Fred and Barney Big Horse

23/04/2025

11/03/2025

‘The wind of heaven is that which blows between a horse’s ears…’

Barney
Art by Barbara Salvatore
(Copyright)

27/12/2024

🐴 ❄️ Dashing through the snow!
!!!
❤️💚❤️

25/07/2024

https://www.facebook.com/stories/101832286152518/UzpfSVNDOjQwNTg4Nzg1MjUwMTQ2OA==/?view_single=1&source=shared_permalink&mibextid=W9rl1R

12/07/2024

I’ll be there, with Healing Plants 🍃💚🍃 Learn what grows around us!
Taste Teas and edible plants.
🌱 🌸🌻☘️

Books, too! 📚
🐴🩵
Friday, July 12th

Come to PIONEER ADVENTURE 1887 this Friday in Chalupnik Park, Verdigre.
It's multi-generational and a chance to celebrate Verdigre's heritage.
* The Stringbeans entertain at 10.
* Activities from yesteryear are 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. scattered throughout the park in the shade: rope-making, quilting, healing plants, tomahawk-throwing, handmade soap from goat milk, a genuine Model A Ford automobile, blacksmith tools, butter churning (along with make your own butter in a jar), one-room schoolhouse (with slates and chalk), penny candy store and a GiGi-created pioneer game for winning prizes. Bring pennies for candy! Free water available.
* AND...the Verdigre Heritage Museum will be OPEN!

10/06/2024

How’s It Growin’ ?
Your Weekly Garden Connection

Barbara Salvatore will be our guest on How’s It Growin’? on Wednesday,
June 12th, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm (CST)
on KZUM.
Barbara is a practicing herbalist from Verdigre, Nebraska and offers classes in traditional plant ways. As part of their PLANT STORIES – LIFE MEDICINE series,
she and Bob Henrickson of the Nebraska Arboretum, will be talking about Lavender and Rosemary.

These beloved culinary herbs are also used medicinally, internally and externally, and are commonly found in culinary as well as bath and home products.
There are so many ways to work with these plants and enjoy their generous benefits. Hope you can listen in!

Barbara Salvatore is author and illustrator of the award-winning Big Horse Woman series; historical fiction novels, whose main characters, Big Horse Woman and Magghie, survive the challenges of their time with the aid of traditional plant medicine.

Tune in to How’s It Growin’?
on KZUM at 89.3 FM
or online at kzum.org

26/04/2024

As author/ artist, I love doing podcast interviews and readings.
One core theme throughout my book series is plant healing and seed saving.
Big Horse Woman and
Magghie keep plant medicine knowledge and seeds for all future generations.

“Plant Stories, Life Medicines” (c) is a radio show I do here in Nebraska, also available on my website. 🌿💚

www.bighorsewoman.com/events

Work your way through the seasons with the plants! 🌱

events UPCOMING RADIO SHOWS   |   PAST PODCASTS   |   PLANT CLASSES & GATHERINGS Upcoming Radio Shows 2022“PLANT STORIES, LIFE MEDICINES”© scheduled on KZUM How’s It Growin’NOVEMBER 16TH, 2022 — Winter RootsTo get us through the cold months:Jerusalem Artichoke, Dock, Dandelion, Chicor...

13/03/2024

FORAGING SPRING GREENS and Morel Mushrooms~
How’s It Growing ~ ‘Plant Stories, Life Medicines’

In the warming days (a lot warmer this year!) the earth transforms from brown and grey to GREEN, and the first flowers spring up. Now is the time to pinch vitamin and antioxidant-rich Spring Greens to add to your foods, make highly nutritious salads, drinks, and soups.
Plantain, Nettles, Dandelion, Chickweed, Amaranth-Pigweed, Lamb’s Quarters, Chicory, Violets, Clovers, Raspberry leaves, Ground Ivy, Purple Dead Nettle, Henbit, Oxeye Daisy, Yarrow, Yellow Dock, Wood sorrel, Yellow sorrel, Burdock, Wild garlic, Wild Onions, Wild chives, Garlic Mustard, Cresses, Mustards, Day Lily shoots, Milkweed shoots, Cattail shoots, Mallows, wild Asparagus,
and it’s almost TIME… for precious and much-loved Morels!

Join Bob Henrickson and Barbara Salvatore in a free-wheeling,
free-roaming, plant talk that will inspire you to get out there
and find your green friends!

Print by Lizzie Harper, Artist.

(You can see more of her work, purchase her charts on her website.
LINK in comments)

23/02/2024

BIG HORSE WOMAN
ShoNge ToNga Wa’u
Barbara Salvatore (copyright) 2014

“Certain trees, certain animals, certain birds, certain clouds,
are yours to keep-
those you are born by.
The Willow, the Horse, the Ears-Up dog,
are my kind…
I keep the ermine at my waist,
morning rain, at my fingertips.
Willow talks to me soothing.
There is no sadder tree, no better trunk, to cry on.
Her roots deep in sandy water,
she drinks up tears, and they flow through her.
So it always was with me,
Thi’xe Ni Win...
Water Willow.
I thought myself one of them,
being so named Willow from birth.
And I was the Willow for my people.
If I had not been born there, then,
under that tree, those stars –
only spirit knows -
I would never have been able to bend
to the times that were coming
So I was - born under a twin red willow tree
on the west bank of the NiNshude -
The sky was full of shooting stars,
showering in every direction, so they say.
Yes, I saw them-
The changing stars that saw my way to earth.
I would say that birth
is very much like seeing stars…
It was for me.
I landed among the people
at the Beginning of cold weather,
on a cold, snow covered night.
Thi’xe Ni Win...
They named me.
Water Willow
I was called.
You would have thought they’d name me for the stars…
But the stars are magic.
Sacred. X’ube.
They…the stars …
our ancestors, our babies, our unborn.
No. Grandmother gave me the name of the Tree.
The tree, gave me its ears and voice.”

