Raising Free-Range Kids In Idaho

[carriage harnesses jingling]
♪ country ♪
PETER: Good morning, guys.
For many ranching families
there’s a very high price to pay
to live the ranching lifestyle.
So today we’re gonna meet a local family
who’s decided to take themselves out of
a lot of the noise of the modern world
stay true to their values
their love of land
and raise their family
in more of a traditional way.
Let’s go see what they have to say.
Let’s do this.
♪ country ♪
[door opens]
PETER: What a great spread.
PETER: How are you doing, AJ?
AJ: How are you?
PETER: Doing well.
[Peter chuckles]
-Beautiful place you got out here.
-Thanks
-So the kids will be sixth generation?
-The kids will be six generations.
My grandma, who is their
great-grandma, she’s still alive.
I think she’s here today actually.
PETER: What are you doing
with this dandelion?
CHILD: Making WD-40.
-All right, let me see it, buddy.
-You shoot the top at your cousin’s head.
PETER: Okay, you have to shoot
at your cousin’s head first, right?
-That’s important?
-And then you pull.
So you get one half of it and you scratch
and then it’s really slippery
and then you do this.
[children scuffling and giggling]
PETER: And that’s WD-40?
So AJ, from first impressions
you’re sort of living in between.
a very modern world,
new homes, nice vehicles.
-But you’re dressing more traditionally.
-Yeah.
Planting the garden with the kids.
-They know how to work.
-Kids know how to work.
They don’t seem spoiled.
AJ: Yeah, I think a lot of why we do
what we try to do
is ’cause we try to live with a purpose.
So rather than just kind of drifting and
doing what everybody around us is doing
We try to look at a goal.
So my big objective
with everything that we do
is really to create kids that are quality.
-Okay.
-So that’s really my objective.
There’s a lot of things
that we do that are unique and…
PETER: But unique as of
in the last 30 years maybe?
Oh yeah, they’re unique now.
They’re traditional
is a good way to say it
but there used to be a lot more
focus on doing things together.
<Okay.
Working together, helping each other.
You feel
a lot different when you need somebody
and somebody needs you.
Right, there’s a depth of satisfaction.
Like there’s a fulfillment.
Like it would be really easy for me
to just rototil the garden, right?
But I’ve got four kids
out there with picks.
So I can go get a rototiller if I want…
they wrestle.
-Uh-huh.
-They’re hanging out.
PETER: How are you doing?
PETER: So who lives in all these homes?
AJ: So this is my dad.
<Okay.
Dad and mom, and we’re
just building this, it’s one home.
My grandparents used to milk dairy cows.
The cows were sold for a long time before
we ever were able to buy the family farm.
So now, we use it for different stuff.
We just have all of
our horse tack in here.
So I like draft horses,
I wanted to do a lot with draft horses.
I could see the utility aspect in a lot of
the things you can do with draft horses.
including myself, what are draft horses?
So a draft horse is a
heavy type horse that is made
more for utilitarian type work.
Like pulling heavy loads, moving stuff.
Whereas a saddle horse would be more like
a lightweight horse for transportation
maybe on a buggy
or you could ride him around.
So a draft horse is like a work horse.
My grandma, she tells me about how
they used to harness the work horses
and they would go literally over the river
and through the woods [chuckles]
to her grandmother’s house
and they would go for
Thanksgiving dinners or Sunday dinners
and you know, it was just a staple of life
and now you’ve seen those,
one at a time, go.
Just like everywhere,
this place isn’t completely unique
to the changes that are
happening all over the world
but one thing that is unique is
this valley’s always kind of been
like 15 or 20 years behind.
So if you go back to the 80s and 90s
there was still a lot of horse teams here.
Now there are less and less
and then you’re starting to see
a little bit of a revival with it though.
There’s a lot of the new generation that
are kind of sparking an interest in it.
They’re watching it kind of
dim out and then they’re going
“Wait a minute,
we want to keep that alive.”
[horses walking]
PETER: These are massive horses.
[children chattering]
CHILD: Gunner, you’re getting videod.
GUNNER: So?
[kids chuckle]
PETER: Don’t mess up, Gunner,
you’re on video.
CHILD: Yeah, Gunner.
PETER: You gonna pull this thing,
you’re that strong?
GUNNER: We’re all gonna pull it.
CHILD: Are we moving this?
[shouting] One, two, three, pull!
[children grunting and shouting]
We’re on a roll, keep on moving!
CHILD: Okay, right there.
I had fish for breakfast.
PETER: What kind of fish?
-Um, what kind did we catch?
-Rainbow trout, cutthroat trout…
golden trout.
-Did you guys catch ’em?
-Yeah.
We have a big pond down there.
Breakfast of champions,
it’s better than Wheaties.
You ever heard of Wheaties?
-Nope.
-It’s junk cereal, don’t eat it.
PETER: Gunner, what are you doing here?
GUNNER: Brushing the horse.
[horse brush scraping]
AJ: So this is a collar right here.
AJ: This is a collar.
That’s what you put on the horse’s neck
so that they can lean into it.
And that makes them comfortable
when they’re pulling something
[bridle clanking]
[AJ grunts]
PETER: You going no saddle?
AJ: They can feel your energy,
they’re really sensitive to…
GUNNER: We don’t really ride this one.
AJ: If you’re panicky or you’re
really agitated, they can sense it.
If you’re really calm
then they reflect that.
AJ: So these names are all
ancestors that have lived on this farm.
So Clennie and Reuben
are great-great-grandparents.
Silvon and Fay were great-grandparents.
They lived here when I was a little kid.
I remember Silvon and Fay, we’d go
to Christmas parties at their house.
So then they have a daughter
who is named Jeanelle.
-She is my Grandma.
-Okay.
How connected to this land do you feel
since obviously your ancestry
has been here for a long time?
Do you feel, like, that close connection?
Definitely feel a connection to it and
I just think our entire culture,
our entire society
is kind of letting go
of the traditional things.
‘Cause there’s always faster,
there’s always easier.
There’s always more productive.
There’s always a bigger profit margin
and so we chase those things.
We kind of worship it as a society.
If you can do something
and it takes a little longer
but at the end of it
you’ll have a lot better kids
nobody seems to put
as much emphasis on that.
PETER: Are you guys good kids?
CHILD: Yeah.
-Would you rate yourself a good kid?
-Yes.
-Yeah?
-Nine out of ten.
PETER: Nine out of ten! [giggles]
PETER: You built these?
AJ: Built the homes, yep, my dad
has been a builder for most of his life.
And we just come from a background where
you try to do everything
you can yourself, right?
PETER: You designed them?
AJ: Fully designed everything,
built them ourselves.
There’s basically just a couple
little things that we hired out.
[horses walking and wagon creaking]
[children chattering]
AJ: Whoa.
PETER: What’s the password?
-Please.
-Please.
Okay, we’re in.
PETER: So you have 15 kids?
KORTNEE: [giggles] No, I have four.
-She’s my oldest, this is Haddie.
-Okay.
WOMAN: Sage is on the horse.
Then Gunner right here.
And the youngest is Colt.
-Colt?
-And then this is Garret right by you.
PETER: Garret?
And our niece, Grace.
And a neighbor friend, Mahan.
PETER: It’s pretty fast, huh?
These horses get going.
AJ: Whoa!
[wagon comes to a stop]
PETER: See you, guys.
CHILDREN: See you.
[giggling]
AJ: Whoa.
[wagon noise and hooves]
I lived in Sicily,
I served a mission for the LDS Church.
PETER: So LDS church for those
that don’t know, I think most know but
Mormon Church, right?
The Mormon church, Mormon’s a nickname.
It’s something that is just basically used
to communicate the idea of who we are
but the actual name of the church is
The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints.
It’s an organization that teaches
about selflessness and service
and putting other people first
and following Christ’s example
and so part of what we do in that religion
is we go on service missions.
[kisses at horse]
And we go to foreign countries.
[kisses]
Every house that you can see right now
within your radius of view
was not hear like four years ago
or five years ago.
The population has quadrupled,
or five or six times
in the last 10 to 15 years.
PETER: How do the locals feel about it
or is it mixed?
Well it’s fine, I mean quality people
are quality people, right?
And so we love the ability to meet people,
to be around good people
but one of the problems is
you end up with a lot of people
that want to show up
and put up “No Trespassing” signs, right?
And it just sort of starts to dilute
the essence of what they’re after
and what we’re after, right?
Right.
So we have a community
where everybody knows everybody
your kids can be riding their bike
they get a flat tire,
they can knock on any house
somebody will give ’em a ride home.
when you’re used to being
in that type of an environment
and then you go to
the environment where there are
“No Trespassing” signs
on people’s entrances.
It just… It feels like
you’re getting something removed
that used to be so precious
and so valuable.
You know, maybe a lot of those people
that are sort of on that level
they simply
you know, they don’t
have any bad intentions.
Maybe they just think they’re
protecting themselves or something.
But I don’t think they realize if they
just make friends with their neighbors
there would be a whole
deeper layer of protection.
AJ: Hi, guys.
Yeah, those guys are really cool.
-Almost everybody loves the horses.
-Okay.
Lots and lots of people
love the preservation of culture.
They love the older style of living
and many people,
to be quite honest with you…
I think the majority of people
are searching for that.
That’s exactly the ingredient
they’re looking for, you know?
They wanna be back
in touch with the earth.
They wanna be able to
do things that have to do with
helping to create their own food
and get in touch with the resources.
And that’s great.
It’s all good.
The only one small problem with that is
when you start selling
the commodity which is
the peace, and the tranquility,
and the open space
everybody starts buying that
and everybody starts coming to get it
and there begins to be
a diluting effect, right?
Where there’s less, and less, and less
of the thing everybody’s searching for.
<Yeah.
So it’s okay, there can be a balance
but one of the main things is people
have to learn how to treat each other
and how to interact
with each other, you know?
-You’ve been here forever, obviously.
-Yeah.
Someone pulls into town,
they say, “Hi” to you.
Are you gonna open up to them
or are you gonna be like
they have to earn their stripes
they have to prove to you first?
No, we open up to everybody.
It’s just the nature of how we wanna be.
What you have to realize
is that people are like treasure boxes
and nobody takes the time
to open up that key
and find out what’s in people’s lives
and in their soul.
We all are too quick, too curt,
too eager to chase our own pleasures
our own satisfactions, our own priorities.
I didn’t always feel that way
but I’ve learned that lesson where
if I open up to people,
communicate with people
interact with people
almost always, my life
is blessed from it, you know?
♪ country ♪
[hooves on pavement]
So usually we’ll come and get drinks here
and then we’ll go pick up our pizza next.
[Peter chuckling]
-Where do you live?
-I live in Florida.
-Yeah.
PETER: I wrestle alligators
on the weekends.
Yeah, I wrestle alligators
on the weekends.
Everyone in Florida does.
You didn’t know that?
-Actually?
-Yeah.
PETER: So how often are you doing this?
She said, “A lot in the summertime.”
-You go in like this, couple times a week?
-Yeah.
[hooves on pavement]
PETER: Here it comes, the rain.
This is what you get
when you’re rolling with a native.
I knew right where to hide
from the rain storm.
PETER: You’ve seen these
cloud formations many a times, huh?
Seen it many a time.
-Connected to the land?
-That’s right.
PETER: So there was a little
fertilization process
in the exit only drive through area
but we’ve taken care of it.
KORTNEE: We’ll leave it over there.
PETER: Added to the nutrients
in the grass.
-Don’t like and unsubscribe.
Do not like and unsubscribe,
and do not do it!
My new marketing team.
Thanks, guys.
[hooves on pavement]
So some of these buildings, they’re new.
They have the look of an older building
but like the building
right here on the right, it’s old.
I don’t know…
I wish I could date it right off-hand.
Might be like early 1900s.
[hooves on pavement]
[horses slowing down]
PETER: Just do a little parallel parking
PETER: So we’re getting pizza?
AJ: Getting pizza, this is O’Rourke’s.
It’s a Teton Valley, Idaho classic.
O’Rourke’s has been here
since I was a little kid.
Probably at least..
Oh, 30 year’s I’ll bet,
or 32, or 35 years, somewhere in there.
MAHAN: Come on up…
GARRET: You have to come
video me dirt biking.
PETER: Do you know if you eat 10 of those
you’ll lose your hair.
100%, you’ll be like this.
-You guys eat on the road?
-Yeah, we eat on the way.
WOMAN: What do you want,
pepperoni or sausage?
I was thinking, AJ, coming into this,
there would be a huge challenge
living this lifestyle.
But it doesn’t look like a challenge
for you or is it?
-Is it challenging?
-No, I mean it’s not a challenge.
We still do a lot of things.
You know, just as normal people, right?
We have cars and all that obviously but
but it’s just something
that we love, you know?
This is something that we do
because it’s a passion.
We feel a little bit of
a special privilege
to preserve the heritage of it
share it with people.
The fact that people like it so much
and they love the culture
they love the history,
they love the stories
they love the fact that our horses
are named after grandparents
and when we tell ’em all that detail
they just love it.
That’s probably one of
the things that fuels it
because it feels like you’re
doing something that has a
positive uplifting influence to it.
<Right.
There’s so many negative tones
in this world, and there’s so much self
and there’s so much energy towards
seeking to, you know, beat people
and to gain, and to win.
I think that’s one of the
main things that makes us love it
is that people like it and people
feel enlightened and lifted up by it.
Good pizza.
-Pretty good.
-Nice.
Good small town pizza.
PETER: How’s that pizza, big man?
<Yeah?
just in case you run out?
[horse galloping]
[wagon creaking]
-So it’s a lot of work?
-It’s a lot of work.
-I mean you coulda just
got in a car, drove for ten minutes
gotten a pizza, returned.
We still do that too.
[both chuckling]
It’s way better this way.
-You like it this way better?
-Yeah.
It’s one of those things,
once you are around working horses
and that lifestyle of interacting with
the horses, the earth,
planting stuff, harvesting stuff
it’s one of those things that
no matter what else you do
you feel like you wish you were back.
It just gets in your soul
It makes you feel like you have
a magnetizing draw towards it
There’s sometimes
a feeling or a connection…
<Mm-hmm.
To connect with your past
and the history of
who the people were
that basically settled the area.
The people that had to
make the sacrifices.
Like when our family came here
there were no roads.
<Yeah.
There were no fences,
there were no bridges.
<Mm-hmm.
There’s a lot of stories that make you
really appreciate what you got.
Like we have a story about
how when one of our ancestors came
they came in on a wagon
and they said they lived
in a one room soddy.
Which a soddy is like an old log cabin.
And the rain would drip
through the roof when it would rain
and so they had a newborn baby.
He was born premature.
They said when he was born
you could fit a teacup on his head.
It rains, and the water
drips through on him, and so it’s said
that they had to pull the cover
off the covered wagon.
-Mm-hmm.
And fashion it in a way where
it helped keep the drips off the baby.
I think the family journal says that
they’d used up all the pots and dishes
to catch the drips
and at a certain point…
-Yeah, just journal records we have.
-You have one in your home?
I can show it to you, yeah.
[scraping]
PETER: What are you doing?
-Eating salt.
-Where’s the salt?
Right here,
it’s a mineral block for cattle.
CHILD: It’s just like normal salt.
PETER: You were telling me
when we talked on the phone
you also do sheet rock.
AJ: Mm-hmm.
PETER: Because it’s really hard
to make a living ranching these days.
AJ: So in this valley, if you want
to have any type of an income
you basically have to be connected to
the lifeline of the construction boom.
You’re seeing a lot of people move here
that have a lot of money
and so you’re basically watching
a small farming community
get flooded with second and third
home buyers, many of ’em.
So when I was a little kid, for example
you might not have been able
to hire a landscaping business.
There wasn’t really
a landscaping business in the valley.
You wouldn’t have been able
to hire a carpenter per se
you would hire a neighbor
that knew how to do carpentry.
So everybody was neighbors and families.
Now what you see is businesses,
and businesses, and businesses starting.
You can have
a landscape business and it’ll go.
You can have
a drywall business and it will go.
Because it just doesn’t
provide enough income right now?
The main reason is because
if you look at the cost balance
between what land costs to purchase
and how much you can generate
as far as cash off that land
the balance is so far out of balance
that it’s not even realistic.
Like you can’t even come close
to servicing the debt
on what a piece of land would cost.
what we talked about earlier
you split it up with your family members.
But say you grew up on this land
and you weren’t splitting it up
and the land was given to you for example.
You didn’t have any costs in that respect
could you still pull it off here?
No, not even close.
-Even with that you couldn’t?
-Even if you owned land for free.
<Yep.
And you got a lot of equipment
to put up hay for free
and you had all your cows paid off
it would be very tight even at that point.
So I want to mention to the audience
that we’re in Southeastern Idaho
and it really depends
where you are in ranching.
Uh-huh.
How the economics shake out.
So this is an area where ranching
doesn’t shake out to live a good life
but there’s some places
that still offer that.
-Like Nebraska being one.
-We have three things working against us.
First of all, we have a
really, really short growing season.
<Okay.
So you can only produce one crop of hay
and then that single crop of hay
has to sustain your animals
throughout a long winter.
So because there’s a lot of snow
there’s a long season where the earth
is buried, the animals can’t eat
and you have to feed hay.
If you get one crop of hay and you
have to feed for seven or eight months
there’s basically just an imbalance
there to where it doesn’t work well.
It seems like there are a lot of people
in the nation that are confused
about what’s going on.
There’s a lot of chaos,
there’s a lot of competition
there are a lot of
really unhappy, unsettled people.
We have a ton of exposure
to people who have moved here
who have come here.
I meet people in the community
as I operate the construction business
and you get into conversations,
and you say to people
“Where were you from?”
“Oh, I was from Illinois but
things are just so bad there
I couldn’t bear to stay.”
“We had to find somewhere
where we could live.”
“Things are just so chaotic there.”
“The government policies
are getting so corrupt
that we’re losing all of our freedom.”
This story is coming from every angle.
PETER: So for your kids, I notice…
Great kids by the way.
Really fun but very well behaved.
So when we started talking
we didn’t say anything
but they understood
we were having a conversation
and they were quiet,
they weren’t nagging.
You think this lifestyle
where you give ’em a lot of work
where you’re around a lot just
creates those qualities
or what is that exactly?
[clears throat]
I would say yes, it is this lifestyle
but I would also definitely
want to express the idea
that it doesn’t mean you can’t have
quality kids without being on a farm.
It definitely does not mean that
but living with a purpose
is critical in my opinion
to developing our younger generation
and so much of what’s happening,
in my opinion
is that we’re watching
a generation who has been developed
and raised without a purpose
or without guidance.
So for me the purpose isn’t so specific
but you have to have a goal,
you have to have a directive
you have to have something
that is bigger than yourself.
And you have to be able
to look at community and society
and say, “I am accountable
to the people around me.”
And it just seems like
a lot of people aren’t doing that
or don’t understand that.
There’s so many youth and
young children that are basically just
they’re like the ship at sea
without a rudder.
They’re just getting tossed about.
They’re going wherever the wind blows ’em.
They’re doing whatever they see on TikTok.
They’re doing whatever they see on,
you know, the next video.
Well it scares me in the sense that
I know that a
growing majority of people…
They’re are turning into adults
never having developed the capacities
that are gonna make them
responsible neighbors.
