Good Monday morning to all you critter and land loving folks. We usually use our Saturdays around here to get set up for the upcoming week as far as feeding and extra chores that may need attention. This past Saturday I had the privilege of fencing with the worlds cutest crew, I may be a little bias. Before you go feeling bad for my kids that they had to fence all day, they did not, I needed their assistance for about twenty minutes, and then they were free to enjoy the super nice day sledding in the snow! They loaded their handy little sleds with reels, and step in posts and helped me get to the back pasture, a place that any wheeled vehicle isn’t getting to until a major spring thaw. I am super excited to say that unless we catch a major storm in the next thirty days, we have fed everything and will only need to check water daily for the next month. Its kinda like lazy ranching, but it is so nice! I love that we can all do this chore together, and that it doesn’t have to be a whole day ordeal. We are a smaller operation so keep that in mind, and we aren’t lambing until the end of May, so this matches up nutritional needs with the grazing we have available. Its just fun to share a win, a win in family ranching, and a win in us owning the ranch, not the ranch owning us.

Another small thought for a Monday, I bent down to pick up one reel and the handle was covered in our lovely gumbo mud and I saw myself in that picture. One of my children probably dumped it off not realizing it was getting nasty, but as a parent I picked it up and wiped it off and took off to accomplish my job with it. I am that dirty nasty handle, and yet my Heavenly Father asks me to work with Him in this life, and when I would rather run off and play or when I crash and end up bogged down in the gumbo of life, He reaches down wipes me off and takes off to accomplish His work, even when He has to carry me the whole way. As my arm started to ache a little carrying that reel I found myself so very thankful that He loves me and sent His Son to die to make me clean. Faith and fencing, grace and gumbo, it’s a thing, or at least it’s a thing for this mommy blogger in the middle of nowhere South Dakota.

Blessings to you, yours, and your operation.