Feeling good about yourself can help the family farm succeed by making you better at making decisions, dealing with problems, negotiating and leading.

Tears sting my eyes as I pass the greeting card section. With a pang of sorrow, I remember I don’t need to buy one this year. I’ll have to send my love to the celestial realms with thoughts of treasured memories of my daddy who passed away many years ago; but I stop to look.

“Each generation has had their unique spin on how to manage the ranch, with different approaches,” Alex Hart says. “We are becoming 21st century agriculturalists, promoting the good work ranchers and land managers do, taking care of the landscape sustainably.”

It was an early Thursday afternoon. I’d made the 26-mile run into Burley to a sale with a little load of leppy and oddball calves that, after a few weeks of TLC and too much money spent on grain, finally appeared respectable enough that I dared take such a ragged lot wearing my brand to town.

We are in the market for a new horse – a new horse for a just-turned-8-year-old girl. An outsider, one somewhat unfamiliar with our world, might believe that this horse is her first horse, her beginner horse, you might say. If one believes that, one would be wrong.

A few years ago, during an August hot enough to fry pancakes on sidewalks, I was home while my hubby handled 4-H at the fair with the kids. He oversaw some 4-H activities at the time, so he stayed at the fairgrounds while I trucked an hour one way back home to take care of chores on our little ranch.

To me, there is no job more enjoyable than working a pen of cattle with a team of stockmen that I call friends. There are many places across the country where processing day is as much a community event as it is a cattle management task that just needs to be completed.

Is anyone else wondering how it’s May already? Because I am! They say time moves faster as you get older and, at the ripe age of 25, I can attest to that. All jokes aside, May marks my 10th month here at Progressive Cattle. But I’m no stranger to this publication.

I’ve been hanging around for a decade or two. I’ve had some good luck, but I’ll bet I’m like you.