A Day in the Life AND Early Summer Roundup, Installment Four: Seattle Proper!

A day in the life...

So good to be home for the whole weekend. Jeff and I both have been looking forward to the time when we'd no longer be traveling so much and this is the first full weekend of being home.  Not that we aren't busy, however.  Jeff has been spending most of his time mowing CRP that we will be putting into production.  And when he isn't mowing, he and I have been on ranch duties. 

Right now, our cows are running with Tom's at pasture.  They are in four groups and spread out among the different pastures we own and rent.  Late July is a restless time for the cattle, however. The bulls in particular are starting to get antsy.  By now, they have been with the cows for some time and have, ahem, well... one might say they have achieved their mission.  At least we hope they have.  Judging by the tendency of the bulls to get out lately, one could safely say that at least the good majority of the cows are bred.

Therein lies the problem.  The bulls get restless and decide to push on fences here and there and escape.  They go into the neighbors herd (where there are fewer bred cows...) or into the neighbor's wheat field (wheat tastes better than grass! Duh!)... or just into some other pasture (Hence the phrase, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence).  All this activity has lead to Jeff and I spending time mending fences and gates here and there.  As Jeff is on the mower as much as he can be, it has been my job over the past few days to drive around and check whether the cows are in or out at the various pastures. 

Mornings have also been spent watering the vegetable garden and flowers at Tom and Carol's house, and harvesting veggies.  Lettuce is on the down-side of its bell curve of ripeness, while cucumbers and green peas, and snow peas are on the upswing.  If anyone has any good cucumber or pea recipes, send them our way because we have a bumper crop for sure! Tonight I am making pasta with bacon and peas, and I think I am going to experiment with making pea spread either today or tomorrow. It will be like hummus, only green, and I think it'll freeze fine, too.  First step in making pea dip will be simply to figure out how to put together and use the food processor...

So that's what has been happening around here over the weekend.

Back to the Early Summer Roundup, here's the photos from our time in Seattle. 

Really, the only super-touristy thing we did was go to Pike's Place market.  Even though it was crowded with throngs of people, I still enjoyed it.  It was cool to see so much produce and seafood in one place. Although I did wonder how much of it was produced locally versus shipped in from warehouses or facilities from far away...

 

We met up with a very dear friend of mine from college, Ellen, whom I hadn't seen since I still lived in Iowa.  She and her husband and their young son were also in Seattle for a wedding (not the same wedding!) so we met at the market for breakfast.  They are organic farmers in Western Iowa.  They also have a CSA and Ellen is a huge advocate for local, sustainable food. I love her.  Here's one of their websites: Pin Oak Place.

I took this picture in the market because of the beef prices.  HOLY COW! No pun intended.  Glad I don't have to buy beef at the store... although I am sure there is a Pike's Place Market Markup.  Would anyone out there like to pay Bangs Beef that much for one of our steaks?!?! :) 

I bought some delicious Tequila Caramel from this stand. We were first attracted to this booth because of the name-- Woodring Orchards.  We have some close family friends from Townsend, MT with that last name... any relation!?

 

And now moving into the main reason we went to Seattle in the first place! For the wedding of my dear friend, Steven.  Steven and Jessica started dating back when I still lived in Ames... so maybe 2006? I had the great delight of meeting and getting to know Jessica before the two of them moved to Seattle.  Steven I have known since we were in seventh grade.  He's actually still to this date the friend I have had the longest who I still keep in touch with.  He's a pretty tremendous guy! Jessica is so wonderful as well.  Wish we all lived closer. :)

Steven is a very talented person in many different realms. One of his talents is glass blowing.  Steven and a friend made all these little glass penguin figurines and glass ornaments for the centerpieces at the wedding reception.  They were beautiful!

 Another person I was so fortunate to reconnect with at the wedding was another dear friend from high school, Leslie! I hadn't seen her since high school but was so delighted to find that we were still easy friends. Sometimes when you reconnect with someone you haven't seen in a while, either you or they have changed so much that you can't see why you were friends in the first place. Not so with Leslie.  I had a great time catching up with her!

 Jessica and Steven.  The happy couple! I wished we had more time to catch up with them, but that's the nature of weddings. You're surrounded by friends and family but it's so hard to have meaningful conversations with any of them.  Next time, friends!

The light is a little goofy in this photo, but here's me, Jessica, Steven, and Leslie.

 

The wedding reception was at Golden Gardens park, right on a public beach on the Sound. Looking across the water, you could see the Olympic Peninsula and the mountains. 

 The reception was held in what was formerly a bath house and is now an events venue. It was perfect. The weather was perfect. The people were perfect. Everything was perfect!

 
 We were really only in Seattle for about 48 hours, in total, so we didn't have a ton of time to see too many people, unfortunately. Sunday, we did take some time to relax at a baseball game. Happily, the Cubs, my long-time favorite team, were playing the Mariners in interleague play. We decided rather last minute to buy tickets at the gate and go to the game before heading out of town.

 

Approaching the stadium, with great Mount Rainier in the background.

Safeco Field is pretty new and a very nice stadium.

The view from our seats.

Alas, we look pretty confused as fans.  Jeff in his Braves shirt and I in a Mariners hat, and we both cheering for the Cubs.  We got a few funny looks from the people seated around us.  I bought the Mariners hat because I had neglected to bring a hat of my own to the game and it was pretty sunny.  I guess I'm a Mariners fan, now! Since they are AL and the Cubs are NL it's probably OK to be fans of both, right?

 

Stay tuned for the next episode of Early Summer Roundup, coming soon!

