Blogs

Dear Santa,

I hope all is well with you, Mrs. Claus and the elves. I know I haven’t written in a long time, but many things have changed since you were here last Christmas. I just wanted to give you a heads up.

One of the cruel aspects of getting old, for those lucky enough to have made it that far, is requiring care from someone else. Nursing homes, in addition to being expensive, are the biggest fear of the elderly heading toward dependence.

I’m never quite prepared for the first frost. Everything is green and wonderful one day, and the next day it is brown and wilting. I often think of the pioneers during this season of the year and say a little prayer of thanks that I live today and not a hundred years ago.

By the time this issue hits mailboxes, my husband and I will have, the Lord willing, settled in at home with our third baby girl. Especially compared to the journey we went through with our second daughter, this pregnancy was mostly uneventful – until I was hospitalized with COVID-19 for a week in September.

“O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever” (Psalm 107:1 KJV).

Fourth-generation Oregon dairy farmer Derrick Josi is no stranger to tackling the hard questions about dairy farming posed by skeptics online. His first book, An Industry Worth Fighting For, addresses some of the misconceptions and questions he hears from consumers.