From Soil To Soul
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Gasping for air…
Finally! After a period of intense cold, we had hit a bit of a thaw. It was late February, and I was using this window of opportunity to do some cleaning of the barns and feedlot. I was busy moving and piling the thawing manure so I could haul it onto the field with the…
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Life lesson #2…
I know I was afforded a great and awesome privilege growing up on a multi-generational family farm. Hard work…yes. In each other’s business…yes. Moments of disagreement…yes. But there was abundant laughter and always food (More on that in another story). There were also “life lessons” being lived out. At the tender age of five, my…
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Summertime and “The Pit”…
Summertime and “The Pit”… Summer on a dairy farm developed a lot of sweat equity. There was first, second, and third cutting of hay and cultivation of crops in between. The baling also meant plenty of time in the hay loft. You’ve never really lived until you’ve stacked hundreds (sometimes thousands) of 50 lb bales…
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Help? I can do it myself…
Have you ever tried to help someone or something that didn’t want your help? Maybe it was fear, mistrust, or simply an “I can do it myself” kind of attitude. This next story fits squarely into that category. It was a summer day in the early 1970s, and our first-calf heifers were beginning to give…
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Church in the garage…
Church in the Garage… This past week reminded me of an event that shaped my view of church. The other night tornadoes ripped through various parts of Indiana, and our town was one of them. While there was a lot of tree damage, fortunately there wasn’t much damage to buildings. My nephew happened to be…
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The ice rink…
My father loved ice fishing, though he only participated in it as a young man, he talked of it often. He also loved ice skating. In my early teens, Dad decided one winter to make our garden area a skating rink. He purchased a large role of heavy plastic. Cleared the garden of trash. Shaped…
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From the soil…to the soul
Over the past few months, several have asked, “Where did From Soil To Soul come from? What does it mean?” While the seed has always been there from the beginning, the moment of planting happened on a spring morning in 1999. I was sitting on the steps in the back of the milk parlor simply waiting for…
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The questions…if and when?
In the house I grew up in there was a squeak in the hallway almost from the beginning. Of course, Dad was busy milking and farming so the squeak was very low on the repair list. It wasn’t a busted water pipe. In my teenage years that squeak became a real annoyance, because it announced…