Colorado Trip
Having been lucky enough to be selected by SAYFC to go to Colorado for 2 months, I set off on 21st June 2015. I flew from Edinburgh airport to Chicago, successfully made it through customs and made my connecting flight to Denver. I got the shuttle bus up to Windsor where I was dropped off at my first host family who were Mike and Melissa Barton. Their house was located in a nice resort where there was a golf course, clubhouse and next to the house was a lake which I went out on a lot using the kayak.
(Melissa, Me, Mike, RJ)
The first week of my exchange was when the 4H State Conference was being held at the Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins. Mike and Melissa are event planners and this was one of their events. The 4H state conference is where 4H members aged from 15-18 from all over Colorado come together and take part in many competitions throughout the week including Livestock Judging, Horse Demonstration and Public Speaking. This was where I met the 3 other exchangees who were Jackifrom Northern Ireland, and Angharad and Laura from Wales. The age group for 4H is different to young farmers as they are 8-18. We helped on the Monday to get everything ready for the members arriving on the Tuesday. This was when the conference kicked off. Throughout the week we got to go to a couple of workshops and see some competitions. We went to see the horse judging and stockjudging. The one thing that I noticed that they did differently from us was that before each class began, the competitors had to turn their back to the ring until the class started so everyone had an equal chance. We had to give a presentation to some of the students about our own country and Young Farmers as part of being exchangees. Since Jacki, Angharad, Laura and I are all in Young Farmers, we did an overview of Young Farmers and compared it to 4H and we all did a bit about our own countries, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. At night, there was a farewell banquet for about 400 people. We were introduced to everyone and we were invited to collect our certificates for coming to the conference and we had to give a speech on how we enjoyed the conference. Other events which happened in the evenings were on the first night was the opening of the conference with a live auction of state officers and a Hypnotist. The next night there was a county dinner night out with a Superhero themed dance later on. We got to learn some swing dance which is really popular and it was good fun.
Melissa and Mike are event planners whowork from home, so it was good that they were at home and we could do more things. They also have two dogs called Nalu and Kai (Shitzu x Pomeranian) so we did a lot of walking. There are a lot of breweries in Colorado with many of them being up in the North, near Fort Collins. We started off by going to a beer festival. It was good to try all the local beers. I managed to sample quite a few breweries throughout my time namely one of them being the Budweiser factory. Unfortunately the Clydesdales weren’t there as they were away on tour and they wouldn’t be back till October but it was good to learn all about the process and their history especially the part about there being a Dalmation which was there to guard the Clydesdales while on tour.
I managed to get to a couple of rodeos with the first one being at the Greeley Stampede which was in my 2nd week. It was a great experience with some of the events being bull fighting, mutton busting and steer wrestling. On the first day of the Greeley Stampede, Kenny Rogers was playing in concert so thought I would need to go and see him while I was over there. I managed to get tickets and it was a great concert especially hearing his well known hits “The Gambler and “Islands in the Stream”. Ronnie Milsap was supporting him and he was good as well. Before the concert, we had a look round some of the stalls and had something to eat and saw the parade of longhorn cattle and horse and carts. The other rodeo I went to see was at the Larimer County Fair which is like one of our agricultural shows. One of the eventsat the rodeo was that the kids had to catch a lamb or goat and halter it in the quickest time.
I also got to the chance to go and see a baseball game. Melissa managed to get free tickets to see the Colorado Rockies and the seats were 6 rows from the front, it was a great to watch. Melissa has a friend in Kansas who is a farm manager and was busy with his wheat harvest. Melissa’s brother, RJ, took me down to Kansas where I spent 3 days with Terry. It was good to see the process that goes from the field to the sheds. Firstly I spent some time in the combine with Terry then I had a shot in the lorry where the grain was taken to the sheds where it was stored. They weighed the lorry, sampled it and stored the grain in the bins until it was needed to go away. They grew 4000 acres of corn and 4000 acres of wheat where they used 19 irrigators and some drip irrigation. The drip irrigation was where they fed water and fertiliser underground. The landscape was really flat and the roads were long and straight – I don’t think I could live there! The east of Colorado is similar. Some of theother places we went to see were the Rocky Mountain National Park and also a Drive-in movie where we saw the Minions.
