My Perfectly Imperfect New Years Resolution through a Horse Tale

Ever since I was little, I've wanted a horse. Not like crazy obsessed, everything in my room was a horse (not that there is anything wrong with that, my room just happened to be covered in cows). I think I never pushed too hard for a horse because I already had cows. I even had a cow I could hop on and ride around, but that desire for a horse still lingered in the back of my mind.

Before a trailride at the SDSU horse unit.

Over the past few years, when we would visit my fiancé's family, I'd ride every chance I would get. I even joined SDSU Horse Club for a semester because they did trail rides. Then this past semester, my last semester at SDSU, I decided on a whim to check and see if the Horsemanship classes had any openings right before the semester started and low and behold, the English Horsemanship class had one opening. So every week I got to ride and be with horses for two hours. I learned so much beyond just sitting on a horse and my thirst for knowledge would not allow me to stop there, therefore I wanted a horse.

Dusty and I in Kansas in 2014.

I knew I wanted an older horse that already knew how to work cattle and could help finish out my basic riding education. This is where Mr. Dusty came into my mind. Dusty used to live at Nick's mom's house because they took care of him for a friend. Before he moved to Kansas in 2012, Dusty was a feedlot horse, meaning he worked cattle all day long, everyday. Also he is 14 years old, making him a great candiate for what I was looking for. However, he's not perfect. He has some issues.

He has a condition called heaves, which basically means he's allergic to mold dust. So he has to live the rest of his life outdoors and cannot eat out of a big round bale of hay or any moldy hay.

Dusty ready for a close up!

He also has an attitude problem. He went from working all the time to pretty much being retired and lazy. This laziness created an ego problem. He thinks he's in charge and he likes to bite.

He's not perfect. No he's not, but neither am I. He gets a bad break from some people because he's not the easiest horse to take care of, but sometimes, I'm not easiest to take care of either. He bites. I had a biting problem until I was about three and I sometimes catch myself clenching my jaw. He's not perfect, but that's ok. As we look forward to the new year, we can both start working towards become better versions of the person and horse we want to be and a better team.

The day Nick and I picked up Dusty.

Therefore, my new years resolution is not to become perfect, to never try to be perfect, but to be perfectly me and to love those around me and never expect them to be anything, but perfectly themselves. And to get Dusty and myself back into working shape.

So I am not going to be a dairy farmer... at least for now.

When you were litte, what or who did you want to be? What kept you up at night, too busy dreaming to sleep?

Now take a moment, did you accomplish that dream? Are you that person? Are you still dreaming?

"Flicka" came out when I was in 6th grade. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it. It's the story of a girl, who lives on a horse ranch and falls in love with this wild horse. (There's more to the story so here is a link to IMDb for more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434215/.)

I saw this movie and that is what I wanted (only I wanted cattle, not horses). I wanted beautiful scenery, a beautiful man (a cowboy of course), beautiful cattle, a couple beautiful horses and beautiful sunrises. I drempt of minimal people, minimal profits, and idealy minimal snakes. But somewhere along the way, the world stepped in. I thought of careers that were more financially fit, more sensible, more stable, more... someone else.

Then I found the dairy industry. It was a job where I could have beautiful cattle and in some cases beautiful scenery. And I love dairy, I do, don't get me wrong, but... well, it's hard to explain, even to those closest to me. (For the sake of this blog post, I will not go into the details, that will be for another time.)

When I graduated high school, my friends would always joke that I was going to head off to South Dakota, find my cowboy who had a ranch, and never come back. I would laugh and say no I'll be on a dairy, but in the back of my mind, I would think back to Flicka.

Mobridge, SD. Not far from McLaughlin

No, life is never as glamorous as in the movies, but growing up, I spent my days in the pasture with our beef cows. It was my happy place. So started in Janurary of 2017, after my December graduation from South Dakota State University with degrees in Dairy Production and Speech Communication and an Animal Science minor, Nick and I will be heading to McLaughlin, South Dakota. We will both be ranch hands for a family owned ranch. I will spend most of my days with the cows, Nick with the corn and some days with each other.

McLaughlin, SD

So, no, I am not going to be a dairy farmer... at least not for now. I am young and alive and I would not be me if I never gave my dreams a try.

The Great Graduation Dilemma

What are you doing after you graduate? The million dollar question for any college senior.

When I entered college, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I have figured out my calling... many times, then decided it was something else once again.

I graduate in 3 months 9 days 1 hour and 51 minutes and if you asked me today, where I see myself in 5 years, I can tell you one thing. I'll be doing something.

I currently have this internal battle going on. Part of me wants to venture out into the unknown, the uninhabited, God's Country (because no one else wants to live there). I want to set my worrying soul free on the back of a horse, surrounded by cattle. Wake up before the sun, grab my coffee and head out to feed the world in a place the world has never seen. I want to go to bed after the sun has set, the crickets and fireflies have come alive, and the days work is complete. I want to bundle up and trudge through deep snow just to ensure my animals are fed and happy. I want to spend my days using my hands, in order to let my creative mind free to sit down a write each night.

