Well, I’m glad it’s Monday here on the Knolltop. Last weekend was too busy for this family!

On Saturday I was privileged to speak to the Michigan Cattlewomen’s group at the Michigan Cattlemen’s Annual Meeting. Boy did we have fun! After listening to Mark Thomas of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association talk about marketing and then hearing the new director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture speak at a delicious lunch it was the ladies turn to slip away and have some time of encouragement.

Although I had heard rumblings of some of the men wanting to join the ladies at our conference, I kept telling them “no!” I guess they thought cattle worming might not be the most thought provoking topic of the day. Who could blame them?

So as we all got in our places and were settling in for our afternoon session a man came bursting through the door! Randy H. the auctioneer from Napoleon Livestock…and he’s the owner too. He said he wasn’t leaving…I even threatened to talk about female stuff and he didn’t budge.

As it turned out he contributed a lot to our conversation and even helped some of us understand how men think. It was a real blessing to have him in there with us. We talked about beef promotion, life in agriculture and family life on the farm for 2 hours and it was hard to stop then! It was a great time to be with that group!

Then yesterday, after church, JW and I headed back to East Lansing for a Michigan Junior Holstein meeting. Those are always fun…plus we always eat lunch out. It’s fun to get my kids alone and visit with them one on one. JW and I always have intriguing conversations. Yesterday was no different.

Okay…I’ve got so much more to write…but I’m so late for the barn…Bobby will think I’ve given up on coming out!

We are in answered prayer overload on the Knolltop!

Two days ago we had one vehicle and I was praying and asking you to pray for another vehicle so I could get to the Michigan Cattlemen’s Conference today. Well, Thursday my parents offered to bring me a vehicle and Friday morning our truck showed up in the driveway with a new transmission! WOW!

All I can say is thank you for your prayer and thanks to God for his provision! So that brings me to my next thought…if you people are so good at this prayer thing…I shouldn’t be the only one who is beinging prayed for….you should be too! So if you have a prayer request that you want to share with us…let me know. YOu can post it here so we can all read it or you can email it to me and I will keep it confidential if you like. What I’m getting at is that we are seeing God work in our midst and it’s exciting….get in on the action!

I’m headed to EAst Lansing for the conference….yes you can pray for me!

Last evening, I had the best time with the Monroe County group of farmers and conservationists. There were so many nice people there, I loved visiting with every single one of them. There is just something about a farmer that is so appealing. Maybe it’s there great sense of humor or the wild sense of adventure or the fact that they are such risk takers. But I really enjoyed talking with all those folks…especially Delmer Cilley and Herbert Smith. More about them later.

I was able to see a few old friends…one of them was Larry See, a man who thinks blogs are for those with nothing else to do. Well, he might not have put it in that context….but I love teasing him. I’m hoping he’ll log on today and take a gander at my attempt to educate the world on agriculture and stay connected with folks. Larry is the father of Dr. Todd See, one of my old college friends. Todd and his wife Leslie were on the livestock judging team with me at MSU. Yes, that’s where they met and now Todd is on staff at North Carolina State University and they have two kids who enjoy raising and showing livestock. Larry had to show me all the pictures….how fun! By the way….Todd is completely bald….that’s a payback for all the times he made rude comments about my hair on the judging trips!

I also saw the Chapmans, parents of Rob Chapman, someone I graduated from MSU with. Rob is now a pharmaceutical salesman…which fits him perfectly since he was always the salesman of the group. And his wife Kelly Boles-Chapman who was also at MSU, is working for the Battle Creek Foundation and is an international horse show judge. She was such a joy to be around with lots of smiles and a kind word. I miss seeing these friends…we need to have a judging team reunion!

Well, today is a busy day on the Knolltop. JW has a game tonight in Litchfield, I have two stories to write, 4-H forms to fill out and at some point I need to make a quick trip to the store and work on my presentation for the Cattlemen’s annual meeting tomorrow.

BEtter get to it!

Okay…God works at lightening speed! My mom called me this morning and offered to bring a truck down to us on their way to Iowa tomorrow. She hadn’t read the blog yet so she was being used by God and didn’t even know it! Isn’t God Great!!!!

Thank you to all of you who have been praying today. I so appreciate it. And I just got off the phone with Bill Broadie of the All American Beef Battalion it was a great interview and I’ll have more on that tomorrow. This is exciting stuff!

It’s another cold cloudy day here on the Knolltop. I think it’s about 10 out, but no wind…so that’s good.

Today I get to interview a guy named Bill Broadie from Kansas. He has started a campaign to get steaks for all of our troops in Iraq. He and a board of directors have begun the Beef Battalion. I’m doing a feature on him and I’m looking forward to interviewing him. When I spoke with him yesterday he was on his way to Ft. Worth to tape an interview with the American Rancher, a show that airs on RFD-TV. I’ll let you know how it goes!

In the meantime, tonight I speak in Monroe County and anyone who wishes to say a prayer or two for me, I would appreciate it. It seems something really good is going to come out of this and the reason I know this is because I have had a lot of spiritual warfare this week. Now, some of you are thinking…”this woman is really whacked out! What is she talking about….spiritual warfare?”

I’m not whacked out, but when you are trying to accomplish something good for God, then the enemy likes to hang around and tell you lies, make you say and do things you would never otherwise do and basically try to throw a monkey wrench into the whole deal. That’s what I’ve been dealing with…listening to lies, saying things I would never say and being confronted with situations I’ve never had to deal with that come from out of no where.

