Hey Everybody

[D. D. Olson]

What would you like the group to know about you?

I live on a farm in Minnesota that's been in my family for over 70 years. I'm about an hour out of the Twin Cities -- just far enough to be rural, but close enough to shopping, movies, theater, great restaurants. I'm happily married, work in a library, have 1 step-daughter who is 25. The biggest thing that's happened to me in a long time is that we took a trip to China in April to visit my brother who is working over there. Mostly I live a quiet life. I like it that way.

My birthday gift to myself when I turned 50 a few years back was to stop worrying about what people think of me -- which isn't the same thing as worrying about how people feel....

[Carmen Diane Bailey]

Hi D.D. Happy to meet you.
And thank you for joining our group.
If you have any questions now just ask away.

[Rosamaria]

Hello also from Minnesota -right in the Twin Cities. Love it here.

I love life, work hard, play just as hard. I believe my purpose is to manifest life to the fullest. Have three daughters and a son, have been single (again) for about five years, love people, have lots of friends and keep a very active life. Never a dull moment.

Look forward to many conversations with very interesting people in our new place~

[Carmen Diane Bailey]

Welcome Rosamaria.
Please have fun in our little group here and ask all the questions your heart desires.

[Lori]

HI D.D...what sort of farm do you have? You are one of the few that has been able to sustain a family farm...CHEERS to you and your family for what you do!

I have lived in Canyon, Texas(just south of Amarillo and home of the second largest canyon in the US) for nine years now and have truly come to understand the farming and ranching lifestyle because of it. On the weather reports nightly from Amarillo I get to hear the soil temperature and the pan evaporative rate. Have listened to the Farm Report on the radio early Sunday mornings too. This is cattle country so most of the farming done is to sustain that industry, but down south a bit is big cotton.

I grew up in NJ and my dad commuted in and out of NYC for work, so moving to Texas was a lifestyle and attitude adjustment. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined being stopped dead in the middle of the road by a bull or a "cattle jam", as I like to call them. That's when cowboys are moving the herd from one pasture to another. It can be across the street or up the road. Yup, cowboys are alive and well here...the backbreaking, hardworking kind, not the "urban" wannabes.

I have become "countryfied" and couldn't live in the city again if I had to. I'll take a cattle jam over a traffic jam any day!

[Bluerskies]

D.D., I really like this... "My birthday gift to myself when I turned 50 a few years back was to stop worrying about what people think of me -- which isn't the same thing as worrying about how people feel.... " those are some words to live by :)

[Lori]

HI Pam! For some, living in the country is too quiet...but where else can we howl at the moon at the top of our lungs and sing HOME ON THE RANGE to the deer and the antelope (can cattle)! Only the crickets care, right?

[ZORBO]

150 cattle! Pan, you don't look like a ranhcer maybe a playboy bunny!................................lol