Category: Ranch Life

Handsome rancher in his late forties with dark brown hair, a well-groomed short beard, gray-green eyes and a cowboy hat standing in golden wheat hills near Pendleton Oregon at golden hour

Every Thursday the Most Eligible Rancher in Pendleton Drove 90 Miles Out of Town and Came Back With Glitter in His Beard. The Whole County Wanted to Know Why. I Was That Rancher

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In a town of seventeen thousand people, a single rancher can’t sneeze without three women bringing soup. So when I started disappearing every Thursday afternoon and coming home at midnight with glitter in my beard, Pendleton, Oregon, lost its mind. There were theories. A secret wife. A cult. Witness protection. The truth was worse. Much, much worse.

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Handsome horse trainer in his early fifties with short silver hair, a trimmed silver beard and steel blue eyes standing in a sunlit barn aisle in Weatherford Texas with a sorrel quarter horse at golden hour

At 51, I Had a Stroke in My Own Barn and Woke Up Unable to Lift My Left Arm. My Doctor Said I’d Never Ride Again. Nine Months Later, I Entered the Biggest Ranch Horse Show in Texas

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I’ve trained cutting horses and ranch horses in Weatherford, Texas, for thirty years. One morning in January, I was saddling a colt when the left side of my body stopped listening. A stroke. My insurance company limited my physical therapy to twenty sessions. My doctor said riding was out of the question. My horse didn’t agree.

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Handsome bachelor farmer in his mid forties with tousled light brown hair, a short beard and blue eyes holding a big orange pumpkin in a pumpkin field in Illinois at golden hour, flannel shirt with sleeves rolled up

A TV Station Interviewed Me About My Pumpkin Farm for 40 Seconds. By Morning, 9 Million People Had Watched It, and 600 Women Were Lined Up at My Gate

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Every October, a local news crew comes out to my family’s pumpkin farm in central Illinois to film the harvest. Forty seconds of B-roll, a quick question, done. This year, the reporter asked me what makes a perfect pumpkin, I said one sentence, and by breakfast the next morning, the internet had decided I was “the hottest farmer in America.”

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Handsome rancher in his late forties with dark blond hair, light stubble and blue eyes standing in tallgrass prairie hills of the Kansas Flint Hills at golden hour, leaning on a fence post

I Hired a Quiet Syrian Man to Fix Fences on My Kansas Ranch. When a Bull Crushed Me Against a Gate, I Found Out He’d Been the Best Surgeon in Aleppo

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He showed up at my ranch in the Flint Hills in a borrowed truck, asking for any kind of work. He barely spoke. He fixed fences better than anyone I’d ever hired. I never asked about his past, and he never offered it. Then, on the worst day of my life, lying in the dirt with a broken chest, I heard him say three words that changed everything: “I am a surgeon.”

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