Have we had a good summer? This is the first summer that I can remember that I felt satisfied with its length. It always felt too short. This summer was literally perfect…can we go back and you know, try it again? Kidding, but what a great summer I had. Let me tell you my highlight from the last few weeks of August, before I go into September.

My daughter Rachel took me on a trip to Michigan, the Upper Peninsula. Oh my gosh, if you’ve never been there, please, PLEASE do yourself a favor and go! We stayed in St. Ignace, and we spent some time in Mackinaw City, and then…we went and spent the day on Mackinac Island. So happy we went there on a Wednesday, and next time I go, I’ll be spending a few days on the island. To say it was beautiful is a complete understatement. No cars are allowed, time is slow, and the flowers and landscaping is a degree that I’ll never know again in my life. We had a picnic, took a private carriage ride (that’s a must), walked around, peeking in shops, ate ice cream, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

The neatest thing was when our daughter saw a Michigan State Trooper, and she asked if she could go up and see the ambulance (she’s an EMT while she’s in college to be a paramedic). He walked us right up to their small trauma bay, and the EMT’s on staff showed us everything. They even pulled their ambulance out of the bay to let her go up inside it. So fun! Watching her listen intently as they told her about their EMT job on the island, how sometimes the Coast Guard will fly patients out, and you have to go with them, and asking her if she’d like to fill out an application to work there next summer.

It was magical.
Then we got home and Ron and I took Levi and the three younger ones on a weekend trip to Yankton before he flew the nest for school. That was really fun too. We got to show the kids the bridge; we took some of Maggie’s senior pictures overlooking the Missouri River. We also got to visit Riverboat Days, and the Lewis and Clark Museum is so neat.
Then our middle son started college in Pipestone! Levi likes it and is in the Carpentry program. So if you ever see a black pickup with a cattle guard on the front, give him a little wave. If you talk to him, tell him his momma misses him, and a man cannot live on junk food alone; buy some produce at Coborn’s. He hears it so much from me, but maybe coming from a nice little grandma, he’d listen.

 What’s up for September, you ask? Well, football - I have one more boy playing, and I have to say, I love it so much! I’m going to miss watching Levi play. But I’ll relish watching Tedd. We’re pulling produce out of our 9,000 square foot garden like mad for three farmers markets, and we’ve got another 1200 square foot produce garden that is really producing too. The worms ate our broccoli like crazy, and it’s no good to us. The chickens will have green eggs after eating as much broccoli as we planted. Cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans are crazy good right now, and I’m starting to bring in a gallon pail of cherry tomatoes almost each night. Oh and our market flowers are going just as crazy.

Ron starts back on second shift right after Labor Day at the school. He misses those kids and games. I decided that while I go back to school, I’m just going to substitute teach for Deuel.

So that’s it in a nutshell. Keep on keeping on and enjoy September!

Until next time,
Fairchild “oh, and have some bonfires too” 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. 

Wow, what just flew past us? Was it July? I thought so! I was driving our nephew to Hutchinson this morning to meet his mom after a week’s stay at the farm and noticed that the corn is starting to turn yellow at the bottom. What in the world?

When I got done with school for the year in mid-May, I thought, wow, this summer is going to go so slow. All the way to mid-June, I thought that, then I wised up. What I wouldn’t give to have this lazy summer right back at the beginning! Remember how absolutely perfect June was weather-wise? For right now, we finished doing some school shopping and buying football gear for Tedd, and now we’re desperately trying to find a little vacation spot before Levi heads to college.

Ron is back to working full throttle at school and at home since his rotator cuff surgery, and right now, our focus is the gardens. I’ve wanted to switch our gardens to no-till for a while and yesterday talked more seriously about it. Between ChatGPT, the long road trip we were on, and me using my best sales pitch, I think we finally got Ron on board. Next year, I’d love to try high-intensity planting, be more intentional about succession planting, and make better use of cover crops, mulch, and more. If our plots are working that hard, we could more than quadruple our food production for ourselves and the markets where we sell. I’d also love to have a roadside stand like that farm family near Clarkfield. Tedd is on board with the flowers, because he approves of anything that helps cut down on weeding and watering.

In hopes of getting full-time work in supply chain (shipping/receiving, demand forecasting, or inventory) I’ve been taking classes and working towards a certificate. Let me tell you, college courses as an older mom like me is not for the weak. But I keep looking at the end goal and think, ‘yep, I got this.’ This brings me back to our market garden; one of my big class projects was how it can be made more profitable. It’s been hard work but mind-blowing at the same time. I can tell you I’ve done my fair share of cussing my test scores out or my computer (because it’s never operator error, correct?). I’ve learned so much!

So, what’s up for the rest of August for the Fairchilds? Getting ready for some more Autumn Felting classes at libraries, gardening like crazy, farmers markets, planting, harvesting, burger feeds, enjoying life before that S word (school) rears its head, Friday night lights, and so many other things to be thankful for. Here’s to loving your life as much as I love mine.  At times it’s not pretty, it gets stressful, and rarely do the paychecks stretch far enough, but gosh. Look at all you have. I’ve been looking around here and thinking about what we’ve got, most of all, each other and it’s pretty great.
Until next time,
Fairchild 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. 

Did someone ask for more heat? Can we talk about that? Just kidding, but really, this heat and humidity…whoa. Where did that month of June go with all that simply gorgeous weather, comfortable during the day, sweatshirts at night?  I have to say, I miss it.

But then again, our produce and flowers are enjoying this hot, sticky weather. I haven’t picked so many green beans in my life as I did last week. I know that’s a little bit of a stretch, but still. The garden has been loving this jungle weather we’ve been having. So have the weeds. We had our first sale of green beans and peas, and we bought a weed burner. I’m in love!

Are you doing anything fun this summer? With me teaching wool painting this summer/fall for libraries, and Ron working in town, as well as we’re up to three farmers markets and the gardens have taken over our lives, we’ve got nothing big planned for a trip or anything. I know, quite boring. But, something magical happened last weekend when one of our older daughters asked if they could camp at our 40 acres on the other side of the section. Of course I said yes, and we had such a great time. So don’t stress out about going on a big trip when actually you can have fun in your own backyard. Or in our case…the hayfield about a mile away.

In other news, I’ve decided to go back to school. I know, what does a 52-year-old like me think she’s doing? Well, right now all I’m doing is getting a certificate in Supply Chain. I figured I’d do that before I spent any money on a degree. I’m also learning Spanish. I actually have been really loving both classes. In the Supply Chain classes, I had to design the layout of a warehouse. This week I have to come up with a product to sell to 10 mayors in 10 different cities and then I have to plan a warehouse within 1,000 miles of each. It’s been pretty awesome. 

As weird as it sounds, logistics has always fascinated me. Shipping out my soaps and wool items, looking where they go and then if they have to be shipped a certain way, etc. It’s so cool. What sealed the deal was when I had to send some of my needle felting kits to Canada, and I had to find the tariffs to ship them under. I knew that my encore career was going to be something in logistics!
Am I going to quit making soaps and stuff? Not for the foreseeable future. My soap business and selling wool have enabled me to stay at home with my kids, so I didn’t miss out on anything and was right there. But now that our youngest is going into the 8th grade, I want something that I WANT to do for a career. Not something that I have to do. So there you go. It’s a 3-6 month course, and hopefully I can find a company that will hire this momma that loves to work, problem solve, and is not afraid to learn new things. Wish me luck!

Until next time,
Fairchild “get out and pick those beans” 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.

In this article, we’re talking cats. Oh yes. Here at the ole ranchero, we appreciate a good farm cat. I know some people are against keeping cats outside, but most of our cats prefer being outside rather than inside the house.

Especially Agent Kitty. We used to call her our high-performance ranch cat. We’d give her kitties away when we didn’t keep them here on the farm, and people loved them. They were good mousers and ratters just like their momma. She could hide under the feed bunk and still catch a starling on the rail, and they wouldn’t know what happened to them.  She lived to be about 16 when she was run over accidentally.  I was so broken-hearted. But she was NOT an indoor cat. One time, the kids were in elementary school and were getting ready for the bus when Levi exclaimed, “Mom! A rat just ran in the laundry room from the mudroom!” You can bet Agent Kitty came in. I fear rodents like no one else. But she spent more time trying to get back outside rather than trying to kill that MOUSE. She hung on the screen door for dear life, and after I let her back outside, she wouldn’t come to me for a whole day.
Then Rosie. We loved her, until we didn’t. She brought her kittens to learn how to hunt in our baby chick pen. Overnight her and the kittens killed 90 baby chicks and didn’t do anything with them but let them lie, which added more fuel to Ron’s fire. That little family was evicted and went to another farm that didn’t have chickens.

We had Tater, who we loved bringing into the house, and he would curl up in a box we put blankets in. The dogs trained him, and when he had to go to the bathroom, outside he went. It was so funny. After six years, he moved on. Personally, I think he went to the neighbors. He liked to roam, even though we fixed him. We haven’t seen him since.

Now, there’s a run of black cats here. The mother is about 7 years old, and her name is Momma Ken, a direct descendant of Agent Kitty (my kids name the cats…I get no say in this). Well, for the last week, she’s been in heat. She howls this mournful howl, 24/7. For the past week, she’s been howling by our bedroom all night long. As a rule, we don’t keep boy cats, or if we do, we get them fixed. So, there was nothing for her here…until her mournful meows reached two of the oddest pair of boyfriends early last night. Ron was sitting in the recliner and said, “Well, we got some new cats.” All I could think of was how we might get a good night’s sleep for the first time in days. I looked at them and giggled. There sat a large tuxedo and right next to him, a small tabby cat, that was literally half his size. I don’t know if the big one was trying to show the little one the ropes or if he just had him there for moral support. But as Momma Ken was howling and writhing in the grass, not five feet from them, they looked at each other, got up, and walked away. Like, “nope.”

