I’m back from the cities! I was in Minneapolis for a week, and just warning you, this article plays more like a story about stomach flu, emergency car repairs, day workers and marijuana.

You guys, what a week I’ve had! But I can look back and laugh…just a little. It all started with me vending at the Minneapolis Home and Garden Show. I left last Sunday after church and was able to stay at my sister’s for the week. We had a blast (most of the time) and my mom even came for two days. It was magical. The weird thing about that show is you have to be down at the Convention Center on Monday afternoon to load in all your goods, have it set up and ready and then you don’t come back until Wednesday.

At least that’s how it is in the spot we’re at. I also needed my dock parking pass so I could park in the marshaling yard where my vehicle could be secure, and I would be safe after the show each night walking to my car. I had to be there Monday morning at 8 a.m.

After my sister and I bought my pass (and we did a little happy dance since there was only two left), we headed back to her house in Lino Lakes. On 35W North, my truck’s tire started making a flapping sound but it was actually my wheel bearing; $670 later, I was back on the road and I certainly didn’t anticipate that happening. Tuesday was great, but it started to snow and my 10-year-old nephew came down with the flu.

Wednesday I didn’t go into the show but Thursday was a great day. Friday about 7 p.m. it slowly started going south. I started to get a little stomach ache. By 7:30 p.m. I was out of there, but leaving downtown, the strong marijuana smell by Franklin Ave. and other parts of downtown was too much. I’m not going to lie, it almost did me in. If you don’t know what that smell is like, think of burnt dog poop and a skunk getting married. I sang worship music all the way home trying not to puke. My sister felt horrible, and said that she’d watch my booth Saturday. But by 11:30 p.m. I get a text from her upstairs saying that she was throwing up too.

Early Saturday I still didn’t feel the best, but at least the puking was over. I texted my other sister that lives by Hudson, Wis. that I’d venmo her $200 to watch my booth. She got back to me a few hours later saying she couldn’t. I had absolutely no one to watch my goods, so I had to go in. I made sure to wash my hands and spray myself with Lysol, and kept my distance from all. It wasn’t hard, I was about sleeping, and the crowd was down anyway.
The funny thing was on my way down there, my GPS that usually talks to me, was suddenly quiet. I took the 94 and Grant, exit but if you keep left you can get back on 35. So instead of getting in the middle lane to 94, I was so out of it, I got back on 35. I realized it too late and had to get off on Lake Street.

That was wild! I had NO idea that this was where all the day workers and other workers waited for jobs. I stopped at the light and I could’ve had about 10 guys in my truck. But I thought, ‘the only work I’ll have for you is if I don’t get to the bathroom soon I’ll need my truck interior cleaned.’ My GPS cut me through the city streets and some awful neighborhoods. One three block stretch was all washboard and potholes where I had to go about five miles per hour. I did feel tons better by evening though. Sunday was slow and more enjoyable.

I got to talk to a lot of customers, and that was great. One couple I was talking to was so much fun. I giggled and said I couldn’t wait to get back to my husband and family. I also mentioned that the last manly handshake with even a trace of a callous was when I was at church back home the week before. His wife giggled and he throws out his hand to me and says, “Hi, my name’s Tom and I’m from Yankton, S.D.” That bone crusher made me realize how much I was looking forward to going home. By 6 p.m. I had loaded up the rest of my goods and was headed for cattle country.

Now, do I love Minneapolis? Hmmmm…..I used to, so, so much. It really has changed however. But there is still some really great people there, and you know me - I can talk an ear of corn off a plant!
Until next time,
Fairchild “there’s no place like home” Farmgirl

Suzanne Fairchild is a freelance writer who lives on a farm in southwest Minnesota with her husband and children. She can be reached at rmf@itctel.com.

Happy Valentine’s Day! I asked my 12-year old son if he had a valentine on the way to school this morning. He shot me a not so Valentine’s Day worthy look and said no.

