Blogging the Country Life

Tell me about your farm.

We're primarily wheat farmers. We also have a cow-calf operation. We've got feeder cattle and we also raise some corn, but we're not big corn farmers by any means.

What made you want to start a blog?

Your mom always told you 'don't do what everybody else is doing.' My daughter had started a blog and my sister had started a blog. Ironically, neither of them are still blogging, but I was interested in it mainly because I've always written. I've always been a writer. I've always loved writing, so that kind of prompted it.

How do you decide what you're going to write about everyday?

I say that my blog is about farm, family, faith, food, and, photography. I usually don't have a hard time coming up with what I call story ideas. I write about what's happening on the farm. Currently, we're having baby calves so that provides lots of material and cute pictures. The farming part of it kind of depends on what's going on in our lives on the farm at the moment. Obviously we're not doing a lot with crops at this point. I try to keep up with what's going on on the farm and it's kind of a family record as well. I figure some time down the line maybe somebody in the family will want to know what we were doing. And I post a lot of cute photos of my granddaughters!

You also blog about food. How did you become interested in that?

I've always kind of been a foodie, before it was popular even. I enjoy trying new recipes. I never post anything that Randy [my husband] and I don't personally care for or the family hasn't found good.

There are a lot of beautiful photos on your blog. What's the inspiration behind them?

I enjoy the ability to look at simple things around me in a different way. I think there's beauty all around us and we just don't notice it a lot of times. I think that kind of helps me to look at it as something beautiful even if it's simple.

Why do you think it's important to blog about agriculture?

I think the majority of farmers in this world are just like us. They are families who work hard to provide food and fiber for the whole country and, to some degree, the world. We're feeding our own families from the beef we raise and other families from the grain we take to the local elevator. I just want to show that agriculture has a face and it's a face like many other faces. Whether we live on a farm or in a town or city, we're not all that different. We want what's best for our family and yours, too. We're not the evil person or entity trying to put terrible products in your body, despite what some special interest groups would have you believe. I want to portray honestly why we do what we do.

What else do you think people should know about your blog?

It's made me more aware. As I approach a blog post — let's say about applying pesticide or why we implant baby calves — I interviewed Randy just like I'd interview somebody as a reporter when I worked at the paper. I interview him, write those answers down, and ask the hard questions. I make sure to listen carefully so it doesn't fly in one ear and out the other so that I could answer the whys and wherefores of our farming operation.

I do think it has also helped me be a better 'agvocate (agriculture advocate).' I also don't think blogging is necessarily all that different from what people used to do. Every so often in a magazine or newspaper article you'll see somebody has posted something from a journal from a hundred years ago. People have been talking about their lives for a long, long time and this is just the way it's happening, at least to some degree, right now. It may not be written in cursive on a journal page, but it does kind of show a little piece of our lives.