Our Bloggers

Renee Zimmerman

Renee Zimmerman is a dairy enthusiast and serves as the Research and Development Coordinator at Weaver Livestock. Growing up, her summer vacations weren’t typical beach trips. Instead, you could find Renee showing at the Ohio State Fair and the Holmes County Fair near her hometown. Renee continues to raise and show dairy cattle. Her herd includes Coco, Coco Chanel, Charlie, and the two newest additions Carat, and Colette.

Renee is living one of her favorite quotes, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Renee is very passionate in sharing secrets to her success with the youth of today so they have the tools to be successful in the ring, and in life!

Jeremy Evans

Most people that work with Jeremy Evans at Dover Middle School in Dover, Ohio think Jeremy is a farmer. He prefers the term “Agriculture Enthusiast” because 8 acres and 5 head of cattle doesn’t exactly make a farm. When he is not grading papers or changing apostrophes that don’t belong in plural nouns, he enjoys feeding his son’s (Barrett, Brady, Blaine) steers, but not writing the checks for the feed. His wife Michelle is also a teacher at Dover City Schools and he considers his greatest accomplishment in life the fact that he converted his wife from a “horse person” to a “cow person” as evidenced by the fluffer comb in the back pocket of her ski pants at shows.

Jennifer Friend

Jennifer Friend was raised on a small cow/calf and sheep farm in Central West Virginia. From an early age she caught the “show bug;” when she was two she told her Mom that she wanted to show a sheep while her Mother was judging a sheep show! Ever since then, she has been showing sheep locally and at the state level. It wasn’t until she was 8 that she was allowed to show a calf and that heifer’s influence is still found in Jennifer’s herd. Besides the show bug, Jennifer competed on 4-H and FFA livestock judging teams and then went on to judge at the collegiate level for West Virginia University. She will be graduating in May 2018 with a BS in Agriculture and Extension Education and Jennifer plans to pursue a career in production agriculture.

Kelly Thomas

Kelly and her husband, Chad, raise cattle, sheep and two children in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. Their kids are the 4th generation to grow up on the farm and show livestock. Some of the family’s very best days happen in the show barn. Some of their most contentious days happen there too. Kelly believes that a kid will build life-long friends showing livestock. After all, she is the girl that married the boy she met in the show ring. She loves educating children, especially about agriculture. She believes that even if a kid won’t grow up to work in agriculture the kid still needs to grow up to be a knowledgeable consumer. Oh, and that ranch dressing should be considered a food group.

Greg Kirlin

Greg Kirlin resides on his family farming operation in west central Illinois and is a Feed Sales Representative and Marketing Specialist for a local feed & grain company, Dearwester Grain Services. He uses his passion for livestock production to help local producers reach their goals in both commercial and show stock settings. His brother and he both have a passion for raising and exhibiting purebred Simmental cattle.

Greg lives by a quote from Grant Cardone which states “Your greatness is limited only by the investments you make in yourself.” Keeping this quote close, Greg lives each day reaching for success and working towards goals set daily. He hopes to challenge readers to create their own success through passion, determination, and hard work.