Betty Olson
It was another nice warm, windy week and the rain we got on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday added up to 3/4th of an inch!
B.C. Struble and Jacob Smith brought propane Monday morning and tried to fix a leak on the old propane tank at Taz and Amanda’s house but couldn’t get it done until all the propane is gone out of the tank. I had the privilege of running down to meet Clint Doll at his mailbox to pick up Copper when he brought the kids home from the school bus at Reva.
With only a few ewes left to lamb, Casey and Taz cleaned out the lambing shed on Tuesday and put all the jugs and panels away. I was on a Zoom call with a lot of the people who are getting the petitions filled out to put SB 201 on the ballet to let the property owners vote on whether to get rid of it or to allow the private company Summit take away your property rights using Eminent Domaine to dig their pipeline through private property to bury CO2 up into North Dakota.
Reub and I went to Hettinger on Wednesday and were surprised when we went through Reeder to see that two houses had burned down just next to Phyllis and Larry Jackson’s house. We came back home through Reeder to have coffee with the Prairie Pioneers to find out what had happened. One of the houses was lived in by Dexter Sack and the other one was the Al Kittleson house. The fire started at 1:30 Sunday morning and the fire departments from Reeder, Scranton and Hettinger showed up and were able to put a fire wall between the burning houses and the Jackson house, which saved it. Phyllis Jackson showed us picture of the fires that she had on her phone along with a picture of the rainbow that formed over the wall of water as the sun came up. Both houses that burned were sitting empty and thankfully no one was injured.
The vet from Baker, Montana came Thursday morning to test the bulls over at the east place. When the guys finished there, they came home for lunch and then branded another batch of calves that afternoon. I stayed down here to watch the twins while Amanda, Missy and Reub all went up to help Casey and Taz brand. That was a really fun job for this old lady! Mardell Kok got her SB 201 petition filled out and brought it down to me late that afternoon so I could take it to Bison Friday night for the meet and greet for all the Republican candidates running for office in District 28. Sam Marty and Sue Peterson are running for the Senate in 28, Jana Hunt and Ryan Maher are running for the House in 28A, and Travis Ismay and Travis Martin are running for the House in 28B. A good crowd showed up and had lots of questions for the candidates. Eldon and Mary Jean Jenson came down from Lemmon and Mary Jean brought me three good books I can’t wait to read. They are “The Essential 2nd Amendment Handbook” by Steven Bryant, “How the Republican Party Became Pro-Life” by Phyllis Schlafly, and “Nixon Off The Record” by Monica Crowley.
We lost another good friend. Ronald Hofland, 78, of Reeder, passed away on May 4. The funeral service for Ron was Saturday, May 11, at the Our Saviors Lutheran Church in Reeder with burial in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Reeder. Casey, Missy, Taz, and Reub and I went to the funeral and got to visit with a lot of friends and family. After the funeral service Ron was hauled to the cemetery in a wagon pulled by a team of horses, which was something that old cowboy would have really liked.
Sunday was Mother’s Day and Pastor Henry and Linda Mohagen gave every mother that came to church that morning some flowers of various kinds for each of us to choose to take home. There was smoke in the air on our way to church that morning, but it was really heavy when we left church to go down to join a bunch of other friends to have some of that delicious soft ice cream that Vince has at the Reva Store. The smoke is coming down from Alberta, Canada. My brother-in-law, Ken Amor, lives in Morinville, Alberta so I talked to him to find out if it was close to where he lives. Ken said that there were 57 wildfires burning, but only two of them are out of control. One of the fire is northeast of him about 200 miles and the other is about 150 miles west of him. Ken said they are getting more fires every day, because the forests up there are bone dry and ranchers and farmers are in really bad shape. Please pray for the people living up there and the firefighters who are working hard to get the fires under control.
With the house fires in Reeder and all the fires burning up north, I’ll leave you with these firefighter jokes:
*Why should you never leave an open fire unattended? Because they’re naughty when nobody is looking at them.
*How do you know that your child might grow up to become a firefighter? They’re the ones putting out the fires instead of starting them.
*Why do firefighters wear yellow uniforms in most parts of the world? Because the fires they have to fight are wearing orange.
*What’s the most important part of a firefighter’s work gear that they can never afford to be without? Their skin.
*Why do firefighters wear boots with their uniform? Because it would be pretty hard to fight fires when they’re barefoot.
