It’s a busy week coming up! This is our annual Oregon Farm Bureau Meeting week and it will be held not too far from home this year. This is a 3 day meeting that I actually, really quite enjoy! I love to farm, I have the best job in the world for me, but sometimes I’m not going to lie, I need some social time. Being out in a rural area is much different from my college experience of having people all around, all the time! In Los Angeles it’s one of the first things that I noticed, there was no where you could go without someone else being very close by. Here on the farm I could walk for miles and never see a soul, and if I did run across someone I would probably know them and them me since I was a kid. In LA, those people who are so “close” to you all the time, you didn’t know them, lots of strangers. It was something that I didn’t expect to feel and I finally related to that saying of being surrounded by people and somehow still feeling alone.
Our Committee a few years ago at Annual Meeting.
Anyway getting back to the point, this Oregon Farm Bureau Meeting is such a great way to get to see so many of the faces that I only get to visit with once or twice a year. We are all spread out over the state, with very diverse farms, with different crops, soil, weather, terrain and somehow we all come together to help write policy this week. Policy for Farm Bureau for those of you not familiar is basically our guidelines for what we think is important, what we think is fair and what “in a perfect world” is how we would like agriculture to be regulated, treated, and taken care of in our state. It’s important for our lobbyists so that they know what o fight for, and also what to compromise with. It’s also something that I use often as a starting off point for questions that I might have about issues I don’t know much about.
Just a few of the great friends I have made through YF&R
So yes meetings aren’t always the most thrilling way to spend a rainy week in December, but between the great friends I get to see and the interesting conversations about what’s going on all over our state, I think it’s more than worth it! I’m also very active in our state Young Farmer’s and Ranchers Committee and this will also be our annual Leadership conference, annual discussion meet competition, and annual meeting. So it will be a busy week to say the least, but again, I’m really excited! I think that you always come away from conferences like this with a new excitement for ag in our state. It makes you feel not so alone in this journey of sharing your story, of making sure agriculture is never forgotten as such an important part of this state, and working together to make sure that my grandkids can still keep this farm going and going!
NuttyGrass 