But then I have this other part of me. The part that wants to study hard and learn more every chance I can get. The one that wants to achieve enough to teach others and encourage them to never give up on their dreams. The one that wants to find the answers to the questions I have been asking for years through hours, days, weeks, months, and years of research. The one that wants to feed the world by providing farmers with more efficient, environmentally friendly, and animal centered ways of farming. The one that wants to change the world and maybe even run for office someday.

So where I will be in just over 3 months, I can't tell you. Currently, I am looking at pursuing both avenues, waiting for the right door to open. And I know that God has a plan, he just has not shared it with me yet.

The Award I Never Thought Would Come My Way

Two weeks ago at the Miss Central States Fair pageant, I won an award that I never imagined I'd win, not even at a local pageant. I won the talent award.

I have always seen my talent as a weakness, and it has always been the area of competition I worry about the most. I cannot sing or dance, the talent that seems to dominate the Miss America stage. All I can do is talk. So I've tried to spice it up every way possible, to make it seem more like a true "talent." Everything from poetry to auctioneering and even a civil rights speech that was comprised of three famous speeches. But all of them seemed to fall short. At the end of the night, I'd win interview, and then nothing. I just could not seem to get it right.

Miss Colorado performing her talent at Miss America.

Then I sat down and thought long and hard about what I was doing wrong. I watched Miss Colorado, Kelley Johnson's Miss America monologue over and over again. What was it that made her's so successful? And then it hit me, she was being 100% herself. All of my talents were what I had thought the judges and audience wanted to hear, not what I wanted them to hear.

As I prepared for Miss Central States Fair, I looked through my blogs, trying to see what exactly I wanted to talk about. I came across this post from October, http://thefarmingbeautyqueen.blogspot.com/2015/10/just-trying-to-live-childhood-dream.html. I decided then and there I was going to talk about all the things that may have contributed to my dreams of becoming an "American Dairy Farmer," the title of my monologue.

Me and my heifer, Midnight.

In the Saturday pageant, Miss Rapid City, I did not win talent, but I did happen to take home the interview award. And at the end of the night, I had people coming up to me saying "you're the dairy girl, I loved what you said up there." By being truly myself, the audience could see my passion and see the personal side of being a dairy farmer. And Sunday, when I won that talent award, I was beyond shocked, and so honored to have shared my story (in a minute and a half), to yet another audience.

Performing my talent on Sunday.

I cannot wait to share my passion with more people throughout my year as Miss Central States Fair. Now you know why I compete and why I LOVE the Miss America Organization.

Putting My Passion First

As I have posted before, I "lost" a local pageant in September. After that, I decided that I was done with pageants. I hated feeling like I had done better than the results showed. I also wanted to just eat whatever I wanted and start working out for fun instead of for a goal. So I was done. My competitiveness clouded my judgement and what was really important to me.

But then I attended a Dairy Girl Network event in Sioux Falls in November. For two days, I watched amazing and inspirational women in the dairy industry with similar goals and dreams speak and it was like they were talking directly to me.

Dairy Carrie with my friend Chelsea and I after her presentation .

Before one of the sessions, these two women sitting next to me asked if I had ever been a dairy princess and I shared that I had been a butterhead in 2012. Then I told them how now I held a local crown within the Miss American Organization, and I was still promoting dairy with it. They got so excited and one of them said "you have to keep doing it." My heart smiled as they spoke and I knew at that moment that yes, I HAD to keep doing it. Then the very next speaker, Dairy Carrie, showed a video of the main actress in Bones, Emily Deschanel, one of my favorite shows. She was speaking on behalf of PETA. After that video, I just had this weird feeling that if I just gave up on promoting my platform in pageants, PETA won. (Sounds crazy, but it was the push I needed.)

So when I step on that stage this Saturday and Sunday competing for Miss Rapid City, I will put everything I have out there. I will not be afraid of not walking away without a crown because by just performing my talent, I will have shown what dairy farming truly is to an room full of people, hopefully encouraging them to support their local community by buying dairy products. I will know that I have put nothing before my love of promoting the dairy industry and my cows. Nothing, not even a cheeseburger or pizza, nor a night I just did not want to go to the gym, nor my fear of losing again, nothing!

7342, my favorite heifer on the SDSU Dairy Farm.

On a dairy farm, cows come first. In my heart, cows come first. So when I get on that stage, cows will come first and nothing else will matter because Monday morning I will be with the cows once again and they will love me no matter what, crown or no crown. And if I have the honor of winning that title, I would be more than pleased to promote dairy across this wonderful state of South Dakota.