Guest Blog

In farming, as well as in life, things sometimes go totally different than what a person expects or plans. This last winter proved to be a very hard one with all the ice, snow and bitter cold. Spring finally came, and with it the realization that most of our hay fields had terrible winterkill.

“My husband came in at lunch and told me the statistics on farmer suicide. He told me how hopeless he felt. I was scared to let him go back to the field.” 

“I am always so angry. I yell at the kids and throw things in the milkhouse. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” 

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of blogs Rebecca Shaw is providing about female entrepreneurs and what the dairy industry can learn from them. In her next blog, Shaw will further explore the idea of a red team in the dairy industry.

Ask a dairy farmer how things are going, and I bet you’ll get a familiar answer: “We’re still holding on,” which is the polite way of saying “It’s really hard right now. We’re struggling to make ends meet. We don’t know how much longer we can do this, but we’re praying something changes soon.”

When I saw the title of a recent interview of The One Thing’s podcast, “The Gift of Struggle,” I thought: “Gift of struggle. Come on, what kind of gift is there in struggle? Anyone who thinks there is a gift in struggle probably hasn’t had much of a struggle.”

Have you ever noticed that when you have to break some seemingly bad news to your young children, they aren’t nearly as bothered by it as you anticipated? A friend from school moves away, one of their show calves catches some strange disease and dies, or the water park plans get canceled because the hay is ready to bale.