Karina Jones is a real-life ranch wife in the Nebraska Sandhills and one of the most highly sought-after speakers in the cattle industry nationwide!
If you ever want to feel absolutely helpless, vulnerable and stressed to a point that you didn’t know existed, then try calving during a Bomb Cyclone.
Our stress was compounded, for this momma, as the morning of that the storm was rolling in, we put our girls on the school bus. I had an uneasy feeling and asked my husband if we should just let them stay home. But, both girls were presenting that day in the school science fair, and they really didn’t want to have to make up their presentations.
What no one could prepare for was the detail to this scenario that our ground was frozen hard after a cold, relentless winter in 2019. So as the rain poured, and I mean drowned down that day there was nowhere for that water to go but to run and to rise. It had nowhere to soak in.
By midafternoon it was clear, our girls would not be coming home. Our road had washed out in multiple places and was impassable. My mother-in-law would have to retrieve them from school and take them to her house.
We were smack in the middle of calving. And while we had done all we could to prepare, there was just no way to prepare for flooding of this nature, in the middle of March. This was not your typical spring run-off. This was inches per hour, beating down on frozen ground. Water would be swift and rising through the very canyons that our cows had learned for generations to take shelter from spring storms. Only this time those canyons would not be their shelter but instead their danger zone.
Come right back here tomorrow as I finish up our 5-year anniversary memories of the historic Bomb Cyclone.
Karina ranches with her husband, Marty, and 4 children near Broken Bow, NE. She grew up in western NE, with roots also in southwest SD. The cattle industry and raising kids is her passion.
Watching the cattle industry go the path that it has gone, she could no longer sit quietly at home checking cows, fixing fence, and doing all the everyday tasks wondering when some else was going to make it all better. As she became more active and outspoken on industry issues, she was asked to join the R-CALF USA staff in September 2020 as the Checkoff Petition Campaign manager. That position transcended into her former role as full time Field Director for R-CALF USA.
You can hear her almost every Friday on Your Ag Network’s Hot Barn Report, where she deep dives into cattle industry issues and industry reforms. Listen to Ranch Raised on a Your Ag Network hometown station or www.youragnetwork.com where she talks about her daily life on the Jones Ranch.
Cattle producers are her people. She will meet you at the county fair, at the sale barn, or anywhere the dusty trail leads.
[email protected] or visit facebook.com/ranchraisedwithkarinajones
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