Hi I'm Mike.
6 years ago today, we lost the man that brought us into this world.
Not my father, but a man that I would have been glad to call my dad.
His name was Gilbert and without him, me, Erin our kids, our entire family and you included,
wouldnt be where we are today right now, right here on Our Wyoming Life.
Welcome to Our Wyoming Life, if this is your first time here, please subscribe and come
along with us as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary and if you have been
here with us before, thanks for coming back and being a part of our lives.
A life that we never would have dreamt for ourselves, a life that really when it comes
down to it is all thanks to one person.
His name was Gilbert Oedekoven and he was my father in law.
Gilbert ranched his entire life, he worked many different jobs to support his ranching
habit and was successful at it.
For him, the ranch was his whole life, it was so very important to him and I though
that today I would share with you why it was not only important to him but also to us.
10 years ago both Erin, my wife, and I were working corporate jobs in radio, we both thought
that career would last us the rest of our lives.
That we would end up buying a house, settling down, maybe having a family and living the
american dream, white picket fence, that kind of thing.
Little did we know that in October of that year our lives would be turned upside down.
Gilberts health was failing, and right then he needed help to work his Wyoming ranch.
We took a 15 years in a career and quit.
We didnt know anything about ranching, our meat came from the grocery store, visting
the farmers market was a way to escape the office and kill an afternoon and we would
buy kettle corn and walk around enjoying the sunshine and then the next day go to the store
and buy our vegetables there, not even realizing that just the day before, the guy that was
selling his tomatoes, or corn or brocolli was counting on his sales to feed his family.
Since we came to the ranch we have learned alot, we've grown as people, we've maybe even
become better people and when we lost Gilbert 6 years ago we were thrust into a whole new
level of this experience.
Gilbert taught me alot, but no where near everything I needed to know to do this job
right, and successfully.
A year or so ago we started this youtube channel and I know its gonna sound weird but bringing
you along for the ride has taught me more than I have learned over the past few years
out here.
We release videos from the ranch 3 times per week and I rarely struggle with what to make
a video about, but this week has been a little hard for me.
Its not like we are lacking anything to do, we are calving.
We have storms moving in almost every night, I'm out checking cows constantly day and night
but I wanted to do something today only to honor Gilbert a little bit but maybe something
that would explain why he did this for more than 70 years of his life and why we plan
on doing the same thing.
In the US the average american eats 55 lbs of beef per year, total beef consumption was
over 24 billion pounds last year, Thats enough beef to fill the Houston astrodome from floor
to ceiling 14 times.
A lot of that beef starts on small family ranches just like this one.
In fact most of them are smaller.
The average herd size in the US is only 40 cows.
There are around 800,000 beef cattle operations in the US, but farm and ranch families only
make up 2% of the US population and one US farm feeds on average of 165 people per year.
But to be perfectly honest, all of these numbers dont mean much to the average rancher or farmer.
Its impressive when you look at it, when you hear the numbers.
But if I could go back and ask Gilbert why he did this for his entire life, his answer
would probably surprise us all.
I think Gilbert would have said, because he could.
I dont think he ever thought about how much beef an average person ate, or how many families
he fed.
Truth is though, he worked hard his entire life to get us where we are today.
A.side from ranching, he drove one of the first taxi's in our county, he used to mow
the runway at the airport before it was concrete and he worked for the local grain elevator,
where rumor is that he got fired everyday and still came back the next morning and went
to work again like nothing every happened.
Sitting here in the shop, where he used to come and hang out for hours every day.
Just enjoying being on the ranch.
Toward the end of Gilberts life, he lived in town, he didnt live on the ranch and I
used to drive him every single day.
He would go out and putz around on his gator or like I said sit in the shop.
I used to think it was weird.
Of course those were my first years here.
The longer I'm here, I find myself doing the same thing.
Just enjoying the ranch life.
Gilbert is still on the ranch in a way, in fact he buried right here, I dont think there
is any place he'd rather be.
I'm going to let it go there, its a holiday.
Go enjoy time with your families.
As you sit down and eat, think about all the Gilberts of the world that gave us what we
have today, that helped put that food on our plates, that give us a chance to sit around
the table with people we maybe dont get to see that often or get to connect with.
I know this has been a different kind of episode than you are used to, but we will be back
next week on Tuesday with the project list and we will get more done around here.
Erin is back this week in the gardens.
Calving will continue and ramp up even more, we've got 15 calves now on the ground and
a whole lot more to come.
Hopefully spring is just around the corner for us and we can really start to get busy.
Find us on facebook for content you cant find anywhere else, you can also visit our website
at www.ourwyominglife.com And until next time, have a happy easter and
thanks for joining us in our wyoming life.