Do-overs

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do-over, reimagine, reposition, reset

” No do-overovers” was what we’d tell each other on the playground – an important life lesson to learn because we certainly don’t always get second chances. But as we grew, we realized sometimes we do. What is life for, if not do-overs? Nobody gets it right the first time. What is Jan. 1 for if not a reset?

What would you want to do if you had a second chance? Quit eating doughnuts every morning on the way to the field? Run another cost analysis before buying that equipment? Take more soil samples, talk to a financial adviser, help that son/daughter change their oil instead of doing it for them, be more patient with the employees, take muddy boots off before crossing the kitchen floor (one can hope), remember your anniversary? How about, “The Old Me never had time to build shelves in the shop, but New Me will build shelves and quit tripping over all that junk on the floor.” (OK, that’s not so much a goal as a flippin’ fantasy.)

Well, not to discourage you, but researchers say by the time you’re reading this, 25% of those who made New Year’s resolutions have already failed to keep them. In fact, only 9.2% of us will ultimately achieve the goals set – which is why we darn sure need do-overs.

This won’t surprise you, but the same researchers say searches on Google for “diet” soar on Jan. 1 by 80%, but they also spike on the first day of every month and the first day of every week. And that’s an important point. “Something about days that represented ‘firsts’ switched on people’s motivation,” says author Daniel Pink. It “opens a new mental account” when we can close the books on the past and open a new one. “We are mentally reborn.”

Pink identifies 86 days of the year when we can make new starts, some of which include: Mondays (52), the first day of the month (12), and the first day of each season (4), national celebrations, religious holidays, your birthday, the first day of school, the first day of a new job, anniversaries and the day you finish a big project.

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.”—T.S. Eliot

We all need and deserve second chances and do-overs, from time to time, and now’s your chance (at least one chance out of 86). Reset. Reimagine. Reposition.

(And I suggest you start with that “muddy boots on the kitchen floor” thing and reset it every Monday morning if you have to. Just sayin’.)

Guest post: A slice of life from one of our readers

Well, the holidays are over and the new year is already well underway. We’re still not exactly sure what this blog will bring in the coming weeks, but to start us, off we’d like to share a little ‘slice of life’ from one of our readers we really enjoyed.

Jayne K from New York state tells us a bit about how she got involved in the forage industry. She writes:

I came to farming late in life. My husband knew he wanted to be a farmer when he was a young boy, and now at age 64, he’s still doing what he loves best. I met him at church a few years ago, and prior to that I had never even been on a farm.

Our first date was a trip in his 18-wheeler to buy a load of dry hay and our second date was to the New York Farm show in Syracuse. And I was hooked! We were married in August of 2013.

I baled hay the day before my wedding and the day after, but I drew the line at working on our wedding day. It was a wonderful, casual time spent with good friends and chicken BBQ. Then we spent our honeymoon day at the Empire Farm Days Show.

We farm 2,000 acres of dry hay and package it into large square bales. Since I work with learning disabled children at an elementary school, it gives me summers off to work on the farm. I dearly love my big, old John Deere tractor and never could have imagined I’d drive the machinery I have or see the wonders that nature provides.

Thank you for that little glimpse into your life, Jayne! It’s always so fun to hear stories like this!

What about you? How did you become involved in agriculture? Did you grow up on the farm? Or were you lucky enough to ‘stumble’ into the lifestyle like Jayne?

Grateful for another wonderful year

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Gratitude

Can you believe it? Another year has almost come to a close. This is always a time for reflection, as we look back over the previous months, and I can definitely say it’s been another year full of changes and growth for me.

At the beginning of the year, I was editor of our Progressive Forage Grower magazine and had the idea to share gratitude blogs from our staff members each Friday throughout the year. I don’t know how many people have seen them or if they have touched anyone else, but I have definitely enjoyed the experience.

By mid-year, we had hired a new editor so I could focus full-time on circulation, but she was gracious enough to let me continue to maintain and collect these gratitude blogs.

