When I compare this semester to last, it has been anything but quiet. From the start there were things to work on and get involved with. In the past week, I have been to two 2-day conferences with another one coming next week Thursday! On top of all of this, next week is test week... fun stuff!
Last week Friday and Saturday, January 28-29, I went to the Iowa Farm Bureau Young Farmer's Conference in Des Moines, IA, along with my friends Abigail and Rachel. We went as representatives of Sioux County. The keynote speaker was Jolene Brown! She was so good and mixed the right amount of humor into her talks to make them very effective. A lot of what she covered was on farm succession and the best way for young farmers (ages 20-30) to go about taking over the family business, or getting into farming, when the current age of the Iowa farmer is around the age when many people want to retire. She also discussed the best way for families to work together and how to lay out wills that will best fit a family(business) going through the major transitions that change in management can bring. She said that it's important to work yourself into management over 7-10 years, starting with labor and working your way up. I agree with her and she definitely gave me a lot to think about. If you ever get a chance to hear her speak, DO IT!!
Dr. David Kohl also spoke about how the world economy will affect what goes on here in the United States.
After the speakers, there was a social time. Now, most of the people there were young couples with kids under the age of 5. There were also some single guys there, but the only single girls that we could pick out were the three of us. Let's just say that even though nothing bad happened, guys can be annoying especially when they've had too many beers and won't take the blatant hints to get lost. Not everyone we met was bad though, and overall it was a really good time. Abigail and I even went out of our comfort zones and did some country line dancing.
There were also some workshops on Saturday. I went to one on how to balance life between family and farm. There were some great tips and websites provided that will help organize my life in the future, but wasn't really what I was hoping for.
So yesterday and today, myself and three other Ag. Club officers went to Ankeny, IA, for the Iowa PAS Spring Leadership Conference. The Ag. Club has officially been a member of the IA PAS Organization for three weeks. For those of you who don't know what PAS is, it stands for Post- secondary Agriculture Student. It's basically a professional ag. club for ag. students. It works with the FFA but is its own organization. At the conference members can compete in College Bowl, team events, and single member events both covering dairy, beef, swine, sheep, ag. business, interview and career planning events. There is so much to do once you get involved. We rounded up our four people and competed in the College Bowl, which technically calls for five people, but they were lenient with us since it was our first year. We made it to the second round but that's all the farther we got. However, our scores from those two rounds were high enough to qualify us for the National PAS Conference in March. We don't know yet if we'll be going but we hear it's lots of fun :) If all goes well, our club should be involved in full swing next year and we expect to do well because we have great students!
Funny story from PAS: We decided really last minute to compete in College Bowl so I wasn't given much of a choice. Let's just say that the guys on my team weren't sure that I was going to make it through the first round because I was so nervous. Right before we began the first round one of them leaned over to me and said "Don't forget to breathe!" That's when I realized I had been holding my breathe. Probably not a good life choice right before a competition. Whoops ;). Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I actually answered a couple of questions!! Whoo hoo!! I'm looking forward to the coming years!!
God bless!
Erin
