About

Everything I ever needed to know about hard work, creativity, and finding adventure in the ordinary I learned while growing up on my family’s dairy farm in northern Wisconsin.

Life is unpredictable. I’m betting my dad didn’t envision having four daughters to help him work the dairy farm where he’d grown up. Yep, four girls. No boys. Yet my parents never advised us that “Girls can do anything boys can do”, because we always assumed that was indeed the case.

Creative thinking is worth the effort. “Picking rock” is a springtime farming ritual that’s exhausting, dirty, and generally boring. It involves walking through a field alongside a tractor/wagon duo to find rocks and put them on the wagon. One year our sister team realized that walking back and forth between the rocks and the wagon was wasting time. There had to be a better way! And there was. We formed a rock brigade line and threw rocks to (at) each other. What could possibly go wrong?

There’s usually room for improvement. When I was in junior high, my parents bought an Apple IIe computer to track important cow information: Names, breeding cycles, feeding details, etc. (Yes, we named every single cow.) That little computer brought us right to the cutting edge of farming coolness. I’m pretty sure that my interest in technology can be traced back to (1) the Apple IIe and (2) the arrival of War Games.

Some things don’t need to be improved. A Wisconsin/Norwegian tradition I took with me to Colorado was my love for lefse. My son dove into the lefse-making fun when he was about 18 months old, and he continues to humor me during the all-day lefse making adventures that cover every inch of the kitchen with flour. The recipe hasn’t changed through the generations. But now that my son is tall and strong, he serves as the designated roller. I love my new role as the designated taster.