We Are Hungry

Since the first day of school, conversation with adults and students has centered on the new lunch policy that basically limits the amount of food for EVERY kid. They are limited to the number of calories that are needed for obese children to lose weight.

Through looking at calorie intake needs for ACTIVE students, I have basically concluded the same thing as several sites I looked at. The drastic cut in calories can actually cause our students to have problems with growth and overall health.

So, since we have very few kids that are overweight (and a majority of students that participate in after school sports), this logic seems a bit on the flawed side. Through many conversations this idea was born. This is what I've been up to lately. Check it out and see what you think. Hope you enjoy!

Click Here: We Are Hungry

God's healing rains

On a day with a blustery, depressing beginning it was amazing to see how emotions and nature were transformed once again by God's grace.

It all began with a windy, overcast and depressing drive into town where I didn't know if I had ever seen dust billowing out from behind the vehicle from our dry dirt roads like it did this morning.

Once at school, there was a solemn attitude as many of our junior high kids were dressed up to go to a funeral for a friend of theirs in the neighboring town who had been killed in a car wreck just Saturday.
Seeing those kids and knowing they were preparing to deal with a heartbreaking part of life was a bitter reminder of how cruel this earth can be at times...and the weather seemed to fit perfectly.

After they returned from the funeral, the sprinkles started. Just one here and there, but there was hope. Then the rain began...and ended...and began...and continued for over 2 hours

It wasn't a downpour, but it was one of those refreshing rains. As I arrived to help serve the meal at youth group, I saw those same kids, that dealt with one of the hardest moments in life, running around playing football in the rain. Everyone in town was loving the moisture and just enjoying the freshness it seemed to bring.
I traveled home and thanked God for the moisture and the stark change in scenery from the drive this morning. There were still reminders of the serious drought we are in. But I take pride in the character of people in western Kansas.

 We might look a bit like this corn field. We might be worse for wear at times, but we still hang on and try to tough it out. This corn won't be harvested, but it did as much as it could. This rain may not have amounted to much more than 20 hundredths, but it served its purpose. It gave us a fresh outlook and washed away some of the sadness to remind us that God is good and we can make it to another day!

Like Superman...it's all about the clothes

When I head back to school there is a huge struggle with my true identity and my alter ego. There's the farmgirl for life part of me that loves nothing more than the freedom of living life on the farm. But there is the teacher side of me that loves to invest in the lives of my students...and it also helps to pay the bills ;-)

This week, I'm getting to use both of them to their fullest extent.

Early morning, I'm Farmgirl. Dirty jeans and all.

As soon as chores are done, I have to transform to become Miss K.

Even though I've been a farmgirl all my life, I've never been a morning person. Just ask my cousin. She is pretty much the only person I'll get up for at anywhere between 4:30 or 5 in the morning to go work out with. Seriously, she's the only one...and I'm never all that thrilled about it. But as she says, "It's all in my head."

However, on mornings like this week, God makes it SOOOO worth it to walk out my back door to do chores. Here's the view as I walk out to God declaring, "Good morning!"

Here's to hoping that you have been able to enjoy God's beautiful day, no matter what identity you are using at the moment ;-)

Decisions, decisions

Today was an important step for me in terms of growing up.

After helping dad feed the calves this morning, he told me to go inside and get a piece of paper to write down numbers. I have 11 heifers and I will only keep five of those to grow my herd. The others will be sold. Even though I'm in my 30s, this is the first time I've actually been the one that makes the decision (ok, my boyfriend also helped me today). This is also the largest my herd has ever been, so there was more to choose from.

See the tiny one hiding between the other ones? That's not one I am going to keep. 

Number 208 is more what I'm looking for. Pretty good looking heifer.

This is my highly official paper I was writing on.

Hmmm....can you guess which ones will get kept out of this picture?

In all my years of competing at livestock judging contests (and being a complete and nervous wreck when preparing for the "reasons" part of it), I didn't really ever think it would do me a ton of good. It has helped me more than I ever thought. It gave me a good idea of what a good calf looks like and what characteristics I would like to have in my cattle herd.

Today it wasn't too in-depth. Basically, I was looking for the healthiest heifer calves. This has been a rough year because of the drought so we have weaned the calves almost two months early. That means they are no longer being fed by their moms, so they have to be able to maintain their nutrition on their own from whatever we are feeding them. In some cases it was an obvious choice that I didn't want to keep one of the calves because they were so scrawny. Other times it was basically a matter of opinion, but I think I'm pretty content with my choices.

So, if my herd doesn't do well in the next few years, it is ENTIRELY my fault....feels good to be a grown-up ;-)

How can you argue with this?

I LOVE having people out to my house. LOVE it. I have to remind myself of that fact when I am cleaning the house in preparation for the company (don't LOVE the cleaning part of it).

When I made the decision to move back out to the farm, I wanted to use my grandparent's house to host family and friends. This is what we did tonight.

It's great to see how the farm/ranch just brings a smile and sense of peace to those that don't get to live that type of life on a daily basis. This young lady was introduced to horses today.

A good portion of the food tonight was raised right here on the farm. The steak is some of our beef, the eggs were from my parents' chickens (getting the eggs is one of the earliest chores I remember doing), the watermelon is from our garden as well as the squash in the grilled vegetables. Also from my garden are the pickled okra. I have also found my new favorite food. It is jalapeno poppers, which tonight were made from peppers from my dad's garden. They involve jalapenos cut in half with the seeds removed and stuffed with cream cheese and then held all together by half a piece of bacon....YUM!!!

There is just such a sense of pride when you are able to present loved ones with something you labored so hard to bring to the table.

The lighting wasn't the best to take a picture, but the company was awesome and we didn't run short on food. AMAZING food.

This young lady was too busy informing me of her love for KU and she didn't eat too much. However, she was great entertainment and she appreciated the chair that was just her size. She also left me a present to find later in the form of her silverware hidden under the table cloth ;-)

I hope you all have a relaxing Labor Day and that God blesses you with time to spend with family and friends.

Givin' our calves some new bling

With all of the concerns about the source of people's food these days, age and source verification are becoming much more common in the livestock business. That means that people like to know where their food originated and the path it took to get to their table.

It is not mandated yet, but our family already does this by tagging our calves with E-ID tags. This gives them an electronic number that is stored in a database so when they are sold, they know exactly where they originated and how old they are. This is required for exporting them to certain countries such as Japan.

We also had a guest worker with us today. My mom made an appearance! It was kind of fun to have her out there with us. She is usually stuck in the house. I don't even remember the last time she has helped us with running cattle through the chute.

Her job was to record the number we gave the calves at birth, along with their current weight and the # of EID tag dad placed in their ear.

I had a nice little chat with one of my heifers while she waited for her turn in the chute.

This what our whole operation looked like. My job was to push the cattle through the alleyway and into the chute.

We got a new chute a year or two ago and it comes with nice scales. Mom sat in the mule and had a front row seat to the weight readout. She also had to record whether it was a steer or heifer and what color it was, along with who it belonged to.

The worst part of today was getting covered in dirt. I'm still coughing the stuff up and probably will be for at least another day. We didn't water things down first and it was just powder. When I came inside and took off my cap, I had a dirt line on my forehead. Nice.

I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend!