Growing up as a child, my mom told me a number of times how difficult it was during the Great Depression. Her family had a dairy farm but were deeply in debt, and thus had no money. But since they farmed, they grew almost all the food they ate, so in that, they were greatly blessed.

It was one of those falls up here that was wetter than normal. We had gotten our corn silage chopped off, and now we were going at our high-moisture corn. I always hired my neighbor, Howie, to come with his combine and two trucks to harvest my corn.

People need real challenges in life, especially young people; they need to learn to press on even when the going is extremely difficult.

As a young farmer, I dreamed of raising super-excellent crops to feed our dairy cattle, especially since I had very limited acreage. A couple years after I started farming here, I had a dairy analyst in to mate my dairy cows. The man also did a little part-time farming on the side.

Recently, the news came out evangelist Billy Graham had died. Although he was 99 years old, when I heard of his passing, I had to stop and do a lot of remembering. I, along with a lot of other Americans and people from around the world, owe a lot to this man. It certainly can be said Billy Graham impacted the world for God.

Sometimes in life, we take on a project and, no matter what we do, it seems to go wrong. And no matter how hard we try to correct it, it still keeps going wrong – but if we stick with it a long time, it will turn out well, although it may be entirely different than what we planned on in the first place.

It was a beautiful, warm, late-summer afternoon, and I was enjoying every minute of it. I was busy baling a heavy third crop of alfalfa hay off of my upper-marsh hay field. I was baling hay with my old 276 New Holland hay baler I had bought used 24 years before from John, who was the implement dealer in my hometown.

Even though it happened many years ago, lots of Americans remember Dec. 7, 1941, as Pearl Harbor Day. It was the day Japan attacked the U.S., without a declaration of war, and killed thousands of Americans and destroyed so much of our naval force and air force at Pearl Harbor.

Henry Hemminghaus, my great-grandfather, was born in Germany in May of 1858. Born to parents who made their living in agricultural work, Henry worked alongside them, learning all he could. He was a hard-working, industrious young man pursuing a big dream.

My grandpa, George Elbert, was an extraordinary man who ruled his spirit and tongue like few people I’ve ever known. His life was not an easy one, but it certainly was a blessed one.