Guest Blog

With the holiday season at a close, it’s easy for most of us to move forward toward the New Year and lose sight of what made the last few months so special. Heart-warming feelings of generosity are soon replaced with resolutions and goals to chase. But for organizations like United Dairy Women, the New Year means new opportunities to continue giving back to those who need it most.

In December 2018, I attended the DTN conference in Chicago. I had the opportunity to be part of a conversation regarding the future and how it affects agriculture in general and specifically dairy, as the group I was there with either have a dairy or provide feed to dairies. We had an interesting conversation regarding the byproducts we feed to our cows and what they may or may not be in five to 10 years.

We at Bremer Farms were bustling about as fast as Santa’s elves earlier this month. While the elves were building toys at the North Pole, we were creating a Christmas extravaganza on our dairy farm.

As our industry’s main events – such as World Dairy Expo, NAILE, NDB/NMPF/UDIA joint annual meeting, the Dairy Girl Network Forward TogetHER and more fall conferences and events than I can type – come to a close, we gear up for year-end and the holiday season.

A while back, I was scrolling through Facebook. And I came across a video by a large animal activist group. The video was horrible! They used videos, pictures, lies, sad music and anything else they could to play on people’s emotions to convince them of their negative agenda. As I continued scrolling, I saw it again. By then, I was wondering why this was even on my news feed. That’s when I realized it was being shared by dairy farmers! Their captions would read, “Can you believe this stuff?” or “OMG, did you see this?”

Tell your story. Get on social media. Join the bandwagon that is now everyday life for the consumer. Odds are you have come across an article or person that has encouraged you to either tell your personal story or your farm story. If you know me – and odds are you don’t – you know I am on social media. I post pictures of our farm and write up small blogs on Facebook and Instagram.