When I was a little, I used to love listening to my mother tell me about her experience on her grandparent’s farm in Michigan. My mother’s father was in the Navy, so many times while he was “out to sea,” my mother (along with her mom and 2 brothers) would stay with her grandparents and help out on the farm. The stories always made me smile because I could tell how much my mother loved being on the farm with her grandparents, it was their livelihood, so they worked hard, but always made sure my mother had fun while helping out. My sister and I would sit and listen to her stories before bed and we were just mesmerized. She would tell us about waking up extra, extra early with her grandfather and help him do chores around the barn. She would tell us about picking strawberries with her grandmother for hours and hours that needed to be sold. She would tell us about milking cows and helping with the planting and cooking and baking with her grandmother.  Being farmers wasn’t easy, but it was something that was in my great-grandparents blood and they had a passion for it and loved it.  It’s funny, till this day, every time my mother eats a strawberry she tells us it reminds her of being with her grandmother so many years ago.

I grew up with a special appreciation for farmers and all the hard work, blood, sweat and tears that goes into maintaining a farm. It’s not easy.

I’m honored to have partnered with SheKnows and the US Farmers & Ranchers Alliance, with their Food Dialogues videos to give farmers and ranchers of all sizes and production, a voice.

It’s important to increase consumer confidence in modern agriculture, and I think it’s so amazing what they’re doing by creating these wonderful Food Dialogue videos to do just that!  The Food Dialogues video series highlights the daily activities of farmers and ranchers across the nation who grow and raise their own food.  It’s pretty incredible to see just how much goes into a daily day for these men and women.  We have a general idea of what farmers do, but not exactly how they do it.  Let’s face it, getting the opportunity to spend time on a farm alongside a farmer is not something that most of us get to do!

I’m excited to share with you one of my favorite videos from the Food Dialogues – How to Milk 1200 Cows. Oh, yes… it CAN be done!  Check it out:

There’s many other videos to check out, too – to name a few: How to Care for 7000 Pigs, How to Use Trash to Help Crops Grow and How to Gather 50,000 Eggs a Day. The great thing about these videos is that they will help answer so many questions Americans have about food production by showing just how farmers are growing and raising food.  As you can see, it’s not an easy thing to do!

Disclosure: This post was written in partnership with SheKnows and the USFRA, partially funded by one or more Checkoff programs. As always, all thoughts and opinions shared are mine and mine alone.