PETER: Okay what are these though,
these are tiny homes you’re selling?
No, they’re just storage cabins.
-You built this?
-We’re basically just gonna…
Yeah, this one’s just
gonna be just a storage.
We’re just gonna basically store
just stuff in here like boxes and tools.
PETER: But it’s made pretty nice,
like a nice floor.
It’s pretty nice, it’s got a good floor,
it’s just plywood walls, just utility.
If you go back let’s say 30 years.
All of the kids in school
would have had holes in their pants
holes in their shoes.
-You know, everybody here was just…
-Here?
Moderate to moderate poor.
Like the families were very average.
And what we’ve experienced is
Jackson Hole, Wyoming is…
I think it was like first, or second,
or third richest city per capita
in the world.
So we’re experiencing this effect
where the billionaires
are literally
choking out the millionaires.
So you can’t even hang
in Jackson if you’re a millionaire.
Like literally,
if you have a million bucks
you probably won’t find a house
that you can even buy over there.
And so now these millionaires
are getting pushed out
and they’re coming to Teton Valley
which is the bedroom community
for Jackson Hole.
So the workforce for all of these
huge, beautiful, ultra-mega
custom homes in Jackson…
The workforce lives here
and a lot of the people
that used to live over in Jackson
are fed up with
the congested busy lifestyle
because it’s getting really, really busy.
So they’re moving out
and so now you have this influence
from all these people that are
used to that
sort of more luxurious lifestyle
and they’re buying land over here
and then there’s bidding
and there’s competition
and there’s only a limited
amount of land for sale.
So of course that drives the price up
and so what you’re seeing is
[clears throat]
And 80 acre farm that possibly went for
you know, 100,000 bucks
or 50,000 bucks back in the 80s.
These chunks of land
are going for a half a million
1 million, 2 million, 2.5 million.
So it just becomes
completely out of balance.
coming over here where are the people
that were the workers in Jackson
that used to live here?
Where are they going
’cause this is not cheap anymore?
So they’re hanging on
by the skin of their teeth.
They’re doing the best they can to
find a room, or an apartment, or to share.
There’s a lot of people
renting and sharing apartments.
I know of one specific person
that was paying $800 a month for rent.
Small simple home.
And it went to $1,600
in the course of two or three years
So that’s doubled
and then from $1,600 it went to
$2,200 just in the last couple of months.
<Hmm.
So more than doubling
in just the course of a couple years
and that’s been the side effects from
all of the money coming to the valley.
So it’s like…
You know it’s a good feeling
because now
there’s a lot more cash, right?
Like you can go get a job
anywhere you want
and make 22 to 25 bucks an hour
but the problem is
you can’t find a place to rent.
for $1,500 maybe
if it had a toilet
and kitchen in it, right?
<Oh, yeah.
So out here in Idaho… [chuckles]
We put up California welcome signs.
So this is a Idaho Equine Act.
And so just because
there’s a lot of strangers coming around.
You know, it used to be… You would
never see a sign like that ever.
My whole life, nobody would
ever have something like that up.
<Why, are there lawsuits
coming or something?
Yeah, just the mentality like
somebody’s gonna step out of their car
and roll their ankle in a pothole and
then you’re gonna be liable, you know?
It’s this whole mindset of
somebody else is accountable
for my mistakes.
-Is this all your land out here?
-Yep.
-It goes out to the trees there.
-Can we walk out a little?
AJ: Yeah, we can walk, we can also
go ride the buggy if you want.
PETER: Oh yeah, let’s do that.
AJ: Everything that you can see
clear to the trees is the hay meadow.
So the hay out here will be
about this tall in two months from now.
[rake scraping]
[ATV engine]
PETER: Are these your cows?
AJ: Yeah, these are our cows,
that bull’s the neighbors bull though.
[AJ whistling]
PETER: So Rocky just knows
exactly what to do, huh?
AJ: Yeah, come here Rocky.
[whistles] Get ’em up.
[whistling]
AJ: Get ’em Rocky, good boy.
Get ’em.
[ATV crashing through bushes]
Good boy, Rocky.
PETER: Just chase ’em?
PETER: Okay, push ’em through.
PETER: C’mon, buddy.
Did you know aspen trees
are the largest organism
Correct me if I’m wrong
but I think that’s true.
Largest organism on the planet.
[stream flowing]
[sighs]
[cows squealing]
PETER: So milk cows are kinder?
AJ: Well, they’re a very docile breed
PETER: Okay.
and they’re basically bred
and handled every single day.
PETER: Right.
AJ: And so their demeanor
is a lot calmer than the beef cows.
The beef cows are kinda wild,
they’re just out on the range.
PETER: Sure.
KORTNEE: This one was raised in a pen
so she’s also friendly.
KORTNEE: She’s a beef cow.
AJ: This is a little bull right here.
KORTNEE: That’s a milk cow, number one.
PETER: But you’re not doing milk cows
anymore, these are your neighbors?
AJ: Yeah, well (these) are our cows
but the milk cows are…
We just have two in here.
We just have ’em around
in case we wanna milk ’em.
PETER: What are we doing, Gunner?
GUNNER: Ridin’ the cow.
♪ country ♪
This is why I love this work.
I never know what
every day is gonna bring.
PETER: Close.
Let go.
[music continues]
[children chattering]
[ATV engine]
I think he’s like
a modern lifestyle type bull.
He doesn’t wanna go live with the ladies.
[chuckles]
AJ: All right.
PETER: So cows getting
into the neighbor’s driveway?
Yeah, so this is a cattle guard.
Sometimes we’ll have friends coming over.
Maybe people that have moved here
from supercalifragilistics.
[chuckles]
And we’ll say, “Come down
and drive past the first cattle guard
and then turn left.”
And they’ll get here and they’re like,
“Yeah, my GPS brought me right here
but I didn’t see the cattle guard,
where was he?”
We’re like, “No, a cattle guard
is not a person, a cattle guard is a…
It’s like a bridge thing that goes in the
road so the cows don’t just step in here.”
COLT: Already.
PETER: That was quick, you guys.
[splashing]
PETER: So you have this well-stocked, huh?
AJ: Yeah, there’s some rainbows in here.
COLT: Like a hundred.
GUNNER: Just a couple rainbows.
Rainbow trout.
AJ: Rinse him off, buddy.
GUNNER: All right.
GUNNER: He might get away.
PETER: That’s a huge one in there.
PETER: Look at that massive one out there.
GUNNER: They’re goldens.
MAHAN: That big one’s a golden.
COLT: The golden one’s
actually mean that they’re albino.
GUNNER: Yeah, they’re like an albino.
COLT: It’s an albino one.
GUNNER: There ya go.
PETER: Big man, let’s see it.
PETER: Let’s see what
you’re all about here.
AJ: Better hook one out, buddy,
you’re on.
PETER: A lot of pressure.
GUNNER: Aw, I had him.
AJ: We work for the
ability to live this way, right?
Takes a lot of effort to generate
and maintain this type of a lifestyle.
AJ: You have to…
PETER: You have to really want it?
AJ: You have to want it,
you have to work for it.
PETER: So just this experience
with the kids, this takes a lot of work?
You just simply can’t maintain
all these different things alone.
It takes a machine, it takes a family.
AJ: When I have a day off
I wanna go play with my kids.
We go fishing, we go on a horse ride.
We go to town on the wagon.
We do all those things
and it’s something that I wanna be doing.
I’ve never felt that feeling like,
“Oh, I wish I was gone with my buddies.”
You know?
I just feel a lot of fulfillment
being with the kids.
♪ country ♪
MAHAN: Boom!
[music continues]
This is grandpa.
And this is the dad of all of these sons.
So this dad
William, William Woolstenhulme.
And then this is his son, George,
who is the dad of our line.
So this is my grandpa.
This is also my grandpa.
So then if you come over here.
-So this is the same William.
