When we arrived in Philadelphia, there was a malfunction with the door of the plane, causing me to miss my connection. The next available flight? Days away. The hotel? An eye-watering sum due to the Fourth of July holiday in founding city, USA.
After finally settling into my hotel room I discovered, the hotel restaurant was closed for the holiday. And to top it all off, my late-night food order got delivered to the wrong address. Picture me, hangry, trying to explain the hotel’s layout to a confused delivery driver through my phone screen. It was frustrating, a little expensive, and completely out of my control.
As I sat stewing in my hotel room, a thought dawned on me: This is a lot like farming.
Think about it. How many times does your meticulously planned day on the dairy go completely sideways?
The unexpected delay: You've got your breeding schedule laid out, then the cow doesn’t cycle as she’s supposed to. Or a sudden, unforecasted rain shower hits, derailing your hay day plans.
The unavoidable expense: That emergency vet call in the middle of the night for a complicated calving? Essential, but not in the budget’s spreadsheet. Or the unexpected spike in fuel prices that eats directly into your bottom line. These are the "costly hotel rooms" of farming – you must pay because the animals rely on you.
The misdirected delivery: You ordered a specific part for the milking parlor, and it shows up completely wrong, or worse, got lost en route, despite adamant location checks to the tracking number. Or you've got a load of feed scheduled, and the truck breaks down counties away. It's that feeling of vital resources being just out of reach, despite all your planning.
The airport ordeal left me feeling a little helpless, at first. But then, that familiar farm mentality kicked in. Just like on the dairy, where you can't control the weather, the markets, the cattle behavior, or every mechanical hiccup, you learn to adapt. You make the new plan. You find the workaround. You might grumble about the cost, but you still make the call. And you certainly don't go to bed hungry (well, I don’t, anyway).
That night, eventually, my food arrived . . . after a sassy conversation with customer service. And I made it back to Wisconsin a day later than planned – and at a different airport than my car was. It was an inconvenience, but a manageable one. I thought my travel saga was bad . . . until I caught up with a coworker this past Monday morning who'd just returned from their own breed convention. Hearing about their journey, filled with many more twists and turns, suddenly made my situation seem like a minor hiccup. It reminded me, once again, of the incredible resilience and problem-solving grit that our farmers display every single day. You don't just react to chaos; you keep going right through it, finding solutions, making sacrifices, and always, always putting the needs of the herd and land first.
My airport saga was a small taste of the fickleness constantly navigated by farmers and ranchers. No matter the curveballs thrown, they’re there continuing to nourish our communities.
Samantha StammSamantha Stamm is the 2025 Hoard’s Dairyman editorial intern. She co-owns and manages an Angus seedstock and commercial cow-calf operation with her family in northeast Kentucky. Stamm earned a master's degree in agricultural communications from Oklahoma State University and a bachelor's degree in agribusiness with a dual major in animal science from Morehead State University.
