Volume II, Episode/Issue 5
You can listen to the audio version at the end of the article
This issue and episode of Terry County Community Spotlight will focus on a lady who loves her family, her job, and her community. People have seen her at several events, especially those that are ag-related. She is a hard worker, no-nonsense, and a common sense kinda lady. Most of the time when you see her, she’ll be wearing blue jeans, boots & spurs, and a cowboy hat. If you haven’t guessed who she is, well let us introduce you to Katie Jo Day.
As always when we visit with people when we do the Terry County Community Spotlight, we ask some quick questions. You had to choose only one of these three to drink, Coke, Dr. Pepper, or Big Red, which would it be? Katie was quick by saying Dr. Pepper… “I’m Dr. Pepper girl for sure… and no diet stuff either, keep that in the vending machine.”
Next was her favorite food. She said, “I’ve gotta go with beef right? We better say some beef dish.” We asked her what cut. She responded, “I like fillets myself… if I go to a good steakhouse I’ll order a fillet… It’s hard to beat a good chicken fry though.” We asked if she had she ever been to Mary’s Cafe in Strawn. She said, “I have… yes I have, it does not beat Deanne Yates in Tarzan though. I think my mom beats it.” We said jokingly “I don’t think we’ve been there.” She responded “That restaurant is open for grandkids now is about all.
Katie continued to say, “Homemade chicken fries… I don’t think a restaurant could make one better than a good home-cooked chicken fry. That’s the only thing about a restaurant chicken fry, you don’t get the same kinda of gravy. It’s the gravy that makes the difference.” Chuckling, we then said, “I agree with that… it’s like a lot of love in there.” Katie then said with a big smile on her face, “If they had that kinda gravy, I might get that on a fillet.” We then spent another couple of minutes talking about gravy.
The next question was what is her favorite color. Katie, being very specific said, “A good cobalt blue… I gotta a blue felt hat, I’ve got blue eyes… blue is the color of first-place ribbons.” We then asked what her favorite social media platform is and again Katie was quick to say, “Man I like Instagram… yeah it’s just always worked for me… maybe my age, I don’t know.” She then went on to say again with a smile on her face, “I would say Snap Chat, but my BFF Katy Jane, she’d come through the microphone and strangle me… so that’s my secret favorite is the Snap Chat.” Next was who is her favorite team. “We are Dallas Cowboy people… thick and thin, we root for the Cowboys… we don’t cut it off in the fourth quarter if they’re getting skunked by the 49ers. Yeah our house is pretty die-hard Cowboy fans,” said Katie.
Next we we talked about where she’s from, what schools, and who is her family. Katie is from the Tarzan community, which is about 30 miles south of Lamesa or 16 miles northwest of Stanton. Katie went to and graduated from Grady High School, which is located in the community of Lenorah, right down the highway of Tarzan. Katie stated she had 14 in her class, “Coming to West Medda (Meadow) I used to having a little elbow room, so I fit right in.” She has been married to her husband Rusty for 19 years and she said, “We met showing cattle when we were in elementary school… and I had a big crush on him when I was like in the sixth grade. When I got in high school and I liked the social part of stock shows as much as I like the work part he was always working… so I kinda thought he was a dud, to be honest.”
They began dating her senior year, and Rusty went off to Texas A&M University, and she said, “we made it work through college and dated five years, been married… got two awesome kids, better than we deserve.” Katie and Rusty two boys, Ryder who is a Junior at Meadow High School, and Riggon is in the eighth grade. We bragged on Ryder and Riggon, and Katie said, “They’ve had some great examples… they’re blessed with a great set of grandparents and great-grandparents.” Katie got her college education at Texas Tech University and told us she and Rusty were first-time college students in their families. Katie studied agricultural economics (ag-eco) and minored in finance.
While at TTU, through the ag college, Katie had the opportunity to be an intern with former Texas State Senator Bob Duncan, which she did her senior year, and then he offered her a full-time job working as a legislative assistant in the district. She said she learned so much from Senator Duncan “He was a shining star for West Texas and the Texas legislatures.” She attributes this opportunity to the ag college. We then spoke a few minutes on the past Texas legislature.
We got into a more serious conversation. We asked her what she was most passionate about. Katie said, “I think because of our lifestyle, it would be for me, animal agriculture. You see so much bad publicity, and its really been better and I do credit… and this sounds silly, but really the exposure that we’ve gotten through Taylor Sheridan… him having Yellowstone (The TV Series), him purchasing the Four-sixes (A large ranch in and near Guthrie Texas) and they’ve just glamourized this lifestyle to the point… in recent years… the last couple of years, really it’s been a ray of light to have a positive public perception of this lifestyle verses you remember when they hit the dairy (Fair Oaks Farms in Fair Oaks, Indiana, in June of 2019)… they hammered on those guys because they snuck in a camera and the animal activists had everybody’s ears it seemed like and it’s still present, but lately there’s been just a little bit of glamourizing the lifestyle… so it’s been a breath of fresh air really.”
