Ten Things to Love About Ranch Life

March 13, 2017 by ~The South Dakota Cowgirl~ Leave a Comment

1. You can call your neighbors anytime, rain or shine, or at 4am in the morning. Whether you need help with a cesarean on a heifer, OR you’ve buried your tractor and pickup in the mud or a snowbank, or you need some support with a wiley colt, someone will come help you! It doesn’t really matter what it is, folks around here will support you and help you out of a bind.

2. If you call for propane and you’re out and the driver knows it, they’ll likely light the pilot on your hot water heater for you if you’re not home when they come fill up the tank.

3. No one locks their doors – which means goodie baskets sometimes just show up on your kitchen counter or in your porch when you get home.

4. Neighbors will drop by with a 12 pack of bud-light and visit occasionally. Then you invite them to stay for supper. Because, well, they’re your neighbor and it’s the neighborly thing to do.

5. Friends and neighbors, as mentioned above, will stop in to visit, unannounced, and no one will say anything about the state of your almost always messy kitchen table. Come during calving and it may be covered in ear tags. Come during tax season and there’ll be papers everywhere. Come the day I went to the mailbox to get the mail for the first time in a week, and, well, you get the idea!

6. Need to borrow a trailer or piece of equipment? Chances are it may just “show” up, or you may have to go get it, but if your neighbor isn’t using it, you’ll likely get to borrow it.

7. You wake up every morning and get to do something you love!

8. Baby animals, duh.

9. There is no pressure or need to feel like you’ve got to keep up with Joneses’. The rat race really doesn’t exist out here. Can I get an “amen”?

10. Branding season!

Do you have anything you’d add to this list? Do you love ranch life as much as me?

Happy trails!

About ~The South Dakota Cowgirl~

Jenn Zeller is the creative mind and boss lady behind The South Dakota Cowgirl. She is an aspiring horsewoman, photographer, brilliant social media strategist and lover of all things western.

After a brief career in the investment world to support her horse habit (and satisfy her mother, who told her she had to have a “real” job after graduating college), she finally took the leap and stepped away from a regular income; trading the business suit once and for all for cowgirl boots, a hat, and jeans. She has not looked back.

When Jenn first moved to The DX Ranch on the South Dakota plains, she never imagined she’d find herself behind a camera lens capturing an authentic perspective of ranching, and sharing it with others. Jenn has always been called to artistry, and uses music, writing, images, home improvement, and her first true love of horses to express her ranching passion.

Horses are the constant thread and much of her work centers around using her unique style of writing to share her horsemanship journey with others in publications such as CavvySavvy, the AQHA Ranching Blog, the West River Eagle, the family ranch website, and her own website.

Using photography to illustrate her stories has created other opportunities -- Jenn’s brand “The South Dakota Cowgirl” has grown to the level of social media “Influencer”. This notoriety has led to work with Duluth Trading Company, Budweiser, Wyoming Tourism, Vice, Circle Z Ranch and Art of the Cowgirl, to name a few. She also serves as a brand ambassador for Woodchuck USA, Arenus Equine Health, Triple Crown Feed and Just Strong fitness apparel. Her photography has been featured by Instagram, Apple, TIME Magazine, The Huffington Post, and Oprah Magazine. Jenn’s work has been published internationally, has been seen in several books and has graced the covers of several magazines.

Jenn became a social media influencer by accident when she started to explore Instagram as a way to share her life on the ranch with folks that don’t get to experience it. It’s grown into an incredible platform that she uses to empower women, create an environment for self improvement and share life on the ranch.

When she’s not working, she loves to drink coffee, play with her naughty border collie named Copper, start ranch colts, and run about the country chasing cans. Her mother still thinks she doesn’t have a “real” job.