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.

I’m beginning to think we’ll never have frost on the pumpkin, because it’s too dry to make even frost…or maybe I don’t understand science and it doesn’t work that way. Nevertheless, it’s pretty dry out there and we sure could use some rain.

I still am liking the warm temps though, because even though I haven’t watered my flowers in a hot minute, my hollyhocks are covered in blooms as well as the zinnias. Just gorgeous! I need to water my dahlias as well, but you know how it is… “oh, the garden? Yeah, I haven’t been out there in a while,” I say, as I see the weeds are waist high in parts and putting out seed. My favorite saying, “look with a blind eye.”

The rest of the farm is rolling along. As we wrap up this season’s farmers markets, our young chickens are finally starting to lay eggs. Isn’t that convenient? We were short all summer, we had excuses like, “it’s too hot,” “it’s too wet” (we can’t use that excuse anymore), “maybe they’re not getting what they need mineral wise” (I bought them a block for chickens, they ate it up I bought a couple more, NOTHING).

The excuse was really that they’re too old and we have them outside running everywhere just being happy chickens. We probably have a thousand eggs around the farm in the weeds and that would explain the massive amounts of raccoons and skunks we’ve had all summer. What do ya do? Keep them shut inside all day and night? Not here. I like watching them dust bathe in the driveway and eat bugs while I’m doing dishes. And what’s better than a hundred chickens running up to you when you leave the house thinking you’ve got some vegetable scraps? Probably a lot of things if you don’t care about chickens running up your leg. That should be some kind of phobia I should think. I digress. The only one who really doesn’t like them all over is Tedd because they poop on his “basketball court.” I mean I get it, bouncing a ball in fresh chicken poop isn’t as cool as you may think.

Speaking of chickens, I feel like this place could be a real gold mine. I bet Ron and I don’t even know what we have. I mean, yeah, there’s love and all that, the kids, I’m a good cook, he likes to make me things when he gets a wild hair, but seriously. I saw an Airbnb that was on a farm, and you slept in the chicken coop. Actually, it’s built to look like a coop, but it’s a new building. But one side is plexi-glass so you can watch the chickens all day if you want. Plus, you can pay extra to do chicken chores, wash eggs, clean the real coop…among whatever else you may fancy on a full-fledged chicken ranch.

As I sit here and think about this, I bet my kids would pay our guests out of their very own pockets to clean the coop. More than likely, they’d probably sit there and micromanage the guests like their dad does them. “Hey, you think that corner’s clean? Look again. We have all the time in the world.” Bahaha!

Then, I could cook them breakfast and charge them for it. What would be on the menu? Eggs of course, unless the raccoons got to the real coop first. Maybe I could charge the guests to be on night watch.

Oh the ideas! But until we get the Fairchild Ranchero turned into the Fairchild’s Chicken Stay n Play, we’ll just have to stick to the stuff that’s been working, like Ron farming for someone, I’m subbing for school, writing these articles for your utter enjoyment and hawking my handmade wares at craft shows.

But you best believe, I’m planning something.
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.