Oh, so you're 'Country' huh? Seriously?

If you've never stood in a field with this exact view thinking, "Damn, only 450 bales to go," you're not really 'country'.

I sometimes chuckle to myself when I see people who claim they are 'country'.
Small town USA doesn't make you 'country' any more than owning a pair of cowboy boots, cowboy hat, and listening to George Strait makes you 'country'.
'Country' isn't about how you decide to dress one day, or the fact you went four-wheeling in the mud last weekend.

I guess maybe my idea of 'country' is more extreme than most.

'Country' is when you can walk outside in your underwear (and have the audacity to do so) without a second thought because there are ACRES to separate you from your neighbors, not merely FEET. (Thank goodness, right? No one needs to see that!)

'Country' is having a big stock tank as a kid for your swimming pool and thinking it feels like heaven after a hot summer day of push mowing the lawn.

'Country' is when in rain, sun, snow, or sleet, you pull on your muck boots to feed the cattle because they still have to eat regardless of the weather. (No matter how bad it sucks...they don't care about you)

'Country' is hurling bales of hay onto a moving vehicle in the middle of a blazing hot field with no shade, and then stopping to throw up because it's a hundred degrees out there. (Sweet, sweet memories)

'Country' is getting up at 1:30 in the morning to check on a heifer whose about to have her very first calf, and then wrestling around to get some rope around the calf's front feet to help pull the slimy little fella into the world. (Ultimately, you end up with some of that 'slime' all over you and your clothes, sometimes on your face, and if you're really lucky, in your mouth)

'Country' is having your own pet cemetery in a designated corner of your property where you dug the graves yourself, put your best pals to rest, and then cried as you covered them with dirt. (You also knew you had to pile rocks on top or something would dig up your furry friends)

'Country' is riding a horse and it suddenly decides to break in half for no apparent reason, but you manage to hang on anyway.

'Country' is growing up and never having to ask where babies came from because you already knew. (Animals are great teachers.)

'Country' is flipping over cow patties to find worms for fishing and then piercing the wriggling creature (while they squirt poop all over you) onto a sharp hook. Once you catch a fish, you take it off the hook, scale it, and gut it...and all of this by your little lonesome.

'Country' is being chased around a barn lot by an eighteen hundred pound Simbrah bull named Austin, who just wants to 'play'.

'Country' is riding your dirt bike back in the field to the blackberry patch to pick enough berries for your mom to make you a pie. (Love my Momma!)

You see, I could go on forever with this.
Claiming to be 'country' and actually being 'country' are two very different things.

Until you've had unmentionable animal secretions flung on you, enjoyed a cow chip fight (hopefully dry ones), sought the quiet solitude of the woods when you were upset, or suffered a groundhog bite while trying to save the critter from the snapping jaws of your dog, you can't really call yourself 'country'.