As an agriculture educator, part of my summer involves Supervised Agriculture Experience visits. SAEs may include an ownership project like raising animals or a garden, placement projects working a job, or a research or service project.

These are often like the SAE lotto. Is the student going show up, even when they confirmed this morning? Will there be any dogs or interesting younger siblings? Am I up on my vaccinations? These are all the thoughts going through my head on these SAE visit days, even with students like Andie. Andie is a great person, and I am a better teacher for having students like her in our program. I never know what she may come up with next, and for her SAE visit instead of going to her either of her two jobs, she wanted me to come see her cadet training at the local fire department. Even though this fire department is about 40 minutes from her house, this is the location she chose to be a cadet because it is has meetings in the evenings that she can participate in.

When I arrive, I see Steve, the fire chief, who I have known for years. Steve let Andie lead the training depending on her needs. She wanted to spend some time knowing where the equipment was located in the new truck. She worked on understanding what equipment would be located in which bay so she could retrieve it when at a fire. Then she got on her gear to run the hose. It was a really cool SAE visit. Partly because she was overly aggressive with the hose and the spray was a great mister, but more importantly because I saw what a great teacher Steve is for her. He was patient and asked great questions about whether the hose was rolled correctly or not. He let her struggle a bit, but gave clues when needed. As I got in my car, I was thinking how blessed we are to have Steve in our community and thankful for the volunteer fire department. I even let my mind think, “I am so glad we have never needed them on our farm . . . “

You know you should NEVER have that kind of thought without knocking on wood, throwing salt over your shoulder, saying the St. Michael prayer – something!!! 

The next day, I was very thankful for Steve and our volunteer fire department for a different reason . . . 

Yep, this picture illustrates a lot about my husband. I was in a greenhouse workshop at a neighboring school when he called and I texted, “I am in the workshop can you text?” This picture was his response! 

Now what are the stages of grief: denial/shock, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance – I felt them all within the next two hours. But as the day went on so many things to be thankful for:

—our boys were not driving,

— Chad got it to the edge of the field

—He was mowing and not baling with the new-to-is baler purchased earlier this spring

— He had not fixed the door so he was able to get the baler monitor out saving the few thousand dollars it cost

—He got the mower unattached and away without much harm

—The fire department kept the field from burning

—The tractor was insured

—We have awesome neighbors who came over to bale the hay

—Anyone on our facebook page with 100 miles is sending up tractor posts! Bonus: I love it when random events reset may algorithm.

So often, we have some event that happens, and in the moment it sucks – that is a fact, but if we can learn to be curious about that event, we can learn to learn what we can, take what is useful, and leave the trash. 

Living in the light of the silver lining is much better than focusing forever on the part that sucks. I choose to see the blessings in spite of the loss. And to know that one day this will be an epic story we tell our grandkids. Today it still sucks but it is looking more silver all the time . . . maybe with a hint of rose.