WIFE | MOM | BOSS / blog

Not Fancy. Super Tired. Always Hungry. But Lovely AF


A blog about life as a ranch wife, being a mother of three, and the owner of The Rollin J Boutique. 

Our big guy...The spotted steer.  Pretty much just a hay burner.  But when Lindsay Schmidt Photography comes around, he's the star of the show!  Thank you to my lovely friend for capturing so many stunning images of our beloved critters.

So here we are well into 2017... my last post was before Christmas which is quite appropriate beings that it takes me exactly this long to recover from the Holidays. Like seriously THAT was a whirlwind! The store was SO busy and we were certain we would see a slow down after Christmas, but much to our surprise, we haven't had a second to let the dust settle. Y'all have kept us going and going...and going and we couldn't be more blessed. So here's to you, our super loyal customers, our friends, and our family here at The Rollin J.

January went fast, like actually, where the hell did January go??? I'm still trying to figure that out. Now it's past mid February and you know what that means...or maybe you don't lol. It's calving season here at Rollin J Ranch. It is the most brutal, stressful, most exciting, and fulfilling time of being in the cattle ranching business. Me and calving season, yeah, we have a love hate relationship. My husband goes from sun up to sundown, with a few late night checks in between. Some checks are easy peasy, others, not so much. We have one rule...if he's doing anything "dangerous" to call me before he does it so I know to come looking for him when he doesn't come back in a timely manner. You never know if he got kicked in the head or ran over by some crazy mama cow. Just one super simple rule.

 However, if you know cowboys at all, you can probably figure that he has never to this day EVER given me that heads up call (Insert hand slap to the forehead).

It's his jam and he's pretty damn good at.  That still doesn't mean I don't worry about him while he's out there.  I only get called to order on very rare occasions these days. Like blizzards, mean heifers, and to "act like a fence" or "distract her so I can snag the calf" You see, having three very small children has put a damper on my calving assistance capabilities. I used to be pretty HANDY to have around, but right now I'm in total mom mode so Matt has to do a lot of the dirty work by himself.  But I try to help whenever I can. Someday the entire tribe will be out there helping daddy...he'll have so much "help" he won't know what to do with himself.

One night I got the call at 2:00am to "hold the spotlight". Liiiiiiiike, okay, what are we spotlighting? This sounds illegal...lets do it!  "Just a small pack of coyotes taunting a cow and her new baby calf" Well  heck yes, count me in!  So we propped the baby monitor up in the window and out we went. Just some normal "neglect your children for the sake of your animals" action going on here. Just kidding, we left a dog in the house to watch over things....and I could toooootally see the monitor from the calving pasture. So it's all good and everyone except that one pesky coyote ended up just fine.

The brunt of our operation... Cow/Calf commercial beef.  Mostly all black balancer beef cattle. Yes black lives matter, but we really enjoy our longhorn herd, mostly because they are so dang photogenic.

Bottom line, we love our critters.  We live for this lifestyle and love calving season even if it's a little stressful at times. We take pride in our herd and the fact that their genetics are top notch. Nothing has come easy for us and unlike the majority of cattle ranches, not a dime or acre of ours was inherited. It's how my husband was raised. His grandpa worked hard for everything he has, which then led to his dad having to work equally as hard to build his own operation.  So here we are three generations of self built, salt of the earth, hard working cattlemen and farmers.  It was inevitable that my husband wasn't going to stand around and wait for hand outs...he was going to build his dreams on his own and that he did!  

The hired hands.  Doing everything on horseback is the only way to go. It keeps the cattle calm and the cowboy's heart happy. 

He built everything we have from the ground up all by himself (with me cheering him on...98% of time;)) the other 2% of the time I was probably stomping off saying eff this, eff that, I'm effing over this. You want a fence?!? You build a fence!!! I'm done being your effing fence. <----See, it gets real when a husband and wife work cattle together. It isn't always sunshine and rainbows out here on the prairie.

When you're running on little sleep, high stress, and a crap ton of responsibilities, let's just say emotions tend to run a little high at times. But we love it! and we sure as heck wouldn't trade this lifestyle for the world!

 But best of all, our kids love it and we hope and pray that some day they will want to be right where we are doing the same thing...
...working hard for their dreams and doing what they love weather it be ranching, retail, anything just LOVE what you do and be passionate about work and life in general!
 It is definitely not a FANCY way to make a livin' (although we like to pretend like it is at times... my girls & I that is...not Buster and Matt)
We always seem to be TIRED and it never fails, someone or something is always HUNGRY.
But behind all the mud and the muck (aka cowshit and afterbirth) it truly is a LOVELY way to raise a family. 
LOVEY AF to be exact.
Doing what we love and seeing our children fall in love with this life more and more each day.
So here's to raising kids and critters and loving every second of it! 
Hope you enjoy and thank you so much for reading. Stay LOVELY! 
Shelly Jo
All T-shirts are available for purchase under the Tops section of our website.  We strongly suggest buying them all...;)