The cowboy in the black hat from idaho

Medvedev chats with US cowboys working in Russia

Published May 23, 2012

Associated Press

MOSCOW –  Russia's prime minister paid a visit Wednesday to a farm that has imported cattle from the United States and also some American cowboys to help the Russians develop their struggling meat industry.
Dmitry Medvedev chatted with a couple of the cowboys, including one in a broad-brimmed black hat from the U.S. state of Idaho, who introduced the prime minister to his wife and young son.
Medvedev, the former president, asked the American in English whether he had managed to learn to speak any Russian.
The man, who was not identified in television reports on the visit, said that other than "please" and "thank you," the most important words in his Russian vocabulary were those needed for taking care of the cattle: "open the gate" and "close the gate."
The farm in the southwestern Bryansk region has more than 7,000 head of Aberdeen Angus cattle, many of them imported from the United States. At least four U.S. cowboys work on the farm, where they use American horses to herd the black cattle.
The Miratorg holding company, which operates the farm Medvedev visited and others in the Bryansk region, said it imported 5,500 head of the black cattle from the United States in January. Two previous shipments within the past year came from Australia.
The company also imported 57 American Quarter Horses, the breed used on ranches throughout the United States.
During a meeting at the farm with the Bryansk governor and other officials, Medvedev said Russia was committed to reducing its dependence on imported beef.

The fun part about this article is that the cowboy in the black hat, was Josh. I can honestly say this fancy pants meeting went alot better than all the previous ones.

I decided to change my attitude this go around of fancy pants and important Russian government officials. And try to be a better representative of my country, my family, and my faith.

The big day everyone had been preparing for arrived.I cleaned our house, and got the boys and myself all cleaned up in the event I had to show my house or show what a real American family looks like.  By 4:00 p.m. we hadn't heard from anyone all day and Josh wasn't answering his phone.  So I figured the prime minister was off looking at one of the other ranches and we had gotten off easy this time woohoo.

 So the kids and I brought a bunch of snacks out to the guys. And 10 minutes later the horse barn where we were hanging out was filled with camera men and reporters and no other than the Prime Minister Medvedev came in shook our hands, and asked Josh quite a few questions.He wanted to know how we like living in Russian. If Josh thought Bryansk was a good area to raise beef and if we were learning to speak Russian. He was kinda a short little guy, but was polite to us and very personable.Carter offered him the cookie he was munching on!ha

I'm not too sure why he stopped and visited with us really, but I guess it will be another one of the crazy stories we tell our grandkids someday about living in Russia.

Honestly the BEST part of the whole day was watching the three helicopters swoop in and land and take off. They scared the cows so bad they were running everywhere and I thought for sure they were going to run through the fence and run through the chef tent and catterig crew! That would have been pretty funny. Maybe next time :)

 I didn't get any photos, I hadn't planned on meeting the prime minister. But one of the veternarians found this article I have on the top of this post and I found a few photos on google. I think the funniest thing is that everything I found on the internet was about Josh, the mysterious cowboy in the wide brimmed black hat from Idaho!ha No one cared about our names at the time because we weren't even part of the formal interviews set up, so it cracks me up that the only thing I can find circulating the world wide web is about the mysterious cowboy in the black hat from Idaho.

P.s.
google medvedev visits ranch for alot of poorly written stories about the mystery cowboy from idaho.