People have been underestimating me for as long as I’ve worn boots and a braid. At the feed store, at the fence line, even across the creek, strangers and neighbors alike assumed I was playing dress-up instead of running two hundred and forty acres on my own. They asked about my husband, laughed at my confidence, and spoke to me like I needed supervision. I fixed water lines in snowstorms, pulled calves in the dead of night, and restored land everyone else had written off, yet somehow the blonde hair made me invisible. I swallowed it for years, until the day a note appeared on my barn door that said, “I know what you did with the west pasture.”
That pasture was my pride, a broken stretch of land I rebuilt inch by inch after my marriage ended. Seeing those words felt like a warning, and when I found footprints near the pond and fresh scratches on the barn door, I knew it wasn’t a joke. Someone was watching, trespassing, trying to unsettle me. Fear crept in, but I refused to let it take over. I reached out, spoke up, and stopped pretending I had to handle everything alone just to prove my strength. Neighbors who once doubted me started paying attention, and law enforcement took the situation seriously.