I grew up around agriculture. My dad, like his father and grandfather before him, is a cattle, sheep and goat rancher. It is a lifestyle that I feel fortunate to have experienced for many reasons, not least of which is that it taught me that through hard work, you can make your own way in life.

Ranching is not something you learn from schooling; it’s something you’re born into, and you learn by doing. There are freedoms associated with ranching that you can’t find in an office job, and there are elements of how I grew up about which I am admittedly and unashamedly sentimental. There’s something to be said, for example, in seeing the sun rise over your own fields; for hearing the daily bleat and call of animals; and for smelling the sweet scent of freshly cut hay. There’s something rewarding about working with your hands and being physically tired at the end of a day. If ranching had a feeling, it would be the feeling of not seeing a soul all day. If it had a sound, it would be the silence of total darkness that you can’t find in a city. It is a feeling of independence and being connected to the land.

Put that way, it sounds romantic. But it is not an easy life. Tractors break, fences wash away, animals die and something always needs fixing. It doesn’t rain. It rains too much. It takes a physical toll. My dad walks bowlegged, a consequence of many years of hard labor that has weakened his knees and back. He doesn’t sling 50-pound bags of feed like he once did, but he is still going strong because that life is part of him.

For all of these reasons, the story that resonates the most with me in this issue of Spirit is the faculty profile on Dr. G. Cliff Lamb and how Texas A&M University’s Department of Animal Science is addressing some of the biggest issues facing the beef cattle industry through new programs and research. It’s so important that we learn how to become more efficient in our agricultural production, especially as less and less people pursue careers in agriculture and more and more people rely on its products.

Today, I live in a Plano, Texas, subdivision. Looking at the way I dress and talk or the style of home I have, you wouldn’t guess that I have country roots. Sometimes I regret that I don’t live that life anymore, but then I remember that it molded me into who I am. And so, in that way, it is still very much alive in me.

Occasionally, my husband and I will jokingly refer to my family’s ranch as “the back forty.” Things move a little slower there, and certain technologies will never find their way into my parents’ two-story blue farmhouse. But I feel immensely at peace whenever I’m back home, surrounded by memories and away from the hustle and bustle of our busy lives. My dad calls the land where he grew up “the home place”; I’m proud to call the 200 acres that shaped me my “home place.”