Category Archives: Life Lessons

I am real proud of my daughter, Mesa.  She grew up being exposed to some really influential horse clinicians.  She has the desire to be the best at what SHE wants to be.  The subject this week is being yourself and Mesa is the poster child!

~ Curt Pate

mesa WH cover

 

Farm Bill

Everyone sure seems happy the farm bill got passed.  I don’t know anything about what is in it and don’t really care.

The thing that I would be interested in is people’s attitude about how important it is to agriculturalists’ success.

I had some real good things set up in my morals when I was younger.

First my grandfather Leonard Frank was really against borrowing money.  It was not the borrowing that he did not like, but he felt by working and saving and starting small and growing you grew your skill ahead of your business and therefore could maintain and improve the business.  The farther along I get in this life I am seeing how smart he really was (ornery, but smart).

My father Tex Pate was very good at seeing a good business and then learning how to make it work.  He was not afraid to borrow money, but was real serious about getting out of debt.

Lee Pitts had a big impact on me as we got his paper The Livestock Digest. He was outspoken about things in the beef industry and I liked his philosophy at the time when I was just starting to think about things in the cattle industry.

Then I read a book titled The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton.  It is a tragic book about the drought in the 50’s.  Charlie Flagg is the main character, and he is very set in his ways and does not believe in government programs.

I totally agree.  When you put your hand out to the government to pay or partially pay for something it will most likely cost you money or effect your business negatively somehow, but it is just so hard to turn down something that appears to be for nothing.  This is a thing that is very hard to see, especially when everyone is justifying it.  Nothing is for nothing.

Most of us know there will be a drought in whatever part of the country you live in.  Before all the assistance programs you kept your numbers down, and the feed reserves up just in case, or were willing to sell animals to match available feed.  When we started getting disaster assistance it changed the grazing programs, cattle numbers, land prices, age of ranchers, type of equipment, number of auction markets, added to the national debt,  and caused a ripple effect across the entire cattle industry.

From what I see we have become a nation that lives beyond our means and our country can’t support all the things we all think we are entitled too.  This goes from farmers to auto manufacturers to folks that have lost their job.  I would be willing to bet this is going to change.  It has to and it should.

I learned this the hard way.  I got into a situation that I had to make a payment on a grazing operation based on paying for it as the cattle grazed.  A very extreme drought caused us to reduce numbers and remove cattle early.  It did not cover the mortgage and it’s a good thing I had another income.  I was sold on a deal that couldn’t lose.  But in the back of my mind I could hear my Grandpa saying, “You had to be a big shot.”

Like I have said before when I share an opinion if you don’t feel the same that’s fine with me. These are just my thoughts and it really is not that big of a deal to me if you agree or disagree. I don’t farm the government and never have.  I got a check for $700 dollars and tore it up and threw itin the garbage. I had no idea what it was for. I also let a neighbor talk me into letting him get some money from the government for some farming he did for me. The money came to me and I gave the check to him, but I did not like it.

This is a really tough deal.  Every one says how tough it is to make it these days in agriculture. I disagree.  It is really tough to make it these days if you go borrow money that is impossible to pay back.  It is tough to make it if you don’t do the things that make money in this day and age.  Just because everyone else is doing it a certain way may be a good reason to do it a different way.

It seems we think you must get big to make it these days. I disagree. Start small, gain knowledge and resources, and then try to stay small.  If you are really good that will be the biggest challenge.  The better we get at something the more we challenge the limits and then we either are not as successful or quality of life suffers.

I hope you will read The Time It Never Rained.  I hope you will take pride in the fact that you are making good decisions that will help you prosper on your own.  Then when the time comes and this old country comes down hard on us, like it did to our friends in the North last fall, we can all pitch in and give the kind of help that really works – prayers, physical help and spare money, or commodities from friends and neighbors.  Our founding Fathers, our ancestors, and Charlie Flagg would be proud of that.

~ Curt Pate

Time well spent with United Farmers of Alberta

I have spent most of the month of January in Canada.  United Farmers of Alberta is a farmer owned co-op that hosts a series of “Cattlemen’s Colleges” each year and I spoke about cattle handling.

They were great learning experiences for me.  The speakers were top notch. Marketing, finance, nutrition, forage management, and best calving practices were presented.  I did not hear one sales pitch to buy anything from the store.  One  speaker on nutrition explained how a certain blue block of salt had little value nutritionally, and was like licking metal in the subzero temperature.  He recommended loose salt added to mineral to get the best value and health from the purchase of salt.  That was real good information, but the funny thing was the store was giving away several blue salt blocks for door prizes.  Now that’s humor!

I think it is real smart what they were doing.  If I owned a store I would want my customers to be educated enough to purchase things that made them a profit.  It is in the store’s best interest to help the customer become a professional beef producer.  The more they learn and implement for-profit practices, the longer they will be in business, and when you are profitable it allows for more expansion.

Knowledge is the first step, then learning how to use the knowledge. Then keeping that knowledge and skill learned in practice and improving is the big challenge.  This kind of beef production is what it is going to take to get it done in this era of ranching.  This is also what the consumer of beef wants, a producer that treats and cares for the environment and the livestock up to their moral standards.

I am a little embarrassed when I speak in front of the Canadian rancher.  They are good people that have had a tough go of it.  You can’t believe how bad they felt for the South Dakota storm victims.  These are the same ranchers that R-CALF and other groups has cost thousands of dollars.

I am not a political person.  I am a dedicated proponent of the proper production of beef.  If you are Mexican, Canadian, or from the U.S., we all are North Americans and if we can work together it sure seems like a lot better way to go about it.

I look at this in the same way as I look at neighboring in ranch country.  I’ll bring my crew to your branding and you bring yours to mine.  If there is a range fire we all go to it and help each other by putting it out, no matter whose land it is.  In the Southern U.S. they put everyone’s cattle together in groups to improve the marketing of the cattle. Good neighbors help each other, no matter if it costs them a little, because at some point it may save them a lot, and I am not talking only financially.

I’ve seen quite a few people bad mouth their neighbor when they weren’t around, and then not say a thing when they are present, but they can’t look them in the eye.

So all you folks that are for putting politics in to the beef industry, go to it.  I hope it’s not to just raise money for your organization or cause.  I am going to stay with doing the right thing for the industry, not for my own selfish greed.

If you get in a bind and need some help give me a call.  I bet I can get some of my Canadian ranching friends to come help us out of a tough spot.  You see there are some things you don’t learn at a Cattlemen’s College.  It’s called doing what’s right, it’s called integrity, it used to be the “Code of the West.”

~ Curt Pate