Future Farmers of America

When I was in high school, even though as a City boy at the time, we thought of anyone wearing one of the denim jackets with the gold FFA symbol embroidered on the back as; kickers. There was usually another word in front of that but you can guess.

Secretly though, I admired those jackets – even wanted one for many reasons.

40-something odd years later I find myself a sort-of farmer although I like the term rancher better. To me farmer says “row crops” and things you grow and rancher says things you raise. Right now we aren’t raising anything but kids and dogs, but I digress.

The editor of Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, for whom I write, asked me to attend a local Beef conference. I went, listened, ate well (very nice prime rib – what would you expect?) and came away with this observation: I can’t do the math but the average age of the 160+ attendees was older than I am (55 and fast approaching 56!) There were a few younger couples but most of the folks were my age and older.
One of the presenters showed a chart revealing that even though prices aren’t great and the economy is in shambles, one bright spot for beef producers is we – the U.S. – are exporting more beef than we import. And this for only the second year in the last 20 or so that his chart covered.

But if the people in the room are an indication, this trend will swing back the other way unless there starts to be many more kids wearing those cool FFA jackets again. I see them – my daughter was in FFA for 2 years. But I don’t see lots of them. Who is going to produce the beef for us to eat in a few years?

Another simplistic observation that shows my total lack of economic knowledge: doesn’t it make some sense that if I’m shipping out so many tons of beef to countries around the world but some of those countries ship back almost as many tons of beef – what if some of it just stayed where it was? Imagine the reduced shipping, packing, storage costs? Reminds me of the C.S Lewis comment about “being sixpence none the richer;” if I give you sixpence so you can buy me something as a gift, I’m “none the richer” once you give it back. We may have a net gain in exports versus imports but what about the cost? Some bright MBA will have to explain that one to me.

But the long term issue seems to be how do we encourage more young people to go into or stay in farming and ranching? My oldest daughter and her husband raise cattle in Montana but what will keep them at it? And for how long? And if they stop – where will our next pound of beef come from? Well in my case I know – our freezer because we raised it ourselves and will continue to do so as long as we have some land and grass.

It’s Round Up Time

I always thought going on a round up would be fun and I almost got my chance.

Saturday morning December 29 found me doing my usual chores, which include walking our two Border Collies. As we came around one corner of our 40 acres, I began calling our male “Jake” so he wouldn’t harass the two steers we let wander our pasture. He responded but I noticed only one steer was standing in the corner. I had not noticed the other one anywhere on our walk. They are like twins – frick-and-frack, dumb-and-dumber – one doesn’t go anywhere without the other. I figured one had gotten out somehow so I took the dogs back to their pens, alerted everybody inside and headed back out to find the missing steer.

I spotted a place in the fence where he could have gotten through if he’d stuck his head far enough through and instead of backing up, kept moving forward. My wife had also heard a bunch of coyotes around 3 a.m. so I was worried they had chased him and in the dark, he simply went through or over the fence somewhere.

Our property backs up to and is also adjacent on the west side, to a large farm with perhaps 100 crossbred cows. Our steers are Holstein so they are distinctive in their markings. He was easy to spot with the other cattle. He can’t do any harm – he is a steer, which for the uninitiated means he can’t do the bull-thing anymore.

But I wanted to get him back where he belonged so back to the house to get our team together. My wife, my 24 year-old-daughter and her fiancé, Caleb headed out to see what we could do.

For about 30 minutes we chased him around a rather large pasture with my driving our 4 wheel-drive pick-up and the others trying to head him toward a make-shift gate. We never made it.

A neighbor rides and trains cutting horses so my wife wondered about asking him to help. I hate asking people for help – not so much a pride thing as I don’t want to be a bother. But I drove down. He was home and seemed almost eager to get in some practice.

A few minutes later he, his wife and Caleb are saddled-up and ready to go. My job, as the non-rider in this group was to make sure we could get the gate open when they got close.

It took them about 15 minutes to separate our steer from the herd and move him toward the road and the gate. Once on the road he has pretty well confined with fences on either side. A few minutes later and he is back at our place. A few more minutes later and my wife has him and his buddy in a stall in the barn.

Later that day Caleb and I spent a few hours clearing brush and trees off an old fence which also may have afforded the dumb steer a way of escape.

The moral of this story - if there is or should be one is: using the right tools is important and in this case that meant the old-fashioned way; horses. Also the old adage “Good fences make good neighbors” works more than one way. And I guess one more; don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Thanks Carl, Lesia and Caleb for being our “cowboys” and “cowgirls” today.