Missouri State AG Forum

Well I just got done with the William H. Darr School of Agriculture Ag forum and what an event it was. We had Senator Blunt and Congressman Long there to discuss with us the current ag issues and what they are doing at the capital to fix the problems and work towards a solution. Our moderator was Todd Hays the Vice President of Missouri Farm Bureau.

Topics we discussed include Child Labor laws, EPA regulations on dust, the death tax and renewable energy. There were many issues discussed but those were just a few of the largely hit topics. Members of the public had the opportunity to ask our Senator and Congressman questions on any ag topic and the   gentlemen gave there response.

This was the 13th year for the forum and it is always a very large event for Southwest Missouri and a great opportunity to keep up to date on current issues and for the public to ask questions they would not normally be given the opportunity to ask.

I myself was blessed enough to get to sit with Senator Blunt and his director of agriculture Don and also Cliff Smart the Interm president for Missouri State University. This was a great opportunity to get to speak with many great leaders for not only our state but the nation also.

I cannot wait to attend the event next year and to hopefully meet many more great people and to hear more about all the things we are accomplishing within our industry.

Four Wheeling

I love this time of the year because it means it is four wheeler season again. Evan and I this last weekend met up with one our friends and went for a ride. Let me tell you so much fun well until the cow manure ended up in my hair and on the collar of my shirt but owell just a consequence of riding in a cow pasture. It also gave Evan a good laugh since he was the one driving and was the one that technically caused the four wheeler to throw the maure at me. Then I gave him the opportunity to go get me one of his shirts before I threw the manure on my shirt onto him.

After I got changed we decided to take the four wheelers a little more off roading,  which involved taking the four wheeler’s through the woods and up some steep banks. I have learned the trick to this style of riding just hide your head and whatever body you can fit behind Evan that way when a tree limb comes out of nowhere it will not hit you in the face. Although, if you start out by hiding your face behind his back don’t plan on looking up until you are out of the woods or you will get hit in the face, trust me I learned that the hard way.

As much fun asthat night was I am even more ready for warm weather and then a good rain so that we can go mudding on my friends property because his dad lets us use his dirt pit. He says he would much rather us use that pit than be on core ground and getting in trouble. I completely agree I have never really been much for trouble because I’m kind of

afraid of confrontation lol.

I only hope that in the future I can post some more stories on here about our experiences this summer with mudding, four wheeler riding, and whatever other trouble Evan can find for us to do.

HSUS Stands for “D”

Recently Charity Watch has developed their April/May  charity guide and they gave HSUS a “D” rating which is unsatisfactory. This is the same rating that they have gotten for the last two years. They are even scored lower than PETA which has a rating of “C+”. That is just plain sad. This guide also has looked into HSUS’s finances and they said that for every dollar they make they spend 48 cents to raise that money. That is not an economical manner to finance their endeavor. For a group that says they focus so much of their time and money on saving animals that cannot really be possible when for every dollar earned they spend less than a half a penny on the actual animals.

I hope that as time goes on more and more people begin to realize what this organization is all about and will not allow them to continue to pass laws and regulations. Especially the new ridiculous law that they are trying to pass that would give animals legal rights and would allow people like HSUS lawyers to sue farmers for animal abuse on the animals behalf. For example, if a hog is harvested then the lawyer can sue the farmer for manslaughter on behalf of the hog. I personally find this ridiculous and hope that everyone sees it my way too.

Puppies, Puppies all Around!!

Well I have not shared with you guys a little tidbit about my family which is that we love Basset Hounds. We actually have three registered Bassset’s and have another one on the way once she is big enough to leave her momma. We also like to breed these Basset’s. Let me tell you once the babies get old enough and their ears start to really get long and they get wrinkly around the face they are about the cutest puppies ever and I’m not biased or anything. Our latest litter consisted of nine puppies 5 males and 4 females.

These babies are out of our family pets Maxi and Bubba. We currently have puppies going to five different states which include California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Idaho, and Pennsylvania and of course Missouri my home state so I guess that would technically make it six states. Our Basset’s have had two other litters beside this one and when we sell our puppies we always like to have the new owners send us updated pictures of the puppies as they grow up. So, we love it when we get a picture of one of our old pups now grown up and being pampered by their new owners.

Our family is not one of those families that just breeds dogs for the money we like to have these puppies because we want to make other families as happy with a Basset Hound as we are with ours. People don’t understand quite the personality these dogs have until they own one themselves and are around them a little. I hope that after reading this you might also consider getting a Basset Hound and joining in on the fun of owning a dog with human like personality.

Here Fishy, Fishy!!

So this last weekend my boyfriend and I were looking for something to do and I mentioned that we could go fishing. He loves to do anything outdoors and I usually do too. Although, the smell of fish is not normally my favorite so I like to think that offering to go fishing was a sort of sacrifice on my part. As we got our poles ready to go and Evan gathered tackle he asked me if I had my fishing license. I believe I looked at him with a ha are you serious look. From that look he gathered that I didn’t have a fishing license. So we went to get my first ever fishing license at 20 years of age. I myself found that funny because it shows just how little I fish.

Evan said he thought we should go to Bear Creek because they were supposed to have the White Bass biting down there, but when we got there we realized that apparently the memo about the fish biting there had gotten out because it was packed. Therefore we moved onto another location. This other location was not exactly what I would have picked simply for the trees and weeds. I am only 5′ 5” and the weeds were about 6′. This made it a little hard for this girl to wiggle between these massive stalk like weed things. I know that was real exact definition of the weeds.

