Brandi Buzzard - Advocating for Agriculture
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Jodi:
Welcome to the Successful Farming podcast I’m Jodi Henke. In this episode, you’re going to hear how one woman’s passions and agricultural experiences as a child and in college has led to her career. Brandi Buzzard is the Communications Director for the Red Angus Association of America. She advocates for the well-being of animal agriculture, owns a ranch in Kansas, has a family, and blogs about those experiences.
Successful Farming’s Bill Spiegel talks with Brandi and the many paths she has taken on her journey.
Bill:
Tell me a little bit about you, where you grew up, how you got involved in agriculture.
Brandi:
Well, I have a pretty boring background, I guess. I live in the same county I grew up, which I love. I grew up in Anderson County around Colony, Kansas. Now I live in Greeley. I grew up like most rural Kansas kids. I was in 4H and FFA and we had what I would call a hobby ranch, had a lot of horses and we had 4H animals. We didn't have a cow/calf herd or stockers or anything like that in terms of production cattle, production beef production. But we always had roping calves or roping steers. So we had cattle, but we didn't use them. I guess we sold them and they went onto the beef chain. So I guess there's that. But we were not a production Ag facility. I went to Fort Scott Community College and then onto K-State, I always knew that I wanted to be involved in agriculture. You know very few Ag careers, Ag teacher, veterinarian, maybe Ag lender, insurance salesman.
Brandi:
Those are the ones that you know, so I just figured I would settle into one of those. I was going to be a vet and I shadowed a lot of vets when I was in high school. And then I realized I would have to do surgery. That weighed way too much on my shoulders to think about having to do surgery on a little cat. So I decided not to do that. And then I found my way into animal science at K-State and got my master's there as well. I've always loved science, but I love communicating science. I figured out maybe I should have added an Ag Comm major. I figured that out a little too late. So my background is in animal science and I have a little bit of communication, one class. So now I'm the communications director for the Red Angus Association of America. I get to work with cattle producers every day. And I do my blogging and advocacy in my "spare time."
Bill:
So you grew up on a small farm operation. Your mom and dad, did they farm or ranch? And did you have siblings?
Brandi:
No, my parents were not, we didn't farm anything. We had maybe 25 or 30 acres. We didn't farm anything. We had a lot of pasture for the horses and the cattle, or a lot, 25 acres. My mom and dad both rodeoed, like my brother and I do. My mom grew up in Kansas City and she met my dad when they were, I think, college rodeoing. And that's how the rodeo thing came in.
Bill:
Then when you were in high school or before high school, 4H, was that your entry point then into a lot of the activities with Agriculture?
Brandi:
I would say yeah, probably so. You can join 4H when you're seven in Kansas. We had steers and stuff for my dad to rope and we had the horses and stuff. So I was lightly in it, but 4H was where I was introduced to the showing cattle and having pigs and the different projects and things like that. So that's probably my first introduction into, I guess, a career in Agriculture maybe, but yeah a lot of it started in 4H. I was in 4H for 12 or 13 years, so.
Bill:
And then FFA too?
Brandi:
Yeah, FFA in high school. We didn't have a middle school FFA where I went to school, so yeah. Loved FFA. I loved all the competition aspect of it. I did every competition you could do, except for, I only did meats judging one year because I just really hated being that cold. Public speaking, I credit the green hand competition, the Creek competition in public speaking with really giving me a lot of the experience and the footwork that I use today when I publicly speak at producer events. And then also when I used to work at NCBA, I did a lot of public speaking. FFA helped and 4H as well. Both of those organizations helped me with that. I was a chapter officer for a lot of years. When I worked at the Beef Cattle Institute, I actually, for about four years, I coordinated the Kansas FFA convention. I really loved that as well. FFA has been a big part of my life.
Bill:
So rodeo I know is one thing in the research that I've done then for this interview, you're still active in rodeo.
Brandi:
Right.
Bill:
I don't know how old you are, but you've been out of college for a few years. So you've had a pretty doggone long rodeo career. So tell me a little bit about what you do and your passion for rodeo.