I have come to appreciate my co-workers even more than I already did, as each one shared a unique and personal part of themselves with me and each of you. It has also helped make me even more aware of how much we do have to be thankful for. There as so many little things in our lives, each and every day, that truly are blessings, if we will just stop and recognize them as such.

I don’t know what will happen with the blog moving forward – our new editor will be making some decisions about that soon. But I want to thank each person who has taken part in our gratitude blogs throughout the past year, whether you have contributed a submission or shared in reading and sharing them. I hope it has been a blessing in your life each Friday, as it definitely has been in mine!

I’m sure it will be another wonderful year, if we all commit (in the words of Jean-Luc Picard – yup – Star Trek fan here!) to “make it so.” It just takes a little time for reflection to find the things that make it that way!

To repeat the words of Henry B. Eyring:

“Ask yourself, ‘How did God bless me today?’ If yo do that long enough and with enough faith, you will find yourself remembering blessings. And sometimes you will have gifts brought to your mind which you failed to notice during the day, but which you will then know were a touch of God’s hand in your life.”

I wish you each a happy and blessed new year!
Lynn O

Guest blog: Grateful for the sun

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Gratitude

Another snow storm is headed our way tonight – I can’t wait! I’m really one of those “dreaming of a white Christmas” kind of people, and I wouldn’t mind a bunch of the white stuff so I’d have a good excuse to curl up in a blanket with some hot chocolate and watch a movie or play games with my family. But we’ll see what happens. Hopefully it just doesn’t pass us by like usual.

Today I’m excited to introduce you to another member of our staff. Rebecca Ragain is our web editor and one of our newer employees, but she has been such a welcome addition to our team.

She writes:

I’m grateful for the sun. But not in that “we need food to live and plants need sun to make food” kind of way. In Portland, Oregon, where I lived for 13 years, plants go gangbusters – they get all the sun they need. But for about 9 months of the year, this sunlight is diffused by a layer of low-hanging clouds that hides the horizon, enveloping Portlanders in a cocoon of misty grey.

When the sun did come out, I’d follow the bright patches around like a cat, moving around the living room with my book every half hour as the shadows shifted.

When I decided to leave Portland, I eliminated more than half the country as potential places to live, based on the number of sunny days those areas get in an average year.

Portland gets 144 sunny days per year.

Here in southern Idaho, even when it’s cloudy directly above, you can almost always see across the desert to where the sun is shining on another area, whether it’s Boise (206 sunny days) or towards Elko, Nevada (229 clear days).

When I drive east to work in Jerome, Idaho (210 sunny days), more often than not I can watch the sun climb in the sky, mostly unobscured by clouds. In the evenings on the way home, I see it set, creating splashes of orange and hot pink in the sky on its way down, drenching the corn fields with a pink-gold light that is miles away from the greys and deep greens of the Pacific Northwest. I’m grateful for that. 

– Sunny day data from Sperling’s Best Places

Rather ironic that she chose to be grateful for the sun on a day when I’m hoping for a good snowstorm! LOL! But I have to agree with how beautiful our sunsets our here in southern Idaho and how they bring a smile to my face as I drive home – gorgeous! Thank you, Rebecca, for another great reminder of how blessed we are to live where we do!

May you and your family and friends enjoy a safe and enjoyable holiday season in the coming weeks. Merry Christmas to you and yours!

 

Guest blog: The miracle of Christmas

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Gratitude

Christmas really must be close, since we got our college kid home this week for the holiday break! I’m glad to have her here (and so proud of her hard work and accomplishments her first semester away from home), but I’m also a little nervous that Christmas is almost here. I don’t feel prepared at all, and that’s a really weird feeling for me as I’m usually ultra-organized and prepared. But I try to remind myself what this season is really all about and worry less about the material things and more about just enjoying our time together as a family and appreciating all the good things that surround us. Always helps to put things in perspective when you do that.

You’ve almost had a chance to meet all of our staff members this year and learn about things they are grateful for….almost! Just a few more to go (another sign we must be close to the end of the year)!

