We all love to answer the question, “What are your favorite dairy products?” Your eyes glaze over and your mind instantly shifts to heaping bowls of ice cream, the cheese board at your cousin’s wedding last year or the doctored-up bowl of yogurt you annihilated for breakfast this morning.

It is no secret that humans are emotional beings. We naturally are moved by sensational content that pulls at our heart strings or scares us into action. This is the template that animal and environmental activist groups have been using to captivate audiences for years, and they are successfully swaying public perception through emotionally charged material and skewed data.

April showers bring May flowers. Those spring showers can also bring on some much-needed spring cleaning. Instead of complaining how it’s too wet to do anything outside, turn those rainy days spent indoors into a day of productivity.

This morning, I walked in the new plowed earth thinking of the changing seasons. My feet sank deep into the rich brown soil. I remember the many gardens I had planted and watched the plants grow to harvest. I love to garden, and I owe that love to my mother.

My Irish housemates, Kieran and Tommy, were sick of me trying to explain American sports to them. In retaliation, they forced me to choose an English Premier League soccer team to follow. I was already prejudiced against a sport that didn’t have cheerleaders and could end in a 0-0 draw, but I played along.

I think it would be safe to say we were all delivered into this world by our mother – unless you’re Gary Busey or Nancy Pelosi. I’m pretty sure aliens dropped them off. Because they both seem to be from another planet.

I’ve learned over the years from growing up on a dairy farm and being married to a dairy farmer that dairy farmers tend to live in a bubble. We all hang out with other dairy families. We live in rural communities where most people have a connection to agriculture.

For those of you who read my first blog, you know the excitement I had to become a full-time dairy farmer. If you didn’t read it, long story short, I left an excellent job to come back to a physical job with longer hours and less pay, and I couldn’t wait to get started!

“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!

Time is so valuable; time might be our most valuable possession because it has a finite limit. It can’t be manufactured or remodeled. It is spent and it is gone. While I recuperate from hip replacement surgery, I have some time to reflect on some topics that aren’t as easy to capture on paper regarding farming.