Brandi:
I went to my first rodeo when I was two weeks old. So I was born at the end of April. That's when rodeo season started in the mid 80s and really have done that my whole life. There was probably a handful of years there, a nine to 13 or 14 where I didn't. I just really wasn't into it that much. But then about the freshmen or sophomore year of high school, I got back into it really heavy and haven't really stopped. I used to run barrels and rope, and now I just rope. I sold my barrel horse, but I love it. If I could just take care of cows and rope every day, I would just do that. I like being active. I just love it. It's hard to explain, when you have a passion for something, why you have a passion for it. I just do. The same reason, Patrick Mahomes loves to play football.
Bill:
I assume he's getting paid a little bit more than you, but-
Brandi:
Yeah, he's getting paid a lot more than I am. For me, it's not about the money. Yes, I want to win when I enter, but a bad day roping is better than a good day sitting on the couch.
Bill:
For someone like me, who has never rodeoed, I don't even know that I've been to a rodeo-
Brandi:
Oh, very sad.
Bill:
I want you to try to explain to me just what it is that really drives you in the arena. I really have no idea. So I know how difficult it is to try and explain.
Brandi:
It's like a little kid who starts playing T-ball when they're five and then they love it and they play T-ball and coaches pitch, and then they love that feeling of the team. And then they play town team and traveling team. And then all of a sudden they play for the Royals. They're not doing it for millions of dollars. They're doing it because they love it, because it's ingrained in them. It's always been part of them. I guess the same is for me. It's always been a part of me. It speaks to the Western heritage of my family, like my dad and my grandpa. It's heritage and competition and love of horses all rolled into one.
Bill:
So you rodeoed in high school. Did you also in college?
Brandi:
I did, yes. Both at Fort Scott and I was on the rodeo team at K-State.
Bill:
If you're on a collegiate rodeo team then what does that mean? Do you travel? Do you go to other states? Do you load up your stock trailer with a horse? How does that work?
Brandi:
You're on a team. We have traveling partners. So we'd load up our horses generally, depending on if the rodeo was Friday night, Saturday, Sunday. We'd leave on Friday afternoon or something like that. Or maybe Thursday night, depending when we needed to be there. Rodeos were all in Oklahoma or Kansas. That's the region that we were in, both K-State and Fort Scott. You do one run in the long round. And then if you're in the top 15, you come back and run another one, maybe it's top 10. I can't remember. It's been a long time since I was in college rodeo.
Brandi:
You're part of a team, but you're competing against your teammates. One of the gals that I hauled with when I was at Fort Scott, we were in each other's weddings. We're still very close friends, but at the rodeo, we were competing against each other, but that didn't really matter. I think that's one of the really awesome things about rodeo is that all your friends at the rodeo, you are competing against, you're trying to beat them. But as soon as I come out of the arena, I'm cheering for them. Rodeo was a gigantic family. I want my friend to do just as well as me. And if she beats me, she beat me. I'm still happy for her. We're not ever cheering for someone to throw the rope in the dirt or to hit a barrel. We watch each other's kids when the other one is getting ready or is in the arena.
Brandi:
I got my tie into advocacy by defending against animal rights activists. And I felt that I could learn and be the best for agriculture by getting the degree in that animal wellbeing and behavior department. So we got a professor there and I was her first grad student in that degree program at K-State. And then in January 2011, my husband and I, we got married and then moved to Australia for a year, for about 11 months. He was a Fulbright scholar. So we went to Australia. You have to be able to speak the language of your country you're going to, to do research in. He only speaks English so that narrows it down quite a bit.
Brandi:
We had to go somewhere where they had pigs and they spoke English. So that narrows it down a lot. And we were there from February 2011 through December. So there's an extra year in there where I was editing and writing. I wasn't receiving any graduate assistantship during that time. I was basically employed by several jobs in Australia. It was a tutor, class assistant, and then I worked in a lab doing lots of rumen fluid collection and analysis and heat stroke trials and stuff with sheep. I did that for the whole year of 2011 and then wrote my thesis when I had time. And then came back and defended in 2012 and got my master's then.
Bill:
I want to go back to your undergrad years then, because at some point there had to be a trigger that got you really interested in defending animal agriculture.
