A Little Perspective on my Dairy Lifestyle

Dairy farming, farming, ranching, most sectors of agriculture are a lifestyle all of their own instead of a job. There’s no nine to five, TGIF’s, leaving it all at the office for the weekend. We are married to our job, we live our job 365 days a year. There’s usually no vacations or weekends off and away. It’s in our blood, our bones our very souls.

It’s a very special calling. One that is definitely not for everyone. It’s hard, SO hard some days. You go to bed with it, you wake up with it, there’s really no escape. When there’s a bad day, when it all goes to heck and back you can’t just leave it on the desk and come back to it tomorrow.

There’s days when no matter how hard you work, how much effort, sweat, blood and tears you put into it, you still fail. When you try to battle the elements, guess mother natures moves and loose everything in the blink of an eye. There’s times, seasons, years where you make no profit at all. When it can all hang in the balance of the market of a foreign country, the weather for growing hay two states away, and product prices that you have no control over. One tiny tip of that scale in the wrong direction and you can forget about breaking even or even being able to pay all the bills.

There’s a driving force, a passion, a fire in our very core,(maybe just call it stupidity) that makes this lifestyle not a choice at all. It’s something most of us could never imagine leaving. This lifestyle provides countless blessings, wealth that isn’t measured in money and precious moments that make it all worth it.It’s in seeing a beautiful sunrise, welcoming a newborn calf, celebrating a great cow’s production, working beside our family and children that we face this reality daily.