My husband grew up on a dairy farm and milked twice a day every day for years. \u00a0So, I think we all can agree that he can call himself a farmer. \u00a0I wonder sometimes if and when I get to say that I\u2019m a farmer or a rancher. \u00a0Is it a certain number of experiences or more the kind of experiences? \u00a0Or is when I log an exact number of hours spent doing what you think of when you think about farming and ranching? \u00a0Is it when I weep over the loss of a calf at birth? \u00a0Is it when I milk a goat twice a day, not just once, but for months? \u00a0Is it when I spend hours with a new mama goat so she lets her newborn babies latch on to her sore teats? \u00a0Is it when I unload fifty bales of hay or carry thirty bags of feed? \u00a0Is it when I know the exact cuts I want the butcher to do? \u00a0What about when I can back up a trailer into a narrow space (it\u2019s harder than you think!)? \u00a0How many main and side dishes do I need to make from our food raised in our garden and in our pastures? \u00a0How many muck boots do I need to wear out before I can say I farm or I ranch (I think I\u2019m on my sixth pair)? \u00a0Or is it simply enough that I\u2019ve daily cared for horses, cows, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, dogs, and cats for several years now? \u00a0Yesterday, I separated a single sheep from our flock, which isn\u2019t an easy feat on your own. \u00a0I could\u2019ve used a border collie who knows how to herd\u2026hint, hint (that\u2019s a hidden message to my husband who\u2019s still reading his how to train herding dogs book). \u00a0I\u00a0then loaded the lone sheep onto our trailer without a hitch. \u00a0I knew my husband left for work not thinking I could do it. \u00a0So, I proudly texted before I started out driving our farm truck and trailer to meet up with him, \u201cWho\u2019s the farmer\u2019s wife now?\u201d \u00a0But maybe I could\u2019ve left out \u201cwife?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My husband grew up on a dairy farm and milked twice a day every day for years. \u00a0So, I think we all can agree that he can call himself a farmer. \u00a0I wonder sometimes if and when I get to say that I\u2019m a farmer or a rancher. \u00a0Is it a certain number of experiences […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1111"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions\/1117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}