Brandi:
That's a very clear moment in my mind. So when I was at K-State, the K-State Collegian, which is the student newspaper, one of the staff journalists was writing a lot of opinion op-eds that were negative about agriculture. So I remember specifically her writing stuff about anti meat and meat being bad for the environment. But the one that sent me over the edge was the one that said that milk caused ear infections and osteoporosis. And I was like, "I've had it. This is it." So I wrote a letter to the editor and sent it in to them. And I paid zero attention to how long the letter to the editor should be. I think they want them 200 words and mine was maybe six or 700.
Brandi:
They wouldn't print it for obvious reasons because it was too long. So at that point I was like, "Well, what the heck do I do with this column I just wrote?" So I started my blog and from there on out I blogged. I've been blogging for over a decade. I added a Facebook page and an Instagram and I built out my blog to have other website things on it. Not just the blog, it has other pages. And yeah, I guess the rest, as they say, is history as cliche as that sounds.
Bill:
How can we find the blog?
Brandi:
It's Buzzardsbeat.com. Buzzard S beat dot com. If you Google Brandi Buzzard, you'll find it because I'm the only one that I know of. There might be another Brandi Buzzard out there. I don't know. But if there is, she does not have a blog. It's hard to forget someone who is loud and has reddish hair and whose last name is Buzzard. Whether you want to or not, it is hard to forget.
Bill:
Unfortunately, with the name Bill Spiegel, I could do Pure BS, but Blake Shelton beat me to that one.
Brandi:
I like that though. Pure BS. I like it.
Bill:
It's already trademarked.
Brandi:
You should have tied that up years ago.
Bill:
I know. I didn't even think about that, but yeah. So Brandi, with you earning an animal welfare and wellbeing graduate degree, because your passion was triggered somewhat as an undergrad, where did you think you were going to go with that?
Brandi:
I did not know where I would go with it in terms of career. So the degree program in animal wellbeing, behavior and health was the name of the degree program. I didn't know where I was going to go. I wanted to learn more about that and about the biological tendencies and patterns behind it, because animal wellbeing affects production and carcass traits and reproduction and things like that. So I didn't really know where I wanted to go with it. I just knew that that's what I wanted to learn about. I wanted to learn. I was craving education about that.
Brandi:
From that, at the time, there were not a lot of career outlets for a degree program like that, other than being a professor. So going on and get your PhD or welfare consultant or something like that, working for a packer. Now there's that kind of position at lots of different places. I knew going into my master's program that I was going to want to also write. I love writing and communicating, and I love that I understand what I'm writing about, I guess. So I didn't really know what career I wanted to have after that. I just knew that that's what I wanted to learn about was that degree.
Bill:
So then BCI, what is that? What'd you do there?
Brandi:
It's the Beef Cattle Institute. I think my official title was communications coordinator, so I wrote press releases and I helped with beef quality assurance stuff and helped with like if someone called and needed help with BQA online or something, I helped with that. So I was able to get my foot in the door in terms of working in the beef industry, which is what I knew I wanted to do. Once I started the advocacy, that blog, I knew that I wanted to be in beef production somehow, or be in the beef industry.
Bill:
And then what'd you do after that?
Brandi:
I went to the National Cattleman's Beef Association.
Bill:
And what did you do there?
Brandi:
I started out as a manager of issues communication. So I did a lot of media monitoring, watching for negative articles about cattle or beef. If a video popped up that was negative, remember the days of the undercover videos when that was happening, I looked for those. We had a website called Beef Facts and it was a myth-busting site. So I wrote blog posts for that. I did issues management, helping states react when there was an issue in their state or when something big happened in the news that was negative beef. Crafting messages, help training media spokespeople for that kind of thing. It was very much issues and crisis management type role.
Brandi:
Also a big part of what I did was advocacy. They had the masters of beef advocacy program that had been going for maybe three or four years. I started working on that and working with members and doing the newsletters and things. And then I eventually was the lead person on that in terms of creating new modules, member engagement, launching new training programs, that kind of thing. I started as the manager issues communications, but I left as the associate director of issues communication. I left in August of '17 and I've been with Red Angus ever since.
Bill:
And at Red Angus, what is it that you do?
Brandi:
I'm the director of communications.
Bill:
So then through all these activities, you have had a social media presence. I think your agricultural advocacy work, I think has been pretty stellar over the years.
Brandi:
It was not always stellar.
