Thinking under the Sign at the Burwell Livestock Market

There’s worn, cracked paint on the Burwell Livestock Market sign in Burwell, Neb. The cattle on the sign are strewn with flecks of white, and the words look aged and antique. Time marches on in the pickup trucks still parked outside the market though. There’s hope in the people showing up and even greater hope in those who could be raising livestock and don’t have a clue where to start. 

My GMC Terrain was parked right beneath the billboard piece of history recently. I leaned my seat back for a 30-minute nap to catch my breath before heading on the next two hours of my drive home to corn country. York County corn country scattered with a dusting of cattle, like the flecks of white wearing through the painted backs of cattle on the sign I studied so intently.

I came from Ainsworth and Long Pine, in the Nebraska Sandhills last Friday. I was at Larry Hafer’s place, Hafer Cattle Company, where he teamed up with what I will call “nature’s beasts” - Graze Master Genetics® developed at Ficke Cattle Company.

The “Graze Master” began as a composite cattle breed trademarked by Del Ficke. A breed not connected to any computerized data or spreadsheets, but bred with careful attention to the most minute detail by the “computer” in Del’s unique and highly-functioning mind. They are cattle designed to be hyper-in-tune with the land, efficient, attractive, athletic, and maternally sound and consistent or they are swiftly culled from the herd. That’s it. That’s Mother Nature’s approach. Del cannot understand any other way. 

That is also Del Ficke’s no-nonsense approach to life. The hyper-inflated ag industry and its finite lack of vision doesn’t reach deep enough into the “core of the earth of truth” when it comes to cattle and building rural communities for the better for Ficke. 

Del simply doesn’t have time to give a substantial care about what others think about it either. He’s about building the “perfect beast” for his own family’s future and helping others get in tune enough with the land and livestock to breed their own “perfect beasts” too. Period. He’s also about appreciating nature to its depth. (More about that artful endeavor and pursuit later). 

Larry, on the other hand, has a modernized style and approach to cattle breeding based upon sticking to unwavering, traditional roots where it really matters. Adopting more of the modern cattle industry standards, Larry started Impact Solutions to bring only those products and technologies that will help increase the rancher’s profitability. Larry also has an “eye for the great ones” like few do, Del often says. Del also states that Larry’s scrappy, determined background in the livestock judging and show arena, where he earned top honors, helped Larry understand the ills and opportunities in the cattle industry from the frontlines. 

That’s why these two men, lifelong friends, came back together after a lifetime in the cattle industry and after just trying to survive the stressors and pressures ever present in an industry that seems dead-set upon consuming itself. They, along with our entire Graze Master team, want to help farmers and ranchers be more profitable with responsible agricultural practices and solutions that Balance Nature & Profitability. It’s really as simple (and as difficult and complex) as that. 

The most novel part of the Graze Master Group’s fiercely independent business efforts seem to be that we really do want to help others. Still, despite the confusion about us by some, we will “old school” cowboy common sense carry on with those who get it and/or want to learn. 

Not one member of our leadership group was born with any silver spoons either. That’s why we get life a little different than some, but in union with many others. We know what needs to be done, because we had to do what we had to do. Still, the world over, we deeply recognize we are all nearly “born like kings” compared to the very limited resources many of our very able-minded global neighbors have at their disposal. That’s why we see potential and vast waste everywhere around us. That’s also why we want to help farmers and ranchers see the vast profit potential they are leaving on the table. We dig deep and save producers thousands to millions of dollars or more in the first ten minutes of discussion at the farmhouse kitchen table. 

All those grassroots skills are now being applied to help the greater industry and world. It sounds lofty to say the world, but why not? I mean if you say you’re going to reach for the stars you just may lasso the moon. 

Back to the Burwell Livestock Market sign towering before me the other unprecedentedly hot November afternoon … 

As I blinked my eyes open after my quick siesta, I woke up with this thought: you know, the West hasn’t really been won yet. We’re just crawling around in a dusty chapter in a worn book gradually changing, (not for the better all over), with more corn creeping into what should forever be a sea of native grasses. 

I have no bone to pick with corn itself. It’s just that corn has its place and grass has its. Trees too, and flowers, windbreaks, and pollinator strips. But some of you think the latter is just whimsical, weak “hippie talk.” It’s not though. It’s the makings of the resilient, powerful ecosystem that saved our desperate Homesteading lives when we set out to destroy and conquer the wisdom and fruitfulness we didn’t understand. Those mighty nations and tribes already here for millennia before. They had a lot figured out we should have learned from. 

We have Earl Butz to blame and cronies like him, that espoused to their shallow “fencerow to fencerow” farming mindset and the far-off wisdom’s path course they set a nation upon that needed more life on the land, not less. More wisdom, not Butz. 

Butz was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., from 1954 to 1957 under President Eisenhower. In 1971, President Nixon appointed Butz as Secretary of Agriculture. 

