At home on the farm
By WILL MANLY
NESS CITY -- Today's young adults are a generation that has been taught, by pop culture and our public school teachers, that its members need to find something they love doing.
Because if you don't love your job, you'll be miserable going to work every day.
If that advice is accurate, Danielle Dinges has found her happy place. It's the place she grew up, on her parents' ranch southwest of Ness City.
And she's found a job she loves -- raising cattle to feed the beef-eating machine that is humankind.
"I really love it," Dinges said. "I can't think of anything else I'd rather do."
After a few years of college at Fort Hays State University, Dinges -- a former rodeo queen -- moved on to greener ... um ... pastures.
She drives a decidedly un-girly Chevy truck with a John Deere green "Born 2 Farm" vanity plate on the front bumper.
She hauls a huge stock trailer behind it like a pro.
She has her own brand. So does her dad, and her little sister, Kaitlyn.
And while the rest of us are trying "to make it big" and move to the city for bright lights and a high-paying job, there are some who are perfectly content to live in the country and put the western Kansas prairie to work doing one of the few things it's good for: feeding cattle.
The Dingeses keep a cow herd and a handful of bulls.
They sell the calves each year.
And while some of her peers in Hays are planning a weekend night at Home Party Club or setting up the washers boards in the front yard, she's checking the herd, branding the new replacement heifers -- that's the young adult cows that haven't had a calf yet -- and repairing fences.
If the stereotypical 20-year-old American woman can't wait to buy a new purse and shop for three new pairs of shoes she won't wear, there are the proud few who would prefer to check reports featuring the birth weights on bulls that are on the market.
Dinges usually is assigned the bull-shopping duties.
"I like bull-shopping," she said. "I like it much more than I like regular shopping, actually."
This sort of thing might be genetic. Kaitlyn shows cattle. Their older brother, Brandon, has a spread of his own near Oakley.
Or it might be learned behavior. Danielle has photos on Facebook of her infant nephew, Bransen, wearing a John Deere cap and shirt.
At any rate, those who enjoy a hearty hamburger have the Dingeses and others in their line of work to thank. And she doesn't seem to mind the quieter, tranquil lifestyle of a small western Kansas town.
Some people are just born to farm.
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