Blogs

I was enjoying a dandy start to the new year. January was like a heavenly dream. We’d had some snow and a couple of cold stretches in late December, but the first few weeks of the year felt more like April than January.

I was having a discussion with Audrey the other day. I consider her kind of a kindred spirit, since she’s a farm girl turned journalist/editor who, like my wife, hails from a small-town dairy farm.

Hard lessons learned are worth more if they are remembered. When my livelihood came from hauling hay to dairies and ranches in remote places in the Northwest, I was never stranded in the truck without food or drink. I recalled that knack when the solar eclipse came close enough to witness with minimal travel.

A farmer and a farmhand were hiking in the forest when a bull moose suddenly appeared and charged them. The farmer climbed a tree, and the farmhand ran to a nearby cave. The moose stood its ground. About every minute, the farmhand would run out of the cave only to be met by the angry moose and chased back in.

Despite the labor pains of farming, a farmer eagerly lines up to experience it again and again, season after season.

By the time you read this, I’ll once again be walking the aisles at NCBA’s convention in Phoenix. I learned something last year at the convention in Nashville I think will prepare me for a better show this year and a better year beyond that.