Hi I’m Mike and I’m Erin, every day on the ranch is a chance to learn something,
and being a rancher or a farmer is not only a job but a way of life.
Today we get to share with you some of the lessons we learned from the ranch, on our
Wyoming life.
Only a few years ago both Erin and I sat at a desk, filing budget reports, filling out
time cards and buying chocolate bars from our coworkers’ kids.
All that changed when we decided to drop it all and move to Wyoming to live and work on
the family ranch.
Many lessons came on the way, some very hard and we invite you to subscribe and come along
with us as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary, through ranching, gardening,
family, ranch style cooking and so much more.
When we came to the ranch all things changed for us, our entire way of thinking.
We had to rebuild ourselves to be better people, different people.
To work for ourselves and be only accountable to ourselves.
It wasn’t easy and along the way we learned a lot of lessons.
We were and still are extremely lucky to have been given this opportunity to live this life
and one of the first lessons we learned was…
Be grateful and give back We are lucky, we have a roof over our heads,
the heat is on and we have 3 wonderful kids.
Working on the ranch opened up opportunities for us to serve others, service is a privilege
and never a burden and we do it in many ways.
We provide local vegetables, beef and pork to our community.
Our local Master Gardener group that I’m involved with, helped start a community orchard
in a local park that provides anyone who wants to come pick, an opportunity to enjoy fresh
fruits.
Each year we also donate hundreds of pounds of meat and vegetables through our farmers’
market share the harvest program to our local council of community services.
For us its important to give back and no one should ever be hungry.
Serving others is important and it feels good.
Nothing compares to hard work.
Its something that will never leave you, and its required around here.
If you aren’t willing to work you can’t survive, its that simple and nothing comes
easy.
Sometimes to accomplish something great you have to take the hard route.
What’s the old saying?
nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain and difficulty...
I have never envied a human who led an easy life, but I have envied a great many people
who led difficult lives and led them well.
When someone tells you that you can’t do something, prove them wrong
Sometimes I think that when people tell you that you can’t do something, maybe, they
are only telling you what they cant do.
A good example for me was when I started winter growing this year.
I planted vegetables in the high tunnel in the hopes of having fresh veggies this year
at our winter farmers markets.
Some people said it couldn’t be done, but it didn’t stop me.
We have had vegetables that we have gotten through -15-degree weather.
I’m not an I told you so kind of person, but it does make me feel good each and every
harvest this winter.
The importance of farming and ranching and Agriculture in General
Before we came to the ranch we didn’t give two thoughts about where our food came from,
it came from the grocery store.
Eggs came from cardboard cartons, beef was on little Styrofoam plates with cellophane
wrappers.
I even used to be able to eat a steak at a restaurant, now I’m spoiled.
All humans depend on agriculture for food, world wide agriculture employs almost 45%
of the working population, although that is only 2% in the US and get this in some parts
of Asia and Africa its over 80% of the labor force that is engaged in agriculture.
Even with just those simple statistics, its easy for anyone to see its important, but
for families engaged in it, its much more than that.
Hope for the best and plan for the worst Over the last five years we have had 3 of
those in drought, that means we were unable to put up hay for the animals to eat over
the winter, or only able to put up very little.
We had to buy hay from outside sources for sometimes as much as 3 times what it costs
us to produce our own.
That means cutting costs everywhere and being prepared to do so.
Every year we are optimistic for a good hay crop, healthy calves, rain, good prices at
auction, because being positive helps us see new opportunities, grow and learn and keep
moving.
Being negative or pessimistic, doesn’t achieve much.
Respect Over the years I have learned to respect everyone
and everything.
Our elders, other people, no matter their occupation, the land and the animals.
Without those that came before us, none of this would be here, the good and the bad of
course.
If you give respect you get respect, you can’t disrespect the animals or the land or others
and think they are going to respect you.
It just doesn’t work that way, that’s one lesson we learned quick.
Build you project list, but don’t let it run your life
We all have jobs to do, we all have commitments and deadlines.
It doesn’t matter what you do, you deal with them.
Mike has a project list that grows longer everyday but I constantly have to remind him
that if it were life or death, it wouldn’t be on the list.
It would already be done.
Stop and breathe, smell the roses or the manure depending on the season.
Set Goals Along those same lines it is important to
set goals.
Every day we have a goal for what both of us want to get done.
We sit each morning and have our coffee and talk about our days, our plans and how we
can work together to get them done and some goals are bigger than others.
Erin is always planning on expanding her farmers market business, on the ranch we are trying
new things in feeding strategies, animal nutrition and new tools to make things better.
Goals help you believe in yourself, they give you a direction and a reason to get up early
every morning and go to bed late at night.
Just like a map, goals help you get to your destination faster than just sailing through
life aimlessly.
Be a problem solver Its easy to be a problem identifier.
To look at a problem and point it out.
It’s much harder to be a problem solver.
Solving problems is something that comes up constantly on the ranch, many times there
are easier solutions, but the easier they are the more they usually cost and one portion
of being a problem solver on the ranch is knowing the value of a dollar.
Just like in the fields, everywhere a weed is growing there could be grass growing, and
everywhere that we spend a dollar that we didn’t need to is taking away from someplace
that dollar could be spent better.
Eventually the future of the ranch could come down to one dollar, or one problem and we
better be able to solve it.
Don’t apologize for doing what you do Last but not least is something that we didn’t
learn or even really have to experience before we made our leap onto YouTube.
We do what we do because we love what we do, it may not have started that way.
The first few years we were here on the ranch were very hard and full of self-doubt.
We didn’t think we were going to make it.
Dealing with a totally alien situation and job, to family to the stress of giving up
all that we knew for something we didn’t know anything about.
The learning curve was steep, but we took on the challenge and it became who we are.
Others may not agree with what we do or how we do it and that’s perfectly ok.
How else do you learn unless you see a different way of doing something and take that for your
own.
We don’t apologize for being who we are, or what we do.
We support our family, we provide food for thousands of other families in one way or
another and we are very proud to do it.
Now that I think about it there are probably hundreds of lessons that we have learned from
being here on the ranch and if I had to nail it down to one that could sum it all up and
pick the most valuable to me, it would have to be to own your mistakes, for me it’s
the quickest way to learn.
If you don’t own up to them then you don’t learn.
And I have had some mistakes that are embarrassing, others that cost money and some that were
just stupid, but I take each one and grow from it, and hope not to make it again.
Thanks for joining us today.
Its been fun, we rarely get to sit and make videos together, it always seems like we are
running in 5 different directions, sometimes we just pass each other in the middle of the
day and wave, I’m not kidding, its happened many times.
Be sure to subscribe for more from the ranch life, we’ve got new videos for you 3 times
week…garden season is getting ready to fire, calving is just around the corner and that
means spring, hopefully.
And more lessons to come, if anyone tells you they know it all, there’s still one
big lesson they are really missing.
Until next time, have a great week and thanks for joining us in Our Wyoming Life