Cart
0
When I was a kid, one of my favorite pastimes was getting the Iwanna and calling different people about whatever animals they had for sale. Half the time I knew there was absolutely no chance I was getting whatever I was calling about. I knew my dad wasn't going to let me buy a wolf puppy, but a girl could dream, right? The livestock section was always a little more realistic because maybe, just maybe, I could talk Dad into another heifer.
For anyone who didn't grow up around here or is too young to remember it, the Iwanna was basically a giant classified paper full of everything imaginable. Before Facebook Marketplace and before you could pull out your phone and find hundreds of animals for sale in thirty seconds, you got the Iwanna. People advertised cars, tractors, furniture, puppies, livestock and the occasional wolf puppy. I went straight for the animals and could spend forever looking through what people had for sale.
I loved looking almost as much as I loved actually getting something. I'd read the ads, find something interesting and pick up the landline to call the number, even when I knew there was almost no chance I was coming home with it. This was long before texting or Facebook messaging, so I was a kid sitting there on the phone with complete strangers, asking questions about animals I had absolutely no authority to buy. I'm not sure what these people thought when some little girl called wanting more information, but I was completely serious about it.
One day I remember seeing an ad that said Highland cows for sale. I had no idea what a Highland cow was, but I was already completely obsessed with Scotland thanks to Braveheart, so obviously the word Highland got my attention. I asked my dad what they were, and he told me they were Scottish cattle with long hair and horns.
I already thought long-haired Scottish warriors were cool, but long-haired Scottish cattle… even better. Of course I called about them, but the Highlands had already sold. I didn't know anything about pedigrees, genetics or breed standards, and I certainly didn't know how much of my life would eventually revolve around Highland cattle. I just knew I had discovered long-haired Scottish cows existed, I had missed my chance to get one, and someday I was going to have some of my own.
I was 29 years old when I finally bought my first Highlands. I had moved into my grandmother's house, which had a pasture in the backyard, and decided I wanted to start homesteading. After all those years, I finally had somewhere to put those long-haired Scottish cows I'd first read about in the Iwanna as a kid.
By then, the Iwanna had pretty much been replaced by Craigslist, but I was still doing the same thing I had done as a kid, looking through animals for sale and asking around for what I wanted. I told a farmer friend I was looking for a Highland, and eventually he found one locally. In March of 2014, after all those years of wanting one, I finally had my first Highland standing in my own pasture.
Apparently getting one did not satisfy the obsession. By July, just four months later, I had 29 Highlands. I went from spending years wanting one long-haired Scottish cow to acquiring nearly thirty of them in the span of a few months, which probably tells you everything you need to know about how I approach livestock buying.
I think I've always loved the hunt almost as much as actually owning the animals. As a kid, it was flipping through the Iwanna and finding something interesting enough to call about. As an adult, I could spend hours looking at cattle for sale, calling breeders, asking questions and convincing myself that an animal I hadn't known existed an hour earlier suddenly needed to come live with me.
Highlands took that obsession to an entirely different level. The more I learned about them, the more there was to look for. It wasn't long before I was learning pedigrees and bloodlines, figuring out which breeders had cattle I liked and finding animals farther and farther from home. There was always another cow, another pedigree or another breeding that caught my attention, and I genuinely enjoyed searching for them.
I've bought cattle from all over the country since then, and I've spent an unreasonable amount of my life looking at livestock for sale. Some of them I actually needed, some became incredibly important to my breeding program, and there have definitely been plenty I had absolutely no business buying. But I don't think that little thrill of finding one has ever really changed.
Some people outgrow their childhood obsessions. Apparently I just grew into mine. I went from looking through the Iwanna and calling strangers about wolf puppies from the landline to studying pedigrees and buying cattle from across the country, but underneath all of it I'm still that same little girl looking to see what animals are for sale and wondering if I can find a reason to bring one home.
