Vegetarian Ranchwife

Fall always feels like renewal for me. In college, I loved that back-to-school feeling, a new schedule of classes, a pile of new textbooks. I was on fire for all the new things I would learn over the semester.

That feeling of renewal has continued on the ranch, when the change in temperature brings a welcome break from summer’s relentless heat. Our calendar is full of big workdays, as we gather the summer pasture and collect the year’s crop of calves and lambs.

As sad as it is to send them off, we turn our attention forward to the next year. The day after shipping, we we get a look at next year’s calves when we preg test the cows. Our yearly cycle begins again.

This year, as the kids head back to school and I’m in the frenzy of fall baking, I’ve found energy for a new project. I’m over on Substack now, writing about religion. In those pages, the essayist will meet the Religious Studies teacher. I’ll take a look at my personal religious experience, which has often been negative, through interpretive lenses offered by Religious Studies. That’s something different from what I get up to here, which is the essayist meets the ranchwife.

Not that each of these selves can so easily be separated. Religion often bleeds into my writing about the ranch. Watching the birth and growth of calves and lambs every year often puts my mind to religious themes. Maybe that’s no accident. Religious holidays coincide with agriculture cycles, and, in fact, the two have likely been linked since the very beginnings of both.

So, while there may be crossover between my thoughts on ranchlife and my thoughts on religion, I’ll try to keep the two projects separated. If you are interested in longer form posts about religion, I’ll be putting those up on substack at Faithfully Ambivalent ever couple of weeks. My intermittent postcards about ranch life will still be here.