Dive Into the Dynamics of a Ranching Mother and Daughter Duo

Jodi Focken  00:00

I don't know if I ever decided that I just knew it was in me that it's what I was going to do. My childhood was here with my grandparents, my sisters, they worked in the hay field. I couldn't imagine another life for myself, quite honestly, I didn't know anything else and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Shaye Koester  00:24

Hey, hey, it’s Shaye Koester and I’m your host for the Casual Cattle Conversations podcast where we connect you to ranchers and beef industry enthusiasts who can help you build a more profitable operation and improve your lifestyle.  Are you looking for a community of ranchers who support and challenge you to be more profitable and proactive? Then sign-up for our monthly RancherMind events. RancherMinds are mastermind events for ranchers to come together once a month and find solutions for their own and the industry's challenges.   Do you want ranch management advice, RIGHT NOW? Sign up for my weekly newsletter and I’ll send you a pdf with 22 Ranch Management Tips from the ranching gurus who have been on my show.   Follow @cattleconvos on Facebook and Instagram and message me what topics you want to hear more about and book me as a speaker for your next event.   With that let’s see who our guest is today and connect you to a new resource to improve your own operation and lifestyle.

Shaye Koester  01:46

Okay, so thank you for being on the show today. I am excited to have you both on here and to share about your operation and this mother-daughter dynamic duo that you have going on or that I've heard about. But to start off, I want to kind of start off with a fun or unique question. So I would like each of you to share three words that describe your operation.

Shirley Focken  02:15

Cows, water and challenges. Cows being Black Angus, they seem to have less health issues when it comes to the utters and the pinkeye. The water, we have a river that runs by the ranch, a pond, a lake and several creeks. So water isn't an issue. Challenges are the beavers keep damming up the lake so it can't drain, so it floods back on the meadows. Trees fall on the fences and can be a challenge. Creeks flood out because they seem to move a lot of sand where we do live in the Sandhills. So those are some of the challenges that I seem to deal with every day or both of us.

Jodi Focken  03:05

For my three words, I guess mom kind of touched on some of it with productivity. I think our ranch as small as it's not one of the bigger ranches in the area, but I think it does hold its own with a lot of alfalfa. We were lucky enough to get two to three cuttings off of alfalfa and sometimes use the meadows for grazing. My second word I guess I chose forgiving. In the drought years such as this, the meadows really seem to carry us rather than plant hay. And we can get into those low areas that we normally can't get into in wet or average years. And it makes feed maybe not the best, but it does do something for us. And for my final word, I guess I think when I think of this place, I always think of the legacy that it holds what we want to continue on in the further generations what my grandpa has started and how we want to carry on his legacy in our own.

Shaye Koester  04:08

Wow, those are all great answers. And that makes me excited to continue asking you more questions throughout this interview process. And Jodi, since you kind of ended with legacy. I'd really like to hear the history of your ranch. You said, you know what your grandpa has started. So what is the history of your operation? How did that start and how has that progressed today?

Jodi Focken  04:35

I'll let her answer that.

Shirley Focken  04:36

All right. The legacy started my dad. When he got married, he lived north of Atkinson, Nebraska and then farming started to come into that area. And he did not want to be a farmer. His dream was being a rancher. This ranch came up for sale in about 1953 and so I was two years old when we moved here. I'm the only daughter of four brothers. And we moved on the ranch here. And I remember a lot of willows. There wasn't much for meadows as I was growing up. We did a lot of work of cleaning the willows off the meadows to make the meadows bigger. And then my dad rented a lot of pasture locally throughout the years. And then he managed to buy some adjoining acres or joining the ranch, he managed to buy that to make our ranch bigger. And then later on in the 80s, he bought some land over at Mills, Nebraska, which carries probably about 65 to 70 head of cows. He asked me to come back to the ranch and help him even though I had other jobs, working at the sail barns in Bassett and Atkinson and I worked part-time at a welding shop. And so he asked me to come back to the ranch, because I was already helping him part-time. And we I had cattle here also. And so I came back. And from there, we just kind of kept expanding the ranch. And then when he passed away in 2003, the rent or the land that we was renting for 45 years plus came up for sale. And my mom was still here, and we took care of her also. And I had the opportunity to buy some of that land. So I purchased it. And then Jodi had the opportunity to buy part of it also. So she bought some of the acres too and expanded our ranch. And from there, we just kind of looked for ways to make the ranch better. We did a lot of different things and cross fencing, putting in water lines, rotational grazing, and my dad's dream was to make the ranch better and improve it. So we've worked very hard trying to make the meadows larger. So those are some of the ways that you know we're trying to improve the ranch from generation to generation. That's one of our goals.