Do you like all that chatter about flowers and love? Last year my niece got flowers and chocolate from her boyfriend and she said that it was her first time ever getting something at work from someone on Valentine’s Day. It’s tough when you’re self employed with your husband in the same gig as you, and he comes home that day with the same gift as every year for the last 20 years; a sad looking rose that’s seen better days from the gas station.

The old gas station rose. You know the one, where if you get a certain amount of gas or is it that you just get some gas and you get to pick out a flower? It’s a nice sentiment if you’re the station giving out roses with a purchase. But let me tell you, as its recipient, that second hand rose feels a little lacking. Ron are you reading this?

Back in the day when we were kinda hand to mouth or shall I say lacking in the finance department, I thought that gas station rose was a little corny, and a whole lot sweet. Now I’m like, even if we don’t have any jingle, write me a sweet note, get me a Snickers Heart (I’m telling you, they have them at Jim’s in Canby and I get one every time I’m there) or something; I mean Dollar General even has flowers.

Back to this morning’s car ride, I listened to the DJ talk about Valentine’s Day and he buys his young daughter a bouquet, but gets nothing for his wife. What? So I looked what’s trending in 2025 for valentine’s gifts and who should get them: Crazy.

Purple orchids? Gerber daisies? Unexpected fruits? I mean, I wouldn’t want a bunch of bananas or a peck of apples-I could call that unexpected. I’d certainly have to share them. But even under “what to wear on Valentine’s Day” the trending colors are black, purple and deep red. That sounds like a blood clot or old scab on a dairy goat’s udder, not a Valentine’s Day outfit.

But I digress.
I pressed on. What to eat on Valentine’s Day that’s trendy: Love is in the air with Beef Wellington and Marry Me Chicken. Here at the Ranchero, we’ve been married long before the word trend even came out and if they haven’t made a recipe called, “Married with 9 children tator tot hotdish” well here she is. And she’s delish with a glass of chocolate milk.

I can’t believe what’s going on for 2025 Valentine’s Day. Maybe that gas station rose isn’t so bad after all. It is a whole lot less complicated, so go get some gas on valentine’s and get that rose for your honey. Tell’em Suzanne sent ya.

Until next time:
Fairchild “I love any kind
of flowers” Farmgirl

Suzanne Fairchild is a freelance writer who lives on a farm in southwest Minnesota with her husband and children. She can be reached at rmf@itctel.com.

Let’s get right down to the nitty gritty…resolutions? Do you have any? Do you make a list and throw it out by Jan. 15? I know one thing, I never put “lose weight” on mine anymore because I never do it anymore. A friend of mine from college and I named our fat rolls since they’ve made a permanent home on our bodies. Mine’s Priscilla and she’s not going anywhere.

In other news, the ranchero’s kinda quiet except for the two bum lambs I picked up; Harry and Sally. It’s kind of fun just having two. I go out to the barn and it’s easy just feeding a couple. I can enjoy them, instead of trying to feed five pens of ten as you pull your hair out and wonder whose idea it was to buy bottle lambs again, let alone having 50. We’ve also got some Jersey calves and they are so stinking cute. Too bad my kids will all be graduated before we get to butcher them. LOL. I kid, but it sure takes a while to fatten a Jersey. It’s nice, even as cattle prices go crazy, the lowly day old Jersey calf is still steady at about thirty bucks a head. Or maybe we just know where to get them. I don’t know, but once they finally can figure out a bottle, they’re fun to have around.

We’re also busier than a one legged butt kicker trying to get ready for ten days out at the Stock Show in Rapid City. My kids like to shout out the countdown til we leave. Yeah, they have to work out there, but they still have fun. Every time I hear the countdown I’m reminded that I’m not ready. One of the things that I love to do out there, is teach needle felting classes to kids. I take all of that Wednesday and teach. Today, I learned that I can teach a class the night before at a local knitting shop for a adults the night before. That’ll be great.
Not to change the subject, but are you in awe that we haven’t gotten really any snow other than a dusting and it’s already January? I’d kind of like a crazy snow storm where you crawl into bed and you can hear the wind whistling and snow is coming down like crazy. As long as it melts by morning…kidding. I do kind of miss it and honestly as long as we have good weather to get out to Rapid, I’d like one whenever.

