Think twice before you borrow that knife

When I first came and visited the ranch I noticed there was one essential item that every rancher carried; a pocket knife. Ranchers do everything with knives: they cut twine, use it as a screwdriver, castrate bulls, punch holes in leather, and many other things! The pocket knife doesn’t have to be fancy, in fact most of them are basic one blade knives.

An experienced rancher we know said every year he would pay off his grocery bill (back when you ran up a tab for an entire year then paid off the grocery store) the manager would give him a pocket knife as a reward for keeping his promise. That pocket knife had seen a lot of action in it’s day. In fact is almost hard to tell it was a knife anymore because it had been sharpened so many times that is was about a 1/3 of it’s original size. That’s an experience knife.

Despite the versatility of the knife, I learned one thing very quickly; if you are using the knife to cut your apple, know where it was recently. Typically the knife is stained with blood from a branding so cutting an apple with it would not be the best of ideas. Just remember to think twice the next time you need to borrow a knife…