I’ve been negligent in my blogs for awhile so I’d like to rewind back to this spring.   Seems for a while there, every time I turned on the radio I heard some talking head, rattling on about beef exports being the third highest they’ve been since 2003.  I wasn’t paying as much for calves as I was in 2004, so I don’t see what the big deal is.  I don’t sit down and pencil in an export factor into what I think I can pay for cattle, so I have a tough time seeing how this really puts money in my pocket.

Now all this was happening at graduation time.  Have you ever stopped to think what our most valuable export is?  It’s our youth.  They have been programmed to go to school and get a degree so they can get a good job.  I get phone calls from about a dozen kids every year asking where they should go to school.  I ask what they want to do, and every one of them tells me "they want to come back to the family farm, but..."  That excuse just pisses me off!

Now it’s not my place to micromanage what parents tell their kids.   I used to hear the same crap from my high school counselor and my folks.   All I can say is if you are burning with enough desire, eventually people will come from miles around to watch you burst into flames.  Want proof?  This past weekend I got phone calls from people in three different states that were interested in my bull calves.  I don’t advertise.  I got phone calls this week from sale barn managers in Oklahoma and Kansas.  I’ve never been to their auctions.

Here’s my point.  Do you have enough desire, and passion?  Or are you filled with doubt?  Are you willing to out work and out hustle your competition?  People too weak to follow their own dreams will always find a way to discourage your dreams.  Now it can take a long time.  It took me eleven years to get established.  Eleven years before people I don’t know started calling me.  The average age of the American rancher/farmer is in his sixties.  Who’s gonna fill their shoes?  They are gonna retire in the next five to fifteen years.  I smell opportunity.  An opportunity to stop exporting our youngsters to urban areas.