Why Teenage Guys Are Like Earrings

Okay, for starters, I don't have an earring. I am however married with two daughters and they all do wear earrings. This all started with a conversation I had with a young lady at the Hopeline.She was dealing with a bad breakup, and had to remove an earring to get the phone close enough to hear over the noise around her. It then extented to some kids from youth group, and so here we are.
Teenage guys are like earrings. How?
  Young ladies like earrings because they are cool, and fun to hang around with. But what exactly do they do for young ladies? Not so much, but they do draw attention to young ladies, make them feel attractive, and special.
   Most young women start out with earrings that appear to be studs, but on further examination, they are really pretty simple.They will get used to them, and look at them as old friends.
   But sooner or later, the time will come for an upgrade. Something a little flashier, something a bit upscale.
So she will spend some hard earned money and get a hot set of earrings. Some time passes and everything is great, she feels really good about how these earrings make her look and feel.
    But one day, the young lady loses one of these expensive earrings. Panic sets in, she tears the house apart looking for it, trying to locate this lost earring. She loses sleep, can't focus, needs to have this earring back. Being without it will suck, suck big time. People will tell her to forget about it, move on, and this advice will without fail, tick off the young lady even more.
   But as time goes by, the hurt will change, and turn in something different.
Then one day, the young lady will be wandering through Kohls', and see a new set of earrings. Pretty cool earrings. Earrings that will make her kind of forget about the set she lost. And compared to the set she lost, she will wonder why she wanted the first set in the first place.
These earrings might or might not be the set of earrings that she falls in love with for the rest of her life.
  But slowly the realization sets in that the beautiful part of this equation that God created, has always been her.
Not some stupid earrings, but a beautiful young woman.

Telling The Ag Story from a Dad's Veiw

So I've an incredibly busy week ahead. Not that I'm complaining, I'm rather excited about it.
The Central Plains Dairy Expo starts tonight and runs until Thursday afternoon. 
Part of the fun of the next couple of days will be watching as the ag community interacts with their consumers.It starts tonight with a concert by John Michael Montgomery. The dairy community is going to be welcoming the public to the concert. The price of admission for the general public? A donation to a local food bank. Yep, that's it. They also get to rub elbow with real dairymen and women. It's going to be a good night.
The trade, honestly is a favorite of mine. I know it's still work, but there is also a great sense of community that goes on at an event like this. People we may not have seen for a year or more, kind of like a family reunion. There will also be a bunch of folks coming through the trade show to see what this whole "cow thing" is all about. Most of our "tourists" will be kids from area schools getting a look at the tools and equipment we get to use. It's fun to see the look on a kids face when they stick their finger into one of the inflations on a milking machine.
One of the parts that I'm really proud of, is that fact that my daughter and two of her friends are going to be working for the Central Plains group this week. Three very cool young ladies with a passion for animal agriculture. They represent a bright future for agriculture, and make a dad proud at the same time.
So while it will be incredibly busy,  I get to share some of the passion that I feel for the dairy industry with my daughter and her friends.
So if you see three cute young women working for the Central Plains Dairy Expo this week, know that somewhere at that show, there's a really proud dad.

Passion

So when you get asked what you do, what you are passionate about, how do you respond? A friend of mine, when asked that question, answered it this way," What do I do for a living? Or what is my passion?" Interesting take on what we do versus what we love.
So what do you love?
When I get asked that question, it's pretty easy to ramble on for quite a while. Agvocacy is a passion. Few things get my heart pumping like the job of telling our(ag) story to those who don't know anything about what we do. It's my feeling that it's the responsiblity of each of us, and I feel strongly about that.
Or I can discuss my love of working with teenagers. For some reason they've allowed me into their world, and I've enjoyed their friendship.
But why can't we go on and on about the ones that we are really passionate about. The ones we love.
I don't tell the world about my wonderful wife nearly enough. And she is the one person in the world that I'm most passionate about. Why is that? I know that we can't all be as passionate about my wife as I am, that would just be weird. But it's in all of us to let them know that.
I'm reminded of and old west river South Dakota rancher, who no one had ever heard tell his wife that he loved her. His explanation was that he had told her that the day they got married, and until that changed, his word was good.
We find special days to get flowers, send gifts etc, but do those in your life theat you feel passionate about, know how passionate you feel about them? Try tell them again.

Poisoning the Well

In the February issue of the Readers Digest, a book review from the New York Review of Books was quoted. The topic had nothing to do with animal rights, and in fact, I have no idea what H.L. Mencken's book Prejudices is about, but part of the quote was insightful. The reviewer was explaining the difference between honest and calculated vitriol. "In today's jargon, Mencken, by eloquently proclaiming views certain to offend so many, would be called a polarizing figure. Whereas today's polarizers, however, are professional well- poisoners who spend vast sums for opinion polls to determine how to best inflame the masses for political advantage." Sounds to me like what we have going on with animal agriculture these days.
The animal rights crowd has come up with a group of terms that allow for no debate or consumer education. What reasonable person wouldn't be against extreme confinement, gestation stalls, veal crates, battery cages, puppy mills or animals being force fed antibiotics to keep them alive? I mean really.
But these terms aren't truthful when it comes to the debate, because it shuts off the debate. It's like asking someone if they are in favor of stricter laws against domestic violence. You have to say you are, or you are a horrible human being. You simply can't ask the question, "Are the laws on the books today inadequate?", without looking heartless.You are nearly forced to answer in the affirmative.  
A recent quote from an animal rights site said it this way, "99% of the public are for humane treatment of animals." I guess that would have to include animal agriculture, because we care for animals, but the impression left is that the 1% are those raising the animals, and they don't care.
So it falls to all of us to tell those out there who don't know about raising livestock, how things are really done. That means it is the responsibility of EACH of us. Have you taken that opportunity to tell someone how a farm works. Some friends and I have been working with a Facebook page called The Truth about Agriculture. Discussions have ranged from alternative farming methods, to gestation stalls to horse slaughter. Great views and diverse opinions. It's usually respectful, I've only had to apologize once.  