After 7 weeks I moved on to my next host family who lived on a ranch near New Castle. I stayed with Amy and Nick Krick, Amy is a vet and Nick a rancher. Nick and Amy stayed on one of the ranches owned by Amy’s parents. At the ranch, they mainly grew Alfalfa to make hay and spent a lot of time irrigating because there are on the edge of the desert. I spent a couple of days with Amy on some of her calls. She specialised in equine but did large animals as well. The first call that we went out to was to highland cows, two of them had a sore foot and the other one had diphtheria. The other calls were mostly to do with horses with one of them needing their teeth trimmed. We also went to a call to see some pigs that weren’t well.
I spent a day with Nick where we were checking on some cows and moving them to new pasture by horseback. We met up with the other people that were going to be helping us with one of them being Amy’s mum, Sheila. We got all the horses ready and put them in the trailers and took them to the top of the mountain which was about 10,000ft at the highest point. We shifted some cattle to new pasture and checked round the rest of the cattle to see if they were all ok and doctored the cows and calves thatwere sick or lame. We were riding for 8 hours so my bum was a bit sore by the end of it but I really enjoyed it and it was a great experience to see real life roping in action. My horse was called Colonel, a17yr old Thoroughbred x Quarter Horse and was 16hh. I also spent a day with Sheila, and she showed me round her ranch where she stayed and we took salt licks up the mountain for the cattle. The next day we went to do some branding on some of the later calves and a couple of yearlings who were missed from the previous session. The yearlings were branded inside the crate while the calves were lassoed by Haysus and held down my Amy while Sheila branded them. I got to hold down the youngest calf because Amy said there was a special technique.
After we finished the branding we got showered and changed and Amy, Nick and I went to Aspen for a day out. When we got there we went for lunch to a really nice Italian restaurant. After that we went for a walk round Aspen and saw some of the ski slopes. We then got on the shuttle bus and went up to see the Maroon Bells which is set of mountains with a lake at the bottom. It was a beautiful setting. We weren’t able to spend long there as Nick and Amy had a party to go to at night, so we got the next shuttle bus down and then headed to Glenwood Springs. They took me to the vet clinic and dropped my stuff off and then they dropped me off in the middle of Glenwood Springs to have a look round while I waited till 6pm where I was getting taking to a local rodeo in Carbondale with a couple of Amy’s workmates, Molly and Sarah and Molly’s husband Ryan. It was good to see a local rodeo and how it’s done. On my last night Nick and Amy took me out for tea to a Mexican restaurant in New Castle with Amy’s mum and dad and Connie and Nick’s mum and dad.
Nick and Amy couldn’t host me for the last couple of days of my exchange so Kellie Martindale who is a past IFYE exchange, managed to host me. I got the Colorado Mountain Express bus to Denver where I met Kellie. She lived on the suburbs of Denver in a town called Broomfield. She entertained me for a couple of days before I flew back home. The flight home was a bit of an adventure! I was flying from Denver to Chicago then Chicago to Edinburgh. My flight from Denver got diverted to St. Louis due to the weather so we sat on the runway for a wee while and then we got to leave again to fly to Chicago. Once I got to Chicago airport I missed my flight to Edinburgh so I had to stay in a hotel in Chicago overnight and they put me on the next flight which was the next day at 6.15pm. When I was sitting on the plane ready to leave the next day my seat was at the window and I saw the bags going on to the plane. My bag was a bright red northface bag so it stood out and it was on a separate trailer with 2 other suitcases. All the other suitcases were put on and my bag and the other two were scanned and then taken away. I alerted the steward and he spoke to the captain and he said all the bags should be on the plane. When I arrived in Edinburgh there was no bag and they said it would be on the next flight tomorrow and it would be sent out on a carrier to my house when arrived. The next day my bag arrived, just aswell that was the end of my trip! The couple who had the other 2 bags, it was the start of their holiday.
I would just like to thank SAYFC for giving me the opportunity to go to Colorado and to the International Trust, YFA (Young Farmers Ambassadors) and Bankfoot JAC for the funding towards the trip.