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Arkansas

sw

Well-known member
Left for Little rock on Thursday to do the ProviderPals thing at the Maplevale Middle School. Long layovers made for a long day coming and going. The weather was not all that great, they had rains and flooding Thursday morning. Anyway, these were some of the nicest kids to work with, I hope they learned something from me, I always learn something from them. My prize winning question for the day: Do you ride horses? (yes), do you shoot guns? (yes) Do you ride around on your horse and shoot people like they do in the movies? (when I got my composure back, NO, do you think movies are real?) He said yes. Second place prize goes to a girl who must have been blonde in another life: As we are looking at pictures of the ranch that have the title "Life in the Bull Mountains, Musselshell Montana" under each picture, "Where did you say you are from?", this was almost at the end of a half hour class. Then she said, "I don't believe this stuff you are telling us, it sounds too much like something you would read in a book or something." And the same girl gets the third place ribbon. I had one of the teachers daughters helping me, she is blonde looks something like MCG. There were pictures of MCG in the slide show. The girl asked, "Is that your daughter up there with you?" Before I could answer, one of the other kids said, "that is Mrs. Greens daughter you idiot." The first girl then says to me "Why are you married to Mrs. Green and you live in Montana? Told you I didn't believe this stuff." I had a fun day, the highlight for the kids is trying to rope the dummy calf and having their picture taken with chaps, bandana, long sleeve shirts and a cowboy hat. Wish I could have gone around and looked at more of the state, very friendly people, everything is green and lush.
Learnning how to throw a rope, getting the overhead twirl down is always the hardest
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Even the girls try, had a new one this year, she refused to try because those ropes had germs on them. She didn't know that they probably had blood, scours, horse crap, finger hide and other assorted ranch things
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Getting dressed up like a "cowboy", the get to have a polariod picture to take home with them some of them autographed :wink:
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Everybody wants to be a cowboy. Got this question too, How come it is not "horseboy" instead of cowboy?
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The Arkansas river running into Little Rock
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Flying over Memphis, wish the sun would have shown
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Good old Minnesota crop land
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Mrs.Greg

Well-known member
sw,not only am I very impressed with the work you do with provider pals I'm also jealous,you are so lucky you get to teach those wonderful children somthing thats sooo important.I guess it does all seem kind of unbelivable to children that never leave a city.
 

Red Robin

Well-known member
Glad you enjoied our state SW. I too appreciate your work. It sure is flat down there isn't it. The old river looks bank to bank. Some of that water would be from my place. In the north part of the state we're at is a thousand feet or more higher in elevation and hilly. Next time come and stay long enough for a visit.
 

sw

Well-known member
Like I told some of the teachers, I enjoy doing this and have more fun than the kids, plus I get to see part of the world I would never see given my own choices. I thank the schools for letting us come into their world and try to teach the truth to the kids, not the Ranger Rick BS about the environment, and the thing of it is, kids are so honest early on that they recognize the truth and now they can put a face with a large mustache and crooked nose to the truth about ranchers, farmers, miners, loggers and fishermen. I think this is the best thing I have ever done for our industry. :roll: Or is that me? :wink:
 

sw

Well-known member
Red Robin,
I was invited back to that school next year but I don't have the final say in it. If I would have known more about our crew and what we were doing, our farmer of this group is from Washington state, he went and bought his plane tickets on his own, brought his wife along, and they are staying til Monday. They left yesterday morning going north on a tour of farms and ag stuff in the state as they have never been there either. If I would have known what he was doing I would have joined forces with him and invaded your neck of the woods, and you guys do have woods. This farmer is on the Columbia river plains, raises melons, squash, spuds, alfalfa, corn, very diverse and he wanted to see how things are grown in 50+ inches of rain compared to his 10. Maybe next time.
 

Jinglebob

Well-known member
sw said:
Like I told some of the teachers, I enjoy doing this and have more fun than the kids, plus I get to see part of the world I would never see given my own choices. I thank the schools for letting us come into their world and try to teach the truth to the kids, not the Ranger Rick BS about the environment, and the thing of it is, kids are so honest early on that they recognize the truth and now they can put a face with a large mustache and crooked nose to the truth about ranchers, farmers, miners, loggers and fishermen. I think this is the best thing I have ever done for our industry. :roll: Or is that me? :wink:

Your doing a fine job sw. Thanks. :D
 

Red Robin

Well-known member
sw said:
Red Robin,
I was invited back to that school next year but I don't have the final say in it. If I would have known more about our crew and what we were doing, our farmer of this group is from Washington state, he went and bought his plane tickets on his own, brought his wife along, and they are staying til Monday. They left yesterday morning going north on a tour of farms and ag stuff in the state as they have never been there either. If I would have known what he was doing I would have joined forces with him and invaded your neck of the woods, and you guys do have woods. This farmer is on the Columbia river plains, raises melons, squash, spuds, alfalfa, corn, very diverse and he wanted to see how things are grown in 50+ inches of rain compared to his 10. Maybe next time.
Plan an extra day next year and I'll come get you and tour you around the state , show you some scenery, some cattle and we'll find some good eating. I can't impress you with the size of the spreads but I'll show you some real good stock.
 

ranchwife

Well-known member
how awesome that you are teaching the next generation what it is that folks in agriculture REALLY do...we are not the bad guys and it is because of the farmers and ranchers that they have the food on the table that keeps them going!! Loved the pictures....you know those city kids were having a ball!! Keep up the good work, sw!! :D
 

the_jersey_lilly_2000

Well-known member
I think it's great that you do what you do SW........living where we do, and the kids mostly all comin from rural homes, it's so hard to understand that there are kids out there that think the way they do huh? Keep up the good work.
 

sw

Well-known member
when all these kids have to go by is their Ranger Rick magazines, National Geographic and other lies put out by the enviromental orgs it's no wonder they think the way they do. This school has already picked their eight kids to come out here this summer, all girls. I prepped them for the trip. One of them was worried about snow after seeing pictures of the foot of snow we got here earlier this year. I told her don't worry about the snow, it will be all gone by then, but soon as the snow melts the Grizzly bears come out :wink:
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
You are certainly to be commended, sw. It takes a lot of time to do what you are doing. Along with cash, that's the other thing we are most short of. You are making an investment in the future. Makes me feel guilty as we should be doing more on our end.

How can we help?
 

sw

Well-known member
The cash is the hardest thing to come by. Ford Motor company has been kicking in to the tune of about a million a year, we are not sure if they are going to continue or not. Caterpillar just signed a contract to fund $700,000 last week. Laura Bush held a fund raiser dinner but then she didn't even come to it so it didn't help much. John Deere has helped some, they want to do more, the logging associations kick in, we have some miners working on some of the big mining companies, I would like to see NCBA kick in, we could maybe even apply for beef council grants, it is beef education. We are now in 26 cities with multiple schools in some of them, 2 schools in BC and more wanting us to come to their schools. I know where I can find some more good Providers :wink: but coming up with the money is the hard part. I think this has grown to the point where ProviderPals needs to hire a professional staff with business and fund raising capabilities to further grow. They are going to use some of the money from Cat to put a "virtual village" thing together so more kids will have access over the internet to facts about ranching, farming, logging, fishing and mining but most of the teachers and myself think that the hands on, person to person contact is more meaningful. For instance, one of these kids was working on trying to rope the calf head, he was having a hard time but he was determined so I kept helping him and he finally got it. One of the teachers was standing next to me and she said "you didn't know this but that boy is special ed, he is 12, can't hardly read or write, but you just got him hooked, he kept trying and he finally succeeded. Wish I could do that with him and his reading." He was just another kid to me.
 
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