Blogs

Back in the day, when I was a fair-to-middling high school football player, I did my best to take heart in a phrase our coach often used in his efforts to get the most out of our small-town team.

Often, commodities are understood through tangibles: money, resources, supplies, land, etc. These are all good things, but there are non-tangible commodities too: talent, education, ideas and innovations.

In an era of 24-hour news cycles, constant digital streaming and sensory overload, we don’t use our minds very well. The brain is the most complex and underappreciated organ in the body. Perhaps we should exercise ours with a balanced set of tools – including among them a healthy dose of skepticism.

When beef gets short, a lot of cowboys are forced to do without. The cook must come up with meatless meals. The following recipes are from the Cowboy Vegetarian Cookbook.

If you raise cows, you either have to really love these animals or be somewhat not right in the head. The bovine can make a person half-crazy with her habits of finding fence holes, calving in dumb places and maybe getting a bit ornery at times. And let’s face it, we ain’t gettin’ rich doing this job.

I confess to not owning a tractor. I have plenty of friends nearby with tractors. But, in a lapse of good judgment, I borrowed one to brush hog a patch of weeds. Experienced farmers, even 8-year-old farm kids, know you always drive a tractor thumbs up. I didn’t remember.