These Great Creatures

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you are being chased by something and you are running as fast as you can, but you are not going anywhere? Have you ever had this happen in real life? Unfortunately, about two weeks ago, I did.

I have not told many people because, initially, I was embarrassed that after all these years of working with cattle that I let it happen to me. But there has been this festering inside of me, this irrational fear that is trying to make its way to the surface and I feel as though if I get it out, I can feel truly myself again. I also feel that God saved me on that cold day to teach me a lesson and to share it; that these great creatures we love are exactly that, creatures.

This is not the bull from the incident, but another one on the farm.

So now I’ll get to the story.

About two weeks ago, I went and rode my horse, Dusty. In order to get to the pen that he stays in, I have to walk through a pen of 47 heifers and 20 some bulls. That day there was an old Charolais bull standing in front of Dusty’s pen. He looked like he didn’t feel well and paid no attention to me as I walked by him three or four times getting things for Dusty.

About an hour later, I was asked to go check on a bull that was in rough shape the night before. I figured it was the bull that had been by Dusty, but I headed out to the pen to double check and report back my thoughts. He had gone around the other side of the barn in the meantime, however. As I walked the length of the barn, I talked to him, making sure I was not going to scare him as I rounded the corner. Before I got there, I did as I had been taught when working with bulls, I mapped out an escape route if he were to charge, but I made a critical error when sculpting this plan, I misjudged the depth of the snow.

I didn’t want to make a sharp turn around the corner, so I circled out wide and continued to talk. I said, “hey there big guy” as I turned the corner to see his rear end facing me. He quickly swung around with his head in the air and this is when I knew I was in trouble. I turned to go to the nearest fence, but the snow was about three feet deep and my running got me nowhere, eventually causing me to lose my footing. Thankfully, he targeted my standing body and had no time to adjust when I fell on top of the snow, so he only ran over the bottom part of my legs. Also, thankfully, he had misjudged the snow as well and went flying face first into a large pile of snow. As I saw his body disappear into a white cloud, I knew if was my time to run. I sprinted to the gate, making it safely to the other side.

I stood there crying out of fear and pain, shaking with adrenaline. My fiancé came rushing over with a confused look on his face, not knowing what had happened. I looked at him and said between gasps, “the snow saved my life.” Yes, if the snow had not been there I may have made it to the fence, but I also may have not been fast enough. But because of the snow, he would have hit my entire body, not just my legs. If there had not been snow to cushion the blow, he might have broken my leg against the hard ground, but instead I am just bruised and swollen (still bruised to this day and applying muscle cream each night, but that’s better than a cast). Without the snow, he might have had the energy to come back at me. I was not alone out there that day; my guardian angel definitely was busy.

So as comfortable as we get with these beautiful beasts, please don’t ever get too comfortable. We work in one of the most dangerous jobs in America, but most of us have been doing it our entire lives, so we sometimes forget the dangers. Just remember, I walked past this bull three or four times before this incident and he didn’t even bat an eye at me. We need not be afraid, but always aware.

Phenomenal Woman

“I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, that’s me.”

These words sang from my lips as I performed "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou for my talent for Miss Brookings 2015. I believed every word I said that night, that I was indeed a woman, Phenomenally, but as the past two years have worn on I have come to question what it means to be a woman in 2017, especially in agriculture.

There have been days where I have picked up the 95-pound calf and put him in the trailer because I was told that the 50-pound calf was too heavy for me. There have been days were my unqualified, uneducated, less passionate, underperforming male counterparts have been offered the job instead of myself. There have been days where my thoughts were occupied by sexual harassment comments by farm co-workers instead of on the cow I was breeding. There have been days where I have wanted to throw in the towel.

But then I remember the days where I outperformed every man around me, the days where I saved the calf, the days when the entire cow herd follows me because they trust me, the days when my heart sings with joy because my sick cow is no longer knocking on deaths door, the days that I know I am doing what God has put me on this earth to do.

So yes, “I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, that’s me.” And you can bet that we will still face challenges as we fight for equality and not every man will see us as equal, but we cannot let someone else’s opinion of us stop us from achieving our dreams. Like Ayn Rand said “the question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who’s going to stop me.”

Because All Dogs and Cows go to Heaven

My favorite picture of the nice clean barn at Cindy and Ray's

Yesterday, I cried, hard, all day long, in the tractor, in the pickup, in the shop, everywhere. When I woke up, my mom had texted my fiancé and I for me to call her as soon as I got up. I knew something was wrong, but what had happened was never what I had imagined.

            “Hey Mom, what’s up?” I could hear the sadness in her voice as she said, “Cindy and Ray’s barn started on fire and they lost all the cows.” It didn’t sink in for a few minutes because that is what nightmares are made of. I wanted to sit and cry, but the cows out here in McLaughlin needed to be fed, so I got up and headed to the tractor. About half way through feeding, I got to thinking about all of the good times, good cows, and great memories I had in that place. I stopped the tractor and sat there sobbing.

            That barn, those cows, and Cindy and Ray are the reason I was sitting in the tractor.

            I had always loved cows, but when I started there at 17, Cindy taught me how to truly care for and love those ladies as if they were a part of your own family. Ray taught me to pay great attention to detail to ensure the best outcome for the cows and the farm, as well as how to be rational when it came to the cows. That barn taught me that calluses are your best friend when working a wheel barrel, to not put all your weight into a broom when your boots no longer have any grip left (I have a scar to prove this one,) and that no time in the barn with your sister is ever wasted (especially when you're creating parodies). Rudy taught me that there is nothing more precious than a good old farm dog. And those beautiful, amazing cows taught me that nothing worth having comes easy, that getting up early for cows is way easier than getting up for school, and that I want to spend the rest of my life working for and with these great beasts.

A cute baby calf and myself.

My sister, Laura, with one of our favorite cows, 106.

           
             I thank God every day that Cheryl referred me to work for Cindy and Ray. I would not be the person I am today had they not taken the time to teach and mentor me. I pray that all in the barn went quickly and that they are all waiting for us on the other side (because all dogs and cows go to heaven).

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.