Big Green Combine

Whoa. What a great time William and I had at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assoc. convention last week. They had a record number register for this year’s meetings (8200+).  I’ll admit the main reason we decided to attend was because it was in Nashville. William and I love going to Nashville to hear live music and dance a little. Even better if we can join up with some cattle guys at the same time. After driving down Tuesday we had steaks at the Stockyards. It turned out not to be as good as the last time we were there. Wednesday we went to Robert’s Western World and listened to a singer. He was a lot of fun and played some good music.

Later that day, we headed over to Opryland Hotel to register and walked around a little ’til the exhibit hall opened. I took some pictures and made a short video of William for his blog. So the second reason I wanted to go to the NCBA was the exhibit hall. I knew it was going to be gooood and it waaaas. There were food tables scattered throughout with meatballs, fried pickles and okra.

We joined the tweetup at the Angus booth. It was amazing to finally meet many of the guys from twitter. @JPlovescotton @dailycowman @AR_Ranchhand @cowgirljesse @Agwired to name a few. Sorry if I missed someone. Please remind me in the comments. So much fun talking cattle and social media with everyone.

Afterwards we made a bee line to signup at the Beef Magazine booth for free pair of boots before the hall closed. Met Heather and Jamie there and chatted a little bit. We headed back downtown to our hotel and the honky tonks. A funny thing happened on the way. William’s phone rang. I answered it for him. it was the ladies at the Beef Magazine booth calling to say his name was drawn for the boots. Yeah.  William picked out this pair of ostrich Setsons from Roper. Thank you very much Beef Magazine and Roper.

The next day we were signing up for everything; gators, ipads, guitars. Hey, we were on a roll. We stopped at a ton of booths to talk about feed, bulls, fly control, ag colleges ect. William went to a few meetings while I walked around a little and edited some of the pictures I had taken on my phone. Before dinner we went to the MBA reception. There we sat with a couple from Kentucky. Then we met Whitney and Kaity from Missouri Beef Council. That night NCBA had a couple of bands playing. The band on the main stage didn’t play any two step music so quite a few dancers were disappointed. The action was at the karaoke dj. That was fun. Tried to bribe Ryan Goodman to sing a tune but he didn’t want anything to do with that. Guess tweeting his picture wasn’t enough of an incentive.

this guy nailed it

Again we headed down town for better music and found it at Second Fiddle. Excellent band. William and I even met a group from our state there. Had a good time talking to them when we could hear each other. That was our last night. We drove home the next day. We had to get back for 4H steer weigh in. I did miss getting grits at Puckett’s. I can get them next time we’re back in town or when NCBA is back to Nashville in 2014. We’ll definitely be there.