2016 Year End Review: Agvocacy

Show of hands, who is just plain ready to be done with 2016? Yea me too! Last year I predicted that 2016 would be a whirlwind, and that was a complete understatement. Just like the year before, I have this theme of wondering where the time goes, every year. This year is no exception in that it dragged on forever but also flew by in the blink of an eye. 2016 you’ve been a bit of doozy, so I am relieved to find it that time of year for the 2016 Year End Review: Agvocacy.  Kicking it off with my adventures in sharing our dairy story in the last year.

I started 2016 on a very exciting note as I was offered the opportunity to write for the Hoard’s Dairyman Blog, HD Notebook. I seriously can’t tell you how much that offer meant to me. Growing up reading Hoard’s it has been a huge honor to write for them. It also couldn’t have come at a better time for my writing either as I was feeling rather unmotivated with publishing posts. The audience is mainly dairy farmers, so it’s fun and a little bit of a challenge to switch gears in writing for my peers. It also was interesting to have real deadlines again and created a good habit of sitting down to the keyboard when an idea popped into my head. I wrote my first post February 23rd and found inspiration in everyday farm life for the 22 posts this year.  I am really looking forward to continuing my writing relationship with Hoard’s in 2017.

February and March launched 2016 on a great start offline. Opportunity after opportunity seemed to fall into my path and at the end I was proclaiming What a Month! It started off with my first speaking engagement at the Oregon Dairy Farmer’s Association’s annual convention. I’m not a speaker, but it was fun to share my social media story. The next day I left for Arizona to finish my third and final phase of the Young Dairy Leaders Institute. An experience I still need to share here on the blog and I will appreciate the many connections I made for the rest of my life. I returned home to my first tv commercial opportunity, filming for National Ag Week. I was the spokesperson for the Oregon dairy industry in the Celebrate Oregon Agriculture video series. I don’t think my future is in video, but I’m glad I said yes when the idea was sent my way. Check it out below! It really was a whirlwind of a couple weeks, but reassured me that sharing my story is important and valuable!

So with real deadlines in my life from Hoard’s that meant that my writing here for my blog kind of took a back seat. Of course building a barn had a huge part in that as well! A big part of my goal for 2016 was documenting our construction process. As things starting taking off the reality of running a dairy farm alongside the added construction work took over any extra time there was for blogging. I am glad to be catching back up with documenting what took place as the barn took shape. I did manage to publish 55 posts in 2016, 33 of them being not for Hoard’s. My personal two favorite posts for 2016 were #ILookLikeAFarmer and My Favorite Day of Spring. My top 5 most viewed for this year were:

1. Construction Progress Update
2. We Now Have a Barn
3. The Country Christmas Connection
4. Classification – Jan 2016
5. June #Milksteps in a Day

I’ve been here at Guernsey Dairy Mama for a year and half now, this year it finally feels like home. With over 6,000 views this year I am hoping to really focus on reaching out and sharing with my target audience in 2017. That motivation came from my attendance of the 2016 AgChat Cultivate and Connect Conference. While I had attended regional Agchat meetings previously it was great to finally attend the national conference. Not only was it a great learning experience but an awesome opportunity to meet so many people in real life I had been following online. Ending my year with some new motivation for here on the blog was much needed. I also can’t end the year without mentioning completing the Oregon Dairy Farmers Association’s Young Dairy Leaders program in August. It was another amazing networking opportunity for me right here at home. I really took so much away from the 18 months I spent with my classmates and mentors. There were so many agvocating opportunities I enjoyed offline this year.

I’ve continued to enjoy posting to Instagram and Facebook as well. I reached my goal of 1,500 followers on Facebook, which is tiny in reality, but I really enjoy the conversations and interactions that take place there. Which is what this social media journey had always been about to me, connections over numbers! It is fun to see numbers double though, like they did for me this year on Instagram with over 2,100 followers. I still really enjoy Instagram as a platform, nothing beats pictures! There were lots of new popularity apps this year like Snapchat that just exploded, but I’ve always been a big advocate for not stretching myself too thin. I’m ok with not taking on an active presence anywhere else at this point. Blog, Facebook, Instagram…..happy Guernsey Dairy Mama! I hope you are enjoying following along with me on your favorite platform as well!

I hope 2016 has been a good year for all my readers here. I think across the board lots of us have felt overwhelmed by this year. I think looking back at the 2016 Year End Review: Agvocacy I found it was a year of many opportunities I had overlooked here later in the year. In fact the word of the year might just have to be opportunity! I am not making any agvocacy promises or goals for 2017 as my focus will be on the Ladies as we make our transition to the new robotic facility by the end of January. Send your good vibes, thoughts and prayers our way for a smooth transition for ourselves and the cows. We are optimistic is will go smoothly, but still a stressful process. I am so excited to see my story changing in 2017 as a robot farmer, can’t wait to share it with you!

So here’s to you 2016  thanks for all the adventures. Cheers to 2017, a new year, a new perspective and a new start! Blessings to you all!