My Future is Our Future

If you all don't follow my FaceBook page here is a quick recap.  I am competing in the College Aggies Online contest for the next (now) 8 weeks. The point of the contest is to learn more about other aspects of agriculture and to talk about it, publicly.  College Aggies even gives us mentors each week to mentor and at the end of the week rank our activities (social media and assignments.)  The top one gets scholarship money.

       I am so very passionate about everything this contest values and strives for.  This week, week 8 is all about turkeys which I know nothing about but through the contest I have learned a lot.  Our assignment, are not always related to the topic of the week, is writing a blog post.

Grumpy Grandfather, still won't smile!

For my long- time followers this will be repetitive but to my new ones listen up!

    I live on my families farm in East Tennessee where we raise registered Simmental for show and sale; we have also incorporated other breeds such as ChiAngus and Maintainers.  I love cows, cows are my passion.  As a child, I never understood why we did the things we did, why we dehorn, vaccinate, artificial inseminate the cows and many other practices we have.  I always would ask “why” but farming with my grandfather (a grumpy old man) I got the usual answer “because that is how it is done.”  That lead me to 1: learn on my own and 2: understand the frustrations of the consumer.  I feel my place in the farming community is to tell my story, it sounds very basic but consumers, much like me for a long time, don't know why we do the things we do.   I finally am learning about why we do the things we do and I want to tell everyone.  Farming with my grandfather and being surrounded by grumpy old men has shown me they aren't going to do it.

   Agricultrue in my opinion is the backbone of the US because in order to survive we need food, food is farming/ranching.  But a uninformed public can be bad for the agriculture community which leads me to my career goals: Agriculture Lawyer.  When the ag community, my grumpy grandfather, is not transparent and forthcoming with our way of life things go downhill which turns into lawsuits.  I love the AG community and one way I can finally give back is by defending our way of life and ultimately "telling my story.”  Until law school I am telling my story using my blog, twitter, and Facebook.  If you, like me, want to know why, follow along on my journey and for the duration of this competition learn something new about different aspects of agriculture with me. I am excited, I hope you are too.    If there is something you want to know more about comment below. 

Grumpy Granfather--Mean Gene--Pop--Your average farmer