I have found this to be true...

Dr. David Buchanan shared this at the YF&R Leadership Conference recently and it struck me as so ENTIRELY true, I just had to share it. Farmers don't farm to get rich. They farm because they love it. How many people love what they do? I think it just goes to show you how unique and wonderful farmers really are!

Dawn

Origami love and holey blankets

I'm not sure what to think. After spending the weekend away from home at a conference, I got this wonderful welcome home origami love packet from my daughter:

My son welcomed me with a hug and a kiss!

And the Springer? Apparently he was not getting enough attention from me, because while my son was showing me a funny YouTube video he found, Mr. Springer chewed a fist-sized hole in one of the nice throw blankets that I keep on the living room couch. He got kennel time for it.

It didn't matter.

Shortly after his release, and while I was assisting my daughter with a project, he stole one of my son's socks, hid under my daughter's bed (okay, his hind end was sticking out, so it wasn't really "hiding") and growled at me for what seemed like a full five minutes when I told him to let go of it. Actually, the command we use is "Give." And I did pull him out from under the bed by his hind legs when he started growling, so his little doggy mind probably perceived it as an "escalation" of some kind, when in reality, I just didn't want him to make a hole in yet another sock.

I asked my son if he had misbehaved at all before I came home.

"Nope," my son replied. "I think he's mad at you for leaving!"

So, while my kids give me hugs and little gifts after I've been gone, the Springer is an entirely different animal (Pun intended!). Apparently, he's a classic "negative attention" kind of critter. I don't know exactly how it happened, because I'm the one who comes home at noon and feeds him. I'm usually the one who lets him out when he needs to pee. I let him curl up next to me on the couch and I pet him while I'm watching television.

So, where DID I go wrong with this one? : )

Dawn

Reminders

As one who is fast approaching the half-century mark, I am reminded frequently just "how old" I am.

Like this morning, a coworker (who is part of the half-century club and likes to tease me about how soon I will be joining the elite ranks) mentioned that another coworker was born a few days prior to me being hired. I'm old enough to be her mother!

I also noticed ANOTHER coworker was born a month before I graduated from high school. And to be honest, I'm thinking there my be a couple more that fit that category as well!

So why don't I FEEL that old, I keep asking myself? Oh sure, I forget stuff. I have achy joints. And if I sit too long I have a hard time standing. I sometimes think, however, that the age of my children is the gauge by which I measure how old I feel.

So, if I have a friend and her son is 3, and my youngest is 9, then by my internal math system (I totally stink at math, by the way, and had to have my son show me how to do fifth grade math again, and he's in the ninth grade, but that's a story for another time) she is only six years younger than me. Of course, this is not the case. I am old enough to be HER mother, as well!

Are you as young as you feel? Wasn't that a movie made BEFORE I was born or something?  Apparently I am NOT as young as I feel, but I guess that isn't all bad.

Don't even get me started on how I feel about my age in dog years!!!

Dawn

A contest

As communications person for North Dakota Farm Bureau, I am always looking for ways to bridge what seems to be the ever-widening gap between farmers and non-farmers.

There are a lot of voices out there that aren't very friendly toward modern farming and ranching. But we keep trying to connect where connections are bad or gone. So this year, for North Dakota Farm Bureau Week, we are holding an "I Am Agriculture" contest on Facebook.

North Dakota Farm Bureau Week is March 11-17, and the contest runs from now until March 1.The idea is for people to share a short (150-word) essay about the positive things agriculture does for them, and to include a photo that helps tell that 150-word story.

We have a few entries already, but we'd like to see a mess of them!

If you'd like to join the group, please go to the page and request to join! It could be worth $250 to the winner.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/204847432941374/

Dawn

Wait a few hours....

Two weeks ago, I was posting pictures of my snow-free, never-got-autumn-work-done flower beds in 30+ degree weather. 

This morning? -10, with a windchill that made it seem like -20-something. After -15, unless it gets down to the -40s, it just doesn't really matter. It's all cold. 

What do they say again, about North Dakota weather? I think it's something like "You don't like the weather? Wait a few hours. It'll change."

Well, it took a little longer than a few hours, but when the cold moved in, it did so with impressive gusto.

But we still have almost zero snow. So it actually looks nice outside. 

Oh, how deceiving those looks can be! 

We like to think of ourselves as pretty tough in the north country. But when you have really warm weather for extended periods of time, you can, well, get a little soft. To be totally honest, I have become a cold-weather wimp!

Just last week, I was taking the dog out in my stocking feet. Now, I'm stepping into the boots, putting on a coat, and wearing my gloves. And I'm doing all of that just to put him out on a chain, which takes all of maybe 30 seconds to do.

Here's the really interesting part, however. At least as of this morning, the forecast is that we could get back into the 30+ area this weekend.

It's a roller-coaster, yes, but hey, it keeps us on our toes. Or more precisely, it keeps us from ever putting away our sweatshirts and shorts OR our winter parkas and boots. Because up here, if it hits 30+, we're wearing shorts and sweatshirts.

Hmmm! Wonder what tomorrow will bring?

Ah! North Dakota weather. You just can't beat it! (Even if you wanted to!)

Dawn

Autumn art on a cold winter day

I love leaves and will gravitate to just about anything that has a leaf pattern. So when my artiste daughter was bored the other day I asked if she would draw me a leaf picture. She started and then got mad because it didn't turn out like she envisioned. I told her to keep at it and a little while later, this is what she produced.

I feel pretty lucky that I have an artist who will create made-to-request autumn art on a cold winter day!

