Category Archives: Life Lessons

Would Jesus wear spurs?

After last weeks subject on “Sex, nutrition, and electric fence” I had better do a flying lead change.

We all have different ways of dealing with things. Religion and the way we deal and express it is an interesting subject to ponder on.

I was not raised going to church regularly. When I was in grade school we had Bible class after school on Wednesday and I really liked that. I remember writing a paper about the meaning of Christmas in the sixth grade about liking being around animals on Christmas because of Jesus being born in the stable. That always stuck with me. On Christmas Day I really feel good taking care of animals and feel good about giving them a little special treatment.

My spiritual leaders lately have been a strange mix. A former woman bull rider, drug salesman, bull salesman, cowboy from Texas, and a welder turned cowboy preacher, and a singer that almost went to jail for shooting a guy.

Because of this I really don’t think I am qualified to tell you how you should act, but I would like to get you to thinking about some things that are important to spend a little time on.

A former woman bull rider turned preacher had a huge impact on me. The first time my family went to her service it was in Madison, Wisconsin at the Midwest Horse Fair. She was riding a real pretty black gelding and was singing a gospel song. She tried to stand up on him and he ended up bucking her off right on her butt. I could tell it hurt, but she never missed a word of the song, got back on and finished a very inspirational church service.

I really looked forward to Crystal Lyons words and displays of inspiration. We went to many of the same horse fairs and we became friends. If you have the opportunity to listen to her it will be a great experience, and I guarantee it won’t be boring.

Ron McDaniel, became a real good friend of mine. We spent a lot of time together and he has fun, is very good at his job, and is very humorous. Ron lives what he believes. He gave me a Bible that is called The Daily Bible. It has reading for every day of the year laid out for you. It is a great way to get the Bible read and understood.

If you have ever seen or heard Kit Pharo, you would know he is very strong in his opinions. He is not shy in speaking his mind about the cattle business or God. His Sabbath Day Devotions always provoke thought.

Todd McCartney is a fellow I have spent a lot of time with. When you travel with someone, away from family and friends and watch the ethics they use conducting business you learn about their integrity. Todd is a very committed Catholic, and I have said it many times that Todd McCartney is one of the most honest religious people I know.

My wife and I spent the winter last year in Hubbard, Texas. It’s a great little community, and I started attending the “Hubbard Cowboy Church.” The service is held in an old barn with a dirt floor and an outdoor privy. The Pastor, Butch Boatright, is as country as it gets, but really knows how to get the message out to us country folk.

As you may know I like good music. Billy Joe Shaver sings a song called “If you don’t love Jesus, you can go to hell.” I read his book and it talked about his feelings on religion.

I really admire people who live there faith. When I started this deal of writing, I said I would keep it positive. I am going to get just a little negative for a bit.

I have had it with people that use religion, church, the cross, the fish, or religious music on their cell phone, and then lie, cheat and steal like a bad outlaw. I have seen and dealt with this so much in the last five years or so and am sick of it. It makes me sad to see how low some people will stoop. Sorry for the bluntness, but is a bad deal. You will have a hard time getting me to do business until I truly know you if you are trying to impress me with a bunch of God symbols.

Don’t just talk about it, live it.

Pretty much everything I do has something to do with animal care and handling. I heard a cowboy preacher one time talking about man’s dominion over animals. His thoughts upset me a little, because he was saying we could do pretty much what we wanted because of our dominion that God gave us.

Well I got to thinking about that. We do have dominion, there’s no doubt about that. But I wonder if maybe we are not judged by how we handle that power. Not only over animals, but all things in our care.

If you have read the Bible, you may recall Jesus was a colt starter. Here is a question for you to think about, and if you would like to share your thoughts please do.

Would Jesus wear spurs, or use a hot shot? I encourage you to really think it over. I have heard lots of interesting thoughts that have come out of this discussion. I am sure we will learn of many opinions from many different points of view.

If Jesus did wear spurs I would be okay with him having a cross or a fish symbol on them.

~ Curt Pate

Sex, nutrition, and electric fence

This may be a shocking title to some.  Sex is not a bad word or a bad subject, but it sure makes me nervous even mentioning it.

Sex has a purpose.  It is to create life, maintain and increase the species that performed the act, and ensure the species does not become extinct.  If there was not pleasure in this act, it would be kind of like oiling your saddle.  You know you should do it but you just don’t get it done as often as you should.

The good and the bad of it is, sex is pleasure. Anything that creates pleasure or satisfaction can loose sight of the main reason for doing it. So humans exploit it. We focus on the pleasure and forget the real reason for sex, the survival of humans.  If you don’t use self discipline it can create real problems in life.