Leadership Values

While trolling Animal Rights sites recently I found some interesting thoughts on leadership. It started innocently enough in a conversation about animal care. The site administrator was berating a couple of farmers for the fact that they were exploiting animals. The comment was made that if you were making money from animals, you were exploiting them, and you should be stopped. The farmer in the conversation then asked if those thoughts were the stand of the HSUS. The administrator said they didn’t know, they didn’t work for HSUS, but they were just huge fans.

Over the past several months, this same group of people has been photographed with the president of HSUS. They have received acknowledgement for their efforts in fighting Humanewatch. But they don’t know if the stand they have taken is the same as the official stand of the HSUS?

I’m not sure if I think they believe that statement or not. But that isn’t the question.

Every organization, given enough time, comes to mirror the values of their leader. It works that way, or it should anyway. Find a strong leader and you will most likely find a strong aggressive company. If the company motto goes along these lines,”it’s great to want to soar with the eagles, but at least weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.” you’ll find a company that has questionable abilities and ethics. Company heads surround themselves with people who will help push forward their agenda, and mirror their values.

So when the HSUS tells us that it isn’t in any way against animal agriculture, but it gets repeated over and over again by their supporters, people that the leadership doesn’t distance themselves from, what are we supposed to think? I’m aware of the fact that they’ve done some good things, but when the leadership uses ads that demean all of animal agriculture by association, that doesn’t seem like they are going out of their way to work with the average farmer/rancher.

I know they will tell us that their position is well thought out, scientific, that they are working with ranchers and farmers and are in no way anti ag, I’m going to take that with a grain of salt.

Have A Merry Civil Christmas

Ho, Ho Ho and all that other merry crap. I'm not a huge fan of Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I love what Christmas is really all about, but unfortunately it gets lost in all the noise. And more and more, all of the noise is unfortunately feeling like a year round thing. It used to be that Christmas was the time when everyone went out of their way to be just a little nicer than they were for the rest of the year. Now a days being nice at all would be an upgrade.
Trolling some conversations lately, it seems the tolerance level has reached a level of intolerance that makes almost any conversation impossible. It seems that if I don't agree with you, it must be that I have an agenda, I am a horrible person, or you are a waste of resources. Both sides of the animal rights argument are guilty of this kind of intolerance. Are we so short of patience and kindness these days that we can't be civil to each other?
In the time I've spent  recently on Facebook, I've been trying to slow down and be a bit more aware of what the people that I'm interacting with may be going through. People have a lot going on in their lives that we may not know about. There is so much hurt out there that it blows me away. And that gets me to my wish for Christmas.
It's time for us to focus our energy on caring for those around us, not beating each other up. Be a spouse to your spouse. Be a parent to your kids. Be the friend that you wish you had. Find and interact with someone who you think needs a person to talk to. Each of us knows someone who needs that friend. It costs nothing, and the rewards for sharing the love of this season could very well be eternal. :)

What is Natural Behavior?

So in some recent conversations with some of my animal rights friends, the topic of animals needing to exhibit natural behavior, a dust bath, perching, etc. came up. It got me really wondering about that whole topic.

How many of us, as humans, exhibit what we would call “natural behavior”? Isn’t what we do molded by the restraints that society places on us? A humorist whose name escapes me at the moment, suggested once that left to his own devices, a man would drink beer, chase women, and scratch himself insistently. But society has placed on us limitations for what they feel is morally and socially acceptable for a thriving community. In the same way that we aren’t allowed more than one spouse, we aren’t allowed to murder, rape and pillage. Societal values shape our lives and actions.

So if we need to allow animals to exhibit their natural behaviors, what does that mean for agriculture? Even more, what does that mean for the livestock in our care? While I’m making a few assumptions here, most people, imho, (in my humble opinion), see what they want to see in regards to animal care and behavior. It’s easy to see when you look at the warm and fuzzy videos posted by many animal rescue groups. A 400+ pound sow is taped lying on a bed of straw being petted by her caretaker, and has never shown them any signs of being aggressive. Yet put her in a group setting and she can get mean. Real mean. Cows out on pasture are all calmly eating and they wouldn’t hurt a flea, but they have a fairly complex hierarchy, one that involves pushing the more timid cows away from the choicest feeds. A mother turkey spreading her wings over her flock. Not the picture of her losing her chicks in tall grass, or to predators. The list goes on. The animal rights crowd sees the warm and fuzzy, but overlooks the more brutal part of animal behavior.

So what does that mean for us in animal Ag? It means an uphill climb. How do we show people with no connection to the farm, this side of the farm? I really don’t know, but making videos that are all happy and sunshine, while important, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Some of that is going to require that we put ourselves out there, let people see what we do, all of it. And in a move I can’t believe I’m saying, ask some of these animals rights folks to work with us, read that beside us, to further their understanding of animal behavior and how we in animal ag are working with that.. And if you want to talk about unnatural behavior, well there you go.