So back to resolutions…where are you at with that? I haven’t made mine yet, but I will. There’s something about them that keeps me on track when they’re listed on paper. One will be to finally start something that I’ve wanted to do FOREVER; a subscription called Letters From the Farm on Cratejoy.com. I’m almost done with it and were hopefully going to get it up and running by February. It’s going to be a letter/diary passage from our farm about what’s happening and a local treat of some kind, a craft that I will teach you and some other goodies.

Okay, back to work. I hope we all have a good year. Hit some goals, have some fun and love your family…even that crazy aunt Ethel of yours. I’m sure she’s got good in her somewhere.

Until next time,
Fairchild “gotta get out to feed Sally and Harry” Farmgirl

 Suzanne Fairchild is a freelance writer who lives on a farm in southwest Minnesota with her husband and children. She can be reached at rmf@itctel.com.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Are you all ready for Christmas? We are not and I’m ok with that. The kids wanted to decorate right after Thanksgiving, but I wanted to hold off until the first week of Advent was over, now we’re into the second week and nothings done yet. Wait, one of the kids strung up a set of lights in the dining room, “until we get time to do it all mom.” The rate we’re going, we’ll be setting it up on Christmas Eve after we do all our shopping.

What are you doing that’s special for Christmas? Getting together with friends and family? We had a little neighborhood get together on Thanksgiving night around 10 p.m. when I saw a few cows run past my kitchen window as I cleaned up the dishes. At first, I saw one, then I saw ten. After that there was a whole lot of coveralls flying around, while others yelled “take my boots off and find your own!” We had 85 head out, and one stubborn one was out for three days and ended up six miles from our place. That next day all the longhorns were taken out of the feedlot and sold. We think that one of them got her horn in the gate and flipped it off the pins. But we were due, we hadn’t had cows out in a long time.

For Christmas, we aren’t going anywhere, and I love that for us. Nothing beats time at home when you’re a big busy family that’s running all over for everything. I always said I could be a hermit on the side of a mountain. Around this time when I’m filling orders off our website, teaching felting, running after kids’ stuff and helping Ron, quiet nights at home are so great.

But I’ve got something for you. A little peek at our holidays. You know, in case you’ve never had a big family holiday and you’re wondering what Christmas is like for us in particular, well here, I’ll lay it out for you. It starts the Sunday after Thanksgiving after lunch we all write our Christmas lists and put them on the cupboard doors.

This year, I really encouraged everybody to make presents. Some of our family members do that already, but this year, I think everyone is feeling the pinch and let’s face it, handmade gifts are super special. Some things that get made in our house are quilts or blankets, stuffed or felted animals, paintings, frames for pictures, embroidered towels, keepsake boxes, jewelry, this year I made my sisters some room spray with essential oils, etc…the list goes on. If you look on Pinterest, Tik Tok, go to the library, there’s so much you can make for gifts and it seriously doesn’t have to cost much, if literally anything at all, except your time. Giving is what’s important. If you teach your child to give, well that’s a valuable lesson for sure.

Next, we celebrate Christmas Eve with an appetizer meal that everyone is responsible for. Each kid, even when they were small, got to pick an item to make and then they write that down on the cupboard list along with their grocery list and they make it on Christmas Eve. Oh and it has to be Christmas themed. Then Santa comes, knocks on the door with a letter, and the kids have to go find their presents in a barn or shed in the dark. I thought this year we’d maybe not do that tradition and I had some MAD adult kids, lol. So we’re gonna do it! We eat all night, open up presents one at a time from youngest to oldest (with 14 people it’s crazy) then we clean up and go to church in the morning.