Today I get to introduce a member of our sales team, Sal Gomez. He is one of the hardest working and kind people I know, always thinking about how he can help others and what will make things better for them. It’s probably why he is successful in sales.

He writes:

It’s hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner. I’m very grateful I get to spend another Christmas Season with my family to celebrate the miraculous birth of Jesus. Although I do not enjoy shopping crowds, mall traffic, full parking lots and grouchy Christmas shoppers standing in long lines, I find this season to be the most joyous of the year.

I’m grateful to God for Elsie, my wife of almost 30 years, my children and grandchild. I’m grateful for caring parents who loved me very much and did their best to provide my siblings and I with what we needed.

I’m grateful for my job, the people I work for and the people I get to work with. I’m thankful for my men’s support group and all the good friends that care for me and my family and keep me in the right track (or at least they try – I need lots of work and practice to stay on the right track).

I’m very grateful to my Lord and creator, my loving, committed and forgiving Heavenly Father. I’m thankful for His goodness to me. For loving me and caring about every detail of my life and for sharing my pain, anguish and frustrations.

Most of all, I’m grateful to God for sending Jesus at Christmas to save me.

Thank you, Sal. Such a wonderful reminder of how blessed we all are to know that “Jesus is the reason for the season” and appreciate all He has done for us.

And here’s a little early present from me to you to help with all of the last minute Christmas shopping! This fun little video reminds us that some of the best gifts we can give don’t come from a store but rather from our hearts. ENJOY!

Guest blog: Grateful for photography

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Gratitude

Brrr!!! It has gotten COLD in Idaho this week! We did get a little bit of snow, for which I’m very grateful, but I don’t think I was quite mentally prepared for it to be this cold yet! But winter seems to be settling in, so I guess I’ll gear up and get ready for the long haul!

It has been so rewarding to share posts from my co-workers throughout the year. Each has had a different perspective that has really helped me appreciate and be grateful for different things in my own life. But I do have to say that I’ve really been looking forward to a guest blog post from our contributor today, hoping he might share some of his photography with you! His photos are AMAZING! And we all got lucky, since that’s what he chose to write about.

Let me introduce, Mike Dixon, one of our production team members. His words pretty much speak for themselves. He writes:

Ten or eleven years ago, I picked up photography again in earnest. It has become my passion, my hobby and, to some extent, my profession. It has completely changed the way I see the world around me. It has made me very much aware of what is right with the world. For this, I am thankful.

Human nature and our fast-paced lives have trained us to be very focused and we have become people that live our lives getting from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ to point ‘C’. We have trained our brain to take snapshots of our surroundings and file them away. We pull up these snapshots as we go through the day and see only what is needed or what is expected to complete the trip or task at hand.

We throw out or ignore 95 percent of what is going on around us, and we miss so much. What we do see is the stuff we need to survive or to complete a task, and in a lot of cases these things tend to hang out on the negative and stressful side of life. Hence, our lives become negative and stressful.

In my photography, especially my nature photography, I have learned to slow down and reboot those amazing and powerful peripheral senses we all have. I have learned to take the ‘not so direct’ routes and explore those places and ideas that are always there but often ignored.

I have learned to enjoy the process of getting to know a place or a person. I ask questions and yes, rocks and trees are very good conversationalists. I have found that the best pictures are seldom where I expected them to be, and that they are almost always behind me or off to the side.

I read a study some smart people did a few years back. I am not real sure how they are aware of what a cougar or a horse sees or how they think, but it makes sense. In short, they say that a cougar is very focused and has a ‘predator’ way of looking at the world. This allows it to lock in and focus on its prey so it can more successfully bring home dinner.

A horse, on the other hand, has a very broad sense of its entire surroundings. They have the ability to take in their world and let it fade to the background, always aware. A predator focuses on one noise… one point. A horse focuses on the ‘silence’ and looks and listens for things that break that silence. This skill helps them to not become someone’s lunch. Pretty cool concept in my opinion.

