The old village may as well have been erased from a map. Those who lived there were broken, feeble and hungry. War had come and gone. Disease had been a familiar foe.

The House of Representatives passed the Resilient Federal Forests Act in November, earning praise from the ag community. The bill, introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., addresses the roadblocks to reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires and the budgetary problems caused by “fire borrowing,” or taking the budget allotted to forest management and other activities to fund fighting wildfires.

The 2017 U.S. commercial beef production forecast was lowered slightly from last month at the time of this writing to 26.6 billion pounds. Beef production in 2018 is projected up 20 million pounds from the previous month to 27.3 billion pounds on heavier fed cattle weights during the year.

Cattle don’t like processing days because it’s out of their comfort zone. It’s a lot like men going clothes shopping with their wives. Processing days are stressful events. More people are around.

Typically, when we think of cold stress, we think of feedlot cattle performance being affected, not the cow herd. However, cold stress can impact the cow herd’s productivity and requirements too.

The end of the year means it might be a good time to review and perhaps update the employee management plan. Effective employee management is as important to the success of a ranch as understanding markets and production strategies.

Bull-buying season is just around the corner, and it is time to start making plans on how many and what type of bulls you may need. Before you head out to buy bulls, it is a good idea to determine what selection criteria are important to you, prioritize those criteria and establish a budget.

As 2017 comes to a close, what better way to reflect on the year than to look back at some of the key developments in agricultural law? From water to pesticides, manure to undercover videos, there have been many legal developments impacting agricultural producers.

Chance was a 17-year-old chestnut Arabian, given to my oldest granddaughter Heather by her great-aunt for Christmas in 2000, when Heather was 9.