I don’t usually let strangers get under my skin, but today? I almost lost it. It all started at the feed store. I was there picking up mineral blocks and fencing wire, dressed in my usual—mud-splattered boots, faded jeans, and a long blonde braid tucked beneath an old ball cap.
The guy behind the counter gave me a once-over, like I was out of place. He asked if I needed directions to the “gift shop.” I just looked at him and said, “Nah, just picking up the same stuff I’ve been buying for the last decade.”
He laughed. Laughed! Then he had the nerve to ask if my husband would be loading the truck. I told him my husband left five years ago, and the cows couldn’t care less. I run 240 acres by myself. I fix busted water lines, deliver calves at 2 a.m., and haul hay like it’s no big deal. But, of course, people see blonde hair and a woman, and their minds go straight to “fragile.”
Even my own neighbors doubt me. Roy, the guy across the creek, is always “checking in” on my fences like I didn’t ace my ag science classes. He’ll say, “Don’t overwork yourself, sweetheart,” while I’m the one who patched his busted water line in a snowstorm last winter.
I try to brush it off, but it gets exhausting. Constantly having to prove myself—twice over—just to be seen as capable.
Then today, after all that nonsense, I get home to find a letter nailed to my barn door. No stamp. No return address. Just a folded-up note that read: “I know what you did with the west pasture.”