Erica Louder

I didn’t marry a farmer, but I am married to one now. There is a difference, if ever so slight. When he chose to purchase that first cow, all I could do was shake my head and laugh. I knew he had some ambition to farm life, but I did not realize the depth of that ambition.

If someone were to ask what kind of farm I live on, after maybe a moment’s hesitation, I would have to answer a mud farm. I live on a mud farm.

What is the difference between a farmer and a rancher? The answer may seem obvious – the farmer raises crops, and the rancher raises cattle. But here in southern Idaho, the line separating the two is pretty blurry.

Despite all my pretenses to the opposite, I wasn’t a real “farm kid” growing up. My parents brought home the bacon, but it didn’t come from the farm. I never milked a cow, but my brother told me to not have a cow when he got my goat. As a kid, I didn’t feed chickens, but I was prone to counting my eggs before they hatched and rarely had my ducks in a row. And, if you asked my mom, my room was always a pigsty.

We have a yearling heifer that always finds the hole in the fence. As a calf, she would snuggle next to the fence for a sunny nap and wake up on the other side. She would bellow and holler at her mama, who would in turn bellow and holler at us.

I live on a dirt road that comes to a dead end at our house. It’s about a third of a mile off the highway. Directly to the west of where our road and the highway junction meet is a sugar beet dump operated by the regional sugar beet cooperative.