Early Summer Roundup, Installment One: Having a Ball at Minneota Hall

We had a crazy June full of fun activities-- traveling and hosting both near and far. I think the last "normal" weekend I had with nothing going hasn't been since before track meets started, so sometime back in April I guess... June really topped the cake, though. 

We started with our Farmers Union conference in Bozeman at the beginning of the month. The following weekend was the Rudyard softball tournament (we hosted two couples, one with a baby).  After that was the Bangs Family Reunion and Tom's 60th birthday bash at Minneota Hall (We hosted three people for that one). Then, we left for a road trip through Washington, culminating in a beautiful wedding in Seattle- one of my high school friends. The day after we got back from Seattle, my parents and brother came to town and we were busy hosting them and showing them around the Glacier Park part of the state.  June has definitely been non-stop fun.  It was so great to see so many of our friends and family and do all the cool things we did over the past six or eight weeks. Even though it was such a great start to the summer, Jeff and I both agree that we are now more than ready to simply be at home and get some work done.

With all that has been going on, I haven't had time to do much on the blog. So, I'm going to try to play catch up and do several updates all this week covering some of our highlights of the latter part of June and early July. We'll call this little mini-series Early Summer Roundup. 

Early Summer Roundup, Installment One: Having a Ball at Minneota Hall

The first installment of Early Summer Roundup features the party we had at Minneota Hall for Tom's birthday. It was a milestone birthday ending in a zero and definitely required a big celebration. 

Minneota Hall is an old Community Hall in the country just a few miles north of Tom and Carol's house.  There used to be a small country school there, too, and they would occasionally have "Minneota Play Days," with lawn games, volleyball, baseball, spelling bees, and other activities.  The hall hasn't been used in some time, so there was A LOT of cleaning up to do before holding the party here, but it couldn't have been a better locale to celebrate!

 Carol had this cake made to commemorate the 60th birthdays of Tom, Dan, and Darwin-- all three of them turn 60 this year. The cake turned out perfect!
There were plenty of food and libations to go around...

"Not Responsible for Accidents..."

The inside of Minneota features a cool little stage where they used to hold pageants and plays, I am told.  The floor used to be waxed for dances.

For the birthday boys, Adria made three beer "cakes" with the favorite beers of each respective guy.  She did awesome!

The weather was beautiful that evening! Definitely nice enough for a game of volleyball in the grass, just like in the old days.

Some kids have fun simply playing on the old playground.  Do they even make playgrounds with slides, swings, bars, merry-go-rounds, and teeter-totters anymore? 

Some adults enjoyed the playground as well...

 

Two pen-pals who met a few years ago were reunited at the Minneota party!

Overall, the party was a great success. Friends and family from all over the country came to join the celebration.  A good time was had by all.

Buffalo Dogs and Old Style, Here!

An interesting article in today's Great Falls Tribune gives me another connection between my current home and my childhood, (though it is somewhat of a stretch) : Local Bison Meat to Supply Vendors at Wrigley Field.

In my house, we grew up Cubs fans.  My dad is a Cubs fan, and so was his dad.  I have many fond memories of listening to Ron Santo and Pat Hughes announce the game over AM radio.  I came to prefer listening to the radio broadcast of the games over the television announcers and still believe that listening to radio broadcast fosters a deeper understanding of the game than does watching it on television.  Often, my brother and I would turn the television broadcast of the Cubs game on, but mute the sound and use the radio broadcast instead-- we just liked it better!

Joe Ricketts, an extremely wealthy businessman and whose family is a majority owner of the Cubs/Wrigley Field/ Comcast, has purchased a large area of ranchland in the Blackfeet reservation, northwest of where we live, for the purpose of supplying bison meat to Wrigley Field and other places.

The article has some interesting comparison of cattle ranching to bison ranching, and also touches on relations between the ranch and the Blackfeet reservation.

I am fortunate enough to have attended a small handful of baseball games at Wrigley Field, one of the last remaining Cathedrals of Baseball: a true baseball park.  I don't remember seeing any bison offerings at the games, but maybe they will be available the next time I am there (hopefully sooner than later!) I can already hear the food vendors walking up and down the aisles hawking buffalo burgers and Old Style. I will sample a bison hot dog or burger, knowing that the meat in that product is from my new home of Montana.

Boys of Summer

A lot of people around here have been talking about the Little League World Series, going on right now.  This is because there is a team from Montana who has made it very far into the tournament.  The "Boys from Billings" have won all three of their games so far.  Here's a link with a brief re-cap of their most recent win over California: http://billingsgazette.com/sports/other/kids-and-teens/article_48f7d924-ceac-11e0-bc01-001cc4c03286.html?=update

The tournament is double-elimination, so after they lost, California had to go on to play another team who had lost a game.  California then won that game, so now they will play Montana again in the National Championship.  Because it is double elimination and Montana has not lost yet, California would have to beat Montana twice to take the top spot, and then Montana would be second place.  Call me an optimist, but I think Montana can win at least one of two more games with California, if it came to that.  Then, they would go on to the World Series and play against the top team from the "World" bracket, which I think will either be Mexico or Japan.

I love baseball, but I have never, ever gotten into the Little League World Series before.  It is neat to get behind the 'local' team, however.  It seems like in Montana, people are always excited to cheer for the home team, and with such a small state (Montana is the second-lowest population density state, after Wyoming), chances are we have a connection to this team in one way or another.

I have also heard commentators on sports radio discuss that ratings for the LLWS might be up because Major League baseball does not have as many compelling stories this year as it has in past years.   Again, I have always loved Major League Baseball, but there is something so compelling about watching these kids play.  If you get a chance, turn on ESPN on Saturday afternoon and watch Montana take on California in the re-match for all the marbles and see for yourself. It's exciting, and it's infectious!