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!
I could go on and on about the gory aftermath of the Bomb Cyclone and the destruction, death, and weakness that it left. I can paint pictures with my words but unless you have lived it, you can’t know what was felt.
The days immediately following were spent trying to get to livestock. Sometimes it was easiest to cover miles on horseback since places and trails that were familiar were washed out. Getting to the cows with hay bales would be challenging. We buried our front wheel assist loader tractor trying to get hay to one group of cows taking a path that we had taken a thousand time. Roads were washed out and even driving across the prairie you would come across sink holes and ravines that had washed during the Bomb Cyclone that had never been there. Truly, wounds that would forever scar our landscape.
Fences were washed away from where they had served as boundaries for a hundred years. Canyons and ravines that had served as safe shelters for our herds to get out of howling blizzards in the past were now littered with dead baby calves and even some cows that were trampled into the mud while trying to wait out the relentless storm.
Facing this all with a toddler on my hip was only compounded by not having my oldest two girls home and under our roof. It would be 5 days before our roads were repaired and passable to make it the 9 miles to the highway to retrieve my older girls from their grandma’s house.
Come back tomorrow, I’ve got some thoughts on the scars that were left that you can’t see with the naked eye.
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.
karina@youragnetwork.com or visit facebook.com/ranchraisedwithkarinajones
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