Shaye Koester  07:35

Well, I love to hear that and I think improvement is key to being able to pass it down to the next generation. So Jodi, what has your involvement looked like on the ranch? I mean from growing up to when did you decide to come back and continue living out this lifestyle for yourself in this business.

Jodi Focken  07:58

I don't know if I ever decided that I just knew it was in me that it's what I was going to do. My childhood was here with my grandparents and my sisters they worked in the hay field too. I couldn't imagine another life for myself quite honestly. I didn't know anything else and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Shaye Koester  08:20

So is it just you two on the operation right now or what does this look like from a labor standpoint and from a help standpoint? What does that kind of look like for you as you manage this?

Jodi Focken  08:32

You're looking at it Yes, it is just us like we have family come like for branding and my fiance he'll come down to help us do some more cattle work on the bigger days of like AIing and bringing cattle home from grass or taking them out to grass. We're actually in the process of combining both of our operations, which is a challenge within itself. But for the most part, it's just her and we just got done putting up a hate quarter over the weekend. It's just us.

Shaye Koester  09:07

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Neogen  09:10

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Shaye Koester  10:25

You know, what would you say has been? You know, there's challenges every day in ranching, I mean, so it's hard to pick one. But what would you say are some of those big challenges you faced with some of these generational transitions and making these transitions on your ranch? What are some of those main challenges that you've overcome together?

Shirley Focken  10:49

One of the main challenges was when my dad passed away in 2003. We put up haystacks with a farm hand loader, and a 42-foot dump rake. And I had to change that operation because my dad informed me that I couldn't run that farm hand because he freehand and put up the stacks. So it was a challenge to go from hay stacks to acquire a baler, rakes and the equipment we needed to switch to make that transition, and to switch over to a different way of haying than what I grew up with. But I never knew how to run a baler. But it's all things that was a little time and a few mistakes here and there that we managed to get through it.

Shaye Koester  11:42

Well, awesome. Jodi, what would you say is you know, one of the challenges that you two have worked through and overcome together with these transitions.

Jodi Focken  11:52

As far as the transitions between one generation to the next, for our for us on our end, our experience would, I guess understanding each other's roles. And like knowing each other's strengths and weaknesses, where maybe I might not be good at one thing, and she might be good at it and just reversing that and finding where we both can work and be productive at the same time.

Shaye Koester  12:22

Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong, but you too, you know, started with a commercial operation but are slowly transitioning into the seedstock world, correct? Yep. So what kind of sparked that idea to transition from commercial to the registered industry?

Jodi Focken  12:46

I guess for me it started out with realizing there was a lot of bulls out there that I I liked, but I couldn't afford and then I saw so many, maybe not so great bulls sell way above what I would have thought I would have paid for and my own personal thought and I'm not trying to offend anybody or anything, but I just thought well, wouldn't it be fun to just create it yourself. And I was fortunate enough to get my hands on some registered first calvers and it just kind of grew from there. I had a loan from FSA to expand my cow herd and I used that loan and I took advantage of the low cattle market during that fall. And I did get some registered females. We started working on some AI we got that going. And it's been a really fun process it hasn't hasn't been easy learning everything because once I got one thing figured out I find out I sure don't, but it's been fun and it's really fulfilling to see your home raised bull out in the pasture breeding your own cows.

Shaye Koester  14:00

So with that, do you have any like mentors that you specifically look to or how what resources have you used or people have you gone to to help you make that transition because it is quite the change and can be a challenge in itself?

Jodi Focken  14:14

I guess we spoke to Kory Ostrand a lot. That's where I got my first set of females from a lot of what I've learned is just being a cattleman just throughout the years of purchasing cattle you kind of know some things and maybe you sometimes don't know a lot when the tables are turned and you become a producer for registered cattle but um you know, we just a lot of reading online is what I've done. I've spoke to a lot of maybe people my age too as well to see what their thoughts were, older people, I guess local, local people see what they look for in bulls and maybe what they look for in females, seeing people and meeting them and discussing all ideas and thoughts with them has been a lot of help.