So in the end, if you don’t have traditions, get some. Your family will love it. Make some gifts with love. If you don’t have people to give to, give to a neighbor. If you have no place to go, ask someone if you can come over. And above all else, double chain your cattle gates on a holiday. It’s hard finding someone to help when they’re in the warm bed with a belly full of goodies.
Until next time,
Fairchild “I sure appreciate you all!” Farmgirl

Suzanne Fairchild is a freelance writer who lives on a farm in southwest Minnesota with her husband and children. She can be reached at rmf@itctel.com.

When did 2024 diminish right before our eyes? Side note: we have roughly 50 some days to make this the best year yet in case you haven’t done so, there’s still time!

As usual, we’ve been busier than a moth in a sweater closet. Ron has been working all hours to get farming done for the season for the guy he works for, some small jobs in the shop and keeping up with this place and the kids. I’ve been doing a ton of needle felting classes and have kept really busy gearing up for that and the Christmas season in general.

For about a month I’ve been trying to build up product for a particular show and this past week, I’ve really had to put the hammer down and get things done.  So when Ron asked me to come along to pick up a Scottish Highland cow/calf pair, I kind of thought, ‘don’t I look busy enough?’ But I went anyway, because we only have these kids here for so long right? Right.

The trip up to Webster, S.D. started out fine enough, but soon enough the cloudy sky turned to rain and besides that, we were lost. How we get lost going up to this place I have no idea. We’ve been there three times before. Ron started looking for a “red shed that is right around here, then when you see it you take a right,” I think I remember seeing water on either side of the road, and Jess is in back fast asleep.

As before, Google is no good in Prairie Pothole Country, so it takes us about 10 miles away from our destination – again (and yet we don’t learn from our previous mistakes). It was really raining at this point, and did I tell you that we’d spent about 30 minutes on gravel when let’s be honest, there’s so much standing water in places, we should have taken a canoe. I call the guy and tell him to drop his pin to my phone so I can see where he’s at. I then proceed not to read the whole text (which again, in alignment with previous mistakes) and my phone takes us to the road before the one that he told us to take. We take the google approved road, and we see this black sign that’s written with what looks like white crayon (seriously) it says, “Road closed” in cursive.

If you know Ron, he’s no quitter. “How bad could it be?” he asks. Well soon the road turned into a basic trail with grass growing in the center and we get to the top of a hill and look down, the road narrows to one lane with water on each side. I start looking for a place that we could turn the pickup and trailer around. Nothing. No approaches of any kind. So as we go over this mess of water, I look in my mirror to see mere inches between the trailer wheels and water. We made it through. Whew!

After we get loaded, Ron asked the guys about the red shed…they’ve no knowledge of it. Me? I think it was a Prairie Pothole Mirage, Ron. Something you think you see when you’re lost on a 30 mile stretch of gravel. We cut them a check and leave. The rain picked up and we decided to get home via Summit to Milbank to Ortonville then home.

Oh, the Summit hill country. Why is the weather 20 times worse up there? As if a switch flipped, it suddenly became very foggy. It was so awful and you could cut it with a knife. We stopped at the truck stop to get supper and for a fleeting second I actually thought my hubby may want to eat there and not in the truck, well for obvious reasons. Nope. Ron got a sandwich, Jess got some pasta from Pizza Hut and I got an order of breadsticks to share.

As we were leaving, we literally had to go off my phone to see where the end of the truck stop driveway was to get on the road. It was horrible. In the next ten minutes I realize either how talented of a driver my hubby is, he has a four leaf clover in his pocket or how he truly has no fear. “Turn the light on so I can dip my breadsticks. Oh my gosh, you’re driving!” I yell.

But like always, we made it home flawlessly. I used to say it was the kids that gave me gray hair, but now I’m not so sure.

Keep yer vehicle on the road and have a great Thanksgiving. We truly have much to be thankful for.

Until next time,
Fairchild “Oh, if you’re wondering, that pair sure is pretty!” Farmgirl


Suzanne Fairchild is a freelance writer who lives on a farm in southwest Minnesota with her husband and children. She can be reached at rmf@itctel.com.