Good morning everyone. What a wonderful way to wake up! I was awoke this morning to the sound of steady heavy rains. I haven't been awoken that way in over a year and a half and this is the first real rain day off I have had from work in over two years!
So, since I have the day off I have both kids at home with me. My daughter is still asleep at 9am and my son was up at 7am. I am spending my morning catching up on paying bills, filing paperwork, bookkeeping, some reading of my new Eastern Farm Directory that just came yesterday, and later some misc. stuff outside.
I wanted to make a post this morning that was sparked by an article I just read in my fresh magazine. This article hits home to me and I will share the link for everyone to read. I someday would like to meet the man who wrote it as I quite enjoy reading his articles and he seems to be a very down to earth and well rounded person. His name is Ken Knight, we also share our first names, and he wrote a great article this month, The Color Purple Fades When Exposed to the "Cooler". In this article he discusses how 4-H and county fairs have completely missed the mark on what we are supposed to be teaching our children when it comes to livestock projects. When I was a kid and started going to the fair with pigs and cattle it was still a pretty fair field. Of course those who's parents had more money usually had better animals because they could afford them but the basic lesson was still learned.
As a youngster in 4-H you take projects to learn something new. Projects can range from sewing, cooking, animals, mechanics, and everything in between. The point is to learn something new and grow from it. Most of the other projects are able to be judged quite fairly because their results are a direct reflection of the time the child puts into it. However, with animals it has morphed into something completely different.
Toward the end of my 4-H career there was a shift at the fairs from it being a learning experience of how to select, raise, and sell an animal and make a profit as well as develop good animal husbandry skills, to he who spends the most money wins first place. The focus went from the kids learning realistic real world marketing and business to something completely wrong. It would be like going to a car show and picking a winner for a race amongst all the cars without ever looking under the hood or even driving them. While the cars may look awesome on the exterior they may not have anything worth while under the hood. There are all kinds of tricks to hiding problems in car bodies. The same holds very true for animals. If you have enough money you can take a decent animal and feed it all kinds of different ways to make it fatter, fluffier, and you can even refrigerate them to make them grow hair to cover up what you can't hide with the fat. However, if you took those same animals and judged them on the rail there is no way to hide what you are really looking for. How much meat and fat there is!
For the program to get back to reality the winner should not be picked in these events till the animal is judged on the rail. I would even go one step further and say that feeding budgets and incomes should be included. If the children are going to run a business you have to maximize product as well as income. We are not teaching children what was originally supposed to be taught....how to select an animal for proper genetics, feed that animal profitably and properly, produce a sellable desirable product, and make profit while doing it. Instead we are teaching them that if you have enough money you can buy whatever you want and if you do not spend enough money you will lose!
My children are being taught the original point. I also teach all my customers who by off of me these same points and help them teach their kids how to it should be. Today it is like everyone is running a race and spending a lot of money and only one person can win. This seems to be the way everything is in society today. I hope we soon realize that if only one person wins then everyone else is losing. It is time to start being realistic and change the way, and what, we teach our children!
Now, on to some pictures. I was able to get a great picture of Frosty and her calf from last year. He will be one year old at the end of this month. He is only 100-150# smaller than his mother. She is the one on the right. Her mother, Sally, is in the background with her new calf. I absolutely love this cross. The shorthorn breeding brings the milk and frame for a larger steer while the angus x charolais brings the muscling. Furthermore, Frosty is a small cow and eats less than my bigger mommas but her and her mother produce some monster steers! I am really excited to see how they produce at the butcher next year!
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| Frosty and her yearling, she is a shorthorn angus cross, her son is charolais x angus x shorthorn |
I am officially done with all the first cutting. I extended my bale storage area last year to give me more space. There are 87 bales of hay in this picture. Last year that would have taken a 3.5 rows to store them all. Now I can get 40/row. Also, due to my brother pushing the bales through my fence twice last year I decided to add another feature. I put a wooded fence post at the point where each row will start. The wrapper then pushes the bales into the post instead of ripping up the fence!
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| All the first cutting line wrapped. |
Since the kids were in their swim suits and it was quite hot out I decided to introduce them to my swimming pool as a kid.
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| Lisa and Alex playing in Conser Run! |
My son is fearless and walked right into the deep part which was up to his chin! They were a little leery at first but quickly found it fun and have been asking every day since to go back down again!
I hope everyone has a great day. I hope the rain pushes an awesome second cutting! As for me and the kids we are going to head outside and see if we have any new calves and try to get something done today!
Kenny
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