I'd been looking forward to this Sunday for a little while now as it was the day I was catching up with my Aussie mate! My good friend from high school, Flick, was in the US on her own beef experience and had spent the previous few weeks working on the Gardiner Angus Ranch in Ashland, Kansas. Mark Gardiner, one of the figureheads of the Gardiner ranch, was invited to present at a few classes at K-State that week and had decided to bring along Flick and four other girls who were interning at Gardiner's. This proved the perfect time for a catch up and to meet the interns - it wasn't long after the girls' arrival into Manhattan that we were settled around a table at the Longhorn Steakhouse. Flick and I joked about the language differences and had a laugh about the different things we'd seen or done; it was certainly nice to see another Aussie! After dinner (my first steak in the States) we parted ways for the night.
Monday morning was full of classes until I met up with the girls again. The girls sat in on my Reproduction class where we met with Dr Grieger, the professor, and moved to the Dairy Bar (a little cafe), for a toasted cheese sandwich and pot of chilli for lunch. I left the girls to go back to class, before meeting them again at my Sales class that afternoon. This class was the second presentation I had experienced from Mark Gardiner that day; both were equalling entertaining and thought-provoking! It was after Sales class that Mark offered for me to join their group to visit a feedyard the next morning and I jumped at the chance.
Early Tuesday morning Mark and the girls picked me up and we hit the road towards Herington. The hour drive went by quickly and with no chance of being cold, as we had four squashed in the back seat! We arrived at the Tiffany Brothers feedyard where we were greeted by Shawn and Shane Tiffany. The brothers told us their story on the process of acquiring the feedyard and how they got the business to where they are now. They pride themselves at meeting the Prime grading (MSA 4/5 Star) for a high percentage of their cattle, aiming to feed majority black cattle to reach this target. The similarity in the brothers but also their unique strengths and charisma made them a very successful team and ensured that many of their clients were also friends. Then, we jumped into a couple of trucks (utes) and toured the feedyard, which was built on an old airforce base. This meant that the aprons for the feed bunks were around 50ft long, which is significantly further than the standard, but gave more solid ground for the cattle. We said our goodbyes to the Tiffany brothers and headed into the small local town of Council Grove, for a delicious lunch at a restaurant/hotel built in the 1850's, before heading back to Manhattan.
On our return to Manhattan, we drove straight to my Beef Systems class, where Mark presented for the third and final time. After we all said our goodbyes to the interns and Mark, Flick and I headed back to my apartment for a quiet afternoon.
On Wednesday morning, Flick and I attended my Beef Science class, before catching a bus into Aggieville. We looked around the main street, had lunch in a little cafe and bought a sneaky doughnut before catching the bus back to my apartment. We didn't have much time to pack up our gear before heading to the Greyhound bus stop on campus to make our way to Kansas City. After a long and uneventful bus trip, we arrived just after 7pm in Kansas City, Missouri. We woke up Thursday morning to the snow covered streets of Kansas City, but nice blue skies. After breakfast, we made our way down to the Kansas City River Market where a number of small shops were located. We hadn't realised that people here seemed to start late, as there were barely any people in the streets at 9:30am. The rest of the morning was spent wandering the streets of the Power and Light district, where we found some good dinner spots but didn't find many more people! Once we'd tired of the Power and Light district, we caught an Uber to the Plaza area, which is the shopping part of town. We spent a few hours going around the shops before retiring back to our motel for a break. Dinner time arrived and we wandered back to the Power and Light district for some drinks and nibbles before bed.
Friday morning I was up early to say goodbye to Flick, who was catching a flight to her next ranch experience. After a quick breaky, I was back at the bus station to get back to Manhattan. When I arrived back in Manhattan, I had a quick turn around to make it back to class where we had a presentation in Meat and Livestock Evaluation class from Cassie Kniebel. Cassie and I had met in the airport on my first day in the States, so it was nice to see a familiar face. Cassie works for the K-State Beef Research Department and is currently working on establishing a disease traceability system for the US. The class had some interesting discussions and compared a few differences to Australia and Canada's traceability systems, while we also explored the use of UHF systems in scanning tags. Although the US do not have a traceability system as of yet, it was interesting to see the concept of only having disease traceability (although this will be similar to Australia's NLIS) without having unique property identification. I'll be interested to see how that turns out!
The Friday night plan had been to go to Topeka for a ranch rodeo, however due to some rainy and snowy weather predicted, the plans changed. Instead, a couple of my classmates and I went for a Mexican dinner before deciding to go ten pin bowling. Although bowling is not my strong point (one strike in about 40 bowls..), I had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed the night. Saturday was the day I ventured into town on the bus system to get some groceries, which was made less exciting with constant rain. My classmate and I then decided we would head to the mall for some shopping and by the time we had returned to the car, the rain had turned to snow. Despite the weather, it was a great day and I couldn't wait to cook myself dinner after eating out half the week!
