Joy is a 160-pound Holstein heifer calf. She holds a special spot in my heart. She makes me smile. She gets the most pets. Joy received her name, which means a feeling of great pleasure and happiness, from a situation that wasn’t so pleasurable or happy. Joy also had a twin, who, unlike her sister, was having trouble thriving and fell ill. All measures were taken to help her recover, but through tireless nights of checks and treatments in the cold of winter, she passed away.

You might be thinking, “Oh no! Please don’t tell us a sad story.” But, truth be told, sadness is sometimes the narrative of farming. Sadness comes from many different directions, not just through livestock. Sometimes a field is planted and tended with so much hope for good yield, but a hailstorm, with no way to stop it, flattens and shreds the crop before harvest. Other times, despite regular maintenance, critical farming equipment fails, halting progress as you frantically call around trying to locate replacement parts. Sadness can settle on the hearts of a farmer. Just when you think you know what’s going on and things are in control, nature can throw you a curveball you didn’t see coming.

But there is faith, hope, and joy. Psalms 30:50 says, “But weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” In times when sadness and situations can send you to bed, it is important to find joy in even the smallest things. It feels so overused to say “When one door closes, another door opens,” but it is the truest statement.

In 2016, we planted our corn crop like any other year. Planting a field is a display of true faith. You have faith that you will be able to harvest and reap its benefits. The faith includes time spent in the tractor preparing the ground for planting the seed and hoping for the right amount of rain to produce that crop for harvest. When a hailstorm flattened our growing crop, we were crippled with thoughts of “What do we do now?” and “How will we get through this?” Though the storm was devastating to our corn, the barns were still intact, and our family had remained safe. That was a comforting joy to us. We rallied and replanted the field with a crop of sorghum that could be grown in the shorter timeframe we now had before fall. Our cows would now have feed for the winter, and all was well.

Courtesy Photo In this photo taken by Bryanna Beyer, Joy, a 160-pound Holstein heifer calf, is seen poking her head out for feeding time at Beyer Farms in Alpena.

There isn’t a farmer out there who won’t have some sort of a similar story relating to faith, hope and joy. What keeps us going? That’s not an easy question to answer. I guess you could say that we lay out the options. Throwing up our hands in defeat won’t get us anywhere. We plan for what we can and prepare for what we can’t.

And as for Joy, the calf, she’ll keep faith that I will be there for the next meal.

Stay tuned. More Joy stories to come.

Bryanna Beyer is a local farmer with a passion for educating others about agriculture. She and her husband Collin operate Beyer Farms in Alpena. To reach her, email beyer_farms@outlook.com.