Once Evan thought we had found a good spot he sat his stuff down and he pointed out the logs that were sitting at the bottom of the creek and he told me to be careful when casting there because they were more likely going to get hung up. I was feeling pretty good about my spot because I could not see any logs under the water right in front of me. So, I went ahead and cast and about my third rotation of the reel I felt a tug. At first I was like yeah first cast caught a fish but, then I realized it was no fish but the logs that Evan had warned me about. So, I turned to the side and tried to get it off nonchalantly hoping Evan would not notice and make fun of me. Apparently, I can’t pull of the whole “nonchalant” thing because the next thing I know Evan is laughing and walking over to break my line and put a new lure on.

At this point I figure you can tell just about how good this fishing trip was going to go. After Evan fixed my line he cast one more time and determined the fish weren’t biting there so we needed to move down more. This requires me walking through those dang weeds again. Needless to say my pole got stuck in the weeds a lot and it took me a while to catch up with Evan. Then I realized that Evan likes to simply cast twice and determine with those two casts that the fish are not biting there so we ended up  moving around a lot but Evan also managed to have to fix my pole at every spot we stopped at. At the second spot we stopped I reached back to make a beautiful cast and I got my line stuck in a tree so bad Evan had to fix it, then the next spot I got a rats nest in my line and at this point I was determined to fix it myself. He let me for a while until he was laughing so hard at my confused look on my face he had to come over and yet again fix my screw up.

Many would just give up on fishing and normally I would have but by golly I paid $12 for a fishing license for the year and I intend to use it because I don’t like to waste money. So, there may be more fishing tails to come this year as I find more and more challenges of the fishing world.

Turn N’ Burn

This last weekend I attended one of my sisters barrel races at Double J Arena in Humanesville, MO. My sister has been barrel racing now for nearly two years and in that time she has grown into such a great rider. This race is one of the first ones at the beginning of the season and my sister and DJ her horse are just starting to get back into the rhythm of things. It was gorgeous weather for a race, the sun was out and it was about 75 degrees which is awesome weather for March in Missouri.

As my sister and DJ got worked up and ready for the race more and more people started showing up. With the great weather many people were there. My sister races for the National Barrel Racing Association Division 2 in MO. This is a great division where she has made many friends and even one girl in particular that is just like her twin when it comes to their personalities. These two girls are the funniest when they get together.

the Lovely Twin Friends

But anyways back to the point of my story which is about my sisters run.

As the races began my sister got DJ worked up so that he would be excited when they got into the arena. You would have to personally know her horse to truly understand what I mean by get him excited but he is just a horse that is so mellow he only runs the barrels because he knows it pleases my sister and probably because of the grain he gets when he gets home.

Then when my sister got into the arena and took off with DJ they looked very fluid and smooth like they were made for each other. After my sister rounded barrel one, then two, and finally three then they headed for home. As they crossed the barrier her time popped up as 17.1 seconds which is a tie for her fastest time yet. I am so proud of my sister as her and DJ continue to improve. I hope that she makes if far with barrel racing.

10 things I learned about Blogging

Recently my PR in agriculture class had a visitor and her name is Judi Graff who is from Springfield, Illinois. Her topic this week was to discuss the “essence of blogging”. She gave us many good tips how to promote our blogs better and how to make our blogs more clean cut and precise. I am very honored to have gotten to listen to her speak because she is such an accomplished blogger herself and such a nice woman. We were told how our blogs are our story and we have to use them right to tell people “our story”.

While she was here she helped us to utilize our blogs and to make them more efficient. There were ten good tips though that she gave us that I would like to share with you.

1) Know your Audience: Before you  begin your blog you have to know who you are designing your blog for. What I mean by that is who is your target audience and what do you want to present to them. This is important because each target audience is going to be looking for something different when they go to read blogs. So, just take into consideration how you form your blog and what your present as your material to the audience.

2) Have a Tag Line: A Tag line is what follows your blog title and gives the reader a preview for what your blog is going to be about. This is important because you only have a few seconds to gain your audiences attention and if your blog does not appear interesting right off the bat they won’t continue reading it.

3) You have 7 seconds to gain your audiences attention: When you open a website how long do you really take to look at the website before you think it will be interesting or not. I don’t know about you but for me it is not very long. So, when Mrs. Graff told us that you only have about 7 seconds to gain your audiences attention it really hit home just how important it is to make your blog catchy. Make sure that the most important stuff about your blog is at the top section of your blog so that it catches attention fast.

4) Clean and Organized: If your blog is not clean and organized then it will be hard for readers to figure out what your blog is about and where new information is. So, keep the blog simple and to the point it will make its “readability” a lot easier.

5) Important information above the fold: Like I said earlier when trying to catch your audiences attention you should put the most important information above the fold in the page because that is most often the only thing the reader will read before they decide if they want to continue reading or not.

6) Post Titles: Titles let your reader know what the article is about and is very important if you expect the reader to actually read your article. Titles should also be catchy but to the point because they need to catch peoples attention but also tell the reader what the article will be about.

7) Have a Home Tab: Tabs are important because they help the reader navigate your blog site and help alleviate confusion. A home tab though is the most important because they help the reader find the beginning of the blog where all the important information is held.

8) A Contact Page: Every blogger should have a contact page because this allows readers to contact you with any questions they have about your blog and it makes you seem more personable.

9) Graphics, Graphics, Graphics: Mrs. Graff said that graphics are very important because people like to visualize and to see everything. My blog right now is failing in this department but I plan on adding pictures as soon as my camera gets fixed.

10) Fast Load Time: This goes hand in hand with the 7 second rule to gain your audiences attention. If the page does not load quickly then you have already lost valuable seconds that you could be gaining your audiences attention and I don’t know about you but if a page does not load quickly for me then I usually just exit it and go to a different page.

These are the top 10 things that I learned from Mrs. Graff and I hope that they help you also if you are trying to create your own blog. I would like to thank Judi Graff for taking time to visit with my class at Missouri State University and helping to better our blogs.