Agvocacy Goals

SMART Goals

Earlier this month, when I spoke about connecting with the consumer at the American Agri-Women Conference, I asked all the participants in my session to write down a goal of theirs regarding how they would become more involved in agvocacy. The participants wrote each goals down twice, keeping one sheet of paper for themselves and handing me the second one. 

You see goals should be SMART. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely, is how the acronym goes. However, I like to interchange Attainable for Accountable. By sharing your goals with others it gives you more accountability, just like when I shared my 101 in 1001 list on my blog. 

The goals that the participants wrote down ranged form blogging once a week, join Twitter to speaking to groups about agriculture, and going to law school so she stand up for family farms and agriculture. 

I love when others share their goals with me because it means that I might have some of the knowledge or resources to help them achieve their goals. What are you working towards? No need to wait until the new year to start thinking what you want to achieve?

p.s. Don't forget that December 1 is the last day to vote for the Best of the Barns Awards. I've been nominated in a couple of categories, and would love your vote. 

Ally's First Haircut

Pretty girl. 

This weekend the Boy and I played hairdresser and worked with our Hereford calves. Remember Ally from my feeding video? Ally is one of the heifers that we'll be keeping and hopefully showing this summer. 

Ally was pretty fuzzy so we decided we would shave her head out to see what was under all that fuzzy. 

The boy used a pair of clippers called sheepsheads to shave her head. 

Getting closer to being done. When we clip our cattle we put them in an aluminum chute. This keeps both the animal and us safe, as well it prevents them from moving around too much. 

Finished product! Doesn't she look great. We can't wait to get Ally back in again and clip on the rest of her body. We won't shave the hair anywhere else, except for her head and part of her tail. On the rest of the body we just trim off part of the hair to help extenuate her positive attributes and hid her flaws. 

These are two of the heifers, Firework and Shelly, that we'll be selling. We've been working on them quite a bit and they are well on their way to becoming awesome show heifers. Soon Ally will be standing their next to these girls looking just as fabulous.