“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.” 

As farmers, sometimes we think that we can power through without help. We work when we’re hurt; we work when we’re sick; sometimes, we even work when we’re in labor with our fourth child. But we need to know that asking for help doesn’t make us weak. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Like getting a cast on our arm to heal a break, seeing a mental health professional can get us on the road to healing. As my mother-in-law recently told me, “We can’t always be superman.” Don’t let mental health be your kryptonite.

One of the things I’m known for in my family is my love of the Harry Potter book series. From the movies to the books, and even the books on CDs, I’m amazed at the brilliance that is J.K. Rowling, formerly a struggling single mother who had a vision of a boy with a scar on his forehead and turned it into a multibillion-dollar enterprise with fans clamoring for more, even more than a decade after the last book was published.

“Nobody ever made a difference by being like everybody else.” —PT Barnum, The Greatest Showman The summer season is rapidly approaching, and our little shop on Main Street in Maquoketa, Iowa, has been preparing!

Early in 2017, milk market security weighed heavily on our minds. While our market is safe and our creamery has not dropped any patrons, we were looking for ways to be more profitable and secure a future market for our milk. Now, just a year later, I’m selling my very own Moore Family Farms cheese.

1. “A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.” – Songs of Exile, Garrison Keillor Winter is a struggle for me, as for most farmers, I expect. The time spent unthawing frozen pipes and hoses and waterers, moving snow, putting down extra bedding, feeding cows in the barn … it seems to consume every available hour. Add a few Christmas parties, a couple of 5:30 dinners in town, a quick trip out of town, gifts and Christmas concerts, and it gets overwhelming in a hurry.

If there’s anything that a dairy mama knows, it’s stress. We never have enough hours in the day; sometimes there’s not enough month left at the end of the money. The kids are crying; the cows are bellering; the calves need fed; and the pig is out. (Well, maybe that last one only happens at my house.)

At the end of the school year last year, Tucker and Cassidy pulled me into an aisle during our weekly Theisen’s trip. “Mommy, we want a drone,” Tucker said. “I have tons of money in my savings account. Can we get it?”

The start of the school year is a mixed bag of emotions for a farming mama and her brood. No one wants to see homework start again, but it’s a relief to get back to a routine, and to maybe even have a chance at warm coffee.

Big things are happening at the small rural school that our kids attend. With under 150 children in grades preschool to eight, the school has dedicated itself to teaching its students life skills, utilizing the “Leader in Me” program, based on the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.