By Chloe Burns, Tallgrass Network youth outreach coordinator
1. When you get out a mile from the house and realize you don't have a critical piece of equipment.
How did I not bring the steel post insulators? How am I supposed to insulate now?
2. So you rig up something with extra twine and tree branches and you feel like you deserve a national award.
"As long as there's no wind or rain this should be fine."
3. But later someone else tries to use what you've created and you realize it may not have been the best solution.
4. When you have to explain to *other* (non-farmer) people that you don't spend every day lassoing cows, and actually about 87% of your work is building, repairing, and planning fence.
... Not super exciting.
5. When all of your *other* friends are upset because of the rain, but you've needed it for months so you're like:
6. When an animal gets sick and suddenly the cleanliness of your pajamas just doesn't matter.
Neither does homework, real work, or any other responsibilities that do not involve the immediate health of your animal.
7. Because you're around them so much that they become your family.
A furry, four-legged family.
8. When the whole town has been shut down because of the weather but you're still outside trying to get work done.
There's still ice to be broken, animals to be fed, and a solar charger that ain't gonna fix itself.
9. When people assume that your work is entirely physical labor, and not at all mental...
Honestly, we're basically superheroes.
10. Or social.
11. When you start to see your mentor as more than just a teacher, but a guide to the perils and dangers of your world.
There's just no replacement for the person who taught you to use a rock to weigh down a strand of fence crossing over a riverbed.
12. When you suddenly become unreasonably passionate about grass, dung beetles, and microorganisms in the soil...
And you may or may not walk around poking pieces of poop to see what treasures are culminating underneath.
13. But then you start trying to explain these things to your *other* friends and they give you this look:
14. When people tell you that grassfed livestock and Holistic Management simply can't feed the world...
15. Or that your animals are ruining the planet.
Because... grasslands didn't evolve with hooved herbivores in their ecosystem?
