Thanks to Jeff Foxworthy we all know how to tell if we’re a redneck. But for those of you who wake up every morning, wondering how to tell if you’re a rancher — which by the way is completely different from being a redneck — here are a set of guidelines.
You know you’re a rancher when:
• You wear your Carhartt overalls to go skiing
• You replace Band-Aids in your first aid kit with baling twine
• You don’t have to go to Spain to see a bull fight
• Your barn looks nicer than your house
• Your bathroom has become an intensive care facility for calves or lambs
• You pay $300 for a new stock dog and he always stands in the gate you are trying to push the cattle through
• You think nothing of getting dressed up for dinner and taking the flatbed truck, which is always loaded with hay and covered in cow poop
• You realize cow poop has become a familiar fragrance and not all that unpleasant
• You justify the yellow stains on your Levi’s by saying it just gives them that worn look — the look people are paying big bucks for and you get it for free
• You’ve come to view hay itch as a minor side effect to the sport of feeding livestock and something that all major athletes get in some form or another
• You feel sorry for people who have to sit in nice warm offices sipping hot coffee while you’re out in the snow when it’s 10 degrees below zero and get to breathe in all of that fresh frosty air
• Going to town for supplies and ditch meetings have become your “social activities”
• You start talking to the cow’s stomachs to try and influence the unborn calves to come out during the day instead of at 2 a.m. and are considering writing a book on cow psychology.
• You sell your calves and two days later the price goes up 40 cents a pound.
• Your shovel has become your constant companion and you’ve named your four-wheeler “Big Red.”
• You are down to three horses, one is 29 years old, one is crippled and the 8-year-old that you purchased as a yearling, you haven’t had time to break yet
• Your idea of golf is flipping cow pies out of the yard with a stick
• Your pile of baling twine is the tallest structure on your property and the neighbors are complaining that it’s blocking their view
• Your personal vehicles were all made before 1982 and the air conditioning consists of rolling down the windows and going 70 mph, but your brand new tractor has “climate control”
• You watch Thursday night Smack Down wrestling to learn new ways to throw a calf
• You refer to your home office as a command post during irrigation season and when you go out to irrigate the pastures you are on a water recon mission. You won’t allow other ranchers into your office during this time as you have secret charts and maps on your walls of your watering strategies and you hold family briefings on what to tell the neighbors if they should ask about water.
• You find yourself practicing your Star Wars light saber skills with a hotshot in the barnyard.
• Your idea of getting dressed up to go to town in the summer months is to turn down the tops of your hip-high irrigation boots
• You can’t ever find your wallet or your car keys, but you know exactly where your shovel is at all times
• You call all of your cows by name, most of which are not suitable to repeat in public
• You can recite all of your neighbors’ water rights within a 50-mile radius, but can’t remember your spouse’s birthday or your own
• You take your family on an outing and you yell to your spouse to “round up the kids and head them out”
• For your wedding anniversary you buy your spouse a new section of sprinkler line every year
• You have at least one stock dog riding in the back of your pickup at all times, whether it can actually work cattle is not a priority as long as it looks good in your truck
• You have considered calling the Olympic committee to complain that they don’t include the 200 Meter Calf Chase, the Bull Dodge N’ Dart or the Fence Hurdles in their Summer Games
• You dutifully go to church three times a year, Easter, Christmas and at the beginning of irrigation season to pray for rain
• You know you’re a rancher when duct tape and baling twine have become the only items in your toolbox
• And finally, you know you are a rancher if at the end of the year, when you add up all of your expenses and subtract them from your profits, you end up with nothing. Then you can be sure absolutely sure you’re a rancher.
Good one.