Part of this conversation had Katie talking about people needing to be educated. She went on to say, “A part of my kids growing up around animals like they do, they have… you know i’ve taken them to funerals whenever they were young. To us, life and death… death is part of life… it’s going to happen. My kids are not very sheltered… I mean we live in a pretty isolated part of the country and one of the more rural parts of Texas… you know they are sheltered from some things, social media probably, and TV. It’s different these days even from when I was growing up and the generation between… my kids just have the opportunity to experience more real-life scenarios and part of that education… it was a little bit of eye-opening whenever we started the farm tour for kids through Terry Co. Soil & Water Conservation District, that was one of Jackie Pates ideas and she led that. We host fifth-grade students from Meadow, Wellman-Union, and Brownfield and I think whenever I realize… “wow we’ve really gotta do a better job”, Ive gotta do a better job of helping folks understand animal agriculture and farming also.”
“We consider Terry County an ag county… right? You would just consider all of these kids to be as exposed to agriculture as any of them possibly could, with the town the size of Brownfield and having our smaller schools meadow and Wellman-Union, but it would blow your hair back to know how confused these kids got at pretty basic questions that we would ask them. Then they would get interested and ask more questions. My part whenever I would talk to them about just the lifecycle, where beef comes from, what they might have had for breakfast, and what animal that might have come from, just some of those basic questions. You know we laugh about the statistic that… the percentage that humans that think that white milk comes from white cows and chocolate milk comes from brown cows.” Said Katie. She went on to tell us that she put that to the test for those fifth graders, and asked if was true that white milk comes from white cows and chocolate milk comes from brown cows, Katie was amazed at how many raised their hands and answered true.
We continued for several minutes about how science and technology have helped the ag industry and what it means. Katie said one final thing about education, “We’ve gotta start educating them here and then it snowballs and they tell somebody and they tell somebody, and maybe somebody gets interested. There’s just so many facets of agriculture that folks don’t even realize touch their lives. Go back to the agri Texan deal when I was recruiting for Tech one of our t-shirt recruiting taglines was “Unless you’re hungry and naked, you’re involved in agriculture”… that’s silly right, you laugh, oh it’s funny, but let that sink in… and that’s heavy and I always say that at these farm tour for kids.”
We moved on to what she feels society needs. Katie began by saying, “Man, one of my favorite quotes is from Mae West and she says, “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”… and it’s perspective, but there’s a lot going on. A lot of that I can’t control… you gotta talk to God and leave it in his hands whenever you know it’s out of yours. What I do personally… is… I’m responsible for lives every day, not just my own family but my livestock. I’ve got cows I feed every day, I’m responsible for checking their water… they can’t go fix a pump if it goes out and they run out of water, they can’t go get a bale of hey if we are in a drought and roll out for themselves to eat, because the dirt blowing in their eyes and there’s no green grass out there for them graze… and they’re hungry. They wait for me to show up and feed them, and if I don’t show up to feed them, then they don’t eat… they are hungry and naked. You just have to control what you can control. I get in my own little world sometimes, but I realize if you take care of what God gave you the responsibility to care for… you’ve gotta leave the rest up to Him and faith that He’s gonna walk you down the correct path if you just try to take care of His creations.
Katie would continue on with her advice. “And you know the whole leave better than you found thing… I mean that applies to so much. I don’t care if you’re eating at a self-serve restaurant or a buffet. I go sit down at a table and whenever my family is done eating… if it’s one of those where you’re supposed to take your trash to the trashcan and clean up your table, by golly do it! Leave it clean for the next people that come in. Same thing with the land… you know take it a little deeper… to me God made it perfect right? He made it exactly like He wanted to make it… Man’s been the one screwing it up. So I feel like that’s kinda what He put me here for is to protect what He built and try to either restore it back to the closest that he originally gave it to us or just try to take care of what he made. I don’t really have anything, other than you are here for a reason… you gotta figure that out… that’s on you. I feel like thanks to Rusty Day asking me “do you wanna marry me” … umm.. I was smart enough to say yes and think God put me here for a reason.”
The conversation moved to the community of Terry County. Obviously, Katie did not grow up here in Terry County so what is her reaction to being here? She said, “You know being fortunate enough to stock show and show horses growing up… I had friends all across the state, these are my people now. I talked about some of those gals earlier… there are some phenomenal individuals in this county… I don’t think… except for folks like you (TownTalk Media) that really want to spotlight them. We realize what treasures there are here and you know I’ve always been more of a tomboy and kinda had more guy friends than girlfriends, but now as an adult in my 40’s… early 40s… early 40’s, I’ve got more girlfriends than I’ve ever had and that’s thanks to this county. They’ve welcomed me, I show up to most things without makeup and with spurs on and a hat on my head, because I can do a side braid, and doesn’t take me 10 minutes to get ready and done… and they accept me for that. When I go to the grocery store in Lubbock… boy, everybody’s looking at me. Not shunning or in a bad way, it’s just something they don’t see. Here it’s just expected, I might not be the only one in there like that.
Katie continued on saying, “It’s a great community. The support for things… the support for anything local, everybody’s always welcome to help out… welcoming… the support at the county stock show. If you’ve never been involved in a county show outside of Terry County… man, we’re so spoiled. These local businesses turn out for these kids… sports, the stands are always full. The scholarships that are given in this community is unreal. Dr. Jim and what he does with the Charles Orum. Man what these businesses do and the passion, just to pay it forward… it’s very very impressive.