Shaye Koester  15:11

Well, that's exciting. So, with that, are you really, I mean, what are your dreams on like the registered side of it, what are your dreams for your operation as you continue to grow?

Jodi Focken  15:23

For the registered cows, you know, we run them just like, we do the commercial, they don't get special treatment, they get culled the same. And they you know, that's how you should have your your bulls and your, your animals that you're using to breed like they shouldn't have them be special treated, just because they're registered. So we don't do that. I guess the goals would be to continue that and to keep growing the registered herd. And I don't, I don't know if we've ever really want to sell registered bulls, there's a lot of people who do sell registered bulls out there. And some are registered and some are. There's just too much competition. And there's really good operations out there as well. If anything, I think it would be cool to sell maybe some registered females and elite group of registered females that have had generations that have gone through the all the cuts, they've been treated just the same as a commercial cow. That's what the commercial producer wants.

Shaye Koester  16:36

Okay, so I kind of want to ask here your mom's perspective on this, just as the older generation on the ranch, what has it been like to see your daughter making these changes and be a part of these changes that she's really excited about?

Shirley Focken  16:56

I'm excited for her to make the changes, we do make decisions together here. We discuss it, you know, the issues, the pros and cons of making decisions. And I believe that you have to let the younger generation have an input and a say, to make the next year and also the next generation, which would be her carry on. Because build Nothing's set in stone, that it has to be done this way. Because this is way we did all these years. So I believe that there's changes that are good in every operation. And you've got to let the next generation have their say. Because there's changes I mean, nothing stays the same.

Shaye Koester  17:45

Absolutely. So how have you worked together to navigate, you know, shifting that decision-making process and making that transition where two of you are making decisions? I mean, what did that kind of look like, from when Jodi came back to now?

Shirley Focken  18:06

I'm not sure how to answer that.

Jodi Focken  18:09

I think maybe there was some growing pains when I was younger coming out of college. And that's with any operation. Now that I'm older, nine times out of 10, we're probably making the same decision. Like I mean, I've learned from her. I mean, this is where I've grown up. When we sort cattle, it's just like butter, we can get more work done with just the two of us than a crew out there in the crowd. I always feel more comfortable with just the two of us.

Shaye Koester  18:43

Well, when you have a system that works, that's important to use it. Yeah. Well, is there anything else you want to add? Or I guess what are you excited about for the future of the beef industry?

Jodi Focken  19:01

Well, for me the future, I guess, it's been pretty grim for producers lately. But during the pandemic, I think a lot of consumers realized how important it is to purchase your meat directly from a producer, the rancher themselves, like it's out there, maybe some didn't realize that they had the opportunity or the ability to do so. But they can do that and they know where it's coming from. And I guess that was a little glimmer of hope for beef producers and ranchers and a lot of people were able to find another avenue to sell their beef and market directly to the consumer without having to go through the middleman. So I guess that's what's kind of exciting to me. Looking forward into the future. Maybe people will start realizing that and it'll be more of a trend to go directly to, from the rancher to the consumer. I mean, how cool is it that we take an animal that eats grass and turn it into a sustainable protein for the world? I mean, I think that's pretty amazing. I'm always in awe over that every day. And I think more and more people are starting to see that as well.

Shaye Koester  20:25

Well, awesome. Do you have anything else you want to add? Or any last comments for those listening who are either already in the beef industry or interested in learning more about it?

Jodi Focken  20:37

Um, I am just happy to speak with you today. And I think that getting the word out there and discussing more and more with people to show them that. You know we're not in it to make money. We're in it, because we love the land, and we love the animals.

Shirley Focken  21:00

Well, I just feel like, you know, yeah, we love the animals. We're in it, because we're trying to carry the next generation on. And my thoughts are also if there's any women out there that want to get into ranching or whatever, follow your dreams, follow your heart, and go for it.

Shaye Koester  21:21

Well, awesome. Thank you very much for being on the show today. I love all that.

Shirley Focken  21:27

Thank you. Thank you.

Shaye Koester  21:31

And that's a wrap on that one folks. Thank you for tuning in today and joining in on the conversation. Be sure to take this a step further and take the advice you learned and implement it on your operation. If you want to have a conversation about it, head over to my social media, and send me a DM by following at @cattleconvos and connecting with me there. Have a great day