Butz shifted community-centered ag policy from supply management/fruitfulness/abundance to maximizing production alone (in many ways the start of some very shortsighted and serious cases of bushel fever and iron disease). He is infamous to those with a shred of common sense left, known for encouraging farmers to tear out fences and “go big or go home” ruthlessly accepting the gradual demise of the land and their rural and urban  neighbors’ lives. 

Most important is what negatively happened as a result of farm policies based in downright greed. 

Oh, just things like:

·      Water quality and quantity issues. 

·      The 1980s Farm Crisis.

·      The gradual elimination of much of livestock husbandry on the land. 

·      Soil degradation. 

·      Broken windows on Main Street as the dust overtakes many small towns. 

·      Consolidated schools. 

·      Hungry neighbors in the land of plenty. 

·      Opioid, drug, and alcohol crisis. 

Everything above and more has tentacles reaching from a broken ag and food system. 

The policies of Butz and others short-sighted among him led to the growth of an industrialized (not cultured and civilized) agriculture that didn’t have people’s wellbeing and fruitfulness at the center of its systems. The policies have ultimately led to the decline of thousands of family farms, an increasing number of farmer/rancher suicides, greater use of synthetic chemical inputs and fertilizers, and the gross overreach of government and corporate agribusiness in the real lives of all of us wanting to live on the land in peace and cooperation with one another (if we can hearken the wisdom deep inside ourselves to remember how to live like that). 

In many ways, they have mined agriculture all the way to the soul of the people conducting the ‘business’ of agriculture. They have done this so they can profit from the last muscles in their hardworking backs and hearts in their chests. We desperately need balance in our agricultural pursuits. It’s a bit of a “David vs. Goliath” scenario when it comes to going against the chase for yield alone and going for what will reap the bounty that truly enriches the Heartland for the better. 

Butz turned out to have issues with racism and womanizing. He was eventually called on the carpet for it. Still, his impact lives on in an echelon of agriculture today. Many of those still living under the “Butz” vision are hardworking, well-meaning people. Many of them also have no idea some of the nefarious characters that shaped, and continue to shape, a great portion of the ag industry mess we’re in. 

Moving on to reflections about my trip out West. Big John’s Cafe in Ainsworth across from the Rodeway Inn also has a sign that is cracked and worn a bit too. The condition of the sign doesn’t impact the goodness of the food though. Inside Big John’s, (I assure you), their pancakes, hash browns, eggs, bacon, and coffee are delicious. The people are very genuine too. Smiles all around and buzzing with community conversation. Rural is not dead. Moments like these prove it. 

Without a shadow of a doubt, it’s memories from a breakfast like that when I retain the very real hope I have for the Heartland. 

I also meandered through the community of Ainsworth on my early morning walk watching the sun rise over town. I giggled a bit as I almost waved at the wooden cut out of the man pumping gas at an old gas station turned into a historical landmark. I recall teaching my Grandma Ruth Heine, in her 80s, how to pump her own gas in York, Neb. She never had to before. The gas stations always had a service person that ran out to help, even washed the windshield back in the day.

I remember when I was teaching grandma how to pump gas, a sort of looming cloud came over me. Things were vastly changing in rural areas; I could feel and see it. People were being replaced by something different, something plugged in, a life detached. 

I think running parallel with all the technology that marvels us, is what we need the most as living creatures: in-person connection. We just want to connect and be real again. At the gas station, or barn dance, or conversation over coffee, cheering together at a Friday night football game, attending an art show, or listening to a poetry reading, or just “toodling” around on an early morning walk around a small town. 

Yes, connect again, sitting for a spell listening to the Huskers play Oklahoma on AM radio on the back of a pick-up truck bed while we pick corn where corn should grow. Or, eating a hearty meal after moving the cattle, sheep, or hogs, from grazing paddock to grazing paddock. Building soil, saving water, protecting, and knowing people. Inspiring our communities. Engaging in real life on the land. 

Old paint on an old sign, honestly, who cares about the paint’s condition? The key here is the condition of the people and all creatures great and small. The condition of the soil, water, sunshine, and air. Maybe it should really be about people finding wonderment in moments and a willingness to serve their neighbors from the heart. 

I am not sure we are talking about how to serve one another anymore nearly enough. Serving ourselves, yes. Serving others seems to be such a stretch as we’re all stretched a million directions. I get it. I am stretched and not serving others nearly enough either. 

Just having fun and valuing others: we need a lot more of that. Mostly we need to share stories before it’s too late. Before the paint wears off and we are seeds scattered in the wind, with no water, air, or sunshine to bloom. 

Now wouldn’t that be a crying shame? A crying shame on us it would be. If we lost and destroyed the Creation that sustains us all. 

The “Hope I have in the Heartland” tells me to simply love and lead people to the well of opportunity, to people with wisdom and know-how that far exceeds mine. 

Because the well of hope really does spring eternal. So, come with me and learn on a “Hope Sojourn.” We’re just travelers here, leading each other home. Let’s go and find out ways we can help one another even more and strive to make life better for ourselves and others. I love you all! 🇺🇸 There’s so much potential from east to west. Let’s unleash that potential before it’s too late. 

Learn more at: www.grazemastergroup.com/hope-sojourn-sessions

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