Gaylene, how cool! My husband would love to see that -- and so would I! He is dying to visit Montana and the more northern ranching country.
April, I'm laughing and shaking my head in disbelief all the time. My husband grew up in the area where his ranch is now, so it's a familiar world to him. He left east TX straight out of high school, so it's funny that he's back there, although we have no intention of ever moving there full time.
After 10+ years of owning a small IT business, he was eager to try something new. He gets bored after a while. He and his brother wanted to start some kind of venture together, and they started looking at land, and before you know it, they have 450 acres, clearing tree stumps (it was a timber farm), building fences, and buying cattle!
They grew up with the whole Lonesome Dove cowboy romance deeply ingrained in them, so this is kind of a dream come true for my husband, even though he never thought he'd actually get the chance to do this. It's all new to me! The closest I came to all of this as a kid was going to the state fair, and seeing the tractors my dad's company sold (he worked for John Deere for 40 years).
But it's funny, we sit on the patio of the shop house with our coffee in the morning and realize we're living the dream.