They left the auction arena shrouding their eyes…they couldn’t stand to watch the sale of their cows, the ones they raised from calves and given family names. They didn’t want their friends and neighbors to see them cry so they got their final cattle check and left without saying goodbye.

They’d best be getting on with their lives. They weren’t getting any younger and their son didn’t want any part of the ranching life. So with ranch real estate selling for a pretty penny they decided there wasn’t gonna be a better time to sell the old ranch house. And so they moved their possessions to town in the back of their Gooseneck® trailer. When it was empty they traded it and the truck in on something more practical. The ranch pick-up wouldn’t fit in the garage of the tract home they were buying anyway. They’d left behind a few items they thought the new owners might appreciate but they were soon stacked by the road, “Free for hauling away,” the sign said. Only one item was broken in the move to town, an antique vase, like the ranch, handed down from generation to generation.

Having lived their entire lives under cowboy hats they didn’t have the necessary skills or the proper clothes for urban life. After all, one doesn’t wear five buckle boots and Carhartt overalls to the bank. Having said goodbye to their horses and their habits they tried to rid their lives of any record of the ranch. It was bad enough when a cattle truck would pass or a cowboy friend would call. They stopped answering the phone because they didn’t need good memories reminding them of better days.

City life took some getting used to. You couldn’t run through the house half naked because a salesman or someone peddling religion might be standing at the door. They’d never locked their door in the country and were not used to carrying a house key. So now they had to leave a window cracked and the screen off so they could crawl back in. The neighbors complained about their barking dog, but not for long. He got run over trying to go back to the only home he’d ever known.

Oh sure, town life had some pluses. If you were baking and ran out of milk a store was handy. And when you flushed your toilet it was someone else’s problem. Your well never went dry, fast food was readily available and the hospital was just a short ambulance ride away.

Pops got bored with retirement and looked for some part-time work to keep himself busy but he’d never gone to college, having always known what he would do for a living. He finally got a job delivering soda pop which meant he had to change the brand he drank. In his spare time he wandered around like a pony with its bridle off.

One day he drove out beyond the urban sprawl, past the ranchettes to the old home place. They’d traded places with an urban-bred family looking for “the simple life.” Oh really? Wait till the septic tank backed up or the road went out. Now they were living in each other’s world. Perhaps they’d make it, after all, there wasn’t a cow on the place just a llama, a non-working breed of dog and a miniature horse. Oh well, they had probably never swung their leg over the back of a real horse anyway.

No sagebrush rebels these.

Their old house had been transformed into a bed and breakfast with a coat of paint and a sign by the road. The tree house had been taken down and a cute little John Deere became the first tractor to take up permanent residence on the place. The new garden sprouted signs they knew as much about farming as a hog does about Sundays. It was planted way too early in the Spring and there were far too many mounds of zucchini.

So this is the changing landscape of the countryside, where everyone has a gardener or is one. Welcome to a world that is moving at Internet speed and doesn’t seem to care too much for the ‘family’ or the ‘farm’, where heritage, traditions and customs are reduced to being part of an irrelevant past.

But the blood, sweat and tears won’t sift from the soil that easily.