In 1939, Patrick Kavanagh left his farm in County Monaghan, Ireland, and moved to Dublin to become a writer. When he was young, he would recite poetry while working in the fields or scribble down ideas for his own poems while attending to other farming chores.

It’s Christmas time. ’Tis the season to be jolly. I want all of you to be as jolly as possible. So, naturally, I have some tips to help ya’ll get through the holiday season unscathed.

A while back, I was scrolling through Facebook. And I came across a video by a large animal activist group. The video was horrible! They used videos, pictures, lies, sad music and anything else they could to play on people’s emotions to convince them of their negative agenda. As I continued scrolling, I saw it again. By then, I was wondering why this was even on my news feed. That’s when I realized it was being shared by dairy farmers! Their captions would read, “Can you believe this stuff?” or “OMG, did you see this?”

I wrote earlier this year about selecting “joy” as my one word for the year, based on the concept from the book My One Word. I’ll follow the example Editor Peggy Coffeen set in 2017 and provide an update on how it’s going. In short, not great.

Tell your story. Get on social media. Join the bandwagon that is now everyday life for the consumer. Odds are you have come across an article or person that has encouraged you to either tell your personal story or your farm story. If you know me – and odds are you don’t – you know I am on social media. I post pictures of our farm and write up small blogs on Facebook and Instagram.

It is easy to sit in our over-stuffed recliners and watch the news splattered with the carrion of gossip and conclude America is going to heck in a handbasket and there is no hope for the future.

Maybe it’s a workout class, going on a walk or chasing the cows that got out last night. The better shape you’re in, the better you feel and the better you perform.

Farming is seldom at the heart of social and political controversy. That is not the case in South Africa, however. President Cyril Ramaphosa has recently begun to make good on his promise to expropriate farmland owned by the white population and redistribute it to black citizens.

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.

If there’s one thing I hate more than anything, it’s when people find out I am a comedian and say to me, “Tell me a joke.” No! When I meet an accountant, I don’t ask him to follow me home and file my taxes. When I meet a politician, I don’t just assume they are lying to me – at first.