Calf prices and the White House
The other day I was working on some stuff for a local nonprofit. I couldn’t remember if a deed for some property was done a certain way when the property was donated to the group. So I had to call our former state senator and ask him if we done it the way I remembered. He’s about my age and he’s always been real smart. He got appointed to a high fluting spot in President Biden’s administration. I don’t call him very often, but he always answers the phone when I do. I called him one time during deer season and I could tell he was aggravated at me, he answered the phone while up in a tree stand.
His distant relatives also have one of the best herds of registered Angus cattle around these parts. They have a sale once or twice a year. The best part about their sale is the food. They have charcoaled burgers or they cater in a bunch of BBQ. Folks come to the sale just to eat, it’s quite the shindig.
It’s kind of funny to me in a way. On one hand I’m trying to help a local nonprofit that can’t even afford to pay someone to cut the grass. It just happened when I called him he was leaving the White House after being in meetings all day. Who’d ever think someone that just left the White House would answer the phone over a little bitty nonprofit in far rural southeast Oklahoma? It’s also kind of cool in a way that he did answer the phone.
It didn’t take long for him to answer my questions. We shifted over to talking about calf prices and the cattle market as a whole. He said from where he sat it looked like the beef producers were finally making some good money. I agreed. I told him at the salebarn last week a 240 pound black steer brought a $1050 dollars.
When I bought my first place I literally bet the farm on a calf bringing four hundred dollars. Back then the top sellers at the salebarn would fetch about six hundred. I figured if I raised calves that were somewhere in the middle price wise, and if I could make all the payments basing my budget on that, then I’d be set up for the long haul. As it turned out I did just fine that way.
As we visited I wondered what calf price I’d bet the farm on today. I’d hate to be a young man trying to borrow money for all of the stuff to start a farm. It doesn’t take long to be a million dollars in debt if you own a decent sized farm. Tractors, balers, cattle and land, it adds up quick. The interest rates today aren’t helping the young farmers either.
As I made my evening rounds checking calves and a few cows I wondered what a meeting in the White House must be like. I don’t even watch the news anymore because I’m sick of politics and all the arguing, but dang I’d like to sit in on just one meeting, just to see what’s it’s like in there. I wouldn’t care who the president was, I’d just like to say I did it one time. I’d try to make things better for farmers some way or another. Thinking about all of that kept me occupied for several hours that evening. I was just trying to help out little nonprofit make some money so they could mow the grass this summer. I wondered what those meetings in the White House were about and if they were trying do something sort of like I was, but on a much larger scale.
After thinking on it all day I decided that its a noble thing to your help your community, whether it’s a meeting in the feed store on a sack of feed or a fancy meeting in the White House. I hope our local guy can do some good, he sure spent a lot of time in the hay fields growing up.