When we started publishing 18 issues at the beginning of the year, some people asked me if the dairy industry produced enough news to merit publishing 50 percent more frequently than we had been for the last 20 years.

With spring well on its way, new life seems to be the theme of my world.I watch the new blossoms fill the trees and fade away into green leaves. The tiny plants peek through the ground, and soon they are full-grown plants bearing fruit.

This headline was the title of the lead editorial of the New York Times, April 10, 2008.

Before all of you go off wondering what Progressive Dairy Publishing has gone and done with one of its editors, I am here to tell you that Walter Cooley is safe and sound somewhere in the Midwest as this edition goes to print.

He’s farming at my feet.

“Inch by inch it’s a cinch; yard by yard it’s hard.” I grew up with that maxim, and was always impressed with the truth of the old saying, but the other day I was tripped and sent sprawling with the same old adage.

In the many years of writing this column, I have written of my work.

A reader recently e-mailed me to say he enjoyed our animal welfare review series. He also read with interest the standards comparison chart in the last issue.

It’s been snowing lately, and I have been complaining about the cold. I am not as young as I used to be, and my bones hurt.My circulation isn’t the best; our big house doesn’t have central heating, and the last batch of wood we gathered was wet. If you know anything about wet wood, it doesn’t burn very well.

I can’t remember the last time I heard someone say, “Boy, the weather has been almost perfect this year.” It seems like that used to happen every now and again when I was a kid.