Keeping Kith: Field Notes from the Prairie Podcast

Short episode and short show notes this week. I’m a little underwater with finishing projects, travel, and now puppy wrangling! But I do want to include links to the two places/orgs I mention toward the end: https://knollfarm.org/ and https://www.theinterwoveninstitute.org/ Also, if you are looking for a book to read this summer, consider Helen Whybrow ’s memoir The Salt Stones (she’s the owner/op...

UUUUFFFFFFFFFFF!!!! This week has been hard. Lambing, jet lag, trying to get the plants in the ground, planning for and setting up the Keeping Kith festival this weekend…I can’t believe how physically exhausted I am. And in the midst of it all, the emotional work of lambing, which always has highs and lows—the portal between birth and death is open wide during these times on the ranch, and the int...

Hello! I just got back from the most wonderful trip! I won’t say much here as I go into a lot of detail during the episode…but you can click here for more information about —-> MOTH (which I also talk about) for those interested. Meanwhile, when I left, it felt like early spring, and now it feels like midsummer! The kids are done with school, too, so we are tasting the freedom of long, hot afterno...

The past few weeks have been filled with every emotion I’ve ever felt: Joy, gratitude, despair, utter exhaustion, more despair, more joy. It’s been the best of times, the worst of times, and every other time all at once. Human-ing has never felt more challenging or more beautifully fragile, and yet I somehow feel luckier than ever to be here now, sharing the planet with you and everyone else. SO t...

Another windy recording! If you’ve been following along, you know wind noise has been the ongoing challenge of making these field recordings. And yes, there are a lot of windy days here on the short grass prairie, but the 100% overlap between recording days and windy days is starting to seem like more than a coincidence. So I gave the wind a chance to have its say…which also meant capturing one of...

It’s a big week here! We’ve just had a blizzard and by the end of the week it is forecasted to be 80 degrees. Even those of us who are used to the extremes of a western Dakota spring have to marvel at the scope of wild weather we are experiencing. Honestly, keeping kith has never felt more important to me, which is why I’m very thankful this week also brings two different opportunities to gather....

Short podcast and short missive this week! Keeping Kith on the road! Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

My most trusted tree friends…the hush hush trees… so magical! If you’d like to read an essay about these very special trees, you can find one here . In other, not-so-surprising news, I have not-quite-intentionally given up social media for the time being. But I am determined that we stay connected! So, I’ll keep posting here, but we are also planning in-person events this summer, including the Kee...

This morning, my husband and I were talking about how, despite the fact that time does seem to be going faster and faster the older we get, this January was 10 full years long. “I can’t even remember Christmas,” my daughter piped from the back seat. Technically, we are halfway through winter, but considering that winter storms often arrive here on the western plains well into April and even May, w...

Much of the US is bracing for a massive winter storm, and the rest is bracing for more deep cold. Last week’s high winds have continued on and off for us as well. The weather feels like a metaphor for the kind of disruptions and hardships reflected in all manner of news, near and far. Putting one foot carefully in front of the other, trudging across the ice and snow, barely able to bend over becau...

My second recording session for Keeping Kith proved even more dramatic than the first. Part of what excited me about making these recordings was that I would have no idea who or what would join me, but I knew it would be interesting. In my experience, inviting kith into conversation is never a boring endeavor. Horses, VERY high winds, sudden snow, and what a crazy time it is to be human-ing are al...

I’ve been thinking a lot about listening. If you’ve been with me through Little Pasture on the Prairie or Our Little Pasture , you already know this work has never really been about me alone. It’s been about weather and seasons, about sheep and grass, about the way a place shapes a life if you stay long enough to notice. This new project grows directly out of that practice, but it shifts the cente...

I uploaded this video last week to social media. It was one of those awesome moments when I suddenly felt a lot of clarity around the role technology could play in our lives if we collectively decide to make it so. The self- and community-discipline required to make it a tool of connection instead of polarization is definitely a topic worth discussing anyway. It’s so easy to vilify technology or l...

I spent a hour sitting on a hillside in the rain this morning. As regular readers know, we brought home some “milking sheep'“ last summer, so while most of the flock had their babies in the spring, I kept two ewes separate so they could lamb in the fall and be milked through the winter. This week, one of those ewes, Millie, had a set of twins. The other, Godiva, looks ready to have her own babies...

I’ve been hinting about campers for a while…and here’s why: I’ve been working for the last few months to start a traveling theater company!! I’m including our new mission statement below. (As well as our logo, which I LOVE.) I’m also posting an essay I wrote in February, which offers a tiny bit of our origin story. Friends, I am not being hyperbolic when I say this is the most excited I’ve ever be...

I’ve always found the concept of ‘Earth Day’ a bit odd. Like so many modern American rituals, Earth Day highlights the way our ‘celebrations’ have become more about anxiety than joy, more about forgetting than remembering. I could put it a different way by asking the question: How is every day not Earth Day? How is every day not a celebration of this amazing place we call home? How is praise for t...

I recorded this the other day to put up on social media, fully realizing the irony of posting about my frustrations with posting. And then I realized there was no way the algorithm was going to show it to anybody, so I just posted it here instead. If you are reading this now, you already found my substack and you don’t need to watch the whole video, though there’s a pretty good explanation at the...

I spent last weekend at the Festival of the Book in Brookings, SD. Got to meet some amazing authors, including Trent Preszler, whose book Little and Often was the ‘One Book South Dakota 2024’ for good reason. He’s also a very cool guy, and watching him build boats on Instagram is my new favorite relaxation technique. BUT the highlight by far was getting to perform selections from our ‘folk-opera-i...

This a podcast from 2021, but how fun that many of the dreams I describe here are now coming true…I still believe (as I describe in the podcast) that what we leave undone is as important as what we do, but I also am heartened by the things that get done s l o w l y, coming to fruition with their own sweet timing. Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

For my weekly print column, “Little Pasture on the Prairie,” I wrote about my friend and fellow musician, the late Kevin Locke. The column is below. Above you will find audio I describe in the column of Kevin playing a song on my porch from May 2022… I am sitting on the front porch of my tiny writing shack. The wind is blowing hard today, but still holds so much sweetness. You can tell it’s autumn...

A missive from a drier year… Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe

I spent the week tending ewes and lambs and working on final mixes for the Grass Widow EP. If that sounds heavenly, it has been! This year, lambing is going well, BUT that’s certainly not always the case. For the May edition of the ‘Our Little Pasture’ podcast, I share a missive from 2020 when things did NOT got so well … Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe