Most women have a soft spot in their heart for a man in a baseball cap and blue jeans; there’s a bit of sexiness when it comes to a hard-working man. But unlike the numerous amounts of country songs and romantic movies, there's a lot more to these men then farmers’ tans and diesel trucks. I know; I married one.

The truth about country boys is that they are some of the best men you will ever find.

Country boys grow up to be farmers, ranchers, butchers, and an assortment of other jobs all dedicated to helping people and putting food on the tables of people every where, while they usually eat there meals cold. Or they grow up to fight fires, protect the innocent, and their country.

Country boys grow up to be men with dirty hands and clean souls. They can raise an animal they know will have to some day be in their freezer, but give it every ounce of love and respect an animal deserves. They bring home helpless kittens from the haystack, give them warm milk and fall asleep with it in their lap while reading the latest edition of the breeding bull magazine.

Country boys grow up and marry women that work along side them from before the rooster crows to when the sun has long sense been lost behind the mountains. They become fathers that in turn raise these men.

They are all these things and more. They are the most loyal people you could ever find. These men will help you with any thing you need. And if there’s any sort of sweet treat involved, they’ll be there for sure.

But they are also stubborn, something they learned from years and years of working with animals, mostly cattle. They will stand in the rain with a cow until she decides its safe to go in the shelter, because gosh dang-it that cow is going to be warm and out of the weather.

They feel for all of their livestock, if one is sick no one rests until its better. We have had calves and piglets in the house to stay warm in the winter so they would survive. They get blankets and the rug next to the wood stove.

You don’t hear that in country songs.

I’m married one of those men that grew from a country boy. A man that believes there’s good in everyone. A man that will drive across town in an old truck with no AC in the heat of summer to look at a fair pig of a boy who is worried he won’t make weight. A man who doesn’t eat until there’s no more light in the sky. Who works all day doing what he loves, because doing anything else would be stupid.

As I write this I can hear the pigs arguing over the grain, the sprinklers in the field and cows calling for their calves. This is the truth about country boys and the life they grow up to have.