Agriculture in the News

As a public relations professional, I am always following the media in my industry. I also enjoy following agricultural articles, both by reading the farm magazines that come to my house (some day I'll show you the one that mostly features hog butts) and by reading about how agriculture is covered in the mainstream media.

I highly recommend the The Rural Blog as a great source for agriculture articles from around the country.

This week, who could miss the front-page feral hog story in the Dayton Daily News.

Yikes! We live very close to the Germantown MetroPark but have not encountered any wild boar. A feral pig could really cause some trouble on the farm, including jumping in with our prize State Fair gilt and doing the wild thing.

As the lone agricultural person ever known to many of my Friendly Suburban-Dwelling Co-Workers, I often get questions about ag in the news. I usually take the opportunity to answer thoughtfully and educate them on the issues.

Then I go home and find out from the real farmer that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm going to have to study the pig butt magazine more often.

Impregnated by Marketing

I've never met him (or her!) but someone at a mail list broker has impregnated me. Yes, call it the Im-mail-culate conception.

Let's be crystal clear: I AM NOT ACTUALLY PREGNANT. But yesterday I received a mailing from Pampers with a handy guide of what to pack for the hospital--complete with a free sample newborn diaper.

I laughed it off as a weird error until today when I received the Enfamil coupon. Oh my God, someone out there thinks I'm pregnant.

I'm not sure what to do. These mailings are not random, they have my full name and proper address. I guess they'll stop in nine months (?)

I'm racking my brain to think of what I could have done out there in the world of market research that would get my name added to the pregnant list. Maybe this is a joke and someone out there will read this post and see that they got me good.

I know lots of women my age are still having kids, but I have a nice scar in my belly button that proves I'm outta commission.

What will be next? Offers from Gerber? Pamphlets from La Leche? Am I going to have a daily piece of junk mail that is completely off the mark. What other lists am I on? Triathlete, scuba diver, stamp collector, hula instructor, perhaps.

When you think about it, these largely unknown list-keepers control a lot of what you know and who reaches you. Think of the power. With a touch of a button they can mark you as old, diseased, gullible, health conscious, rich. Apparently, they can even impregnate you.

Venturing Out

We enjoyed today what one sleep-deprived meteorologist called an "ice sandwich." A layer of snow covered in ice and then coated with another four inches of the white stuff.

I ventured to the end of the lane to get the mail and newspaper. I guess all that rain, sleet, snow, dark of night stuff is for real--both were delivered on time.

What do tough country kids do when it snows? They put on their Carhartt jackets and head out.

I may have spawned a fair weather farmer after my own heart.

We live on a busy county road, with cars usually whizzing by at 55+ mph. Today, there was little evidence we even had a road at the end of our lane.

Here's the view facing west. I only include this to impress my husband who often laughs at my inability to know which direction I am facing. The little blacktop showing is courtesy of my brother-in-law who scraped the lane and then kept going.

THIS is snow removal country style. Oh, yeah. Of course, Husband spent all day shoveling out the pigs, so my car and little cement pad behind the house remain covered in ice sandwich.

You know you're married to a farmer when ensuring that every animal has a place to poop takes precedent over de-icing the minivan.

An Open Letter to the FedEx Letter Writer

If you don't know about the Twitter debacle with Ketchum and FedEx, then visit this site. But please come back.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one wondering about the letter writer Fusion PR Forum: Who Wrote the Infamous Ketchum/FedEx Email?


Dear FedEx letter writer,

Wow. On behalf of all the corporate communications professionals who ever sat by and watched our bosses spend millions on a "big-time" agency, congratulations. You have done what many of us dreamed of. These agency vice presidents (they are ALL vice presidents) swoop in from the big city and assume that the in-house PR people are simpletons who have no clue how the world of communications works. How many times have we all dreamed of throwing their know-it-all arrogance right back in their faces.

But we keep quiet because our bosses and their bosses are completely in the tank for these big-time agency people.

But you, oh, you took advantage of the reach and range of Peter Shankman (a mutually beneficial arrangement, I must note) to make sure your observation of the big-time agency guy's disdain for your HQ town didn't just get buried in the inboxes of management. You were not to be ignored.

