Janet's Blog

I was twelve, the first time I went to the ranch, on the Pine Ridge in northwestern Nebraska, with my family. But I heard about the swing several years before. Dad first hunted at his uncle's ranch with his Dad and brothers as a young teen, and continued after he and Mom were married. Mom and Dad went with their parents and siblings, almost every fall, to hunt deer and turkey. I was pretty young when they came home and told the story of how Dad and (I think) Uncle Lee hung a swing high up in an old Cottonwood tree, so they could swing out over the Wounded Knee Creek.  When everyone gathered at the ranch for a week of maintenance and repair, and the kids were finally allowed to come along, we could hardly wait to try out the swing. Oh, we hiked, and fished, and roasted marshmallows over the fire, and rode horses by the hour. But the swing was something special. There is nothing like flying high, over the water below, on a warm summer day. I have seen pictures of my pare...

It was just after Christmas when I decided, seemingly on a whim, to order myself The One Year Bible from Amazon. Since I wanted large print, I had only two choices of versions. I certainly didn't want the King James Version, so I settled, somewhat reluctantly, on the New Living Translation. I was excited to start reading as soon as we returned from our after-Christmas trip to Fairbury, so I was only a day late getting started. For those of you who are unfamiliar with The One Year Bible , it is the entire Bible broken down into daily readings, one each from the Old Testament and the New Testament, as well as a daily segment from the Psalms and a verse or two from Proverbs. I've read the entire New Testament several times before, sometimes in one sitting, and I read the Old Testament all the way through when I was taking Bible classes in college, but I have never before used this format, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I have found the NLT to be exceedingly readable...

It was just a few days ago that Meagan and I were discussing chickens. I had noticed on Facebook that several of my Gering friends had suddenly decided to raise chickens in their backyards. It seems that the City of Gering has finally passed a law allowing up to five backyard chickens per family. I was thrilled with the new law, and started brainstorming with Meagan about how to add a chicken coop to my yard. Meagan even offered a couple of her excess hens to be my starter chickens. I knew that Bill would not object to having a couple of layers again, as we did, years ago, on our Michigan acreage. But first, we had to cross the chicken coop hurdle. I was prepared to scrounge through our stash of old rabbit cages, chicken wire, and boards, to find the materials we would need to enclose the bottom of the kids' tree house, which is really just a playhouse on stilts, but Bill decided it would be much easier to just buy a chicken coop from Menards. So, that's how I happ...