Welcome to my podcast, a collection of stories and ramblings explaining and celebrating the life of the working cowboy. If you read all that, congratulations, it’s all audio content from here. Two years into a head first dive into the buckaroo style of ranching and cowboying, and after much urging from my loving wife, I embarked on yet another journey chronicling my experience as my world of the High Plains cowpuncher collided with that of the Great Basin/California vaquero or buckaroo. Settling in rural Lyon County, Nevada, the McKinley continued our unorthodox journey in pursuit of our American Dream. After of year of scraping together pennies to buy beans, and the conception of our second child, Augustus, opportunity again arose and like our ancestors before us, we loaded up and headed west, over the Rockies and the Great Divide, toward the Pacific Ocean and the setting sun. Countless hours, endless amounts of blood, sweat, and Coors Light yielded a stint in a confined cow-calf operation, which was brought to a screeching halt, rather unceremoniously, when I was fired in February of 2016. Over the next 4 years, Rebekah and I got married, and made an absolutely perfect, gorgeous demon-child named Sophia (Phia Monster). We were officially a thing come March of that year, when the big wigs in Amarillo decided to cease feedlot operations at Syracuse Feedyard and pursue an experimental confined cow-calf operation.
After a disastrous first date, I managed to not creep her out enough to get her to agree to a second. In January 2012, I met my smokin’ hot wife, Rebekah. Learning far more what not to do, rather than what I should do to be successful, I served a little over a year as a manager trainee in all the cattle departments at Grant County Feeders.Īn opportunity arose with Cactus Feeders at Syracuse Feedyard in Syracuse, KS, where I learned to feed delivery side of the feedlot business for the next year and a half. I was immediately baptized in putrid waters that roll out of the sewers of the corporate feedlot scene.
After bouncing around as day trash for a short while, I took a job with Grant County Feeders in Ulysses, KS. I attended Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado (Go Rams), graduating with bachelor’s degrees in Animal Sciences and Agricultural Business, while simultaneously earning a doctorate in all around jackassery…don’t act like you’re not impressed.įrom there, I spent a winter in Montana working for a large ranch, trying my damndest to be Monte Walsh, but to no avail…Montana had my number and I was soon southbound and down.
I was raised around cattle and horses, riding as many as 25 miles a day on my dad’s week-long trail rides and helping family, neighbors and friends move, brand, sort and ship cattle. I was born in Denver, Colorado and grew up in the extreme southeast corner of Baca County, the southeastern most corner of Colorado. Howdy there! I’m Matt McKinley, and we’re burnin’ daylight.
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