Nutrition has a purpose.  It is to maintain life and create a healthy environment in the community of cells that make up the human being and hopefully create enough energy to make you desire sex.

As the human being has become more sophisticated, life has gotten pretty easy compared to our ancestors. Food has become more of a focus of pleasure and social status than a means to sustaining life. It may be evolving into the opposite of its purpose and actually killing us rather than helping us to live.

We need to take nutrition seriously and learn to eat the right stuff, in the right amount, at the right time.

There happens to be many different opinions on the right stuff.  If we get down to the basics, we need certain vitamins and minerals in the proper balance and amount, along with energy and protein in the correct amounts.

The things I know are really important in all of this is sunshine and soil nutrients.  Sunshine is the only ingredient in the nutrition puzzle that is free for anyone to absorb.  Everything else has a cost to it.  The soil is easy to take the nutrition out of and when depleted difficult to put the nutrients back in.  If we eat foods that are lacking in minerals and vitamins our body needs, it will create the desire for more, leading to over consumption and obesity.

When nutrients are harvested from the land it is like mining the soil.  If you mine the soil you must put back the stuff you took out or the soil will not be as healthy as before you harvested.

Conventional farming practices have replaced soil nutrition with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, also know as NPK.  This leads to good growth of a crop, but I wonder about the true nutrition that comes out of the soil.  I wonder if this is why we have so much obesity in our country.  We have plenty to eat but always crave more.

Lets look at haying.  When you harvest a hay crop and sell it, you mined the soil and sold it to someone else.  If you make a hay crop and feed it to animals in a different location on your operation you transferred the nutrients away from the hay field.  If you take you must give back or sacrifice quality.  Putting back nutrition takes energy, energy costs money, and it is difficult to put it back as well as you took it away.  I have read that the Amish farmers always rotate grazing into the farm system.

So lets graze that same field.  When a grazing animals eats forage the body absorbs what it needs after its digestive system has broken the cellulose down and passes the rest through. This seems to me the quickest way to start recycling the nutrients that there is.  A very small amount of the minerals and vitamins were absorbed by the animals, the excess goes through and it goes back on the soil it came from to be recycled the way it has done for thousands of years.

I have been told goat meat is the most nutritious meat of the domesticated animals we eat. This is because of the varietyof grass and brush they eat.  You are what you eat, they say. And goats know how and are athletic enough to get the good stuff.  We need to provide our beef with a highly nutritious diet so they will provide us with a highly nutritious diet.

Farming seems to be difficult to do without depleting the soil of valuable nutrients.
As we go along here it looks like we will have to come up with ways to put proper nutrition back in the soil.

In some parts of the U.S. the wheat is grazed for some time before the cattle are pulled off and the wheat makes a crop.  This looks to be a great way to increase profit and nutrient density.

Thousands of head of cows are grazed on corn stocks in the winter as a cheap source of feed.  It looks to me like this is a great system to add nutrients back into the soil.

This is all done because of electric fence.  Power fence is the technology that has the potential to help us graze animals for better sustainability of resources, graze areas that were impossible to graze without it, increase profit with more effective grazing, and control animals in a safe and effective manner.

The energizers of today are so much more reliable than in the past (30 years ago). Along with this, the components it takes to make an electric fencing system work such as the grounding methods, wire, insulators, posts, and all the other components are better too.

Buy high quality products and they will last longer with less problems.  Learn how to put the fence up correctly. You must also learn how to train animals to power fence.

I keep hearing how we are going to have to increase production to feed the world as the population  increases.  As I drive around the country and other parts of the world I see so much wasted or unused feed that cattle could utilize, then naturally fertilize, then be used for highly nutritious protein to help feed the world.

This looks to me like a great opportunity for young or newcomers to agriculture to get started in the business when they have not much capital.  It also looks like a great way for operations that don’t have the time or the energy to utilize these areas of production to get them used and create more profit, as well as creating a more healthy environment through proper grazing.

To get this to work we need to learn to use the technology of power fence and water systems, plus the skill of animal handling, and use proper grazing methods that ensure sustainability.

It is so exiting and encouraging to look to the future and see the possibilities that beef production has for helping the world solve some of the challenges it faces.

The use of the technology of electric fence will help make this possible.  I encourage you to use it.

Don’t forget nutrition.  We need to eat a good balance of foods that nourish and satisfy our body’s.  I believe beef can play a big part in this.  I also know that by eating it I am helping create balance in nature.

Eating a good steak is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Well almost …

~ Curt Pate