There's not much to say. I grew up in Wisconsin. My parents came from Poland. My dad is a dairyman, and I thought I would be. He wanted me to get an Ag degree so I could help with the dairy expansion, now up to two thousand head. I went to Purdue, and then I got interested in beef and came out here on a study exchange when I was working on a research grant for dryland grazing. My dad still wants me back in Wisconsin, but I am having a good time here learning to cowboy and enjoying no early mornings and hardly any mosquitoes. I think I will sign up for a year and stay. It's going to be hard on my folks, but they have help and I just can't see dairying my whole life, which these days is 6 days of paperwork and one day of wading through the muck every week. Here I'm on horseback pretty often, and running the tractor a bit and keeping fences, and this is mostly eight-hour days, probably the easiest work I'm going to find around bovines, I guess.
When I first came out here I had been reading Aldo Leopold in college, required for a land conservation class. He is not a hero to many Midwestern commercial operators, to say the least. But then I went and saw his place and got very excited about his trips in the west. I had never been out of the Midwest. When I saw this exchange spot open up I just set aside my nervousness and jumped on it. If they'd of known that I didn't ride I bet they would of past me up. One word of advice I have is do not show up day one on a Utah ranch saying you came because of reading a conservationist hero and that you can't ride. Good thing they were looking for help giving shots, because that I can do. I do love working the lots and culling the animals. I gave up my wellies and John Deere hat, and now I'm in ropers and a straw wide-brim that I bet my buddies back home would laugh at, but it's the right gear for here. So, like I said, I'm staying on for another year. After the drive I am going to work hard on my riding. My foreman has a big quarterhorse just my size, and I do spend some time nights thinking I might buy that horse and settle here. Everyone is real decent and I can't think of a bad word to say about any of this except I feel bad my parents will not like this new life I'm working on.
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