Cowboy goes global

"I got a horse when I was seven," Jake Zielke said. "We more or less saved it from the slaughterhouse because it was old. The first year, I rode it bareback before I could save up enough money to buy a saddle."

Little did he know this first step would lead him to travel to every habitable continent -where has made his living as a cowboy.

The purchase of "Snowball" was one of Zielke's first steps in becoming a cowboy.

Zielke started his years in Estes Park, Colo. where his father was working as a brewer. His father, Richard, is currently the brewmaster at the Saratoga Resort and Spa.

Zeilke said his father left the job in Estes Park to work at a brewery in Wisconsin. It was in this state he started entering rodeos with a purpose in mind. Which was to get a scholarship for college.

He had been in rodeo events since he was young.

"First, I started to ride sheep and then graduated to calves," Zeilke said. "My first bull was at 13 or 14 and, truthfully, the first time I rode one, I fell off and got run over and I thought to myself, 'why on Earth would anyone want to do this?"'

Zielke said he had no intention of getting back on one, but this was a bull riding clinic. When they asked all the other kids riding who wanted to do it again, everyone but him raised their hand.

"As I saw everyone with their hands, I thought to myself, 'Well I am not going to be a wuss about it, so I will do it again,'" Zielke explained. "That one I rode for eight seconds and I jumped off it landing on my feet and then I went over to the fence and I thought to myself, 'that is why people ride bulls' and, honestly, I was hooked."

He said learning to ride bulls made him want to enter rodeos and, since he lived in Wisconsin, it became the place he got most of his high school rodeo experience.

"Wisconsin doesn't have the scale of events or even rodeos that out West does," Zeilke said. "But it was still excellent experience."

As he went to the rodeos in Wisconsin, he had films of him riding bulls and horses that he sent out to different colleges. He got accepted at several, but he was offered a full scholarship by the late George Howard, the rodeo coach at the University of Wyoming (UW).

"George saw my films and said 'Yeah, you can ride for me,'" Zielke said. "Although I got accepted at other colleges, once I got accepted at UW, there was no question where I was going to go to college."

Zielke said when he was a little boy back in Estes Park, he heard that UW was the cowboy university, so he assumed, until his teens, it was a college to go to learn to be a cowboy. Even though he found out UW was not specifically a college for cowboys, it remained his first choice for college throughout his years growing up.

He went for four and half years and graduated with a degree in veterinary science and agriculture business.

The semester before he graduated, Zielke went to Australia to cowboy.

"It was the summer before my last semester when I went there," Zielke said. "I was in the absolute north corner tip of Queensland and it was really dry. I tell people it is like the Australian Serengeti."

He said the trip and job came about from meeting a girl at UW who was in a program of study abroad.

"I asked her if she thought she could get me work and put me in touch with her brother," Zielke said. "Basically, he and I exchanged just a few emails and he gave me a time and the name of a town, Kowanwama."

He said for the next few months he slept outside in the bush.

"I think I slept inside two or three times my entire stay," Zielke said. "When I first got there they gave me a bedroll and told me to sleep wherever. But Australia is home to some of the deadliest snakes and my co-workers said I was crazy to sleep on the ground, so I found an old steel bed frame that I put on 55 gallon helicopter drums and that is what I slept on the rest of my stay."

He said the job was to round up feral cattle on aborigine land, which meant moving around weekly to different locations in the bush. He said the area reminded him of reservations in the U.S. because the land was gifted to natives and run by the government.

After he came back and graduated, he was looking for a job and was told if he had a second language, it would make him more employable. Zielke decided he wanted to learn Spanish, so he decided the best way was to immerse himself in a Spanish speaking country. He chose Argentina.

"I worked at three or four estancias (Estancia is a large, private plot of land used for farming or cattle raising) and I spoke no Spanish when I first got there," Zielke said. "I managed to make my way around and I learned as I went along and by the time I left, I was not fluent, but I could understand."

Zielke was in Argentina over three months and had planned to be there longer, but he got sick. He didn't want to be treated in Argentina, so he came back to the U.S.

