Lavender farmers and ranchers in southern idaho

Valerie and Alex's dogs greet me as I drive up through the lavender fields. Happy wags and tongues lolling as I say hello to Val and Alex and their family visiting from out of town. Alex and his Dad have been working on the chicken coop, I've been told. It's almost finished. I look around to the rows of lavender, the wide open expanses of the Idaho steppe, the sagebrush and the skyline.

What a lovely place to carve out independence, in the form of a farm- with pigs and cattle and a garden and the lavender all around, it seems like a beautiful purple dream.