Knolltop Farm Wife

It was a situation I glossed over.  I didn’t have to deal with it every single day but it was often enough for me to go to my Bible study group and submit it as a prayer request.  They would listen to me and invariably one or two of them would tell me, “You’ve got to take care of that. Get rid of it.” I knew I should, but I didn’t want to face the conflict and I was fearful of the consequences.  Life would not be the same. I would have to find other avenues to fill the void that the resolution would create. So instead of facing it once and for all, I worked around it.  I figured out ways to deal with it. My work was suffering because of it, but I kept making excuses that it would get better over time.  If I just kept feeding the monster, it would be satisfied, and things would work out. But that’s not what happened. I had sleepless nights of worry; I was short-tempered and spent a lot of time wringing my hands and waiting for a better result. Before you start th...

By Melissa Hart On the cover of the recent Michigan Dairy Cattle News is a photo of the Wolverine Purebred Livestock Sales Pavilion, a massive sales arena that sat on Grand River between Williamston and Okemos in the 1950s and 60s.  This same photo was on the cover of the 1955 Holstein Michigander, the predecessor of the Michigan-Indiana Holstein News and the Michigan Dairy Cattle News. I put that photo on the cover because it harkened back to a time when the Registered Holstein business was thriving in Michigan.  There were sales in every corner of the state and Michigan Holstien genetics were sought after by breeders from across the country. The Wolverine Sales Pavilion was built by Clarence B. Smith after World War II who came north from Kentucky as an auto worker.  His love for cattle led him to manage Baynewood owned by E.M. Bayne at Romeo, MI. There he developed the great Royal Ormsby, the 141 st cow of the breed to produce over 1000 pounds of fat in one ye...