Guest Blog

If you’re anything like me, sometimes farming can consume you. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but farming has a tendency to throw us challenges, long hours and a long list of to-dos.

At the dairy, there are so many intricate parts that it’s easy to have this law entangle your life. What am I talking about? You may remember this law, which states that any object can become entangled with another object without any rhyme or reason.

On any farm, sometimes it is more about having “enough” employees than it is about having the “right” employees.

That was the exact moment when I knew those kids and farming ideologies were not going to be us.

“I think your son may have sensory processing disorder,” the doctor said to me. Meanwhile, said son is literally bouncing off the walls, grabbing random objects and throwing them, putting every godforsaken thing in his mouth, and I have my foot on the door so he can’t run away.

I’ve been a pretty open book regarding my struggles with anxiety and depression over the years, especially regarding how they intertwine with my vocation as a dairy farmer.

When I read The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz, my life changed.

In 1955, U.S. President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack, and a war was raged on heart disease. Eisenhower’s doctors pinpointed the fat in his diet as the culprit of his heart attack.