We, as smart and powerful humans, have the ability to function both ways, but today’s society has trained us to spend most of our time in predator mode. I have learned to live more of my life as a horse, and as long as you can avoid the cougars, it’s a much prettier world when viewed through the eyes of a horse.

You should try it. It takes a while. Most of us have to completely rewire our brains.

I guess, in short, I am grateful for photography and the way it has taught me to see my world. I am grateful for the beautiful and varied people, places and things that surround me. I am grateful for what is behind me and to my side. I am grateful for ‘what is right with the world.’

Thank you so much, Mike, for both your beautiful photography and also your words of wisdom. I really enjoy your ‘fresh look’ at the world, and resolve to try to slow down a little in my own life and see what’s around me in a more positive light.

And for those of you who would like to see some more of Mike’s work, click here to visit his new Facebook page. You won’t be disappointed!

Guest blog: Thankful for turkeys

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Gratitude

Another wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday, spent with family and plenty of good food to eat. As I sat and watched my kids play with some of their cousins, I thought about what the past few years have brought and what the next few years might bring. I especially enjoyed listening to our college-age daughter talk to family members about her experiences over the last few months. It has been so fun to watch her stretch and grow and learn more about life and all it has to offer. Yes, there is a lot to be grateful for!

With this late post today (simply because I put it aside and didn’t get to it yet), I have the honor of sharing some thoughts from our now-not-so-new Progressive Forage Grower editor, Lynn Jaynes. She is a talented writer and has such a fun, expressive way of sharing her thoughts that I always enjoy reading her material.

She writes:

I’m thankful for turkeys. I know that seems obvious today of all days, but I have true gratitude. Have you ever raised turkeys? I tried once. I threw them in the coop with the fryers I was raising and just hoped for the best. They didn’t get special treatment or special diets, and they had to fight for feed right alongside the chickens. The turkeys’ lives weren’t easy.

One day I sent my youngest daughter out to fill the waterer with the hose, and when I went out later to see what was taking so long I found her spraying the daylights out of the turkeys and chickens. She hated turkeys and chickens. And I’m pretty sure they hated her. But my daughter wasn’t the only threat; the skunks and foxes terrorized them all spring, and eventually captured a few. They were stressed enough that by the time we finally butchered them, I think we did them a favor.

Three weeks ago this same daughter, now grown, gave birth to her first little girl who was so anxious to come into the world that she arrived five weeks early. And for a few anxious days the baby fought for every breath as her little lungs struggled to develop. It takes fortitude to just be born, and every breath she fought for was precious.

With a little time and help from a medical community prepared for such births, the baby progressed and was able to go home, and my little girl is now caring for her little girl and planning for her future. No doubt they’ll have tea parties together, paint their toenails together, read “Goodnight, Moon” a hundred times, and snuggle in the mornings when the chill is still in the house. Good times. I hope they enjoy every minute of it.

But I also hope someday my daughter buys a turkey and a few chickens for my granddaughter to care for. My granddaughter should learn how to raise an animal, no matter where she lives.

Standing the torment of a little girl with a hose in her hand as she learns those lessons is perhaps one of the most noble things a turkey can do. So every Thanksgiving, for more than the obvious reason, I appreciate turkeys.

Can’t you just see her daughter out there with the hose? Yes, kids that grow up around animals are definitely blessed! And I got to see pictures of that precious new granddaughter, and she is beautiful. I hope both you and your daughter enjoy her, right along with the memory of those turkeys!

Guest blog: It makes me who I am

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Gratitude

Getting close to the end of another month, believe it or not! But I love this time of year, when people think about what they are thankful for and (hopefully) think of each other a little more than themselves. As long as I avoid shopping, my spirits stay pretty high!

Our guest blogger this week is a member of our office staff, Fernie Stobart. She hasn’t been with us very long, but I’m happy to share some of her thoughts with you today.

