My husband has been a dairy farmer his whole life. In 2006 we lost the rental farm that helped pay the bills with corn and soybeans that could go to market. Since 2006 everything that has been grown on the home farm goes to feed the cattle. We have not been able to rent any other farm ground in the area because the crop farmers keep renting it all up. We have tried to streamline our farming operation so that we can make our current bills and stay afloat. Unfortunately our past bills are eating us alive with there 18% interest. A new bank has tried to help us out but our account payables are just too high for them to be able to help us. We can sell the cows and we have been selectively selling to help pay off the account payables but we can't lose all our cows. Cows are our family. Our cows have names, they are not just a number to us. My husband has taken great pride in his herd and building it up to a quality herd with quality genetics. We have finally gotten a bull into the AI program and we are hoping to get more sold to AI companies. That is a big hurdle to get a bull into stud. Anyway, one thing is losing the dairy cows but another thing all together is telling our employees that they no longer have a job. That is the toughest part of all and one that we would hope to avoid. We employ 4 people either part or full time and one of our employees has 5 children to support. How do you tell a father of 5 that he no longer has a job because you can't get a bank to help you out? Our bank has ignored us for the past 3 years so we have approached a new bank that is willing to work with us if we get our payables down.

We have been very lucky that our local feed dealer and coop have been so understanding and they do keep working with us. It is a hard and very difficult time for us right now and we just need some relief. So I was thinking that if this could go out to 100,000 people who would be able to spare $3.00 then we would have a chance to start over without all of the heartache that goes with selling everything and putting hard working people out of work.

This is just a crazy thought and I hope that people will understand that this is kinda the last hope that we have. I am hoping that this will also inspire others that are in the same situation to reach out. A little here and a little there from people do really go a long way. We are all community and neighbors whether we live 1 mile away or a million.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and if you can help out a little then A MILLION THANK YOUS!!!!

Donna