My Dad the Agvocate

I just spent 45 minutes on the phone with my dad. He is sitting in his hospital room recovering from a very successful back surgery. I am an hour and 15 minutes away sitting at the dining room table in front of my lab top. I answered my phone and he says... "Yeah - Hey Katie, I want to get on the internet." 




Mom and Dad



Well, if this was a man who had actually been on the internet - not just looking at the internet over my mom's shoulder - but who had actually used a touch pad and right and left buttons, the request might have not come as quite the shock....but I'm proud to say that after our "session" I could work for Dell Customer Service and do a pretty darn good job. Though at one point, I seriously considered just driving down, spending the 30 seconds it would take me to get him to the site he wanted and drive home. I'm not sure Dell could support those travel expenses...

After explaining how to make a window pop up by slowly moving his finger across the pad so the arrow was on top of the picture (cause "What's an Icon?" and "How do you make a dot?" wasn't getting us anywhere), we slowly but surely progressed to the Michigan Dairy News Bureau website. 


The McCune Family Farm



See he is a farmer. And he's proud of what he does and what he has. He should be, he's been farming since he was 12 on the same farm his great grandfather farmed on - in the same milking stanchions. The stories and insight he has on the dairy industry and agriculture overall are fascinating. He has a high school education, but I confidently think he could teach at the university level. Ag is in his blood, he doesn't need books to tell him what to do, he's lived it and he could write the books. 


Yet, his reasoning to check out the site was not to read the latest dairy trends.... no.....he wanted to show the nurses his farm. In only the two days Dad has been at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, MI, he has interacted with just about every employee. This does not surprise me. Nor was I shocked when he told me there was a nurse he met who has a father farming in Ethiopia and the nurse asked if he could come visit our farm.....




This is my favorite photo of my dad ever. It's him.



So when I received the request to get online, I knew this was a big deal for him and it became important to me....and with a glass of wine and a long phone call we finally found exactly where he wanted to be - on our family's feature page. And now with some pictures online, he can proudly display our farm and write down directions so the nurse can come visit. 

And if the hits on the MI Dairy News Bureau site go up tremendously, it's probably because the entire 6th floor staff have been stopping in and checking out our farm thanks to my dad, the Agvocate.


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The Michigan Dairy News Bureau is the center for science based information about Michigan Dairy farming including cow care, environmental/sustainability practices and dairy food safety. Our family farm was featured, among many other great Michigan dairy families, last summer. Check out all their stories, find science based information from the experts and read blogs written by dairy farmers and their families!