From the Osage, With Love

Some places become part of you before you ever realize you’re being shaped by them.

Mine is a stretch of prairie in Osage County, Oklahoma, where the grass grows high, the cattle know their way home, and the horizon has always seemed a little bigger than anywhere else. It’s where I learned that a good life can be measured in early mornings, cracked hands, sweaty horses, long days, and the people who keep showing up when the work needs to be done.

Our family has called this piece of Oklahoma home since 1896.

The ranch sits in Frankfort, a small Oklahoma town founded by my great-great-grandfather, Frank Murphy. For more than a century, the Murphy family has worked this land, raised cattle, weathered droughts and hard years, celebrated good ones, and passed down the stories that make a place more than just a piece of ground. The Murphy name is written into the history of Frankfort, but more importantly, it is woven into the land, the work, and the generations who have called it home.

And then there is Osage County. A place of wide-open prairie, deep history, working ranches, small towns, and people who have learned to make a living from a landscape that can be both generous and unforgiving. It is also home to the Osage people, my people. Being Osage is another thread woven into my connection to this place… a connection that goes beyond the ranch, beyond the family name, and beyond any one generation. Osage County has shaped the way I see the world, and much of what I write begins here.

There is a quote I have always loved: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” I think about it when I think about the women who came before me… the women who raised families, worked cattle, held communities together, endured hard years, and refused to be anything less than themselves. They were tough, stubborn, independent, sometimes unruly, and probably more than a little wild. They knew hard work and how to have a good time when the work was over. I like to think some of that made its way down to me.

There are the early mornings, the long days, and the hard seasons. But there are also Friday nights that turn into Saturday mornings, cold drinks after a branding, music coming from somebody’s tack room, laughter around a kitchen table, and stories that somehow get better every time they’re told. There is a certain kind of wildness that comes with growing up here.The kind that makes you stay out too late, say yes to the adventure, and understand that some of the best memories are the ones nobody planned.

The prairie itself has its own story. Big bluestem rises from the ground every year, surviving drought, fire, grazing, wind, and whatever else the Oklahoma sky decides to hand it. There is something about that grass that feels like the people who live among it: resilient, sometimes weathered, occasionally stubborn, but always growing back.

That is where Murphy Bluestem comes from.

This is a place for stories about the West as I know it… not the polished version, but the real one. The beauty and the heartbreak. The cattle and the cowboys. The women who keep ranches running. The families, the land, the losses, the laughter, the wild nights, the quiet mornings, and the complicated parts of loving a life that asks a lot from you.

I write because rural life is full of stories that deserve more than a passing conversation at the kitchen table. Some are funny. Some are hard. Some are wild. Some are almost forgotten. And some are the kind you carry with you for the rest of your life.

My hope is to write them honestly.

I’m a writer, a ranch girl, a fashionista, a social butterfly, a lover of espresso martinis, an ag-vocate, and lifelong student of the places and people that made me who I am. My work is rooted in agriculture and the American West, but it has never been only about cattle or grass. It is about people. It is about belonging to a place. It is about working hard, playing hard, getting a little wild, and finding something worth celebrating in between. It is about what we inherit, what we lose, and what we choose to carry forward.

So, welcome to Murphy Bluestem.

It started in 1896, with a family name, a little town in Osage County, and a ranch surrounded by big bluestem.

The rest of the story is still being written.