“I wish I could just move west and buy a ranch.” It’s something I’ve heard my dad mutter for years. He’s been around agriculture all his life, stacking hay as a teen and raising Hereford steers for the freezer as an adult. But Maryland is not big country. These days, he’s living vicariously through his three daughters’ 4-H projects and FFA events (and my internship here at CAB of course).
Uncomfortable silence.
If you don’t like it, you know the kind. Perhaps you’re just getting to know somebody, and you reach a point in the conversation where that silence hangs heavy and it makes you uneasy.
“His name is Panic Switch,” says Colton Hamilton with a grin. His father Gavin helps hold the stuffed bull’s head nearly their height.
But I didn’t hear the word “panic” clearly. I don’t know what I heard, even after asking a couple more times. Maybe the Canadian accent was fooling me.
Ryan Noble is smart. And goal oriented. For example, he set a goal to grow the herd from 120 to 300 cows, which quickly escalated to 750 cows and a large number of developing heifers. The definition of an overachiever.
He’s not a cattleman, but Kent Black may look familiar to those who are. Maybe you remember the owner of The Original Black’s Barbecue from our recent video “Quality Outside the Middle Meats,” in which he talked about the importance of really good brisket and being an early fan of the Certified Angus Beef® brand.
“Good cattle sell themselves,” says Nebraska cattleman Trevor Dam. He uses artificial insemination, breeds based on EPD parameters and is trying Angus Link to give him even more information on this year’s calf crop.
You don’t have to tell people who make their living from the land that treating it poorly is just bad business. Ranchers have been leading conservation efforts for generations. Yet, you’d have to have had your head in the sand to not hear something in the news about beef sustainability.
I’m not all that fancy. I grew up wearing second-hand clothes and riding in farm trucks. My siblings and I thought the Super 8 was an upscale motel because they had a pool. Still today, I rarely find myself in a town with a five-star restaurant. So when I get the opportunity to attend an event like our Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) brand annual conference, I often find myself in awe. The food, the venue….the hoopla!
When I was a young girl, if you’d have asked me if I would be starting my career in ag communications in 10 or 15 years, I would’ve probably called you crazy for asking. A tomboy with an intuitive brain, I loved feeding cows with my dad and not much else. I wanted to know how the cow business worked and how I could make our operation better for the future.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. By continuing to use this site, we will assume that you are in agreement.OK