At our meat CSA pickup this past Saturday, one of my friends hugged me like she always does and told me she loved me. She also said she noticed I hadn’t written in a while — and she was right. For the last two weeks, my farm emails to you have taken a break, and I owe you an explanation.
I’ve been on the road and all over Minnesota this month, wearing my other hat as Event and Communications Coordinator for the Minnesota Grazing Lands Conservation Association — work I love because it lets me share with others how much grazing cattle on pasture and this lifestyle has given my own family. An event with Blue Dirt Farm down in Blue Earth. A cattlemen’s bus tour near Marshall. A visit to Amo Creamery in Heron Lake. A soil health fair clear over in Appleton. Welcoming Women in Conservation here to our own farm — so good to see so many of your faces here. A grazing school field day up in Duluth. And one last stop along the Iowa border in Harmony.
At that last stop, I looked down a line of dusty pickup trucks parked near an Amish horse and buggy, everyone there for a similar reason — a love of growing good things close to the earth. Over these past two weeks I met farmers and ranchers and conservation folks from age nine to ninety, and every one of them had something worth learning from.
None of it would have been possible without help back home, though. My daughters Natalie and Marion usually take over milking when I’m away — they’re incredible at it — but they were off at camp this whole stretch. So when one of our customers stepped in and milked so I could keep showing up at these events, it meant more than she probably knows.
But the best part of any morning I was home? Out in the dewy pasture before the world woke up, moving cattle, listening to the birds, bringing Rosie in to milk. This life is unpredictable and routine in the same breath, and that steady little rhythm is what kept my cup from running dry through all the driving. I think God has a way of doing that — filling us back up right when we need it, whether through a peaceful walk at dawn or a hug at pickup on a Saturday morning. I just love it all!
So, thank you for your patience the past two weeks. And thank you to that hug this weekend for reminding me exactly why I do this. I’m home more now, and glad to be back in your inbox.
From our little piece of good earth, Leah
