Agriculture | Midwestern At Heart

Go to the feed store….

This is Devil Dawg, not Mudflap….

As we were pulling out of the driveway this morning I looked down at my phone and it said I had 26 minutes to my parents house and that traffic was clear. I laughed and joked that we go to my parents house a lot on Sunday’s I guess.

If you don’t have an iPhone, it has some feature about it that picks up on patterns that you normally do and tells you how traffic is for that particular commute. Oh… and we weren’t headed to my parents house this morning.

Hubby said that the other day he was talking to my dad. My dad mentioned that he looked down at his phone the other day and it told him what traffic was like to the feed store. Dad started laughing and asked if hubby and I were playing tricks on him. But no, every Saturday is feed store day.

Mudflap used to tell dad it was Saturday and time for the feed store. Mudflap recently passed away though… so now it is dad’s phone that tells him it is time to go to the feed store. I can sure tell you the horses will be happy to have dad receiving reminders ;).

Oooooo I wonder if we travel on a trip if it’ll say he has to go like 136 miles (or some random number) to get to the feed store.

Boots Boots and more Boots {and Tips on taking care of Leather!}

My love/hate relationship with Facebook paid off once again this week. Why do I say love/hate? Well because sometimes I love to hate it! Sometimes people overshare on Facebook. Sometimes people take what you say wrong on Facebook. Sometimes….. the stories go on and on. Use your imagination.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great place to connect with old friends and new friends a like. a great place to share recipes and pictures. And a great place to find deals on boots!

Oh, wait, what? Boots? Yes, boots. This past weekend I was on Facebook, and a group that I’m a member of Farm Hats had a post about a Durango Boots discount. I read through the post and it said that if you ordered with the code FFACHAPTER you got a pair of FFA Durango Boots for $49. I thought that seems too good to be true.

So I went on to the website and it showed that they were $149 (or if men $152 or something like that). I went ahead and added a pair to my cart, plugged in the discount code, and bam… $49 pair of FFA Durango boots. No tax and you could get free shipping for $2 for FedEx shipping. I showed it to the hubs and also shared it on my Facebook page for others to benefit from.

Then that night hubby and I decided (and I use hubby and I loosely, he did it 😉 I just benefitted from it) to order us each a pair. One… the website said $2 was donated to the FFA (I’d have liked a little more but whatever) and two, you can’t beat a pair of $49 pair of boots.

They arrived yesterday. I was sooooo happy! Oh and get this… The box said they donate $5 per pair of boot to the FFA. Even better!!

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FFA and National FFA Week

Welcome to FFA Week. Did you know it was FFA week? What is National FFA Week? It is a week for FFA, Alumni, and Sponsors to be agvocates for this great organization and Agriculture as a whole.

Now I grew up on a farm and I have always had a fondness for agriculture, but I have learned there are people out there who think their food comes from the store. Well, yes, but where does the store get it?

Words that scare people are GMO, Farm, Factory Farm, Blood & Guts, Antibiotics, etc. There is nothing scary about those words, especially if you educate yourself to the best of your ability. That’s not reading just one side, no, read both sides. You may not agree with what the other side says, but that is how you educate yourself.

I joined FFA as a Freshman in high school (the earliest you could join when I was in school). When I did my student teaching I learned that some programs have 7th and 8th graders taking classes in agriculture to expose them, our school didn’t offer that.

But through the FFA I was able to travel both Domestically and Internationally. In fact I got my Bachelors degree in Agriculture Education. Which here’s a fun fact, George Straight graduated from Southwest Texas State University with a degree in Agriculture Education. Hey King George, you’re awesome in more ways than one!

Anyway I got in to showing sheep as an FFA’er. I showed sheep all over the state of Missouri and took it on to the American Royal. I also traveled to Washington D.C., St. Louis, MO, all over the state of South Dakota, and Costa Rica to pursue agriculture (and that’s just to name a few). Yes, Agriculture is that awesome.

In the FFA I learned how to public speak (I am a very shy/outgoing person), judge animals, trapse through muck with the best of them :), achieve awards, and much more. I learned how to be a team player, how to give more than I receive but receive all in the same. How to make friendships with people you didn’t know and much more. I can’t say enough good things about FFA. And now, some pictures.

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Horses & Food

Two weekends ago we went riding and since then Abug “talks” about riding in the form of Ride, ride, ride, ride, ride. This last weekend was no different. Hubby went to work on the shower houses back at the campgrounds again on Saturday so Tbug, Abug, and I went to hang out with my dad. I figured it wouldn’t take much and the girls could ride :).

We took one of dad’s saddles to our friend Len to fix and then it was time to head to the horse show that was going on. Dad’s on the board so he makes an appearance plus we like to see what’s going on anyway. Dad bought us lunch at Lucky J (where the show is).

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Sunny and 68

Saturday morning the weather was predicted to be in the upper 60’s. The upper 60’s in January, really? Holy cow yes! And was it ever awesome!?!?

Hubby, Grady, and Jared had plans to help Chuck start cleaning the campgrounds that we use for the trail riding events. If you remember the rains in December after Christmas… there was mud everywhere. The refrigerator and freezer were full of water. The hot water heater was busted (I think that’s what I heard). It did a lot of damage to the shower facilities. There was 36″ of water before it crested. So they decided since they had a free weekend, why not go down and start the cleanup process.

