It’s winter. It’s Nebraska. It’s just plain cold. And it seems as though everything is frozen: my fingers, the pond where the cows drink from, the cat’s water bowl and the lake. The ducks are circled around the last remaining water here in this picture … and the kids asked when we could go swimming! I told them unless you have a wet suit and a death wish, it will be a while.

This time of year, I’m always reminded of how dreary the landscape is and how time just seems to creep by until the warm days of summer reappear. But it’s also during this time that I gather with friends and co-workers at the cattle convention and am reminded of how thankful I am that farmers work 7, 12, 365 to put safe, affordable, healthy food on my family’s dinner table. They are the ones out there breaking up the ice so cattle have water to drink; they are the ones in the bitter cold fixing fence, feeding cattle and fixing equipment; they are the ones crunching the numbers to make farming work for their own families, and for mine, in the years to come.

But it is January and it is Nebraska. So I’m going to complain at least one more time that I’m cold and I wish things would thaw.

Until we walk again …