I was invited to be included on a blog about farm blogs. I know that sounds redundant, but this was a blog put together by a dedicated blogger who wanted to compile a list of farm blogs around the world.

Here’s how it works: I have a Web log (“blog”) about our farm called the “Knolltop Farm Wife.” Someone else who also has a blog about their farm has been to my blog and liked it enough to recommend it to the blog about farm blogs. Are you with me?

I was sent an invitation to be on this blog of farm blogs and they wanted me to write a brief summary of who I am and what my blog is about, plus a few pictures. Thinking this was really cool, I cooperated and sent my summary and snapshots to be a part of the blog of farm blogs.

A couple of weeks went by and I checked on the blog of farm blogs to see what was what. It was there that I realized how our perceptions of people, places and things can be deceptive.

The author of this blog had posted my summary and pictures and then added his own introduction of my blog. I was fine with it until he wrote that I owned and operated an organic dairy farm.

The last I knew, to be an organic dairy farm I had to have organic cows, organic feed and organic children milking them. (Well, maybe organic children is a stretch.) And, you had to be certified by a certifying agency, and in order to be certified you had to jump through more hoops that I’m willing to jump through to produce the same white, creamy substance that does a body good – that I’m already producing without any hoop-jumping at all.

If you take a glance at my blog you will not see any promotion of anything organic. There’s not one word leading anyone to believe that I even endorse organically grown food. You’ll see more about cows, kids, baseball games and birthday parties than about organic food.

I’ve written about everything from conventions and conferences to cow shows and moonlit tractor races. I cover the weather to extremes, get on my soapbox too often, post pictures of meaningless daily life and declare what God has done lately.
I’ve taken a daily journal of my private life and made it public for all of cyberspace to see. My goal is to show the world how life on our farm is lived.

Pondering how anyone could misinterpret my blog, I wondered if being a small dairy farm triggered the organic assumption. Or maybe it was because it’s a small family farm and I have more than two kids. Or maybe they automatically thought it was an organic farm because we have a small herd, more than two kids and the four kids that we have only have two parents.

Or, maybe the organic light bulb went off when they saw pictures of me with my long braided hair under my wide-brimmed sunhat, wearing a cotton calico dress, tiptoeing through the cow pasture with four kids under the age of five following behind.
Nope, not me – wrong blog.

Regardless of being misunderstood, I consider it an honor that even one person liked my blog enough to recommend it for a worldwide farm blog. And I’ll keep on writing about this challenging and ever-changing rural lifestyle we call farm life – no matter what the perception.

Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.