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The Day I Got Chased by a Turkey

Once upon a time I was doing an engagement photo shoot. We were walking around this little “faux” town that is near where I live. We were dodging another photographer so that we didn’t photobomb them and they didn’t photobomb us (although I’m not so sure they were being so decent).

There was a dog that ran up to us eating a dead chicken. Yuck! It stunk! So we were avoiding the dog and the dead chicken too, just so we didn’t have nasty things in the photos.

Then we walked over to the chicken coop. The chickens were okay with us and we were pondering using a building right beside them. Then………

The turkeys came.

At first we were talking to the turkeys, then they started gobbling at us and coming at us. We all wound up on the other side of a rock fence. We found a new way around the rock fence and they were still coming at us so we moved on.

And that is the story of how I was chased by a turkey.

Maybe not so scary, but we weren’t sure what the turkey’s might do to us in the moment.

I can now cross off being chased by a turkey on my life’s list as well as being flocked by a goose. I’m on a roll! By the way, Did I ever tell you I was flocked by a goose?

Thursday’s Food for Thought

Tbug and I were driving down the road one day. She’s constantly telling me this that and everything else. It’s a joke with my dad that it is payback for the years I spent talking his leg off about everything under the sun.

Anyway we drove past a corn field and she proceeded to tell me something that my Mother in law told her. Now I was not involved in the conversation where my mother in law is concerned, I just got the story relayed to me by Tbug. But supposedly my MIL said that a farmer plants the outside rows of corn for people to come by and take as they please.

I’m pretty sure I had to pick my jaw up off the ground. Then proceeded to tell Tbug that is not the case. Farmers aren’t out to give away free food. They are out to make food for consumers that is good quality to feed the masses. That farmer also makes a living off his crop, whether it be a crop of corn, soybeans (pictured above), dairy or cattle.

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Want to Ride Along?

One phrase I can tell you about farm life… if anyone ever wants you to “ride along” with them… what that really means is, come be the gate b****.

haha. Okay so maybe that’s a bit harsh, but basically it means that you’re the passenger, you get to get the gate so the driver doesn’t have to get out.

And I’ve mentioned before I hate getting the gates when I am the driver... that’s why I used to always leave the gate open and drive my grandpa nuts. Now I drive my uncle nuts. But let me be clear, if the cows are up by the gate/road, I get out and close the gate, every time. It’s just if they aren’t up by the road or they’re in the bottom pasture, surely I won’t be there that long so I leave it open. Then I watch from the house. I too need to point out that there is a cattle guard that is supposed to keep them in. But to be on the safe side we don’t trust it. Sadly people are sue happy these days.

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Farm Tour: Do Farmer’s have computers?

Growing up I’ve been presented with some extremely amazing opportunities.

I learned to drive a truck at 4 years old in a freak lightening storm in the middle of the night, in a hay field. And it should be noted that not one bale got wet and I only drove over like 2 or 3. Hey I couldn’t see over the steering wheel at first. I had to sit on my dad’s hard hat.
At 6 years old I could fly across the field in a Chevy S-10. I slid the seat all the way forward and could reach the break and gas. There’s good stories there too!
At 12 years old I was driving a Standard Transmission like you were supposed to hitting the clutch and shifting gears.
I learned to drive a tractor sometime around that same time frame.
I learned the value of hard work and persistence.
Animals get fed before you do.
I’ve traveled all around Southwest Missouri, Columbia, Sedalia, Kansas City, Louisville, KY, Washington D.C., All over South Dakota, up to North Dakota, all over Oklahoma, Southeast Kansas, Northwest Arkansas, Northern Texas and even out of the country to Costa Rica.

So what? People get to do things like traveling all the time. Well mine is all thanks to Agriculture. I’ve traveled where Agriculture wasn’t involved yes, but because of agriculture and farm life I’ve had more opportunities and experiences than I could imagine.

Last Friday I got provided with another opportunity because of Agriculture but also because of blogging. The Missouri Women’s Bloggers teamed up with the Missouri Farm Bureau to do a Southwest Missouri Fall Farm Tour.

Emileigh from Flashback Summer, Me, Pamela from Thrive Personal Fitness, Trent Drake (Production Agriculture Farmer), Alicia from The Sensible Family, Fawn from Instead of the Dishes.

This is the second fall tour that the Missouri Women Bloggers and the Missouri Farm Bureau have done. The first was up around the Kansas City area.

I met Laurie through other means of blogging last summer, early fall and instantly fell in love with her blog, because well it’s about Agriculture. I pointed her in the direction of the Missouri Women Bloggers and she was actually able to attend the Fall Farm Tour in the Kansas City area. While they were on their tour, they were eating lunch and a local the Chief of Police in the town of Garden City posed the question, why tour farms? (If you want to read about that, you definitely should!)

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Hay!

The other night I was sitting in the house doing homework. Between reading and studying I was about to go nuts. Hubby had taken Abug outside with him, so I snuck outside to see what they were up to; that’s when I heard the tractor running. We lucked out, some really good friends of ours brought us their tractor over (plus mower, second tractor and baler, Thank you Jared & Karen!) to do some fall haying. Our mower is broken (again).