Easter in America

Thursday the 13th of April I rode down to a property near Florence KS with James. We met Mike and Zach (my uncle and another wonderful cousin of mine) at the holding yards where the cattle were spelled the night prior to our arrival. Mike had shipped over part of their cow calf herd from the ranch in Southeast Colorado to Florence, Kansas to be turned out onto new pasture to grow. James and I drove down early in the morning to meet them and help pair babies up with their mamas. It really wasn’t a hard morning of work, more accurately a good chance to get out of town for a few hours, hang out with cattle a while and catch up with some family.

Bruce Young is a Livestock Nutritionist from Cargill that consults for Mike and Mary-Lou’s feedyard back in Walsh, Colorado and I am extremely fortunate as this summer I have managed to score myself the chance to follow him around the country a little through a few other feedyards that he is a consultant for.

We met Bruce at the holding yards also as his house was not far and he was going to watch these pairs while they were out there. We walked through the cattle, unloaded motorbikes from the trailer and quickly ran a once over the fence line before letting the pairs out.

It’s hard to use the word unfortunately when you’re leaving something great for something else that is great also. I would have absolutely loved to spend the whole day out there, but my Beef Systems Management class with Dr Nicholls and Dr Corrah was headed up to Marysville, Nebraska for a tour of Valley Vet and I wasn’t about to miss it.

It seemed as though the company just kept going and going! I guess I hadn’t really thought about the type of processes a business such as this would go through a whole lot but I just couldn’t believe the extensiveness and complexity that went behind every little thing that the company had on offer out front.

I saw my first game of Donkey Basketball after church in Ellinwood, KS on Good Friday the 13th of April. My goodness, that was an experience I thought I’d never have, but man I’m sure glad I did! Hahah If you can appreciate a good time and love a big belly laugh, I promise this is a game you will enjoy!

Saturday I headed back to Walsh, CO with James to spend Easter with the family. Unfortunately, Mary- Lou had gone back to Australia to spend Easter with family back home so I missed her that trip, but it sure made my mama happy to have her home a while!

When we got to the house, Mike and Zach were busy at the feedyard so we took the horses out to check the pairs on the home place. It was such a nice sunny day.

When we got back we washed the horses off and tied them to the hitching rail to dry off before we put them back. James and I were both so exhausted from being flat out for so long, before we knew it, both us, and the dogs were all out like a light on the lawn… I didn’t even notice I was asleep until about an hour later. I heard Zach roll up about an hour later, flat out, 100 miles an hour as he does! gave us both a bit of a dig in the ribs and said “quick, get up you two. Put your boots on! We can’t sit around all day sleeping! Some of us have work to do!” haha. Needless to say, he quickly kicked us back into gear, so we put the horses away and I learned all about his crop rotation this year and had a great big lesson on the irrigation system when we went out to turn the pivots on.

Easter Sunday Zach cooked a great big ‘proud American’ breakfast (that those of you that do know him, could only imagine!) and Mike took us out to the ranch and read a few verses from the bible and we had a real nice service amongst ourselves. Then we went way out for lunch with all of the Wilsons. I always really enjoy my time with Mike’s family. They are all such humble and beautiful people.

It was a really nice weekend and kinda sad to have to leave really. Being back in Walsh with everyone always makes me put my life back into perspective and every time I leave, I leave really happy. I would have liked to put everything on hold for just a little while and spend another couple of weeks there, but that’s not quite how it works. James and I got into Manhattan Sunday night at 12.30am and I had a few hours of sleep before I had to be up to help at the pig shed Monday morning.

Good Friday, I started helping a grad student in the K-State pig nursery with his research on palatability and preference between three different feed types for the number 2 ration given to young pigs. The biosecurity in the pig sheds over here in the US was just mind-blowing. There was so much going on towards the prevention of disease spread among the pigs in just this facility alone and I’m told it’s much stricter in regions such as Iowa, where pig populations are much higher. This research started officially Monday the 17th of April (after Easter in Walsh), and continued through to the next week. I absolutely had no idea that pigs grew so fast at that age! Course, the research required that only the feed troughs need be weighed upon finishing up the trial so I guess I’ll never know, however I am convinced that these piglets must have grown at least 8kg each, average, within that week.

Intensively growing and feeding pigs in this type of setting makes for an extremely high production industry and you could probably make a killing pumping pigs through those sheds as quickly as they are able to over here. It was incredible, I had a lot of fun checking out the pig shed. I just get curious and have to have a look around everywhere, but I think anyone would have a seriously tough time trying to convince my heart to stray too far from beef production for too long.

For the longest time I have tried everyday to take a minute and remember just how incredible lucky I am and to appreciate everyone and every little thing that has brought me this far.

“Life is a series of tiny miracles, notice them.”