Bill:
Well, who among us has come out and started doing something that we're passionate about and it's been totally groovy from day one?
Brandi:
I don't know.
Bill:
I just want to get into that though Brandi, because that's how I first became aware of who you were. I saw this, for lack of better word, and forgive me if I say maybe a little brash in some of your early postings on Twitter and things.
Brandi:
Yeah. I guess, can you give me a year? Was this in 2020 or was it ...
Bill:
No, this was years ago. So your social media presence, you started your blog then when you were an undergrad and it's still going today?
Brandi:
It is still going today.
Bill:
So 12 years, well, 11 years, that's a pretty doggone long time to keep a blog going. So how often do you update that?
Brandi:
When I was in undergrad and grad school, it was two or three times a week. And then I realized I was being brash and-
Bill:
I apologize.
Brandi:
No, it's accurate. It's okay. I have matured and changed the way I advocate and matured as a person I'd like to think. I've learned more about communication and rhetoric. So, yeah, I needed to change. When I first started. I was probably posting three times a week, but I wasn't reaching outside of the wind tunnel of Ag. Somewhere probably after we got married and I didn't have cows yet, it was hard to find stuff to post about because I wanted to stand up and be a voice for agriculture and beef. But it's hard to be a voice for beef if you don't have cattle. Blogs are still important, but I don't feel like people read them as much as they used to. So I don't blog just for the sake of there being a blog post up. I blog with quality. I am always doing one a month. Sometimes I'll get two a month up there. But I don't blog unless I have something, what I feel is valuable to add to the inter webs.
Bill:
It's something that a lot of people don't get right, is that they feel like they have a blog, so they need to post something. But there's that fine line between having content, fresh content, and then having good content. But that message still needs to get out there. So the need for frequency, but the need for good messaging too. How do you find that mix?
Brandi:
Well, so when I first started blogging, I was 23. I was not married. I did not have a kid. So I was blogging a lot about issues because that's what I found really interesting was issues and animal welfare. And I still find those settings really interesting. However, I feel at this point now, almost 12 years later, I connect with people better as a rancher who is also a mom. So a lot of my content is now about concerns that other moms my age might have about what their kids are eating or vaccinations or using antibiotics in agriculture. So my posts are less frequent, but I really do feel like they're meaningful because they serve a purpose rather than just being out there for fodder. The purpose of them is to help people have more confidence.
Brandi:
I will admit it was when I started my blog, I want to blog and I want people to see that I'm writing things. Yes, I wanted to help people learn about agriculture and stand up for it, but I wanted to do it for me. I think that's something that we have to be cognizant of in, I guess advocacy is who are we actually doing it for? Are we doing it for ourselves or are we doing it for agriculture as a whole to promote the industry? So I can honestly say that now when I am blogging, it is to help people learn more about where their food comes from, to help them be confident in the things that farmers and ranchers are doing, hopefully for a mom who's walking through the grocery store not to see something on a food label that scares her half to death. Those are the goals of the blog and if it doesn't fit those things then I don't write it.
Bill:
What kind of impact do you think you've had on your audience then? Have you gotten any feedback on, "Hey, this was really helpful to me," or, "Hey, I think you're full of it and let's get into it."
Brandi:
Well, both. I do get comments from people. I'm trying to find one because I saved one the other day. It made me feel really good to have someone say something nice. But I got a comment from someone ... Every once in a while I get something that says ... Here, I'm going to read it. I found it. "I'm grateful for all the information and education you share about GMOs and how much we need them in agriculture to keep the world fed." I don't get something like that every day. But when I do get that, maybe it's every other week or something, solidifies that all the effort I'm putting into helping people be confident, it works. And I get a lot of comments like, "You're wrong." I have been called a bad mom more times than I can count. I have had email threats sent to me.
Brandi:
So I get a lot of the negative. But when I get one of those positive, that really affirms for me that I'm making an impact. I want people to not be scared of their food. And when I get comments like that, that really solidifies that I'm doing something right on that day. So if I can replicate what I did on that day, I'm going to try to keep doing it.
Bill:
What kind of traction do you think you've gotten? I don't know if you want to get into numbers of people who read your blog post. Feel free to share it if you wish. Has your audience grown? Where are you at with traffic or do you even care?
