Dreams are Goals Wearing Work boots

During the winter months farming looks very different than the rest of the year, most people think of farming as tractors, livestock, hot long days and bib overalls. You think I am joking about the overalls but I rock those babies on loading day!   For us, there is fewer feed store runs, fewer early morning pasture moves, and of course more darkness. But with the change in seasons,comes the time to “hit the books” finalizing the previous year’s finances, preparing to give Uncle Sam the good or the bad news, and begin setting goals to turn this year’s dreams into realities.

 Farming chores during the winter definitely have a different view, spent in offices, with financial headaches, regulations, inspections and spreadsheets. Many times they aren’t as formal as my spreadsheets, sometimes it is planned in spiral notebooks leaning against a pickup truck and scheduling inspections while feeding. Despite where the plans are created we all start with a dream.

For me, I love all the nerdy things. What I dislike is when life and nature gets in the way of my plans and projections. I mean really, after spending hours crunching numbers and completing several different scenarios to plan the number of birds to raise then mother nature comes along and throws extreme heat or torrential downpours or lurking predators at me. Well, how dare her interfere with my perfectly laid-out plan!

There is an old saying by Dwight Eisenhower

“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.”

Now I may not be in the corn fields and not a thousand miles away but, January Planning Amber is different than Amber in July managing flocks, working to prevent heat stress or obsessively monitoring trail cameras to stay ahead of all of mother nature’s chicken eaters. I have come to terms with that reality and know 2023 has gone from a dream to a goal, AKA spreadsheets and Planners and I know we will have to pull on our work boots in order to keep us on track but we are ready! I think!