Is there a moral to this story? Again, nope. Just funny catty things happening at the Fairchilds, wanting some mousers in fall, not sure if we’ll get any, because of our weirdo female feline.
Until next time,

Fairchild “Momma Ken, that’s not a good look” 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. 

Do you remember me writing that May was going to be crazy? Well, here we are in the thick of it. Guess what? My ADHD brain loves every little bit of it. So, we got through Cody and Laura’s beautiful wedding, which was amazing.  This past weekend, we celebrated Levi with an early graduation party at the Gary Legion.

Up until the week before, I was stressed out about how we would decorate. In the past, we’ve always had some sports things, FFA, or other groups to show off on the tables at the party. Levi likes three things that we could display somehow: football, trap shooting, and working. Ron and I giggled as we walked around the place, looking for ways we could make centerpieces for the party. “Well, you know how he collects junk, maybe we can use that.” He wasn’t wrong! As Ron walked past Levi’s old boat with the light hanging off it, he said, “We could put this old light as a centerpiece!” We decided against that but did pick up three old center hubcaps from his Chevy pickup and an old console from the same vehicle. “This will be where people can put his cards!” Ron said excitedly. So, a lot of scrubbing ensued, and by the party, we had a lot of stuff to put out. It was fun, our centerpieces ended up being antlers from his shed hunts, spent shells that had notches in the plastic to hold pictures, and “ditch bouquets” which had blooming plum branches, dried grasses, dogwood, leafed out branches, and pheasant feathers – they were beautiful!

In other news, Caio; our foreign exchange student, came downstairs last night with a sad look in his eye and said, “One more Sunday.” I thought, what in the world is he saying?’ Then I realized what he meant. His parents are coming to spend time with us, and then they’re taking him back to Brazil. We are throwing him a surprise party on the Friday before he leaves. I’m not worried about him reading this…he has no idea I even write for the paper. But it’s going to be great for his family to meet his friends and our neighbors.

As for me, I’m happy school is going to be over for the year. I have some interesting summer plans for myself, for one, the farmers’ market in Watertown (I love that market). I am going to see what it will take to turn my old liberal arts degree from Minnesota West into a business degree. If that’s the case, Levi and I will be at the same school (well him in Pipestone). For now, let’s just get through the graduation ceremony. We’ll deal with everything afterwards.

Until next time,
Fairchild “congrats seniors!” 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. 

Well readers, it’s 13 days until my son marries his sweetheart, and besides not having the shoes that I’ll wear, I’m ready for this shindig.  Having said that, I’ve done a lot of reflection lately, and I’ve come to this realization.

I’m old.
This isn’t even because some of the middle schoolers at work are calling me “Grandma Fairchild,” which they claim is only because they want me to bring homemade cookies in for science class, and “that’s what grandmas would do,” hence the name. I gave them boys a hard look and said, “so, me not being a grandma yet, but just called that because of a lame – o cookie reason and not the obvious ‘gray hair’ reason, is going to get me to bring you in a treat? I don’t think so.” Whatever, they know I love them like my own kids, and I’ll totally bring them a goodie one of these days.
I digress.

Seriously! This wedding brings me closer to being a real grandma and further away from the drunken bonfire nights of my younger years. Am I going to sit there and be okay with that? Let me think about this, do I have a vote? Not really.

Are my first 50 years dissolving away like a sugar in a cup of tea? And PS, even that analogy makes me old…who even drinks tea unless they’re old as dirt? Kidding…I love my tea drinkers out there.

Also, the fact that next month, my darling Grace graduates college and my spit fire Levi graduates high school, isn’t helping. These chickies are leaving the nest at an astounding rate! The other day I was cleaning the house, cursing under my breath as I cleaned up after the kids who still lived at home and started to think. I stood there for a minute, sweating and out of breath like a chubby mom who’s been spiffing all day, and with the empty granola box on the floor, literally next to the garbage can, I realized two things. First off, when they are out on their own, I’m coming to their house, walking through their home with muddy shoes and throwing garbage “next to” the garbage can and leaving towels and dirty socks on the bathroom floor. Oh, also spilling shampoo in the bathtub and not cleaning it up. That right there is a serious chubby lady hazard. I got in the shower and thought I was going to break my other hip.

Even though I face messes on the daily, have words with my kids sometimes when I’m wanting them to do their chores, and having them expect me to drop whatever I’m doing to help them, I love those turkeys. And they’re not all bad all the time…they have a lot of good qualities. Also, I inundate them with Facebook reels and TikToks that only a chubby old lady would laugh at, so I guess were even.
Moral of the story? I can’t remember, I’m old and forgetful. Kidding. But I will say, love on your kids…you’ll only hav’em for 18 years. Isn’t that crazy to think about?

Fairchild “what in the world did I just step in? TEEEEDDDD!

Get down here and clean up your mess! 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.