No sun

The sun is not shining here on the Knolltop...partly because there is cloud cover, but mostly because the Packers lost yesterday. Jake was so bummed, he wanted to stay home from school....well, that was as good as an excuse as any. I told him I'd send an email to his buddy and fellow Packer fan, Mark Adam extending his condolences. That wasn't much comfort to him. But MSU beating Minnesota kind of took the sting out of the loss....at least one of our teams won.

The Great Lakes Regional Dairy Conference is coming up in a couple of weeks. Again, this year I've been able to help plan the Partners Program...aka...the women's program. I wrote a column last week inviting everyone to it. I will include it here today..I'm still chuckling...it doesn't happen very often that you laugh at your own writing...what a joy!

Along with the Partners Program, I also get to emcee the Thursday night banquet....I get to introduce the guest speaker....guess who? Trent Loos. Yes, I get to introduce him again, this year and I'm having a ball coming up with my intro. As you might remember from last year, my introduction of him was how I finagled a regular spot on his Rural Route Radio show. Instead of reading his bio, I made one up...fictitious of course...and I had never even met the guy. Now that I know him...it will be even more fun to introduce him to the crowd....

Well, enough of that, right now I've got to clean up breakfast dishes, head back out to the barn and then work on my speech for Thursday night.

Truth from the Trenches
By Melissa Hart

What’s your favorite door prize so far this year? The free calf bottle? The ear tagger? The free bag of calf starter?
Yes it’s door prize season again…otherwise known as meeting season for farmers around the country. And boy is it fun to win those door prizes!
I was at a recent meeting where I won a free calf bottle, a deck of cards and a candle warmer. I just love those door prizes!
I want to tell you about another place where you could not only win some door prizes and have some wonderful food that you don’t even have to cook, but you could walk out with a gift bag of goodies including a book signed by the author.
This year at the Great Lakes Regional Dairy Conference (GLRDC) to be held on February 7th and 8th at the Bavarian Inn Lodge in Frankenmuth, Michigan, the Partners Program will not only make you want to get up and start dancing you may even want to plan a trip down under and learn how to take pictures of your trip as well.
Author and speaker Rebecca Long-Chaney will share about her adventures as she and her husband sold all their belongings, left their families and headed down under to work on a cattle station in Australia. Rebecca is a journalist from the east coast and grew up on a dairy farm.
She married a dairyman and they thought they would milk cows and live forever doing the life they enjoyed as youth. One day they decided to plan a trip of a lifetime. She will inspire us with this adventure and tell us what did for her personal growth and her marriage.
While Rebecca would be enough to make you want to come, we have more planned for those who wish to embark on a day of refreshment with other dairy women. Bring your digital cameras and learn to take good pictures. You know what it’s like when you sit down to do your scrapbooking… you have the curly scissors, you have the sheets and sheets of pretty paper, you have the cute stickers, the stamps, the ribbons and all those great little do-dads to decorate…only to be let down by the really bad pictures that you took when you really thought you were the long lost national geographic photographer of the year.
You will learn how to take really good pictures to fill your scrapbooks that in reality only have two pages filled in them because good intentions don’t get squat done.
When we have finally learned how to take good pictures we are going to learn how to drink really good wine. Well, that is if you’re not a recovered alcoholic. If your stiffest drink of choice is strawberry milk then you can hang with me and we’ll learn what goes into the good stuff that makes people say and do foolish things. Then while we are slurping our strawberry milk and they are sipping their white wine we’ll take high quality pictures of them dancing on the tables and make a scrap book of their day at the Partners Program that they will remember forever!
And that’s just the first day. The second day we will learn how to make good salsa, take network breaks and make new friends while downing as much free ice cream as we can and then the best part is we’ll learn how salsa dance! Doesn’t that sound like a riot? Then you can meet back up with your husband and show him your high quality, suitable for framing pictures of you and your new best friend salsa dancing on the tables while drinking a really good glass of wine!
Seriously, we will be having a good time learning about Australia, wine making, salsa tasting and how to promote the dairy industry. This my humorous attempt at personally inviting each and everyone of you to the Great Lakes Regional Dairy Conference Partners Program. You can on line to www.glrdc.msu.edu. Or you may email me at mhart1@frontiernet.net or you can even call 517-353-3175 ext.229 to find out more and sign up to join us on February 7-8, 2008 in Frankenmuth.
I look forward to dancing with you!