My summers growing up on a farm were spent preparing my 4-H projects for the county fair. Most of my projects consisted of a beef show animal of some sort. The county fair was your pay day for all the hard work you put in during the summer and the start of school was just around the corner. Boy did I love those days!

Last Friday, I spent the afternoon helping with the Hitchcock County livestock show. I started helping 15 years ago when I graduated from high school. I had been a 4-H member for eleven years before that and this was a way I could stay involved. Once people find out you want to be involved they find all sorts of things for you to do. I have now been the county 4-H Council president for five years and on the Extension Board for two years. I guess I have taken to heart part of the 4-H pledge, “I pledge my...hands to larger service."

This week, I look forward to seeing my nephew and niece (Logan and Lindsey) show their bucket calves at the neighboring county fair. This will be their first time showing. They asked me back in March when I started calving my cows if I would get them a bucket calf for fair. I wasn’t terribly excited about keeping one for them because I knew I would have to feed it until they got out of school at the end of May. By the time Logan and Lindsey were ready (mostly waiting on their mother) I had three bucket calves for them. The calves were tame from being fed a bottle of milk every day, so all they needed was to learn to be lead around with a halter.

I hope that Logan and Lindsey enjoy their 4-H experience and learn as much as I did! I also look forward to six nieces and nephews getting invloved in 4-H when they are old enough! 4-H is a wonderful program that has stood the test of time. I love the program and will continue to support it as long as I am able!

When people talk about wanting naturally grown foods, can it get more natural? Our family owns a swine facility that has become part of our operation. We have been fortunate enough to use the natural fertilizer from the hogs in this costly time to help grow our crops, although it is sometimes hard to explain to your neighbors.

We find ourselves constantly on the defensive, defending ourselves for doing the job that our department of ag has taught us to do, by using their regulations, best management practices, and abiding to local code. But, on a hot August evening, with 90% humidity, it is sometimes hard to explain to our neighbors. So the question is, what can we do about it? Do we pack up and leave, and quit the only profession we have known? (We have had livestock for years, but just not this large) Or do we try to get along? Personally on our farm, we try to get along. We spend hours talking to neighbors, and explain to them why we do what we do. Why mid August works the best for us to apply our organic fertilizer, and that sometimes, no matter how hard you try to follow the rules and weather patterns, sometimes mother nature just does not agree.

I guess at the end of the day, it all boils down to public relations, and building a trust in the community. Hopefully all the hours have added up to a good trust in us, as farmers, citizens of the community, and good stewards of the land, as we prepare to apply our natural fertilizer to our ground.

Would you eat food from someone without a working knowledge of agriculture? Would you send your child to a school where the teachers weren’t trained as educators? Are you comfortable voting for politicians with no leadership experience? As I watched the Michigan Primary results come in last Tuesday, my thoughts wandered to these questions.

When did experience become such a bad thing? Experience teaches us lessons. Experience gives us a reputation. Experience allows us to build trust. Yet in politics as in agriculture, there are some who want to paint experience as unnecessary.

Experience has taught American Agriculture many things. We have learned that to feed a growing population, we need to produce more food, more food choices, and the safest food possible on a shrinking land base. Experience has taught us that Mother Nature will have a major affect on how our crops mature, and we have come up with some incredibly ingenious ways to counteract the tricks Mother Nature throws our way.

Recently there is renewed interest in agriculture. I have read articles from Michigan to Massachusetts that highlight someone’s new endeavor into agriculture. The characters in the story differ, but the storyline remains the same: a person can’t find employment, and as a result, he or she decides to plant a garden and sell the produce at a local farmers market. While the local food movement adds choice to our food system, we cannot disregard the experience a long-term farmer brings in his attempts to feed a population that cannot eat locally. Keep in mind, our nation’s experience has shown us that we can’t produce enough food near our population centers to feed everyone.

Experience has become such a four-letter word in politics that politicians are being elected to office without much of any of it. Term limits were supposed to be a great way for us to get rid of the bad politicians and replace them with new, improved models. The biggest thing term limits did in Michigan was reduce the historical experience of our senate to virtually none. New members will hold 29 out of 38 senate seats here. Talk about lack of institutional knowledge.

In politics as in agriculture, a small number of bad actors can give the rest of us a very bad name. We must condemn those bad actors and explain how our experience has led us to utilize the technology and modern production practices that allow us to feed the world. Our food system isn’t perfect, but like our representative republic, it is the best in the world.