As we manage and build livestock operations, especially beef cattle, producers have a need for tools that can help determine the effectiveness of management, especially with nutrition programs, against the mountain of variables that affect animals daily.

It wasn’t really the best of situations. My wife had volunteered to drive her Arizona snowbird parents from our place in southern Idaho back to their home in the far-northern extreme of the Idaho Panhandle, a tedious 10-hour drive under ideal conditions made even more taxing and time-consuming by the demands and requirements of her octogenarian passengers.

Aunt Effie was the “neighborhood healer” in her community of Noble, Oklahoma. When I was visiting and scraped my arm or had a stomachache, she always had the right potion, poultice, roots, soak or fern to treat the ailment.

Congratulations, you're still here! Isn't that a little like how we all feel right now? We have hung on – maybe just by our fingertips – but we are still here.