America is a fancy cut of steak shipped on dry ice to your doorstep from Wyoming. America is grass-fed, grain-finished ground beef raised by a family who fled corporate finance careers to start a farm.
America is more than a country—it is an idea, a spirit, a way of life.
On July 1, we asked Amy Rhodes, 39, a mother and the wife of a cattle rancher on Salt River Ranch, how she and her family will celebrate the Fourth of July. And we asked what America is.
For her family, on July 4, there will be flags by the bundle flown on the farm. “Close to 50,” she told The Epoch Times. They plan to line the highway with fluttering red, white, and blue all along the fence line of their property by planting them in brackets set in fenceposts. “We’re gonna try to cover all of it if we can, the whole stretch,” she said.
That planting of flags began on July 2 so that travelers along the highway would have a few days to appreciate the patriotic gesture. Last year, most of the Rhodeses inaugurated this family affair. This year, it will be solidified as tradition as, at the time of writing, they prepare a tractor to haul their flags and four kids, who will unload and raise the stars and stripes along the highway again.
“They had so much fun doing it,” Mrs. Rhodes said of their first year’s occasion. “They were asking us if we can do it again this year.”
Mrs. Rhodes’s 77-year-old father, Darcel Hulse, also participates. He screws in the braces for each flag on each fencepost in advance, so the kids can mount them with ease. Brynn is 11, Brody is 9, Josie is 7, and Covey is 4. Their new bundle, Livvy, is 8 months old. In their brood, Mrs. Rhodes and her husband, Chris Rhodes, hope to instill American values.
“We were just trying to think of a way that we could show our love for our country,” she said. “And we were trying to instill in our kids the importance of the flag.”
What is America?
America is “a gift from God,” she told the newspaper. “The only way to really change the trajectory of our nation is to raise a generation to love our country, and to love and respect our flag, and understand the freedoms that it really represents.”
Last year, the Rhodeses’ children gained a reverence for the flag, she said, and felt united with fellow Americans as they saw and heard truck drivers on the highway, blaring their horns and waving in support of their first flag-raising.
“There’s so much division in our country—right now especially,” Mrs. Rhodes said. It seems now they have found some common ground with their neighbors.
The family’s life began in California where Mr. Rhodes, worked in corporate finance and Mrs. Rhodes in marketing. She said they were dissatisfied with what they saw going on in the nation, and began to feel it was impossible in Orange County to raise their children in the way they had hoped. They would teach them to appreciate the land. They would learn “to love the land,” she said.
“So we moved out to Wyoming, and my parents bought a cattle ranch out here,” she said, “and asked my husband and I to run it.”
That was nearly seven years ago. Today, the Rhodeses lead a lifestyle that is the diametric opposite of suburban California, but they still hold no regrets. “We’ve never looked back,” Mrs. Rhodes said. “It’s a great place to raise a family. The winters are very long. We don’t have the beach anymore, but we wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
And that most certainly is America.
