Having grown up in Hampton, Va., with Washington, D.C., as his favorite place to visit, this city boy turned agriculturalist will make his new home in Bozeman for the next few years as a student at Montana State University.

A young man raised in the suburbs, Mike True visited Montana for a week when his sister married a Big Sky boy last summer. After attending the wedding in a branding corral and dodging sagebrush and dried cow manure, he fell in love with the landscape and everything agriculture.

Meeting at the wedding and becoming friends on Facebook, I watched his unswerving love for agriculture grow and develop. At first he didn’t want to leave Montana. Then, he wanted to go back for a visit.

Then, he went back for a visit and before long he announced on Facebook that he was leaving Randolph-Macon College and transferring to Montana State University to major in animal science.

Switching his major from psychiatry to animal science was a big move for this boy raised in a Southern home within a family entrenched in the military. But with the support of his parents and those of us who have gleaned the energy from a young man who is passionate about agriculture, he has arrived on his new frontier in the foothills of the Rockies, and will start classes this week.
Mike stopped by our farm for a visit on his trek west. He wanted to see how our operation worked, to visit with us about the options of animal science and to get as much experience as possible on a working farm.

When it was chore time, I gave him a pair of barn boots, a sweatshirt and said, “Meet me in the barn across the road; you’re gonna help me milk!”

With a little on-the-job training, this wonderful young man caught on fast and seemed to enjoy every smelly bit of milking cows. When we were done he was asking if there was anything else he could do. Having done all my chores, I went to the house and left him behind with my husband and they spent another hour just talking “cows.”

Although I didn’t want to give him up, I am excited about the possibilities that await this untainted ag advocate. With no predisposed ideas about how things should work, no hard-and-fast opinions on no-till versus conventional, comfort stalls versus parlor or red versus green tractors, he is open to all sorts of ideas and opinions, with the sky as the limit.

Our greatest natural resource in agriculture is our young people. And one of them is now in Big Sky country, with big dreams – and an even bigger future.

 The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to him in care of this publication.