Blogs

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.

Google may have all the answers, but it doesn’t mean it always has the right answers.

I learned this lesson last summer when I asked the popular search engine to diagnose the round, red rashes on my shins that itched like a pup with fleas.

We did get loaded before we got “darked on.” By the time we made it to the Hill City, Idaho scale, we were being snowed on. After we loaded, I retrieved the pot of chili from the cab of the truck and the propane camp stove.

It was about the fourth day of the first real cold stretch of the winter – still the first week of January. It was the time of year when, each day, I counted the seconds at sundown to try to verify if the days really were indeed getting longer.

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.

“As kids, my brother and I took dynamite into the desert and blew up sagebrush.” That statement came from my grandfather in 1978.

“You did what?” Surely I hadn’t heard him right.