And what a firestorm you started. The agency guy you outed got all the press. You remained anonymous.

AdvertisingAge called you a tattletale and a punk but that's little comfort to the big-time agency since they did write about the whole "tempest in a Tweetpot" anyway. Your company was nicer, at least externally, when they said in a statement to PRWeek, The reaction by our employees proves once again that FedEx takes great pride in our hometown of Memphis.

From the minute I heard about your note, I have wondered about you and whether there have been repercussions for airing this dirty laundry in such a public way. I hope the culture of FedEx is different but my experience has been that embarrassing the boss and second-guessing their choice of big-time agency have both been career limiting moves. I'm sure the media relations team would also like to wring your neck--if nothing else, for exponentially increasing their workload.

FedEx letter writer, we live vicariously through you, wishing we had the guts to say to the world about our boss's choice of meeting speaker: I don’t see much relevance between your presentation this morning and the work we do...

Best of luck to you. And if you ever need to visit a town with even greater self-worth issues, we'll call your Elvis and raise you two Wright Brothers.

Holly

A Rare Breed

[NOTE: If you are interested in purchasing Herefords from us, please visit http://www.bonavistafarm.com/.]

I've always known that we had something unique going on. I mean, how many 30-something non-Amish full-time farmers are there anymore?

But recently we've learned that not only is our life on the farm rare, but we are raising endangered species! According to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC), we are raising two breeds on their conservation priority list.


Decades ago Husband's grandfather decided to raise Ayrshire dairy cattle, probably for their hardiness, their rich milk, and their overall appealing look. Over the years while other farmers either left dairying altogether or switched to higher-producing Holsteins, our farm stayed with Ayrshires. According to the ALBC, there are fewer than 2,500 Ayrshires registered annually in the United States and the estimated global population is less than 10,000, putting the breed on their Watch list.

While the decline of the Ayrshire breed happened slowly around us, the rarity (or plain old unpopularity) of Herefords was well known to us when we started raising them. When Husband and I were engaged, we saw a special exhibit at the Ohio State Fair of this old-time breed that was making a comeback, Herefords. A year or so later Husband returned from a pig show and told me to come outside and see the pig he bought me.

Our first Hereford gilt raised State Fair champions the very next summer and soon, as State Fairs started offering Hereford shows, our pigs were in demand. We have been producing State Fair champions ever since (see champ from the 2008 Indiana State Fair pictured above) and doing a steady business in s&men sales too.

Even for all our efforts to grow and improve the Hereford breed, they are, according to ALBC, on the Threatened list, with fewer than 1,000 annual registrations in the United States and estimated global population less than 5,000.

So here we are: living a rare life on a family farm with a rare full-time farmer under 40, who raises rare species. For some reason, things are rarely normal around here.

Just an Ordinary Day

Today was an average Saturday. We got up a little later and headed out to do errands, including haircuts for the boys and stops at the dry cleaner and grocery.

Just an ordinary day in small town America, right. Then we took time as a family to look at pig s&men in the laundry room. [I don't want to be flagged as one of those sites, so excuse my intentional typo.]


Husband had just collected this s&men from the boar and allowed us to take a peek at the little swimmers with our newly fixed microscope, which has been out of commission for years, for lack, we just learned, of a $7 light bulb.

Anyway, the little swimmers were really doing their thing on the slide.


This is not the moon. It is my very low-tech way of trying to show you what we saw through the microscope. The individual swimmers looked like tiny, tiny sticks flipping up and down. The darker areas on the slide were where they were clumped together, not moving as much.

I don't know if Justin could see anything but he said he did. And he didn't ask too many questions about what we were looking at. S&men is not an unfamiliar word at our house. I actually mentioned this to Ryan's teacher at conferences--in case it came up and she thought we had big problems at home.

Our lesson on little swimmers concluded with me telling Ryan about eggs inside the sow. And Husband taking a bottle of the little guys outside to do their job.

Another normal Saturday.

Movin' on up

Got the great news today that this little blog has been included in the "online magazine rack," Alltop.



I'm in the "rural" page,because they didn't have a category called "corporate farm-wife mommy PR blogger."