“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his life and his religion.  He hardly knows which is which.  He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.  To him, he’s always doing both.”
                                                          J. Michener

This quote was on a business card given to us by a man who is planning on attending our Cheyenne Stockmanship School in May.  Since I have often heard Bud telling people much the same thing, I thought it would be a worthwhile posting in “Bud’s Musings.”

When I write something it always makes me wonder why anybody would read it and why  I wrote it in the first place. Then after reading what other people are writing it makes me even more confused about why anyone writes anything. Maybe it is like the person said “Isn’t it amazing that there is just enough news to fill the newspaper” as he noticed that every page was full.

What brought this on was  reading an article on the DTN (Minding Ag’s Business). Its title was “Buckle Your Seat Belts For 2010.” I’ll include some parts of the article so we can understand the thinking of people who are doing the writing. It starts out with “As the recession spreads through farm country, profits seem to be vaporizing. At these commodity prices, very few operations in either crops or livestock can project profits.” 

Then it goes on to explain how hard it will be to get credit or credit extensions. Then the solution that is given is to “Unlock the cash in your land as today’s interest rates will be the lowest in your lifetime.”  Why do we  think the solution to a problem is more of what caused the problem?  If there is no profit to be seen, why borrow on the (more…)

The dairy farmers are having problems just like a lot of people are now. At a meeting with the Justice Department’s antitrust division the issue was whether or not the largest players in the dairy industry were to blame.

It is always bad when businesses have problems but now, instead of realizing what actually caused the problem, there is the desire to blame someone else. Later in the article this is what they wrote.  “Dairy farmers nationwide are coping with historically low milk prices after a 36 percent drop in the past year to the lowest level in three decades. In 2007 and part of 2008, (more…)

There are so many negative things that are brought to our attention every day that it is getting harder for anyone to stay calm and not be bothered by these things. Try to remember, for every negative there is probably a positive. We don’t have to ignore the negative but it does no good to let it keep us upset all the time. If a negative situation bothers you then work to  find a solution.

When you have something that is not working well, figure some way to solve the problem or eliminate it. It does no good to just complain and keep doing what doesn’t work. Many times the negative things are just different and only a problem if we don’t change what we are doing.

Are people forgetting how to be happy or have they already forgotten? There is all this talk about how bad things are. Nobody seems to realize that the homeless live better today than many people did during the 1930 to1940 period. During that time very few complained at all.  Now, very few stop complaining. During my life we have had a president every year.  Some were not very good and the others were worse, but they were elected by the people so they must have been what the people thought they wanted.

Seventy years ago about half of the people liked the president and about that many disliked the president. Things have changed, now about 50% like the president and the rest hate (more…)

Almost everything that I read recently is about how difficult things are now and that we must cut costs. For the last fifty years they have been writing that ranching is difficult and we must cut costs. If people had been doing what they were told there should be no costs by now. After awhile it should be obvious that the advice they are giving is not that good or things would not always be so difficult. 

For all of these years they also talked about breakeven.  If our goal is to breakeven then any business will be difficult.  When will the livestock business realize that there must be a profit (more…)

After reading my musing “Animal Health Care in Crisis” (posted 9/5/09) a subscriber sent me a copy of an article he had from the Wall Street Journal.  He said it was from 1988 or 89.  It pretty well explains why we keep doctoring and growing the “ livestock health crisis” instead of working on ways to prevent it.  I will not copy all of the article but I will be careful to not change the meaning. (more…)

Eunice and I would like to thank everyone for the nice messages saying how much our stockmanship concepts have helped them.   Good stockmanship is great for the animals and the people, the learning curve is slow and gradual. It is a shame there will be no help from the Livestock Industry or the Universities, they have no interest in better stockmanship.   Of course, that may be a good thing. It was our “best” Universities that taught the people who have almost ruined our entire financial system and educated most of our government officials.  With that recommendation maybe it is best if they leave the stockmanship alone.

What will a more conservative lending climate mean to borrowers?  This is a question that is being asked or at least talked about. How will people handle anything that is conservative? The 1929 market crash that started the great depression was caused because of borrowing that was not very conservative.  How did people handle that?  They learned to save and pay for what they bought.  It was very difficult to borrow money for the next twenty years after 1929. People adjusted and did quite well though it did take a few years to get back to normal. That depression was caused mainly by excesses in the stock market.

This minor problem we have today was caused by excessive borrowing in almost every part, from the government to the individual. The question really should be “Will we even try to go to more conservative borrowing or are we so addicted to borrowing now that it isn’t even possible to be conservative?

Since we have no control over what other people do then we might try using what worked after 1929. That is to save and learn how to live without borrowing.  It worked then and will work today. Try it, you may like not having payments to make and to actually own what you have.

I was reading that the average age of farmers and ranchers is getting older. This is not or at least should not, be surprising since people are just living longer and the work is easier. It was also mainly that only the old can afford to farm or ranch. Everything from technology, equipment, to land is so expensive that it encourages farm or ranch consolidation which drives up prices even more. Few young people can raise the capital to start a competitive (more…)