-Mm-hmm.
And then his son is George, this guy
would be on the left in the photo.
Then this is Delbert,
he’s the one that came here
and you could fit
a teacup on his head, right?
He was an infant when he came
into this valley in a wagon.
<Mm-hmm.
And then he had a son named Hal,
this was my grandpa.
And then his son is Lance,
that’s my dad.
Then I’m Adam, Adam James.
Then these are my sons, three boys.
-Oh, that’s amazing.
-So this is photographed back to 18…
PETER: One, two, three,
four, five, six, seven.
PETER: Is there a pressure
to keep this going?
Like you wouldn’t want to ever stop
ranching ’cause then you sort of end it?
Well there’s a lot of breaks in the chain.
All the way along, right?
So our family has always
lived a particular lifestyle.
The lifestyle is a ranching lifestyle
but it’s also more of what
I would even call preparedness lifestyle.
A lifestyle of being self-reliant.
A lifestyle of being able
to do things on your own.
PETER: Big man, can you start a fire?
Mm-hmm.
PETER: Can you cut a fish easily?
AJ: How many times have you gone and
caught a fish, and cleaned it on your own?
200 times.
AJ: Maybe a couple hundred,
that’s probably not far off.
Maybe a hundred.
This is family search app, right?
AJ: So my name’s the name in the middle.
You can see Hal, Delbert,
George, and then William.
So we go into William.
PETER: This is an app?
AJ: Yep.
AJ: For example, if you wanna know
about a story you can click on that.
Boom, right there.
PETER: Wait, anyone can do this?
AJ: Mm-hmm.
AJ: I’ll show you how it starts.
PETER: What’s the name of the app?
AJ: Family History.
So look History of
William Woolstenhulme, right?
So all this stuff has to be uploaded.
So if you have a family that hasn’t
ever contributed or saved anything
you might have slim pickins.
PETER: Yeah.
AJ: But you still can plug yourself in
and it will network you
into the family history.
So the LDS Church has
the greatest, largest
family history network in the world.
Like the governments
come to the church for family research.
COLT: Dearest Father, we’re
thankful that we can all have a good time
and that we can all be happy.
And that we can nurture
strength in our bodies
and we can all be nice
and in Jesus Christ, Amen.
[all] Amen.
AJ: All right, you got a special treat.
PETER: Good job, big man.
PETER: Mashed potatoes?
PETER: What is this type of pork called,
flattened pork or…
AJ: Honestly it’s from when
I was in Sicily, I learned how to do that.
PETER: Yeah.
AJ: But it’s basically
you pound it really, really thin.
PETER: Yep.
AJ: And then it’s just bread crumbs
and then fried in olive oil.
[spoon tapping]
And then you gotta put lemon on it.
PETER: Guys, how’s the food?
-Good.
-Good.
PETER: Yeah, thank yo so much, fantastic.
Very delicious.
From what I’ve talked with
a lot of people about
it seems like there used to be
a lot of small cow herds, right?
So everybody would have
10, or 20, or 30 cows
and you sort of had these little small
homestead type ranches all around.
So the family and the ranch
were connected.
Instead of now, like you have
this one jumbo ranch
that produces thousands of pounds of beef.
That’s awesome.
It’s really cool but
you’re losing the connection
of all the people with their food source.
So when you have each family
having 10 or 20 cows
then you end up with a lot more people
involved in the production
of their own food.
Okay guys, end of the road here.
What a fantastic day
and what I got the most out of this was
it’s a lot of work to live like this
but the payoff can be found
in these rascals.
Guys…
[boys shouting and playing]
They seem pretty happy.
So looks like they’re doing things right
out here in the country side of Idaho.
And what a beautiful place this is.
Guys, I also want to say
I have a mailing list.
Would love you to be part of it.
I’ll leave that link down below.
And this is part of
a greater ranching series.
I have many other videos about ranching.
Lives from West Texas
all the way to Montana.
Thanks for coming along.
Until the next one.
♪ country ♪