Category: Crops

“Our Ag Story, What’s Yours?”

img_7366A few weeks ago I wrote about how my “business attire” wardrobe may not be as extensive as my non-farmer friends.  Considering as farmers, Shelly Davis and I both wore the same EXACT outfits as the last time we dressed up together…oops!  But the I have to say I really enjoyed everything from the prep for this talk to the actual end result of our keynote for the Dunn Carney Ag Summit entitled, “Our Ag Story, What’s Yours?”.

Shelly shared our transcript on her blog last week, so if you’re interested please click here, or head over to Daughter of a Trucker’s blog to see what we said.

If you’re more of a video type, I have uploaded from Facebook live onto YouTube our keynote.  It’s not great audio, and it is in two parts because the WiFi was being funky.  So if you are patient and you have a low tolerance for video quality, the message is still (in my humble opinion) top notch and spot on!

Part One….

Part Two…

I’ll leave you with this last thought from Shelly,

“The point is advocating on behalf of the entire agriculture industry can be exhausting and take up too much time.  You do it, I do it, we do it because it benefits us, our farm, and more importantly our future farm.”

img_7376

Ask A Farmer at the Smithsonian

It was a LONG time ago that dad and I took off for a very quick (less than 36 hr) trip back to Washington DC to speak at the Smithsonian Museum for Ask a Farmer.  It was for the US Farmer and Rancher Alliance event, discussing food through history!  And here…finally I have the video from that day!

The panel was all about generational farming.  I was lucky to sit on the stage with a group of awesome farmers!  Check it out if you have time!  And feel free to share so more people can hear from some of us long time generational farmers!

Weather Update…It’s Still Cold!

Well it’s still freezing here in Oregon on the farm.  We did get a little insulation for the crops in the form of snow, but not sure it’s enough to make a difference. final-25

I get a lot of questions about what this will do to our crops.  So far I’m really only worried about our vegetable seed crops that were planted in the fall.  We have both cabbage & swiss chard that is still pretty small and not looking too happy with this cold weather.  I am told not to worry too much until 12 degrees, we have gotten down to 14 so far, hopefully that is the lowest we get!

final-22final-23This is a photo of some of our younger hazelnut trees.  These trees pollinate in the winter, however not when it’s this cold!

Just another reason why being a farmer is truly so risky, no one can control the weather, and no one can tell you what is going to happen.  Would we have changed our planting schedule last fall if we had known this was going to happen…probably so!  But once again (I feel like I say this a lot) that’s farming!

final-26Yukon sums up how we all feel about all this cold weather & snow pretty well…we know how you feel old dog…and we are right there with ya!

Happy Friday folks and stay warm!