She writes:

I was asked to write about my gratitude (or better yet, as I would say, my number came up – thank you, Lynn). To me, gratitude is a powerful word because without it I wouldn’t be who I am today. Being a week before Thanksgiving, we all give thanks for our blessings from throughout the year on this one special day. So, I couldn’t have asked for a better time to write this.

My life, as with most people, has had its ups and downs. But what we all need to remember is that there’s a reason behind everything that happens to us. We, as human beings, tend to forget this during different times in our lives. And we may not understand it at that point and time, but later on it does all make sense.

I’m a single mom of three amazing kids, two boys and a girl. They are the greatest blessings I will ever have. The times that I may be having a bad day, all I have to do is go into my own little world and start to think of all the blessings that these three kids bring me as their mother. I know that they love me, and I love them with everything in life itself.

I also know that they depend on me for anything and everything that life may throw at them and they may not have answers for. We love to spend time together playing games, making and doing crafts, and of course, our favorite – taking pictures; that can be a lot of fun, especially when there’s a 7 year old. We also enjoy taking walks and hiking up to different places where we can explore and find treasures.

We, as a family, have lost a lot in the past year, but we have also gained a lot. For this I’m very thankful. I’m thankful for being healthy and having the ability to take care of my family. We believe in our many blessings and our faith, that we will always have each other for eternity. I know that we love each other, no matter what kind of day we are having.

I’m also grateful for a job that I absolutely love and all my co-workers that I have had the opportunity to work with. This has been by far the best job I have ever had, just because of the environment. I couldn’t ask for a better job if I had to.

I’m grateful for attending Boise State University (sorry to everyone in the office for showing my school sprit on fan Fridays – if you know me, you’ll notice that there isn’t one Friday that goes by that I’m not wearing my blue and orange). I know that when they played against BYU this year that BSU lost, but I was okay – not happy, but still okay. We all know that we have to lose some in order to have good games.

I’m grateful for the type of person that I am because it gives me the ability to have a good heart. And, no matter what the situation may be, I can and will always bounce back to be a better person than what I was before. I will always try to be happy and keep a smile on my face because life is too short to live any other way.

Thank you, Fernie! I can definitely say that she is always smiling and trying to help however she can. She is so thoughtful, with special little goodies on holidays, and she truly does care about other people. I admire her perseverance through difficult times and her dedication to her children. And I’m grateful to have gotten to know her.

May you all enjoy a blessed, happy and safe Thanksgiving with family and loved ones. And remember to take time to stop and count your many blessings as you enjoy the feast!

Guest blog: Thankful for good health

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Gratitude

Here we are at another gratitude Friday! Do you know people that are doing the “month of gratitude” on Facebook or somewhere else? I’ve had such a happy heart as I have seen posts from many of my friends each day, talking about something they are thankful for.

The first few days of the month seem to be some of the more obvious – family, faith, friends, etc – but now that we are toward the middle of the month, you can tell there is some more thought put into the posts.

Some are so heartfelt, and you can often tell what kind of day someone has had by the things they write. I smiled to myself a couple days ago when someone said they were grateful for chocolate and someone else mentioned toilet paper. And a tear came to my eye as I read that others expressed gratitude for painkillers or to have time to spend with a dying parent.

There is always something to be grateful for, isn’t there?!?! We just have to be looking for it. And we have to recognize those things as blessings and not take them for granted. So a big “thank you” to family and friends for sharing each day and helping me to continue to remember that!

Our guest blogger for today is Dawnette Hutchison. She’s one of our remote circulation team members, so we don’t see her as often as we might like here in the office, but we are so grateful for the work she does, and I’m happy to share her thoughts with you.

She writes:

I have a dear Aunt that lives in Fresno California. She has been my role model and confident throughout much of my life, especially during the challenging times. One of her sayings is “If you don’t have your health you don’t have anything; always be thankful for good health.”

I have often pondered this statement but especially the last eight months as I have watched the decline of my father’s health, both from the natural process of aging and also of some not-so-good choices he made in his life. With that being said, I started thinking of all the blessings that a healthy body allows me to experience.

