Recently I had the chance to tell my story to a group of young, impressionable minds.

Sitting at a volleyball tournament all day long has a tendency to get a little boring for the dads, unless they bring some reading material for the downtime. Nearly every dad who walked into that gym had a magazine or newspaper in their hand and when their daughter wasn’t playing, they were caught leaning back in the bleachers with a paper in front of their faces, catching up on the news of the day.

My husband was no different. He wasn’t reading USA Today, but a farm newspaper.

While watching one of the nine games, I heard a group of girls behind me talking about the “farm newspaper” sitting on the bleachers in front of them. Not knowing I was eavesdropping on their conversation, they talked freely about how funny this farm paper was.

One of them said, “Look, there’s a farm paper, oh my gosh, can you believe it? What? Is it delivered every morning to like five people? That is so funny!” Giggle, giggle, giggle.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to turn around and set this little gal straight. I jokingly said, “There are more than five people who work every day to feed you! We are dairy farmers, and we get up every day to milk the cows so you can have milk for your cereal in the morning.”

She was instantly embarrassed and all her teammates started laughing. I stopped her when she wanted to apologize, and told her I wanted her to know there is a whole industry full of people who read farm newspapers, and they work hard to provide food for the nation.

Then the whole team got in on the conversation, telling me where they were from and that they had never been on a farm and didn’t know anything about it. Of course, I had my camera in hand and snapped a shot as they posed with the Michigan Farm Bureau newspaper.

We had a great conversation and I spent the rest of the day cheering for my new little team. They were such sweet girls!
Enlightening ten 14-year-old girls about where their food comes from took all of about 10 minutes, and I gained a team full of friends from the suburbs of Detroit. Hopefully they will think of me when they pour their next glass of chocolate milk or dive into a bowl of ice cream. Telling our story is what it’s all about!

As a side note, as I was asking these girls if they had ever been on a farm, they said no, but their coach was married to a man who grew up on a dairy farm. As it turns out, their coach is Allie (Hoard) Ferry, the wife of Scott Ferry, who grew up on a Hillsdale County farm and is in the process of taking the farm over from his mom and late father, Harold Ferry.

Allie’s mom is Cindy Hoard, who I worked with at the Farmers’ Advance back in the late 1980s. What a small world!

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.