The beginning...

Hello everybody!  Actually, nobody as of right now, but hopefully that will soon change.

This is my very first attempt at a blog entry.  I might be behind the times, but better late than never. 

I suppose the appropriate subject to start with would be to tell you a little about me, so here goes!

I was born in Lafayette, IN and raised around Crawfordsville, IN.  I've lived in Montgomery County for most of my life with the exception of a few years in southern Illinois and Indiana around the Evansville area.
Growing up on a farm, my love for agriculture has not stopped growing from day one.  I can remember dad putting hog feed in  my little pail with a clown face on it so I could "help."  I probably thought I was a big man back then!  We raised hogs from farrow to finish and also raised Holstein cattle.  We ddn't milk them, and I'm not quite sure why they were Holstein.  Nonetheless, I was too young to care about what they were.  I just remember how neat it was to watch the silage come out of the silo and those huge steers coming up to eat!  I don't think the hogs fascinated me as much, but I did have my go-to pig Wally.  Not that he was special, but I think he had markings that made him easy to identify.

We lived on that farm until I was in the third grade, and man how my brother and I would roam with just us two or a couple of our friends.  Days were endless there.  We would crawl all over the farm machinery in the barn, make forts, and make tunnels and little hideouts in the hay barn. We even took old barn siding from a barn that blew down and made a tree house by ourselves!  That thing was sturdy because we put a couple layers of those boards down and secured them with about all of the nails we could find!  Of course is was right above our sandbox.  That's where a lot of work got done... Lots of farming and construction work with the Tonka toys.  There are many, many more memories from that Whitefeather Farm, and they will always be special to me.

During second grade, my mom got rushed to the hospital.  I can still remember the ambulance coming to pick her up.  Turns out she was diagnosed with Lupus.  This meant dad needed to get an off-farm job for the health insurance benefits.  He got a job with UPS and during the middle of my third grade year, we moved to another farm that we already owned so dad could scale down his farming duties.  He retired from UPS 25 years later!  I can't thank him enough for the sacrifices that he made for our family.  I have been very blessed to have the parents, brother, and daughter that I do and I can't imagine life without them!

I lived at that location until I went to the University of Southern Indiana and later on Purdue University from where I graduated with an Associate's in Agronomy.  I had quite the time during my college years as I'm sure many of you did as well!  I think I learned more from life during those years than I did from my classes.  I won't ever forget some of those professors and what they did for me whether they realized it or not.  Thank you to all of you educators out there!

I'm sure you are wondering why I am a single dad, and yes... I have custody of my daughter.  That will be another blog in itself!  Not really ag-related, but an interesting story nonetheless!

Once I get past the get-to-know-me blogs on here, I sure hope it leads to interesting and productive posts that we can all benefit from.  Maybe even just for a laugh:)

Thank you for reading,

-Joe