Dawn

Situational morning person

Are you a morning person? I never used to be, but I think I have become a morning person...at least during the week. Well, I don't know if that makes me an actual morning person or a situational morning person, but as my daughter sleepily stood in the bathroom while I touched up the haircut I gave her last night, she said to me, "I don't know how you can be this busy so early in the morning!"

She's nine.

Going on 16.

But that's another story for another time.

I think I'm a morning person because somebody has to be in the house, otherwise nobody gets to where they need to be on time. And if nobody ELSE gets to where they need to be, I don't get where I need to be. So maybe it's not even "situational morning person" but rather "necessity morning person."

On the weekends, I do NOT want to get up early. I want to sleep until my back aches and my neck hurts and I have a caffeine withdrawal headache. So, if you get me up before 9 a.m., I just might give you a dirty look. Which is kind of dumb, really, because if I got up by, say, 8 a.m., I probably wouldn't ache and I wouldn't have a withdrawal headache. But there is something about laying in bed until you want to get up (or guilt sets in and you think you better get up) that is extremely attractive.

So if you ever ask me if I'm a morning person and I kind of seem non-committal, it's just because I can't decide myself!

Dawn

Little rowdy

Ahhh, the wonders of the Internet.

I was thinking about my dad's mom, my grandma Carrie, the other day. She has been gone for several years now. I remember her as this little white-haired lady who baked awesome buns, had a perpetual smile on her face and talked to the critters on the farm in Swedish.

I never really understood what she was saying, but she'd call the dog -- and this is my best guess at a phonetic spelling: Lil-A BOO-sa -- which I always thought meant "little mutt" because that's what we always had around the farm: Mutts.

But for some reason, I just decided that I was going to find out for sure. I get these ideas in my head sometimes, and I just keep going until I figure it out. (I did want to be a detective at one point when I was a kid.)

Well, that's when I found this wonderful little Google tool called Google Translate. At first I typed in the word "lila boosa" thinking the way I remember her saying it might be the way it is spelled. Turned out that meant purple boos. So then I tried "lila buss." That got me "purple bus." So I  was just going to take off the "s" and put an "a" when it said at the bottom "Did you mean lilla bus?"

So I clicked on it. And adding that "l" changed the word from "purple" to "little."

I was half-way there!

So I added an "a" to "bus" and up came the translation, "little mischief." When I changed the "a" to an "e" the meaning came up as "little rowdy." The "a" version and the "e" version of buse/busa sounded about the same to me when I listened to what it would sound like in Swedish.

In fact, when I listened to the Swedish pronunciation, it made me a little sad, because it reminded me so much of my grandma. But it also brought a smile to my face. Because here all this time, my grandma Carrie was calling the dog "little mischief" or "little rowdy."

That has so much more character than "little mutt" and really fits what I remember of my grandma's personality much better.

We have a "lilla busa" at our house and I think from now on in Grandma Carrie's honor, that's the Springer's second name!

Dawn

Wordless Wednesday: Springer sitting

He CAN sit and stay long enough to get a picture!!!!

The teal emergency

Last Friday, I was talking to a coworker when a call came from my nine-year-old daughter. Her bookmark that she made had been besmirched by a water stain. I suggested she make a new one. "I can't," she replied, "because APPARENTLY the teal mark is all dried up."

"Just use a different color," I said unwittingly.

That's when she got really upset. "No!" she huffed. 

Apparently (now I know where she gets her vocabulary) this was an artiste's (you add the "e" and pronounce it ar-TEEST when said artist is a persnickety one) creation, and no sorta-blue-green kind of colored marker would do.

So I calmly inquired what brand of markers she was using. She told me. I said I would stop by at the store on the way home to see if they had that brand.

"I highly doubt it," she said. "These markers are old. They probably don't make this kind anymore."

"We'll see," I responded.

At this point, I have to point out that we probably have so many dried up markers in our house, I could build an outhouse with them all. Nevertheless, I dutifully stopped at the store on my way home from work. And there they were, in all their glory: The markers in the 16-pack with that ever-important teal colored marker. It didn't just say "teal" either. It was like "terribly-tenacious-total-takeover-teal." (Okay, it wasn't that bad, but that's the way I felt looking for it!)

I got home and plopped the markers on the table saying something like, "Found 'em!"

She looked at them, nodded and continued doing what she was doing.

Apparently, the teal emergency just was not THAT much of an emergency.

I just turned around and said, "Thanks, Mom!!!"

A small, sheepish, "Thank you, Mom!" quickly followed.

And the new bookmark? Pretty nice. But to be honest, I thought the one with the watermark looked more "artsy." Shh! don't tell the artiste!

Dawn

Spring's work in January?

Well here's something you don't see every day in the north land! 

I took these pictures yesterday of my backyard. It clearly shows that we have zero snow. It also clearly shows that I did not get done cutting down all my flowers last fall before the snow....ahem....flew. Well we MUST have had a little snow at some point a while back, and I'm pretty sure that's why this stuff is not cut down. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

You will note on the first photo with the St. Francis statue in it that there is a small debris pile in the lower right-hand corner. So I did actually start the job. 

But why, you ask, am I not doing this clean-up work now since there is no snow? Well, when you have record-setting 59-degree weather in God's Country at the beginning of January, you don't spend it doing yard work. You basically just stand around and spend your time marveling at how warm it is outside! Or you run around the yard photographing your ineptitude when it comes to doing that fall flowerbed work.

To be honest, after all the floods and snow North Dakota had last year, I think this respite is actually much-needed. I know the pendulum is probably swinging from one extreme to the other, but you can't swing from one extreme to the other without hitting center, and I'm telling myself we're at center for now.

I'm sure soon enough we'll start worrying about how we don't have enough moisture, but for now, I'm happy with these sunny, warm My Two Acres days!

Dawn