Blogs

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.

When I was young, I lived on a ranch where we had all kinds of animals. Chickens were plentiful, and I gathered eggs and have seen new baby chicks. Sometimes a goose egg was placed under a setting hen to hatch, so I believed the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen when I first heard his tale of “The Ugly Duckling.”

One of the lingering side effects of growing up on a dairy farm is that I continue to wake up before 5 a.m. – despite being removed from the morning milking schedule for several decades.

Our cover photo features the adorable doppelgänger daughter of Editor Audrey Schmitz. When Audrey and I were planning the cover image for this year’s June Dairy Month issue, I knew I wanted to see yogurt as a key component. I Googled something along the lines of “first birthday photo shoot with yogurt.”

My summers growing up were filled with showing my horse, dogs and a borrowed cow at county fairs, the state state fair and through local horse clubs. It was an opportunity for me to show off a year of hard work, along with making friendships and memories to last a lifetime. The same goes for many producers and youth involved in agriculture. 

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of blogs Rebecca Shaw is providing about female entrepreneurs and what the dairy industry can learn from them.

One lesson that has changed the way I approach any situation is to stop saying sorry if I’m not actually sorry.