Brandi:
I do care because you want to know that what you're doing is worthwhile. I don't know how many views I've had over the past 30 days. Honestly, I don't pay that much attention to it probably as I should because the blog is probably not my biggest. It's a landing point, but I probably use Facebook as the one that I'm posting on almost every day. That's the hub. That's where I put my posts from the blog. That's where I put photos that I also share on Instagram. And that is where I'm sharing ... I have the largest audience on my Facebook page. I've got close to 15,000 people following my Facebook page. So that is the hub of it all. That's where I'm getting a lot of that feedback. In terms of traffic, an average post probably gets maybe three or 4,000 views.
Brandi:
The post that has gotten the most traction was obviously the open letter I wrote to Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. That was almost two years ago in 2019. And that post, since it's gone up, has been seen about 290,000 times. It's had 290,000 views. I wish every post had had that many views, but that's just not the way it goes. I actually don't because that thing crashed my blog probably 15 times in a three-day period, and that was really stressful. The numbers matter, but the comments telling me that I appreciate you teaching us about agriculture or you sharing your story of ranching. That's the stuff that really resonates. The numbers are nice as a pat on the back, but the people feeling more confident in their food, that's the trophy.
Bill:
That's cool, Brandi, that you get that. I think that a lot of people start to have this presence because they want to be the next Pioneer Woman. They want to be the next big thing. And I think that you have found the right niche, right? You're real and you've let that reality drive your audience as opposed to saying being a young gun who wants to be an advocate and is doing it for the wrong reasons. Does that make any sense?
Brandi:
Thank you. I think that makes sense. I don't know that I started out being an advocate thinking I'm going to be the next big thing because that was a far shot and I didn't know what the next big thing was. And advocacy was just ... There was a couple in South Dakota who had forged the way and other people were starting to, but it was not this gigantic thing that it is now. That's just not my goal now. I want to preserve this way of life that I get so that my daughter and her kids, if they want to do this, they can. And for that to be a viable option, I have to stand up for what I believe in and for our ranch. And that involves addressing people's concerns about cattle and beef and agriculture. And this is the way I know how to do that. So I guess it is self-serving in the fact that hey, this is the truth about agriculture. Leave us alone and let us do our thing.
Bill:
So about that, you had the open letter to AOC in 2019. Was there any response from her?
Brandi:
No. She did not contact me, unfortunately. I never heard back. I do know that she received the letter because Representative Marshall, who was a representative at the time, he called me on the phone and said he appreciated what my words and if there's anything he could do to help, he would do that. And I said, "Can you please deliver a letter to her office? Can you make sure it gets to her?" It was really hard for me to get a hold of her because her email address wasn't available to people who aren't in her district, which really made me mad at the time, but I understand why. She's a pretty divisive character. I can understand how that feels. I had emailed it to the only email address I could find available for her, but I wasn't sure that it would get there.
Brandi:
I actually emailed her before I ever put it on my blog, but then he called me probably four or five days after it went live and stuff. And he said that he would make sure that a copy of the letter was delivered to her office. I trust that he did that and she never got back to me. I'm not really surprised. I am disappointed. I felt like my letter was very respectful and tried to be very open-ended of not criticizing her, but helping her understand farmers and ranchers want to be a part of the conversation. Please let us be part of it. She never responded to me, but probably better is that she reached out to Dr. Frank Mittloner, who is the world's renowned Ag climate scientist. He is at UC Davis. She did reach out to him and have a phone call with him and learned stuff. So her reaching out to him is way better than her responding to me. I'm not a climatologist. I still think it's a win. The Green New Deal didn't go anywhere. But I think it's a win that she was prompted by this backlash to reach out to him.
Bill:
Something that you and I talked that we weren't going to get into politics here, but I want to ask you this question. I think it's something that we're going to have to face at some point. I've heard a lot of people concerned about the Green New Deal and the negative impact it's going to have on production agriculture. And frankly, I haven't read through it enough to know that that's going to be the case or not going to be the case. But I do believe there is a population of young people who are into a lot of the facets of the Green New Deal. And so I think one of the things I'm proud about what you did is that you opened agriculture up to having a seat at the table, because I think we have to. I believe that's going to come down the pike at some point. If agriculture stands here and says, "We're doing everything correctly and we don't need to listen to a New York Congresswoman," I believe that's bad form on our part as an industry. I'm curious how you feel about that.
