Doing So Much.....With So Little.

A couple of weekends ago we attended the Alberta Simmental Association Annual meeting and tour.  The weather could not have been better for looking at cattle and catching up with cattle friends.  After lunch on Saturday the Alberta Simmental Association held their AGM.  The board members have been doing some great work for us breeders.  The number of Simmental calves marketed through the Simmental feeder calf sales in the fall is up, Simmental influenced projects shown at 4-H are one of the highest for all breeds,

Our YCS Junior Simmental is one of the strongest in Western Canada, 

they are looking at new ways to promote and identify where the breeders live in the province and have indicated to the Canadian Simmental Association that they would like to host the Canadian Simmental  AGM and National Show in 2011.

The one thing that came out of the meeting is the fee structure that is currently in place.  When the association was originally formed 40+ years ago, you could purchase a life membership for $100 and never have to contribute financially to the association again......yet reap all of the benefits of the work of the director's and the promotion that they do for us.  There was lots of discussion on the fairness of this and how funds could be generated in order to give the ASA the opportunity to fund the many projects that they are wanting to do.  Sometimes I think that we feel that there are too many input costs to raising cattle and when the discussion of more fees come up we are hesitant.  But at the same time we will stop for a meal on the way home from the meeting and spend more than the administration fee they were asking us to endorse.  It doesn't take a large amount of money from each participant to give you what you need to support some very worthwhile projects.  We at High Country would gladly support an administration fee of $50 -100 /year to help promote Simmental cattle in our province.  We hope that the board will look into establishing this for 2011.

We would also like to thank all of our hosts this weekend that invited us to their farms.  It was a really great weekend.