Years ago I was working in Corvallis practicing our summer habitat surveys with EBAs from all around Oregon. I'm a rancher who was surrounded by meditating hippy girls and skinny jean wearing boys. I am manlier than some of those wimps. I did not fit in, but I didn't really want to. So I found the one other rancher there, amazingly there was one. He was from the East side of the mountains and was working for the ODFW while on summer break from college. I don't remember how we started visiting, but he had worked on some farm where he drove combines and had done quite a bit of work. We were discussing costs of equipment and I jokingly referenced "John Deere American Farmer". From that point on we were buddies. A friend of his had written an essay in college based on that video game. He received an A grade for it. Myself, my husband, and his roommates and just about any other ag student owned the original and the second version of that game.
As if ranching and farming isn't hard enough, we have all laid out $20 to buy a game that allows us to grow various crops, take out loans, buy equipment and face unforseen challenges. They include a Brittney Spears type singer boycotting beef, which causes the market to dive, a wave of locusts, droughts, poachers shooting your cows, and many many more. This game must have consumed at least 2 hours a day. We were in college, in a city and everything to do there did not interest us at all. If this blog prompts you to go buy JDAF, make sure you get the second part, you can run cattle and other critters, many more options. If you can get past the milk and egg one you are a god at video games.
I would like to say I have outgrown such video games, but that would be a lie. During the daytime when it is rainy, or just an unpleasant day out I stay inside with my daughter and watch spongebob or looneytunes. I can only take so much of Patrick star, so I started playing showcattle.com. If you aren't familiar with this game, it is the exact same thing as breeding real cattle, the epd numbers are just different. Sometimes your really expensive embryo calves die, sometimes your cows die, sometimes they come out deformed, it's basically like real life.
Tonight I was reading another article about a little weasel whose name and title are; Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. If you aren't familiar with ag, this little turds name is most likely unrelevant probably because you haven't heard of what he does. Wayne does his best to attack ranchers, farmers and their livlihoods by using examples such as the dairy one that surfaced last year. If you watch, he only uncovers things when one of his proposed ballot measures are about to come out. I'm not going to get into Wayne. He is the professional liar, I don't stand a chance next to him. The reason I reference him along with videogames is to point out that we literally love our jobs.
I get to pick out sires and dams, breed them together and get adorable little babies. I get to see those little babies go to great homes, or go to feed someones family. I get to pick out the management program that will go along with my livestock. Who wouldn't love this? It's a fulltime job plus overtime, but it's just awesome! I'm covered in poop, hair, afterbirth and whatever else everytime I work with my critters and love it. So the next time you see the little Wayne turd pop up on the internet or the television, or whatever other stage will best benefit him, please remember we aren't monsters, he's just a professional liar and is as good at his job as I am at mine.
*I'm not super proud of this post, there's a handful or errors and I should have gone into greater depth, but I've got a goat kidding and can't sit still too long. Here's a photo of the above weasel and Michale Vick, he's a responsible dog owner now, thanks to said weasel. I do not have anyones permission to use this photo, I googled the weasels name and this came up. Maybe we should have a captions contest, I can think of one or two.
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