Boe is on his way home for the deer hunt.  He lives in Mesa, and he looks forward to getting back to Idaho to breathe some cool air and tromp the mountains with his brother and cousin in pursuit of the big buck. The setting for this annual rendezvous is “The Farm.”

The Farm was homesteaded by Grandpa Ed back in the 1920s and was home to my Dad during his youth. Grandpa and his brother, Joe, broke the ground, built small homes and raised their families out in the middle of nowhere. 

I remember Grandma saying, “When your Grandpa first took me out to see the farm, it wasn’t what I expected.” 

She had envisioned rolling green hills, a bubbling brook and fat cows. It was a dry farm. The cows were in the sagebrush up in the not-so-green hills, and water came from the well below the windmill. However, Grandma took a chance and married him anyway. And we all grew up listening to farm stories, which in our minds were romanticized versions of real-life hard work. 

Dad went on to purchase the farm from Grandpa and Uncle Joe and we got in on some of that hard work ourselves. We picked rock when we were kids, Mom trucked grain to the mill during harvest season, and we even did a little fencing. We got in on enough to know farming was not a walk in the park. However, that little patch of ground out in Ireland Canyon has instilled “hiraeth” in Grandpa’s posterity. Hiraeth is Welsh for longing. The boys come home for the hunt. We drive Grandma Red out to see the farm hills every spring and fall. Whenever we drive by, we sigh and know that’s our spot. That’s where Ed and Blod built a Good Life.