"I got really sick and when I got back, they couldn't figure out what I had," Zeilke said. "At first they thought it might be hepatitis A, but it wasn't and then they said, they think it was the Zika virus because where I was in Argentina was near the border of Brazil. This was when the outbreak was happening, right before the Olympics. My liver shut down for a bit, but because there was no way of telling what it was exactly, and I lived through it, they said whatever I got, I was over it."

Now that he was back in the U.S., he worked for a rancher in Carbon County. He became a unit manager and was in charge of four different properties.

"I was 23 and in charge of 3,000 to 4,000 head of sheep, 800 head of cattle, a bunch of goats and all my workers were Peruvian," Zielke said. "I only used Spanish to talk with them and my time in Argentina learning the language came in handy."

He worked all over Carbon County.

"It was my dream job," Zielke said. "I told my boss, the only way I would leave the job is if I created my own business."

Zielke did start his own business, but he was not looking to leave the job he had. Unfortunately, a downturn that year had Zielke's job disappear. Not only did his job evaporate, but also he had to get the livestock he had invested in off the land he had been using.

"I had one week notice to get the livestock off the land which I had invested all my money in and I had to be out of the house I was living in," Zielke said. "I had two dogs, my 16 year old brother living with me and a car I paid $600 for."

He had to sell his livestock and took a huge hit.

"Basically, for a few weeks, we were homeless," Zielke said. "We camped and slept wherever we could with friends. Finally, a friend told me of a pickup and camper for $2,000 and it turned out to be my home on wheels."

Zielke said he has lived in the camper for two years while being in the U.S.

He credits Cal Herring for hiring him when he is in America.

Zielke said while taking a ranching course, he met a woman from Sweden in his class whose family owned one of the largest organic ranches in all of northern Europe.

"While she was visiting, I showed her a ranch over in Lusk and while we were there, she said if I ever wanted to visit her family's ranch, I was welcome," Zielke said. "I told her to be careful because a lot of people will say they will visit and don't, but I will."

Her family invited him to come over and work, setting him up with the proper visas.

"I spent three months working there and it was the least wild place I have ever worked, but it was wild in another way because of the European Union and the Swedish government and the way they control agriculture, -well, business in general," Zielke explained. "We always had people sneaking up on the ranch to make sure health codes were being adhered to. They just have so many laws."

Zielke worked at the ranch in winter.

"Swedish winters are not awesome," Zielke said. "They are pretty wet and cold where we were in southern Sweden. We did all the work on horseback and they are probably the only ranch in all of Sweden to do it the old cowboy way."

While in Sweden, friends pointed out how many continents he had been cowboying in.

"It was never my intention to cowboy on every continent at first," Zielke said. "But when people realized I had only Africa and Asia to go, it was pointed out there was probably no person that had ever accomplished this."

Zielke looked at his options in Africa and decided on South Africa.

"It is probably the most modern and has technology I was hearing about in the cattle and crop industry," Zielke said. "The country is a lot more willing to change and try new things in modern agriculture. Some of the coolest things from technology was being tested there."

Zielke was put in contact with a woman who founded the Future Farmers Foundation (FFF) in South Africa. He said the small dedicated foundation provides platforms from which young men and women in agriculture and farming in general can become successful commercial farm managers or farmers in their own right.

Zielke said most managers running large farms in South Africa are white. Judy Stewart, the founder, reached out to students from urban areas that wanted to learn about the agricultural industry. Most of the interns that come to the farm are black. He said because there are 11 languages in South Africa, she helps them with not only agriculture, but also English.

"She also has set up a program where successful students at her place go to countries in North American, Europe and Australia to study," Zielke said. "She takes these kids, who truly have started out with nothing and is giving them a life to help themselves and the country."

Zielke said FFF initiated an apprenticeship system that places the students on farms where they gain experience, starting at the bottom where they learn a large variety of skills from the most menial tasks to tractor driving, operating milking machines, control of irrigation systems, dairy herd management and leadership skills. Starting on the lowest wage, these apprentices work their way up as their skills and abilities improve. The apprentices are evaluated by their employers and by an independent labour specialist.