Brandi:
So on the topic of people in New York having feedback, I don't know about other food producers, but I'm guessing there's a whole lot of beef eaters in New York. If someone has a concern about what we're doing on ranches and farms, then I think we need to listen to them. I don't think that we need to listen if they're being hateful or being rude or accusing us of animal abuse or things like that when unfounded claims. But if someone has a sincere concern about we're concerned about what you're doing, what's happening at the water quality, we're concerned about the health of our family. I'm concerned about water. I'm concerned about the health of my family. We need to remember that everybody has the commonality that we all want safe and healthy food. And when you break it down to that basic level, we need to be understanding that people have concerns.
Brandi:
Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez did not grow up on a farm. She doesn't know about soil management or rotational grazing. She doesn't know about any of that. If someone in a city is showing interest, we need to listen to that and we can disagree with them, absolutely. But it's not reasonable for us to completely shut out the input of people that we don't agree with and then expect those same people to listen to our input when they don't agree with us, if that makes sense. Communication is a two way highway. Yeah, I don't know that I can say it better than that. It's not reasonable for us to expect policymakers in Kansas or in Washington DC to listen to farmers and ranchers if farmers and ranchers aren't willing to listen to feedback and concerns from other people.
Bill:
So that letter to Representative Ocasio-Cortez, you may not have gotten to her directly as you may have wished, but gosh, you got on MSNBC and that's pretty cool. Tell me how that came about.
Brandi:
Oh, man. It was the February 11th or 12th. I posted the letter on Friday night or a Saturday morning or something. And the following Tuesday or Wednesday, my husband was gone and I was on the couch scrolling Instagram and I got this direct message on Instagram. It was a message from Vaughn Hillyard. And he's like, "Hey, I'm with MSNBC. We are doing stories about farmers and the Green New Deal and yada yada yada. And we're wondering if we could come to your ranch." And I'm like, "Oh, well the Kansas City MSNBC wants to come, from Kansas city." And I was like, "Here's my email. I'm interested. Could you send me some more information?" And then I realized this is MSNBC from Washington DC or New York, whatever. This is real. I called my husband and he was like, "You got to do it. You got to. This is the chance to get a real rancher voice about conventional beef production in front of a way non-Ag audience.
Brandi:
So I did it. He and two of his crew came and I took him up to see the cows. We talked about DDGs. We talked about rotational grazing. We talked about how as ranchers we care a lot about the environment because I live in it. I want clean air because I'm breathing it. I want my family to be able to ranch for generations. We just had really great conversations. I explained that farmers and ranchers want to be part of the conversation. We live it every day. We have experiences and stories to share. The next day he and the crew came back because he was going to do a live lead in for the pre-taped segment. That was the day, the day that they were here for it to actually air, I think that was the day President Trump declared a national emergency so he could do something with the wall. I'm nearly certain it was that day. So it all got pushed obviously.
Brandi:
It didn't happen that day. I made them breakfast. I made them bacon and eggs and made them drink cow's milk because they had to eat all animal proteins while they're here. We had fruit too. And then they left and then it didn't air for like another week because of all this national emergency thing that the president had declared. And then it was on air. I was frustrated with how many people in the Ag community told me I should not do the MSNBC interview. Or that said, "Well too bad it wasn't Fox News." Well, hello. The people who watch Fox News are already eating a lot of beef. So as it turns out MSNBC, it was great.
Brandi:
If I hadn't written the letter in a respectful way, that would not have happened, I don't believe. Now, coincidentally, about a month later, the blog post got a resurgence, a really large page on Facebook shared it. Then Fox News did call me and I did a Fox News interview like this. I was not sitting on my couch, but it was 3:30 in the morning and I did Fox News and then the president's office noticed it. I went to the White House in April. Yep. I have been to the White House. I have been to the White House. I have been in the Roosevelt room directly across from the Oval Office. I have spoken with senior officials of the White House about farmers and ranchers role in a sustainable and how beef is a sustainable solution, and we care about the environment. Stuff like that.
