We #CanHunger This Holiday Season

I just heard on the news last night that November is one of the busiest months for food banks in Iowa between the holidays, tighter end-of-the-year budgets and colder temperatures.  We all can help hungry families in need by simply donating to our local food pantries and organizations like Feeding America.  I'm happy to accept the #CanHunger challenge from Amy at Modern Rural Living to sign a can of food, donate it and challenge three friends to do the same:  Katy from Learning As I Go, Katie from On the Banks of Squaw Creek and Katie from the Pinke Post!

A reminder to everyone that throughout the month of November my Comments for the Cause is going towards the #NorthIowaBloggers food drive.  So help today by commenting how you are going to help hungry families this holiday season!

Goals from #ACFR13

Over this past weekend, I attended the AgChat Foundation Upper Midwest Regional Conference in Rochester, Minnesota.  This was a great opportunity to for me to focus on my personal agvocacy.  I attended breakout sessions that gave me new ideas for my blog, as well as how to utilize my facebook and twitter accounts better.  A highlight of the conference was getting to meet a few individuals who I had gotten to know through social media, but yet had never met in-person, such as Jenny Dewey, Katie Pinke and Emily Zweber.  I also got to connect with new people, which is probably one of my favorite past-times.

A fun side-note is that Franklin County, Iowa, where I am from, had a great representation in the crowd of 75 at the conference.  There were six of us, that as we all liked to say "live, work and play" in Franklin County.  From left to right is Larry Sailer (farmer and guest blogger who loves facebook), Deb Brown (communications guru who works for Franklin County's Chamber and Tourism), Shannon Latham, Laura Cunningham and Amy Hild (all who work for Latham Hi-Tech Seeds Communications and Marketing department), and then me!

I came home from the conference with several ideas, especially for blog posts, but I thought it would be good to create three goals, as a result from attending the event.  I think all of these goals go well with the beginning of year goals I created in January.

1. Start a Facebook page for my blog.  (I actually accomplished this yesterday during a disappointing over time of the ISU Cyclones basketball game.  Thanks to Sara Broers for her recommendations for starting this.)  So be sure to "Like" my Facebook page.
2. Start a regular post segment about my pregnancy.  I realized at the conference that I am 26 weeks pregnant and really haven't talked about it except in my initial announcement post.  Well this is going to change.  I love being pregnant and am happy that I am, so why am I not sharing this with everyone?  So look for my first installment of Hump Day Bump Report on Wednesday.
3. To actually read my camera manual, front to back, all the way through.  I love taking photos and actually carry my camera's manual in my camera bag but I only use it to look up what I have want to find information about.  So I have decided in order to understand and utilize my camera better I need to read my camera manual all the way through.

The AgChat Foundation's missing statement is: “Empowering farmers and ranchers to connect communities through social media platforms" and I think that is what this Upper Midwest Regional Conference was set-up to do.  This regional conference was the first in a series of regional conferences offered by the AgChat Foundation.  The Foundation decided to start hosting regional conferences so those who were unable to attend their national conference due to location or timing, had a chance to connect and learn about agriculture in social media.