The Evolution of Ponderings

I was sitting at the dining room table, reading the business section of the Great Falls Tribune when I became illogically irate.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, four-section, 32-page, daily Tribune carried no agricultural news in the business section.

It was 2009. My son, Will, was 11 years old and my daughter, Abby, was 3. My husband, Steve, and I had purchased the Graham Ranch near Conrad three years prior.

“Good grief!” I said, “We are in the middle of the Golden Triangle, in a state where agriculture generates more than half of the entire economy and the premier newspaper in Montana doesn’t report ag news? This is outrageous.”

I fired off a scathing letter to Tribune Business Section Editor, Jo Dee Black.

All these years later, I still believe Jo Dee Black is the kindest, most patient person I have ever met.

She asked if I would help her include agriculture in her section by writing a column about ranch life.

Before purchasing the Graham Ranch, I had worked as a county extension agent, editor of the Montana Farmer-Stockman and freelance writer for various magazines.

Writing about what was happening on the ranch would be fun.

I didn’t know it would save my sanity.

I was freelancing for the Western Ag Reporter at the time so that weekly newspaper soon began publishing Prairie Ponderings, too.

Then the Pioneer Press, along with the Independent Ag Network and KGPR radio, picked it up.

Last week, I was disappointed but not surprised to receive notice that the Tribune will no longer publish Prairie Ponderings.

So many of us have watched the Tribune shrink, in pages and readership, just as so many other daily newspapers shrank.

The information industry has mutated.

Yet agriculture continues as the bedrock for our society, food system and environmental sustainability.

The rest of the world needs to know what ranchers do every day, the issues we face and the solutions we find.

I rarely speak for all ranchers – we all are independent cusses who have our own opinions.

Instead, I offer a glimpse of my experience, hoping readers and listeners will find commonality.

Or at least a topic of conversation.

Once I wrote about hunting wolves in the cold, snowy mountains.

A reader searched out my phone number, then called to berate me. He threatened to buy my ranch so he could protect the wolves from dirty, rotten scoundrels like me.

“You won’t buy the ranch if it isn’t for sale,” I replied.

The first time a grizzly attacked my sheep, I shared how I felt.

Jo Dee Black asked me to edit that column, explaining that readers ate breakfast while they read the paper.

Readers inundated me with offers to protect my sheep using both legal and illegal methods.

When Steve died suddenly, they reached out again.

Their notes felt like hugs.

After I wrote about the propane truck driver getting stuck in my bumpy driveway, many people suggested I spread a few loads of gravel.

The gravel I spread continued to sink until I repurposed old carpet as a solid base.

My driveway still has a few potholes, but only where I need to lay more carpet.

Often, I write about rainy days and drought.

I want people who don’t feel the direct impacts of drought to remember that some of us do.

Rainy days bring more than an interrupted golf game.

And I hope people who do feel the impacts every single day know they aren’t alone.

Drought robs us of more than grass and water.

It can rob us of our identity and self-worth.

I keep writing because people need to hear agriculture’s story, even from my narrow perspective.