Bill:
I didn't know that. Great research, Bill. I failed miserably on that.
Brandi:
It's okay. Sometimes I forget. I was doing an interview a couple of months ago. The question was, what do you call your biggest accomplishment? And what I answered was, which I'm not ashamed of, is that my daughter will randomly say things like, "Jesus loves us, Mama." We have raised our daughter in the church and I'm very proud of that. I got off interview and I was telling Hyatt, my husband, what I said my biggest accomplishments was. And he was like, "You've been to the White House." I was like, "I forgot that I had been to the White House." It doesn't change my answer. I still think my four year old having that faith is more important, but I had forgotten that I had been to the White House. So anyway.
Bill:
There's so much that I really want to ask you, but I haven't asked you about your daughter or your husband. I think that every mom would say, even if they've had a chance to go to the White House, that raising their children is the most important job in the world. I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Brandi:
I'm not that kind of mom. It is a really important job. I want my daughter to ... so she's four. Her name is Oakley. It's obviously a very important job, so I'm hesitant to say that it's the most important job simply because I don't ever want to be looked at as just a mom. So I have a hard time swallowing my pride and saying that is my most important job, but it is. I have been blessed with a healthy child who it is my job to make sure that child is kind to other people of all walks of life and understands agriculture, but also how to work with people. It's my job to raise this child into a good human.
Bill:
Tell me about Hyatt first of all. What does he do? Where's he from? How does he get to Greeley, Kansas?
Brandi:
He got to Greeley, Kansas because of me. He is from Northwest Ohio. He came to Kansas to go to Butler Community College to judge livestock and then he transferred to K-State after his two years, and that's where we met was at K-State. He works for a Canadian company and he leads the US division for a swine technology company. They sell really technologically advanced pig feeders for sows and group housing and does nutrition consulting and things that.
Bill:
So tell me about the ranch then, what all it includes. Because I think some of my favorite posts are seeing you out in the feed truck or I don't know, maybe just the tractor with your daughter.
Brandi:
Oh yeah.
Bill:
January 1st maybe? Is that right?
Brandi:
Yeah, every New Year's. We feed the cows together all the time, but I always make sure we take a picture on New Year's so I can document it. I think it's almost 62 acres or something like that. It's not huge. We lease or rent most of the land that we run cows on. So ideally I don't have cows here very often at all. They're either on summer grass from May through the end of October and then they're on winter pasture from January 1st through May 1st. So it actually a long time ago, I think Woodrow Wilson's personal airline pilot lived here and yeah, it's got a cool history. I can find out the exact person. I think it was Woodrow Wilson, but it's just a little ranch here in Kansas. It's got some barns and stuff on it and we've put it in feed bunks and shades and stuff because we keep bred heifers here and stuff. So we have to have some way to take care of them.
Bill:
So you have cow/calves?
Brandi:
We own High Bar Cattle Company. H-I-G-H Bar Cattle Company. And we are a pure bred Gelbvieh balancer seed stock operation. So we raise and sell bulls.
Bill:
You have some beef then that you sell too, correct?
Brandi:
Yeah. The primary business is the seed stock, but we do retain some calves and feed them out for freezer beef. We have a few commercial cows anyway, because we started out with commercial cattle and it was slowly grown into seed stock. So the commercial calves that look like they're going to grow well and have the good genetics, we'll keep them and feed them out. I think maybe we fed out eight or nine this year because this was a special year and then we sell some calves onto the grid. I have no desire to try to market 20 head of freezer beef every year. That's a lot of work. But the primary part of the business is the seed stock.
Bill:
Okay. No pigs then.
Brandi:
No pigs.
Bill:
Yeah. And a garden I presume.
Brandi:
The horses, a garden. I've got chickens most of the time. My husband doesn't like the chickens. I don't know-
Bill:
You guys are living the dream, aren't you really?
Brandi:
I think so. I don't know who else's dream it would be, but I really like it.
Bill:
You've got some great, great experience to share with people and I'm elated that I got the chance to visit with you today.
Brandi:
Oh, well I'm honored that you asked. I really appreciated the opportunity to talk with you.
Jodi:
A big thanks to Bill Spiegel and Brandi Buzzard, and thank you for listening. For Successful Farming, I’m Jodi Henke.