Dreams, goals, banners and golden buckles

As the County Fair season winds down and my social media feed is full of proud parents showing pictures of even prouder kids displaying banners and buckles with their animals and other exhibits, I began to think about what those awards represent.

In recent months, I have been honored to address young people looking toward the future. A graduation commencement address, an FFA Banquet keynote and a gathering of Colorado Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers are some of the events in which I have been fortunate to participate.

During one of my mid-summer days on horseback checking cattle on high mountain pastures, I was reflecting about each of these. I realized they have a lot of connectivity. I thought about my life journey. There are some banners and golden buckles sprinkled along the path I have traveled. Even a tiara from my experiences as a county fair queen is in my collection.

What do dreams and goals have to do with banners and golden buckles?

Turns out, I think, a lot. I share with the youthful audiences the journey Howard and I have covered so far in life. The joint journey started early in both our lives. We have known each other since before our teen years. We met through 4-H and spent time together at the county fair.

We married relatively young and started thinking about what we wanted our lives to look like as we got older. We spent a lot of time dreaming about what it would be like to raise a family on a ranch in western Colorado, working together in the large landscapes I had grown up in.

Next, we started setting goals to reach that dream. The ultimate goal was to work together on a ranch. No specifics, at first. Quickly, we realized we needed some very detailed ideas to make those dreams happen. We began to set targets that had numbers and dates — this many sheep, this many cows, by this particular time.

We got the information and the education we needed to reach those goals, we lived frugally and put all our resources into the creation of what would later become VanWinkle Ranch. We helped our neighbors and they helped us back. Above all, we kept our hearts and minds focused on the dream that had become a goal.

I tell young audiences they need to make a plan, have goals in mind to reach the dream in their heads. Get an education, and it doesn’t all come from a book or a classroom. Be a good neighbor in the community. Do what it takes to get the job done, no matter the setbacks. And I mention, there will be plenty of those. The life lessons learned at the fairgrounds carry over into real life in so many ways. Banners and golden buckles come from dreams that have been turned into goals. The work at home with no one around counts. No one to tell you what needs to be done in the barn when you are caring for your animal, or in the kitchen when you just burned a batch of cookies you were preparing for a presentation at the 4-H Club meeting that night. You figure it out. You work until you get it right; lessons learned along the path to the county fair. Hard work counts in real life, too.

Helping others in the 4-H community is just what you do. Adult leaders and several older members helped Howard and me be successful at the county fair. As time went along, we were the older members helping younger ones learn how to groom a calf, feed a sheep or lead a meeting. Eventually, we were the adult volunteers guiding kids in their learnings. More lessons learned at the county fair. As young adults working toward our goals, we were on the receiving end of our community’s encouragement.

At the end of the day, life is not always fair. At the county fair, you learn to be a gracious winner and an even more gracious, in second, third or last place. You know the class winner may have had some outside help, or had resources to spend on the project that you didn’t. When your win comes along, you know how you earned that banner or golden buckle. Or, if it doesn’t come along, you know you did your best. And at the county fair, that is what counts. In life, that is what counts.

As the dreams and goals turn into banners and buckles, one day the realization comes clear ... it is not about the banners and golden buckles, but about reaching a goal because you had a dream and chased it with all your heart and soul. This is the lesson the kids in the pictures from the county fair learn. Ultimately, the dreams and goals become more important than the banners and golden buckles. This, is the reason 4-H and the county fair are so important in all our rural communities.

Janie VanWinkle is co-owner and co-manager of VanWinkle Ranch with her husband, Howard. She is the past president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association and was selected as a fellow by the Economic Development Administration’s new Economic Recovery Corps to lead AgriWest, an agriculture-focused economic development initiative administered by the Business Incubator Center.