So, those of you who read this who are incline to pray….please do so for me today and on Saturday as I speak again. And by the way, I need our truck to be out of the shop by Saturday…otherwise I have no way of getting to my speaking engagement in East Lansing…sad isn’t it? Actually, I think it’s funny….but let’s pray and see how God answers that prayer…I will keep you updated!

Good Morning from the Knolltop! It’s cold here..although I received warm greetings from a dairy farm in New York state….it’s still cold here! Hey you guys in the west…send us some warmer weather..I’m tired of winter already!

JW’s team won last night and so did the varsity team with a half court shot at the buzzer for the win. We beat Jackson Christian and my pastor and his wife sat with us so we were able to enjoy the victory in their company! Oh….did that feel good. They were good sports about it.

I was reading a blog yesterday from the North east and they were elated that Pennsylvania reversed their labeling laws and decided it was okay to put rBST free on their milk labels. This is a big step backward, I think. Anything that incinuates that our milk supply….our WHOLE milk supply is less than nutritious or safe is dangerous and wrong. Milk is Milk. But I’m not getting on the bandwagon today….I’ll let you do it.

Do any of you out there have an opinion on this issue? I’d love to hear it…whether you’re a dairy producer, city dweller, organic producer whatever…I want to hear what you think.

Boy do I have to write today…I’ve got two stories and a column to create…..what would I do without a deadline?

It’s another winter day on the Knolltop. It’s cloudy, snow is falling and we’re supposed to be getting 2 inches or so. Just enough to cover the ground and make things look pretty. It was actually warmer this morning when we ventured across the road to the barn….it was 22 out.

I talked to a dairy farmer yesterday and he asked the obvious question…anything frozen? It’s funny how we think about the same things because we are all experiencing the same situations. Trying to keep the cows eating, drinking and milking while weathering the cold temps and wind that can freeze water pipes and drinking bowls quicker than anything.

I was on a conference call yesterday with AFACT. This is a group of farmers and industry people who have formed an organization to preserve technology in agriculture. It’s name says it all, American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology. AFACT was birthed out of the push from processors for dairy farmers to stop using rBST. It’s quite a group and they are well organized….I was impressed.

Are any of you who read this blog familiar with this group? Have any of you participated in any way with this group? If you have, I’d like to know your impressions.

Well, it’s off to the barn for chores. I’ve got to write today and tonight JW has a basketball game…at home..thank goodness!

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 [email protected] 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!

Well, it’s a very cold morning here on the Knolltop. Although the orange sunrise peeking through the trees in the east was breathtaking….it made for a rough morning in the barn.

Things were going fine, until we started the gutter cleaner. With time running short before church we were trying to get done in time. But to no avail, when I saw that there was no way we would get the gutters cleaned and the bedding done before church I told JW to take the kids and pick up the extra passengers and head to church without us.

The nice thing is having a son who can drive, before we all would’ve had to stay home, but now at least half of us can go to church….that made me feel much better as a mom!

So now I will do a little baking and just a little cleaning on this really cold, breezy morning here. I think the windchill is down to -15. Not bad if you live in North Dakota the wilds of Manitoba…but we haven’t had this kind of cold yet this winter and I’m not adjusted yet!

I just have to post this mom moment for you moms of teenage sons out there who think they may never grow up to be decent human beings. As I was popping our nightly bowl of popcorn, JW came into the kitchen speaking spanish, like I would have a clue….asking me questions…of course I tried to answer…I might have answer correctly and he would’ve thought I was really smart…but I didn’t.

Anyway, a song came on the radio that we both liked and we began talking about the artist. He pulled out his ipod and said he had another one of her songs on it and asked if I wanted to hear it. Like I’m gonna say no? I said yes, of course I wanted to hear this song. So he put one of the ear phones in my ear and the other one in his and we stood there in the kitchen, the pop corn popping, listening to this song he wanted me to hear while he sang along…which was real treat because he has a beautiful voice. It was such a nice moment to stand there with my 16 year old sharing a song with him…I just can’t tell you how fleeting those moments are beginning to be….it may seem silly to the rest of the world, but it was a great four minutes for me….so I just had to share it with you.

I’m off to walk on my treadmill…stay warm!

It was down in the single digits this morning on the Knolltop. But the barn was warm.

Last night while I milked, Bobby and the boys brought in all the dry cows and heifers and tied them in to the empty stalls in the barn. It was a rodeo as those heifers who haven’t been in the barn since they were six months old came in and challenged every barrier there was. But every one of them is now tied in a stall.

The amazing thing was the difference they made this morning as we walked into the barn. It was so much warmer in there….I loved it! It will be a rodeo this morning as we let them out to bed the stalls and get them back in…it will be good to have all the kids to help us out!

Last night we went and supported the girls basketball team as they lost to Litchfield. After the game we always stay and help the athletic director and his wife…good friends of ours, clean up the trash and fold the chairs and stuff.

While we clean Luke and their son, Brad, shoot baskets until we finally pull them off the floor and take them home. We stayed too long last night…long enough so that Bobby and Gary, the AD, got into a game with Luke and Brad. I guess they just wanted to see if they still had “it.” Although Bobby felt great last night when he got home…this morning he was a little stiff. I was proud of my nearly 50 year old husband who could still try to take his 14 year old….I said “try.”

Today the boys have to work for the neighbor and then Luke has basketball practice. Sarah and Jake also have practice and I will spend the day cleaning, baking and running!