You Know You're in Idaho When…

This is a repeat post originally posted at my blogger blog. But since my blogger blog met an early demise, I didn’t want to lose “my best” posts so I will repost some of them every now and then. Sorry if you’ve already read this one. I’ll post something new tomorrow.

So, a little background. I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Syracuse New York, and along the Long Island Sound in a little town called Madison, Connecticut (hence our daughter’s name). I can count on one hand the number of times I went camping. I’ve never shot a gun or ridden a tractor or ridden a horse (unless you count the time we rented horses at The Homestead and rode along the golf course and back). Ralf grew up in Vienna, Austria and Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He attended high school in the same summer coastal town in Connecticut as me. He was more likely to wrangle big deadly snakes in Brazil than cows. (You do “wrangle” cows, right?) After getting married we lived in the East Bay area of California for 10 years in nice homes with smallish well-manicured yards. Our idea of a big yard at that time was when we upgraded from .16 of and acre to .25 of an acre. We have a push mower and a few hand tools. We know how to mow and blow and how to trim the rosemary bushes. Before coming to Idaho, we thought we owned some pretty impressive pets. A couple of dogs, a frog, and a snake.

How things have changed.

The decision to move to Idaho was a long, well thought out process. We were looking for a slower lifestyle with a little more elbow room and a neighborhood full of kids. When house hunting in Idaho, we made the decision to build and went looking for lots. We found the neighborhood and the decision came down to 2 lots. The small one that would be big enough for a trampoline, swing set, and basketball court. Or the bigger one with room for all that and would also allow a pasture for horses or sheep or cows or donkeys. Well, I guess we were feeling adventurous that day because the idea of having a “mini farm” appealed to us. We went with the big lot.

So…Here we are, city people who’ve found ourselves smack dab in the middle of the ruralness of Idaho. WHAT WERE WE THINKING? Not a day goes by that something doesn’t happen or someone fails to say something that reminds me that we are quite out of our element here. My goal is to blog about these happenings on a regular basis because they’re just too good NOT to share.

So, I will start with a conversation I had with the next door neighbor yesterday as I was going door to door looking for one of my kids who was off playing with random neighborhood children.

Neighbor: “So, are you planning on fencing your pasture and getting some animals?”

Me: “Umm, Yeah, I think so. We don’t know much about animals so we’re gonna have to read up on them first, I guess.”

Neighbor: “Well you can get llamas for pretty cheap. A buddy of mine bought 2 llamas at the auction awhile back. Fifteen bucks for both. He took them home. One of them kept jumpin’ the fence though. So, they shot it and ate it.”

Me: “Really?…………..Really? ………..You haven’t by chance seen a little blond boy about this tall, answers to the name of Erik, have you?”