03/02/2024

My first fan and cheerleader!
Mom was a single mom with three kids when she signed me up for drawing classes when I was 8, but the Art teacher told her to save her money, because all I would draw were princesses and horses.
He tried to teach me perspective by drawing castles.
But he said I wasn’t ready for class.
(He did let me sell my hand-painted rocks in front of his Art Shop during Art Festivals!)

When our Public School cut all Art classes from the budget in my junior year,
My Mom helped me find a private school that gave me a full scholarship. At my new Highschool, I had all kinds of creative opportunities, and built an Art portfolio and report card that got me a full scholarship to ART SCHOOL in New York CITY!

And now, this past year, Mom bought my First Two Books,
and told all her friends, who bought my books.
She helped me organize my Author Event at our hometown library, where she took us every week as kids, to get armloads of books.
My Mom is the first person in the whole world who believed in me.

And now, MOM is the first person in the WHOLE WORLD
to read all FOUR of my novels –
the whole BIG HORSE WOMAN series!
This summer, I finished the manuscripts for Books 3 and 4,
and sent her digital copies.

My Mom does NOT use the computer, and everything is sent back and forth to dad, and he shows her how to open them.
Mom sat at the computer for days
(which she NEVER does)
because she COULD NOT STOP READING!

‘How do come up with these stories?!?
These characters are such real people!
How do you do it, honey?!’

My Mom wrote (she loves writing letters and cards)
the VERY FIRST READER REVIEW for the WHOLE story.

She is the only one in the whole world who knows how it ends.

And this is what she said:

“Barbara is a gifted storyteller whose main characters are two strong, resourceful, and independent women. While BIG HORSE WOMAN and MAGGHIE each embark on separate journeys, they eventually meet and form a relationship based on sharing their knowledge and respect for plants, the earth, and animals.
Through their sharing, they learn each other's language and cultures, and together develop ways to ensure their survival.
As they each grow through teaching each other, the reader also learns, feels a sense of time and place, and understands their struggles and challenges.

Barbara knows the characters intimately, and it enables the reader to also know who they are, and to care about what happens to them. Her rich imagination, knowledge of plants, her artwork, and poetry are an integral part of this memorable series that I didn't want to end.”

THANKS MOM!
❤️❤️❤️❤️
I LOVE YOU!
xoxoxxo

16/01/2024

THE TRAIL to Niobrara
BOOK 3 📚
in the Series,
is in the running!
Yeeeha!
🐎🐎🐎
The 2023 Laramie Book Awards -
Semi-Finalists
The Laramie Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the Americana and Westerns fiction genre. The Laramie Book Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs).
Chanticleer Book Reviews is looking for the best books featuring Americana themes, First Nation stories, early North American History, cowboys & cowgirls in the Wild West, pioneering, and Civil War, and we will put them to the test and choose the best among them.
These titles have moved forward in the judging rounds from the 2023 Laramie Americana Short List to the 2023 Laramie Book Awards SEMI-FINALISTS. These titles are in the running for the FINALISTS of the 2023 Laramie Book Awards novel competition for Americana Fiction! Join us in cheering on the authors and their works!
Barbara Salvatore –
THE TRAIL to Niobrara
📚

https://www.chantireviews.com/2024/01/14/the-2023-laramie-book-awards-semi-finalists-for-americana-fiction/?fbclid=IwAR3cTafpJoWRhjlblmtAZ4tmXnjcMSnSKsa39PN7HaJhRydtxjrSzVhWTAw

The Laramie Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the Americana and Westerns fiction genre. The Laramie Book Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs). Chanticleer Book Reviews is looking for the

05/01/2024

BLACK C**T DREAMING

Woke to wispy memories
in a pasture with a group of horse people.
Them, circled round in a horseshoe shape in front of me.
Behind, horses grazing, some close.
And then, a long-legged black c**t walks up behind me,
and I see the people smiling
before I feel the breath of the c**t’s nostrils,
feel the fuzz of his chin,
as his head pokes over my shoulder,
sniffing my salty ear, licking it, tickling it.
Then, pressing his cheek into my neck.
Then, resting his jaw on my shoulder.
Pressing his chin into the raised flat palm of my hand.
Leaning his head into mine
pressing me into a head hug.
The group watches, and I stop talking,
but to the horse, to whom I soft whisper
love, praise, admiration.
He is a baby horse,
but old spirit lives in him,
and I feel instant familiarity,
saying ‘You remind me of my Barney…’
to which he wrinkles his eyebrows
snorts in my ear.
‘Of course, I do,’ he answers…
alive again, here in your dreams to tell,
‘Get back to writing…
Write all about me.’
And the flood begins,
of all the memories
of being with him,
always like he was talking.
Like all we had to do was look at each other,
feel each other. Communicate.
I want to cry, for missing that feeling.
For missing him.
For walking through the barn door,
like a portal,
to my mind-talking horse.

The people are whispering now
about some kind of horse magic I must possess.
And I blush, thinking ‘How is it mine?
How is it not everyone
has horses leaning into them?’
My heart beats strong like a drum
just thinking of them.

Barbara Salvatore © 1.4.2024