Keeping Kith: Field Notes from the Prairie Podcast
by Eliza Blue
A weekly field-recording practice rooted in land, listening, and belonging. Each episode is recorded outside — with the flock, in the barn, or walking the prairie — and left mostly as it is. Wind, birds, long pauses, sheep noises…all of it stays. A way of keeping company with one another and with the land. 🌾🌾🌾 elizablue.substack.com
Episodes
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Keeping Kith with Margaret
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…
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Keeping Kith with Uncertainty
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…
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Keeping Kith with the Humans
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...
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Keeping Kith with chicks and calves and sheep
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…
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Keeping Kith with Pine Trees
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...
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Keeping Kith with Storms
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...
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Keeping Kith on the Road!
Short podcast and short missive this week! Keeping Kith on the road! Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe
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Keeping Kith with Cottonwoods
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…
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Keeping Kith with a Midwinter Thaw
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...
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Keeping Kith with Cold
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...
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Keeping Kith with Horses
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...
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Keeping Kith
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…
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Flickering lights...
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…
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The Wonder Eye
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…
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Grass Widow + Camper + Theater Co
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…
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A Blessing
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…
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Why It's Getting Harder to Post to Social Media...
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...
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The GRASS WIDOW 2025!
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...
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Sometimes Dreams...
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...
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10 years on the Prairie
Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe
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Audio Postcard from the Stillness
Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe
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Listening to Birds
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...
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A Season of Drought
A missive from a drier year… Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe
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June's 'Our Little Pasture' podcast
Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe
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Lambing on the Ranch
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...
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April on the ranch
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Anxiety in the Age of COVID
I recorded this as part of my "Postcards from the Prairie" series. Get full access to Our Little Pasture at elizablue.substack.com/subscribe
About this show
A weekly field-recording practice rooted in land, listening, and belonging. Each episode is recorded outside — with the flock, in the barn, or walking the prairie — and left mostly as it is. Wind, birds, long pauses, sheep noises…all of it stays. A way of keeping company with one another and with the land. 🌾🌾🌾
elizablue.substack.com
Hosted by
Eliza Blue
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