I am thankful for my eyes that can see the beauty of the earth. I love where I live and am thankful that I can see the beauty of the mountains that surround me and all that nature has to offer and the beautiful faces of family and friends.

I am thankful for hands and arms that allow me to work in the soil in my garden and yard , embrace my family with hugs , offer service to my fellow man and to help provide for my family by working on my computer.

I am thankful for my sense of smell that can smell the cedar trees after a misty rainfall, the fragrant scent of flowers, the aroma of a home-cooked meal or that sweet smell of alfalfa right after its been baled and stacked.

I am thankful for ears that hear the beauty of music that surrounds us in so many different forms; from a new grandbaby’s cry or laugh, the gurgling of a creek, the howl of a coyote in the distance, or a good ol’ belly-laugh of a loved one.

I am thankful for my heart that has felt both joy and pain. 

I am thankful for my legs that allow me to move about in a free manner so that I can experience a hike in the summer, experience a winter wonderland on my skis or a ride on my bike.

May we not take our health for granted, but take good care of ourselves and consider it a precious gift. Following is a quote I came across the other day that I felt was worth sharing:

“One of the main reasons that we lose our enthusiasm in life is because we become ungrateful…we let what was once a miracle become common to us. We get so accustomed to his goodness it becomes a routine..” (Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full)

Oh, Dawnette…THANK YOU for that beautiful quote! It really goes along with what I have been thinking lately. And you are so right…our health is truly a blessing. It’s one of those things we tend not to think about too much until we don’t have it, but we do need to make the effort to take care our that precious gift as much as we possibly can!

Guest post: Looking back

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Gratitude

I can hardly believe another week has gone by! We’ve been making plans for Thanksgiving and talking about Christmas. And I even heard Christmas music on the radio last week! Where has the year gone?!?!

I was also reminiscing this past week as I explained the gratitude blog to one of our team members outside the office (she’ll be sharing something next week), as she wasn’t as familiar with what we’ve been doing. Looking back at all the posts by our staff members throughout the year has been wonderful! I’m so grateful they were all willing to share something of themselves.

The posts have all been different in scope, but it made me realize, again, what wonderful people I work with and how much we all truly do have to be grateful for! Blessing little and big are all around us every day. We just have to stop to recognize them. And this experience of posting something each Friday that someone is grateful for has really brought that to life for me even more.

Today we get to hear from Jackie Brown, one of our circulation team members. Although we don’t get to see her around the office as much any more (she’s a little busy at home these days, as you’ll see below), she is still not far from our thoughts each day, and I’m glad she was still able to participate on the blog.

She writes:

The past year and a half has brought the biggest changes, joys, frustrations, excitement, challenges and blessings to my life.

Its very interesting how we have plans of how things should be. But life doesn’t always go “as planned.” I imagined us living in a big city in California or New York or somewhere like that. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be living in Idaho, let alone a small town with more cows than people! But living here, meeting the people we’ve met and having the jobs we have, has been a HUGE blessing.

In January of this year we welcomed twin sons into our family after a 13 year struggle with infertility. Oh, the changes and blessings they have brought into our lives!

I am so very grateful for modern medicine. I am grateful for my faith – faith in my Heavenly Father’s plan for me and for our family. I am grateful for prayer. I am grateful for life lessons learned, sometimes the hard way.

I am grateful for the support and love of friends and family. I am grateful for our jobs with a company that is so supportive of families. I am grateful for a loving and supportive husband that has put up with A LOT from me as our quiet lives have been changed so dramatically. I am grateful & blessed to be the mother of two beautiful and healthy boys.

May we all remember to be thankful this holiday season for the blessings we have. I know I will be!

Thank you, Jackie! It has been an amazing year and a half, for sure – even from the ‘outside looking in’ as I have watched you and your sweet little family! I can’t even begin to express how happy it makes me to see you and Kevin and those adorable little boys together!

We really miss you at the office, but I wouldn’t want you to be anywhere else or doing anything different with your life right now! And thank you for reminding me of the true blessing and joy it is to be a mother!