Benefits of Bacon

My family and I are huge fans of bacon.  Among friends, we are known for always having a freezer stocked with bacon, and when they come over they love to have some that we have made from our hogs.  My Farmer is known for calling bacon "Meat Candy"!

So this weekend when My Farmer and I were at the Iowa Young Farmer Conference listening to Trent Loos, we were ecstatic to hear that bacon has the same healthy fats as olive oil!  In fact, bacon grease and olive oil both have around 8-9% polyunsaturate fatty acid (PUFA); these types of fatty acids protect against cardiovascular disease.  Types of PUFA that you hear a lot about are Omega-3 and Omega-6.

So keep on eating bacon and don't feel bad about cooking your eggs in the leftover bacon grease in the morning!

What a Weekend!

My Farmer and I attended the Iowa Farm Bureau Young Farmer Conference this past weekend in Des Moines along with 325 other young farmers from across the state.  We had a great time learning new things, meeting up with old friends and making new ones.  A bittersweet note to this year's conference for us was that it was my Farmer's and my last conference serving on the state Young Farmer Advisory Committee.  We've had a great time serving with this group the last three year.  A fun highlight from the conference was that this year our county had nine members attend; a new record attendance from our county.

Franklin County Young Farmers (My Farmer and I are in the blue shirts)

Trent Loos

There was a great line-up of speakers for the weekend.  Trent Loos, a rancher and radio host from Nebraska, spoke the first night and the next day during a break-out session about bridging the gap between agriculture producers and consumers, as well as how to speak out for agriculture.  He did this by providing a lot of great information, facts and figures.  Later in the week I'll be sharing more about one of those facts that My Farmer and I can't wait to share with others!

Aaron Thomas

Another great speaker at the conference was Aaron Thomas, the Athletic Director at Aplington-Parkersburg High School.  Aaron's message didn't have an agriculture focus to it, but yet it really hit deep with me.  He talked about courage, passion, and overcoming the odds.  Aaron's family has been through a lot.  His father Ed Thomas was a well known football coach who rallied the town of Parkersburg after a deadly tornado hit the town.  Then just a year leader, Ed Thomas was murdered by a past football player who was mentally insane.  Aaron talked about what decisions he and his family made that made a difference on how the situation was handled (Click Here to watch a video on Aaron and Ed's story).  One of Aaron's messages that made an impact on me was the focus of having quality time with your loved ones and not just quantity.  I am home with LP all day, so I have a lot of quantity time with him but do I always make that quality time...  Another message the resonated with me was how do I impact others.  Have I made a difference in other people's lives?

Overall I had a great time at the conference and I came back with lot of new information and ideas from not only Trent and Aaron, but from all of the other speakers too.

Farm Friday

This week on the farm we have been busy delivery grain to the ethanol plant, loading hogs and finalizing seed sales for our Channel Bio seed dealership.  A few years ago we started a seed dealership with My Farmer's parents.  The seed dealership gives us an opportunity to create more diversity in our farming operation, as well as it is a way to stay on top of new traits and developments coming down the pipeline.  An added bonus to having the seed dealership that we didn't necessarily think would happen when we started is that we have really enjoyed getting to know other farmers from across the county by being customers of ours.

Farming = A Delicate Game

In a recent article where My Farmer and I were interviewed about our involvement with the ASA/Dupont Young Leader Program (the program that inspired me to actually start this blog!) My Farmer was quoted for saying, "Having access to land and capital and being able to get big enough, fast enough to support a growing family and still maintain good relationships with neighbors is a delicate game."

After conversations that My Farmer and I had with neighbors, landlords and friends today, I couldn't help but think of what he said.  There is a lot of competition in farming, and I think what My Farmer said describes farming for us, other young farmers, and farmers in general very well.  This weekend My Farmer and I are attending the Iowa Farm Bureau Young Farmer Conference where I'm sure this topic will be discussed by many attendees.

I Have to Disagree with Yahoo!

Last week Yahoo! released an article about the top five College Majors That Are Useless.  The article sites that degrees in business, accounting and IT are good majors to choose as they can be applied to a variety of fields, which I agree with, but I disagree with them putting agriculture majors (Agriculture, Animal Science, Horticulture) as three of the top five degrees to avoid!

The Yahoo! article states that jobs in agriculture have little to no projected job growth.  My response to Yahoo! is with a growing need for more food as the population grows, how does that not equal an area with job growth?

Other reasons I see Agriculture as a great major is there is a high interest in the field of bio-sciences and agriculture is the largest employer in the nation.  I graduated from Iowa State University and the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences always has the highest employment percentage for recent graduates for the university.  And why wouldn't the College of Ag have a high employment rating when there is a high demand for ag graduates, who come from a wide variety of majors.

I can't find any reason not to be in agriculture and I am proud to hold a Agriculture Education/Communications degree and to be working in agriculture!

Farm Friday

I have decided to start a new regular posting - Farm Friday!  On Fridays I will show different things that My Farmer and I are up to on the farm.

For my first Farm Friday post I figured I'd explain our hog operation.  My Farmer and I have a 2400 head finishing site.

Photo obviously taken during the summer, way too cold to take a photo today...

As you can see the site has two buildings and an office on it.  Our buildings have an auto-sort system in them where the hogs walk through a scale to get to the "food court" area.

My Farmer checking the feeders in the "Food Court"

When they are done in the food court they can leave and hang out in a "lounge" area.

Lots of space for the pigs to explore

When the hogs are near a market weight of 270 pounds we turn on the scales a couple days before they are scheduled to go to market.  The scales will sort out the hogs that are ready to go to market into a separate lounge area than the ones that still need some time.  This reduces some of our sorting labor in preparation to bring pigs to market.

Our dog Bailey helping with chores

Community Pride

This week I have been thinking a lot about how much I am proud of my community.  People often ask My Farmer and I why we are involved in so much.  Our answer is that we get involved with our community because we are so proud of where we are from.  We want to continue to see our community grow and thrive.  By getting involved we can make decisions that are good for the future of our family and kids.

One of the reasons I have been so proud of my community this week is that on Monday night I was invited to join a Partnership Group with several community leaders and business owners from our county.  The group discussed ways to get more people to our community, create connections and build relationships.  One way of getting more people to our county we decided would be to create itineraries that people could use when visiting our county set up through our county chamber and tourism group.  One itinerary that the group came up with would be a farm/agriculture tour.  Several members of the Partnership Group said that people are just interested about farming and would love to just visit a family farm.  I agreed that My Farmer and I would be willing to host people depending on our schedule and that I'd line up several farmers from the county that would be willing to host a similar tour.  Here is a little of what the group came up with.