After high school, I attended college at UW-Platteville. I was pretty sure that I would eventually return back to the farm, but I wanted to get some different experiences first.
Now, the classmates that I was in college with are all over the country in the agriculture industry. I recently went to a seminar in Colorado, and one of the keynote speakers was a college buddy of mine. We still work together today, and it was pretty cool to see him as a speaker at this seminar.
It’s interesting when you look around to see how evolved a lot of the people that you went to school with are. People are making their own mark on the industry. The agriculture community is really small. The connections that you made years ago remain today.
I didn’t realize it then, but college was really the start of growing my network in agriculture. I always encourage youth, even if they know they want to return to their family farm, to get a year or two of experience off the farm. You never know who you’re going to meet or what connection you’re going to make that will circle back 20 or 30 years down the road.