After a year or two of practical experience, the apprentices who excel in their work may be selected to do a year internship overseas. In Europe, Australia and the U.S., the apprentices are exposed to very high working standards and very different cultures. They learn more about the world they live in and understand what makes a top farming operation successful. They are exposed to a work ethic that is both new and of great value to them. They learn new and valuable skills which can set these young people up for success and enable them to be leaders in their communities.

The farm he ended is in the province of KwaZulu-Natal near the town of Underberg. Zielke said getting to the farm from Johannesburg had its pitfalls. He was fleeced out of the equivalent of about $100 when he arrived at the international airport of South Africa's largest city. A person who said he worked for the airline conned him out of the money and when airport police got involved, they told him to continue on his flight and make a claim at the next airport.

When he told his new employer what happened, she said the money was gone and no report would be necessary. She said he would have to be careful when being asked for money, whether it was police or someone saying they were from the government.

"Your money is gone," Zielke said Stewart told him. "The police system doesn't work well here and the criminals are everywhere and you have to be about your wits here."

Stewart sent him to work with some of her best students.

He found one manager who worked with sheep and cattle to be one of the smartest students for a month.

"This guy came from a place that had no electricity and water had to be carried from a well to where he is managing 12 different farms and speaks seven languages fluently," Zielke said. "We became close friends and bounced ideas off each other. It was fantastic."

One thing Zielke noticed was children around these farms didn't have a lot of toys or clothes. He made a mental note that when he went back to FFF, he would bring them toys and clothes.

Zielke left South Africa and came back to the U.S. where he worked in Wyoming for the summer. After the summer, he went to work in Mexico.

"I got caught in the middle of a big cartel gun fight and I saw a lot of drug deals," Zielke said. "It was in the middle of nowhere in the state of Chihuahua and while I was there, I started thinking about where I could go if went to Asia. I certainly didn't want to stay in Mexico."

He decided Mongolia was the place.

Zielke came back the U.S. and worked in the Valley cowboying while he made plans to go back to South Africa at the end of April this year. His mother bought him a suitcase at Bridge Street Bargains in Saratoga and he filled it with clothes and small toys to take to the children at the farms.

He will stay in South Africa until July and on July 11, he will head to Mongolia, and while in the country, he will be in the Mongol Derby, the longest horse race in the world. It is invite only.

The course recreates the horse messenger system developed by Ghengis Khan in 1224. There will be men and women playing the role of the messengers, and representing about a dozen different countries. The exact course changes every year and is kept secret until shortly before the race begins. The terrain includes mountain passes, green open valleys, wooded hills, river crossings, wetland and floodplains, sandy semi-arid dunes, rolling hills, dry riverbeds and of course open steppe. It includes 25 to 27 Mongolian horses, a support team, pre-race training, and support stations along the way. Riders must change horses every 25 miles at the support stations. Along the way are vet checks to monitor the condition of the horses and the vets may impose time penalties if the riders push their horses too hard along the trail. To gain entry as a competitor, each rider must demonstrate that their riding skills are strong enough to endure the harsh terrain of the race. The horses themselves are semi-wild, and may not cooperate with the rider, adding one more level of difficulty to the race. Riders spend thirteen to fourteen hours a day in the saddle, and the race lasts ten days. The race is in August.

The Mongolian Derby is not the only reason he is going. He is going to visit a nomadic tribe called the Tsaatan where instead of riding horses, they ride reindeer.

"I have to fly into the capital of Ulan Bator and then take a bush plane to a remote settlement," Zielke said. "Then we get into these Russian four wheel vehicles for a few days until the roads end and then we get on horses for another a few days to this valley where we find these reindeer people."

After visiting the Tsaatan, he is weighing his options before the Mongolian Derby. He said he has offers to live with a nomadic family or a tourist company that stages horse treks to the Gobi.

No matter what he decides to do in Mongolia, this 26 year old will have accomplished his goal of cowboying in Asia and thus cowboying on all the inhabited continents.

"The whole reason I did this is, and continue to travel like I do, is because animal husbandry is one the oldest lines of businesses in the world. What we do on the ranches is slightly different, but all the same concepts are all over the world," Zielke said. "I don't have to speak Swedish or Xhosa to know horses still ride the same and cattle is still herded, so animal husbandry is the language I have used to travel the world."