Guest Blog

For many, springtime marks the start of the lawn care season. When I was a youngster, the advent of grass meant that it was time to step into the crucial role of cow turner.

By the time you receive this issue, hay season will be just around the corner or it may already be underway in your part of the country. It’s hard to believe it’s that time of year again.

In my quest for accuracy in Western storytelling, I feel it is necessary to correct one of the myths constantly foisted upon the viewing and reading public. For the record, farm animals are never grateful.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful little valley called Pleasant Valley. Pristine streams ran down from wooded hillsides. Wild game was abundant. Fish flourished. The peasants tilled their farms and irrigated them with mountain water. The livestock grazed the grassy meadows. It was a contented community, though lacking in material wealth.

For as long as there have been farmers there have been farm wives. And today, we are not just farm wives; many of us are farmers in our own right. In an occupation where work, family and lifestyle are so impossibly intermingled, a female farmer faces a unique set of challenges.

Long before diesel engines were the primary power source for farm tractors, most early tractors were powered by gasoline or kerosene.