My husband and I were out fixing fence recently. I watched as he methodically fixed strands of high-tensile wire that had been loosened by the winter wind or a deer passing through. The particular hillside we were on is quite memorable.

One side has cropfields that bump right up to a public wayside where folks slowly meander through for a picnic or to visit the gravesite of a Civil War soldier. The other side is a carpet of rolling hillsides that lead right to the foot of the Appalachian Mountains.

As he fixed fence, I talked to the baby, who was happily riding along in her car seat fastened into the passenger seat of our utility vehicle. Just shy of 8 months old, she thought this was a grand adventure. I recalled the first spring my husband and I were dating, when I was helping fix fence on this exact hillside.

I had just gotten my driver’s license and was so excited to have received an invitation to “tag along” while the men worked on the fence. I asked my husband if he remembered. He didn’t. I tried to jog his memory by giving him a few more details. We shared a little more conversation but then moved onto the next field, and he busily went back to his fence work.

For the first time in a while, I watched him and considered how much he had changed since that first spring I tagged along. I considered how much I had changed. How much we both had learned. When I was watching my boyfriend and his dad patch fence under a big blue sky that day, I had no idea I’d be back in the same spot 12 years later with my husband and daughter and a barn full of cows just down the road.

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I didn’t know how to breed a cow or pull a calf. I didn’t know how to find the motivation to spend weeks on end going to bed at midnight and getting up at 4 a.m. or how to convince an 1,800-pound cow to go where I wanted it to go. I didn’t know a darn thing about milking cows with robots or how to get a baby to nap amid a schedule of running lunch to the field and paying the bills and checking the cows. “How did I get here?” I thought to myself.

The reason I shared this story is because what struck me most about this moment of reflection was not all the things I have learned to do but rather the fact that I never realized when I had learned any of them. It has gotten me thinking about how we all learn.

How do we continue to grow and improve as professionals in our industry? How do we adapt to be good stewards of the land and caretakers of livestock in a world that is ever-changing? I don’t know the answer, but I certainly want to find it.

The official definition for the word “learn” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “to gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience or being taught.” Sounds pretty simple when you put it like that, I guess. I think the reason I never stopped to look at what I was learning is because the rate of learning was constant.

It was interwoven into regular minutes and days. There was no devoted time to pick up a book or choice to gain an experience. I never knew what days there would be a test or what material it would cover. Farming doesn’t give out any easy A’s, as I’m sure you know.

I didn’t realize the one doing the teaching might be a cow that kicks or a calf that doesn’t want to eat. There were days the learning was quick, and my rate of response told me if I passed or failed. Other times, the learning had to be done patiently, sometimes so slowly I didn’t even see it happening.

The most important learning happened on the most ordinary of days. I guess maybe the real key to learning is just paying attention. Maybe learning is about looking.

So, as for me, I’m still figuring out a lot of the things I want to learn. But I’m going to try not to worry when the days get off track and the cows or the baby don’t cooperate. Instead, I’m going to look at what I learned and look to learn some more.  end mark

Laura Flory