Different Path, Exciting Life

I didn't start out on a farm.  My poor parents ended up with a little one after I brought home a couple runt pigs and lambs for FFA/4-H.  I had livestock flowing thru my blood since the day I was born.  I was suppose to be the 6th generation of butchers in our family.  Sadly, I lasted 4 days and am on the producing end now.  My greatgrandfather was a butcher in PA, he also logged in the mountains there.  My grandfather as a little guy often rode the draft horses down the mountains with the logs.  He came to Ohio when my mom was very young.  He was the head kill forman at Sandusky Dressed Beef were he retired.  He was also a horse trader (yeah he had a line let me tell ya lol).

I always thought horses would be my passion, but it didn't end up that way.  Met a guy that was a dairy farmer on the way to the National FFA convention in 1986, what a girl will do to impress a guy lol.  I started showing for them and helping him milk when I got a chance.  My love of cattle started there.  Went to OSU/ATI thought about Dairy (the guy didn't work out lol) and new it was impossible for me to start my own so I went to beef reproduction and management.

Thru that dairy guy, and playing mud volleyball I met my husband.  Boy, I'm glad I ended up with him lol.  We did row crops and had a small feed lot of dairy steers.  Land values and rent went sky high and knew we had to do a change if we wanted to continue farming.  We bought our ranch in Missouri in 1999.  We now run 30 cows, no row crops, and are doing grass fed lamb.

Funny how life gives you twists and turns and how it all turns out!