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Unknowns require faith. While they can bring about sorrow, they can also deliver our greatest joy.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

March 9, 2020

2 Min Read
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My farmer servicing his sprinkler and getting it ready to irrigate for the 2020 season. Shelley E. Huguley

It's the beginning of another season. No matter how long I've been a farmer's wife, it seems like the next crop year comes around quicker than the one before. Didn't we just finish harvesting the 2019 crop?

Since harvest, my farmer has been brainstorming what the 2020 planting season might look like. He's been visiting with fellow farmers, his seed rep and running budgets, plus keeping an eye on what the weather might do three, six and nine months from now, which is anyone's guess. And hopefully he's reading his Southwest Farm Press for some added perspective! 

When we start a new year, I always have a bit of anxiety mixed with anticipation. The idea of starting new is exciting but the unknowns ahead also make me nervous. Will it rain? Will it be enough rain? Is it going to hail or will our crops get blown out by a windstorm? Will the pivots keep pace with summer's heat? Will the wells keep pumping? Will the equipment keep running or require expensive repairs? Will my farmer and son still like each other by summer's end? (Just joking, kind of.)

Farming unknowns seem to come harder for me than other unknowns. For example, when my farmer and I were having kids, we loved the thrill of not knowing if we were having a boy or a girl, although it drove everyone else crazy! I told my farmer, I could have 100 babies for that one moment when the doctor says, "It's a ____!" (My farmer said no, so we settled for three.) For nine months you nurture this little being inside of you not knowing their name, if you'll be braiding or buzzing their hair or dressing them in blue or pink. Beyond the martian-ultrasound image, you don't know what they look like and yet you are hopelessly in love!

Then when that moment arrives, it's unexplainable. Seeing their faces, cradling their tiny bodies and hearing their first cry and thinking, "So, that's who's been in there this whole time!" There's nothing quite like it.

People would ask, "If you don't know what you are having, how do you prepare?" Yellow, lots of yellow! We didn't have a particular name picked out, either. We wanted to see our child first and then name them. Their hospital nursery bands read "Baby Boy Huguley," or "Baby Girl Huguley," instead of their name because it usually took us 24 hours to decide. 

The truth is all the unknowns in our lives require faith. Unknowns can birth sorrow, but they can also bring us our greatest joy. While farming is risky, even painful at times, it's such a privilege to do what we do. While I don’t know what this year will hold, we'll take it seed by seed, day by day and anticipate the harvest!

About the Author(s)

Shelley E. Huguley

Editor, Southwest Farm Press

Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife, she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions made each season based on “if” it rains, “if” the drought continues, “if” the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such as Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.

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