Jessie Veeder: At Farm and Fleet, I'm a woman who can do anything

WATFORD CITY, N.D. -- One of the most worthless things on the planet are rubber boots with holes in both.

I discovered that I own a pair when I got my 4-wheeler stuck in mud halfway up its tires last week.

So I need a new pair of rubber boots, which gives me a good excuse to go to the Farm and Fleet store.

Seriously. I love the Farm and Fleet store. You wouldn't pick up on that just looking at me, you know, with the big hair and my recent attraction to sequins, but it's true. Bring me to a town with a Runnings or a Tractor Supply, a Feed and Seed or Bob or Jim or Kathy's Western Supply down the road, and I will find an excuse to stop in.

Usually it's for dog food. They always have a good deal on like a 1,000 pound bag of dog food for $25.99 or something like that, and then it just moves along from there.

Because there's just something about the racks of work gloves, the spring seeds, the paint, the plethora of barn jackets, long underwear, dog kennels, tack and brushes, fly spray, heat lamps, medicine, fencing supplies, tools, generators, extension cords, lawn furniture and toy farm animals that make me feel like anything's possible.

I could spend hours browsing and dreaming of a perfectly organized tack room, or a summer spent in a light, long sleeved snap shirt and this adorable purple Carhartt cap right here.

Really, how cute would I look in this outfit laying down sod in the yard or chopping down burdock plants?

So. Cute.

Yes, at the Farm and Fleet I become another sort of woman in my head. The kind of woman who raises chickens in a coop made with my own two hands. Because look at all these supplies! Right at my fingertips and right alongside the adorable and irresistible fluffy yellow baby chicks ...

And I'm the kind of woman who would raise and feed those chicks to collect farm fresh eggs for farm fresh omelets, not just on Sundays, but on any old regular weekday morning.

At the Farm and Fleet, I'm the kind of woman who could butcher one of those chickens to fill our freezer and then take it out to whip up a batch of delicious homemade noodle soup or chicken and dumplings if we happen to have unexpected company.

At the Farm and Fleet I'm capable, resourceful and practical enough to never name those chicks, fall in love with them and raise them as pets.

No. At the Farm and Fleet store I am the kind of woman who wears an apron and shoes her own horses.

And at the Farm and Fleet my horse becomes something better too. Well trained and much better groomed. No burs tangled in his mane. Never even saw one in his life. Nope. His hair shines like the sun because I'm the kind of woman who buys Show Sheen by the barrel.

Yup. Show Sheen and fancy tack. The kind that matches. The kind with silver on it. Because, at the Farm and Fleet, it's only the best for my horse with the Fabio hair.

At the Farm and Fleet I am a redecorator. A barn builder. A painter. A farmer with a garden that could feed the neighborhood.

And I can everything. Like meat and beets and corn and carrots. Because at the Farm and Fleet you can buy a book that will show you how to do it.

And when I'm done canning, I train my dog to herd the cattle into a nice group and load them up into the stock trailer on command. Because there's a book for that at Farm and Fleet too.

Then I buy myself a nice pair of leather gloves, because a woman needs a good pair that fits for all the fences I'll be fixing, for all the weeds I'll be killing, for all the dirt that needs tilling and the piglets I'll be raising, and the mud I'll be slopping around in this spring.

Because a woman like me, well, she -- oh yeah -- she needs new rubber boots.

Jessie Veeder is a musician and writer living with her husband on a ranch near Watford City, N.D. Readers can reach her at jessieveeder@gmail.com .