with two curious bakers.

It's certainly not the girls' first exposure to the kitchen. Jill is a wonderful cook and baker, and from the time the girls were little, "helping" in the kitchen has been part of their lives. When Kinley and Brooke come to Grandma's house, they always want to help make the meals.

But this gave us a chance to work together on holiday traditions - yeast rolls and pies. (More on pies in the next blog post.)

I certainly wasn't baking bread at age 4 or 6. True confessions: I was a white-ribbon yeast bread baker as a Pratt County 4-Her back in the day. That's what happens when you only make bread before the county fair.

Jill & Holly's yeast bread adventures started with pretzels. Click HERE for the pretzel recipe they used.

But when Jill was in 4-H, she and her friend, Holly, got interested in yeast breads. And I learned right along with them.

Thanksgiving gave me the chance to bake yeast rolls with a new generation of little girls. We even used the same recipe that Jill and Holly made years ago. (Click here for that recipe and for step-by-step photos on making crescent rolls from a previous blog post.)

 

The girls helped me mix up the bread dough using the KitchenAid mixer that belonged to my late mother-in-law, their paternal great-grandma. Since I got to take it home after Marie's death 20+ years ago, I've told Randy that I will be immediately replacing it if this essential piece of kitchen equipment breaks down. It's just as vital to my kitchen as combine parts are during harvest.

I neglected to get photos of the girls kneading the dough. However, Jill says that Kinley had some tips to share about "how Grandma does it" when they were making pizza dough after their bread-baking adventures. (Sorry, Jill!)

They loved seeing how much the dough had risen after letting it rest for an hour. (Here's a better photo of the actual bread from my pre-Christmas bread baking session.)

They were ready to punch it down:

Look at those faces!

The next step was rolling out the dough. Since I knew we were going to be making bread dough and rolling out pie crusts, I borrowed a smaller roller pin from their house and bought an even smaller one. The medium-sized one and my full-sized rolling pin worked better than the small one for getting the dough even.

Rolling bread dough requires a great deal of concentration (and holding your mouth just right ... she gets that from me)!

They were troopers. We made two recipes of dough - one white and one whole wheat - and they rolled out every bit of the dough.

We used a pizza cutter to separate the dough circles into eight equal parts. That's even hard for me!

Then we rolled each section into a crescent shape.

I told the girls to try and press the end underneath the roll. That probably led to a little more "squeezing" than "shaping" on Brooke's behalf, but we got the job done. And, again, they kept with it the whole time.

Even though their Mommy said they didn't particularly like yeast rolls, they definitely ate their share when they came out of the oven.

And the rest of the family enjoyed them with our Thanksgiving meal, too.

This past weekend, I completed the process again to make rolls for the Moore family Christmas Eve gathering. I made five recipes, using part for crescent rolls. I also made cinnamon rolls for the freezer as a gift for my parents' Christmas, and I used a portion of the dough for hamburger and cheese-stuffed sandwich pockets.

I was ready to be done. I could have used those two extra helpers, don't you think?