An amazing group of Alberta farmers shared their deepest fears with me at the 2018 Agriculture Service Board Conference following my “Finding fairness in farm transition” presentation recapped in the May 2018 issue of Progressive Dairyman.

Animal registration is an important tool for all management systems. Registering cattle through a breed association has many benefits that aid in clearer, more concise management decisions. In addition, the practice maintains dairy industry transparency through a pure national herdbook.

“The thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally responsible for the death of the man who succumbs to infection with the penicillin-resistant organism. I hope this evil can be averted.” —Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish physician and microbiologist who discovered penicillin

I was raised in the country, in a red brick Victorian on 2 acres. I was not, however, raised on a farm. To now be a third-generation dairy and cash crop farmer is far beyond, as a girl, what I thought my life would be like.

In the summer of 1964, shortly after graduating from high school, I was working at a dairy farm near Nampa, Idaho. The owner decided to get his hay from Fairfield, Idaho, hauled in by a smaller trucking outfit, which was relatively new on the scene and struggling.

Have you ever stopped to think about how different farming would be, especially the harvest of grains and grasses, if it hadn’t been for the intelligence and perseverance of a young man from Virginia?