By Ellen H. Brisendine
ehbrisendine@tscra.org
Education Makes Us Ready
When you pray for something, will you be ready to receive it when it comes? Gary Price, 77 Ranch, Blooming Grove, posed that question — which had been posed to him by an elder ranching friend — at the March session of Ranching 101 in Fort Worth.
Ranching 101 is a monthly half-day classroom session on a topic of importance to ranching. The classes meet in the Brand Room at the TSCRA headquarters, which can comfortably seat 50 people. Every month the class is fully booked (free for members, $10 for non-members) and there's a waiting list of interested students.
The March classes featured range scientists from USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) — Jeff Goodwin, Kevin Derzapf, Charles Kneuper and Matt Machacek. Price provided the wrap-up for the day, and related how he applied the science to his ranch, and what the outcome has been.
For the last year, we've been praying for rain. I've been talking to a lot of landowners who've used this exceptional drought to increase and improve stock tanks. Classes about grazing out of drought continue to highlight seminars and webinars. For a list of those seminars and webinars that might be of interest to you, look to the Industry Calendar we maintain at thecattlemanmagazine.com. Instructors are getting down to the basics of teaching how grass grows, which I find fascinating. Above-soil growth affects below-soil growth, and it takes a healthy root mass to catch and keep the rain when it falls. Price and his fellow speakers quoted the familiar saying, "It's not how much it rains, it's how much you keep."
Even with classes of 50-plus, the nearly 20,000 readers of this magazine, or the hundreds at our TSCRA Convention Weekend and School for Successful Ranching, the editorial and education staff at TSCRA have been searching for a way to further distribute useful information to the stewards of land and livestock in the Southwest.
We have discovered a tremendous tool. TSCRA offers the Cattle Raisers Education Center, an online reference library for interested users. Stacy Fox, manager, member programs, says users can access a variety of files — audio or video presentations, many with PowerPoint presentations — at their convenience. Some content will be free, and a nominal fee will be charged for other content.
Please visit the Cattle Raisers Education Center online. Go to tscra.org and click on the hot button in the right column. Tell us what you think and what topics you'd like to see added to the site.
On another note, please join me in welcoming Sheila Nab to the staff of The Cattleman magazine as a member of our advertising sales team. She joined the staff in late March, and her first week included working in the trade show at the TSCRA Convention Weekend March 30 to April 1. Visit our Facebook page to see Sheila and Blake Denbow visiting with trade show exhibitors and advertisers at the Convention Weekend.
"Conversations: Education Makes Us Ready" is from the May 2012 issue of
The Cattleman magazine.
