When I was in junior high, our school principal showed up drunk at a basketball game. He shouted at the referees over a bad call, calling the decision “asinine.” When they gave him a warning, he told them to look it up.

 Statistics show the average person changes careers five to seven times in a lifetime. I couldn’t find any statistics on how many job titles a farmer has in one day. One particular rough Tuesday, I was a carpenter, plumber, ob-gyn (cow version) and an undertaker.

Two years ago, after considering ways to protect their dairy against price loss, Jon and Julie Patterson decided to try the USDA’s Livestock Gross Margin Insurance program for dairy (LGM-Dairy). 

Since the cows first arrived in the 1940s, our farm had exclusively milked Holsteins. For most of the farm’s history, the cows were not registered and mostly herd-bull sired, but they were always black and white.

If there were one word I could use to describe managing a farm with no communication, it would be “nightmare.” I've lived it, and it's like a terrible dream you can't wake up from. Employees don't understand what's expected of them and are too afraid to ask. A co-worker is doing something wrong, but they are not told, so they continue to do the job wrong.

I’m a fairly pragmatic person, and I’ve learned to keep life simple. So when I told my husband that this month’s column was about “healthy harvest meal hacks,” he laughed and said, “‘Pizza Hut online ordering’ is only four words; how are you going to make that an entire column?”

More than a year ago, we began preparing for a redesign of our magazine. I would liken the process to the planning that might go into a parlor renovation or a calf barn update. There were many opinions about how it should be done and what was best.

Two recent small experiences in my life have made me realize the need to be paying attention to the disruptors that we will be facing in agriculture as we move forward producing food for the world.

Who are the people behind the Proud to Dairy blog posts? Let’s get to know Ashley Howlett, a recent college graduate who has blogged about a range of topics, including her tour of China’s dairy industry, feeding acidified milk replacer and tips for incoming college students.

My wife, Joanne, is like a lot of women: She likes to go to thrift sales. As she tells me, “Sometimes you can get some really good deals there.”