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August 2020<br />
A year after first chronicling the challenges faced<br />
<strong>Farmer</strong>, Ashley Johnson reflects over the past 12<br />
March 2020, her family found themselves shocked and<br />
and bustle, came to a screeching halt. In some aspects, it<br />
their three children, but thankfully she says, most of their day-tothere<br />
was no physical church, they couldn’t travel to cattle shows,<br />
a family vacation, but the cattle still needed fed, hay made, corn<br />
other daily tasks that needed tending. Their lives never stopped nor<br />
you can find the beauty in each and every day if you look for the<br />
Ty turned 7, and we again<br />
had a birthday party. Family<br />
and friends attended, and we<br />
enjoyed normalcy, even though<br />
it was short-lived. We should<br />
have been getting calves ready for state<br />
fair, and ultimately that didn’t happen.<br />
Thankfully, 4-H, FFA and the <strong>Iowa</strong> State<br />
Fair board were able to come together<br />
and offer a special show with limited<br />
spectators and entries, but those kids with<br />
livestock were able to show. James and I<br />
took a quick trip to Des Moines to watch<br />
the steer and heifer show. We traveled<br />
home via Highway 30 to check out the<br />
derecho damage. I was brought to tears by<br />
the devastation August 10th brought to so<br />
many farmers in our state. Speaking of the<br />
derecho, Aug. 10 was the day we said go<br />
with our addition and ordered the trusses<br />
and lumber. Talk about timing and a money-saving<br />
decision!<br />
We made the difficult decision to transfer<br />
schools for our kids. Ultimately cattle<br />
markets were the driving force. The volatility<br />
in the agricultural markets on a daily<br />
basis is frustrating enough, let alone trying<br />
to survive in a pandemic. Sure, there were<br />
stimulus packages and agricultural subsidies,<br />
but we had to look at the long term<br />
and the unknowns, and we simply couldn’t<br />
afford to send them to private school.<br />
Their first week of school was nothing<br />
short<br />
of overwhelming for me as a<br />
parent as I dropped them off at<br />
a school they had never been<br />
in, didn’t know their teachers,<br />
aides or associates – never mind<br />
the fact they didn’t know any<br />
classmates. It was a challenge,<br />
and for the first week both boys<br />
cried. I can’t say I blame them.<br />
One week in and one of my<br />
biggest fears was confirmed; Ty<br />
fell behind in reading and needed<br />
intervention. <strong>Fall</strong>ing behind<br />
was a major concern of mine<br />
last spring when COVID-19<br />
hit and schools closed. I personally<br />
felt because we attended<br />
a private school and had<br />
to finish the school year Ty<br />
would be ok, but he wasn’t.<br />
<strong>Eastern</strong><strong>Iowa</strong><strong>Farmer</strong>_<strong>Fall</strong><strong>2021</strong>.indd 110<br />
9/15/21 10:26 am
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