Discipline, freedom and NDFB: Season 7 wrap-up

In today’s episode, cohosts Emmery Mehlhoff and Alisha Nord round out season 7 of Straight Talk with NDFB, reflecting on the season, and discussing plans they have for summer 2024.

 We discuss:

• How to prioritize the important things in life 
• Letting things go that no longer serve 
• The importance of showing up 
• How discipline can set you free 

Our hosts will be taking a break from podcasting for the spring and summer to chase calves and plant fields. To contact our hosts about anything, email emmery@ndfb.org. 

To find all the NDFB happenings, visit ndfb.org.

Transcript

[Straight Talk theme] 

[00:10] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. I am your host, Emmery Mehlhoff...

[00:14] Alisha: And Alisha Nord. 

[00:16] Emmery: We are your Farm Bureau duo, bringing you your competitive edge. In today's episode, Alisha and I sit down to reflect on this season of Straight Talk with NDFB. We talk about our springs, our goals for the summer, and ultimately, what it means to be an American. Stay tuned.

[00:36] Alisha: I like it.

[Straight Talk stinger]

[00:41] Emmery: Alisha and I are sitting at the farm office here, where we have been recording our podcast, and we are having our last podcast of the season. We got together last fall, did our first demo episode together, and we hit it off pretty well, so we thought, hey, we'll do this. And now we're gonna take a break between seasons. So, Alisha, what things are you gonna be up to over the next few months here?

[01:12] Alisha: Well, first, this season just went by so fast, like we were talking. I just can't believe that we were reminiscing about our first podcast or demoing just to see if it even floated and went well. And now, like, how are we coming to an end already? It's just time flies by so fast, and now spring is here, and honestly, not having a real winter in North Dakota has made the time fly by even faster.

[01:39] Emmery: Yeah.

[01:40] Alisha: Yeah. I don't know, just kind of same as, I guess, most people. Spring planting is kind of underway for my family. You know, a couple days in the field and then not. And a couple days back in and fixing equipment in between and just trying to get that all to go smoothly. Calving season has wrapped up for us. I know it's starting for some, but we are done. And it was amazing. I think the best part was, was going out and checking the cows and seeing a calf and kind of panicking and then realizing that it was 40 degrees out and they were laying in the straw and they were perfectly fine. And it's like, okay, I can go back inside. Everything's fine. Just wrapping up on getting bulls delivered, and breeding season is just about to start. So not really looking forward to that because it's always kind of hectic running around and doing all of that. But it will all be good to get the cows out on pasture, checking pastures right now, getting fence ready to go, and before we know it, we'll be hauling everything out and not feeding cows every day, so that will be awesome. What about you?

[02:52] Emmery: We're in the field this week for the. I guess last week we were in the field some, but then this week it's like, get up and go. We have not started calving yet, so we calve starting, well, beginning, but mostly the middle of May, start to see our calves on the ground. The cows are doing really well because they're nice and fat, and then they're just able to calve out on green grass, spend the month of May to June doing that. So that's what's going on, on the farm life. And then I am going to have a baby in a couple weeks. So I guess I am timed to have my baby the same time the calves are coming. So I'm not exactly sure...

[03:33] Alisha: You're gonna be busy. 

[03:34] Emmery: Yeah. So that's going to take up a fair amount of time. So it'll be....

[03:39] Alisha: Babies!

[03:40] Emmery: Babies!

[03:41] Alisha: Baby calves and human babies. 

[03:43] Emmery: Yeah, exactly. One of the things that we've talked about over the last season is how do you find time and how do you prioritize extra things in the insanity of the day-to-day. Like, I feel like our generation particularly has a hard time. Well, obviously the Farm Bureau talks about that. Like, how do we get young people involved? How do we get them interested in things? And then obviously, I think that's the case with organizations in general, churches in general. How do we, in the midst of the craziness where everybody's working, and how do we get people interested in different things or participating in things? And so I was just gonna ask you, Alisha, like, what are some of the extra things that you're involved in? Well, what are they and why?

[04:34] Alisha: So I guess a couple of the things that I'm involved in are I'm a part of North Dakota Cattle Women. I'm still active with the Minnesota Junior Angus Association. I'm on the Red River Valley Fair board. I'm the president of North Dakota Agri Women. I help with Bio Girls. You know, I'm an auntie. I still go to livestock shows year round, pretty much. And I guess kind of reflecting back on all of it, some of it's pleasure, more the livestock stuff. Not only are we in that industry, specifically cattle, so that's also income-based, but it's also something that I thoroughly enjoy. Like, that's something that's fun for me. Going to fairs, going to cattle shows, helping 4-H'ers. Like, that's something that I really enjoy. So I think it is good to be involved in different things, but definitely need to take my own words of advice and kind of categorize that into, like, what's important to me right now, like, in this stage of life. Like, what is important to me.

[05:44] Emmery: How do you even prioritize, though? Like, it's hard, especially listening to the list that you gave. Like, how do you look through that? And obviously each one is meaningful. So then like, oh, I need to step back from this one, or...

[06:00] Alisha: I'm President of North Dakota Agri Women, and I'm on my last term, so next year I will be off not being on the officer team. The great thing about having term limits on any organization you are part of is it gives you that breath. Like, okay, my term's done. I can take a breath.

[06:19] Emmery: Yeah. And it keeps you from just staying there out of obligation.

[06:23] Alisha: Right. Because like, guilt is a real thing. Like the feeling of not showing up. So when you have those term limits that are like, "Okay, you're done. Thank you for your service. You can come back, you know, in a year or two years, whatever it is."

[06:37] Emmery: A few years ago, I was very involved in the Civil Air Patrol, which is the auxiliary off of the Air Force. It's a volunteer organization, and they do search and rescue missions and training, etcetera. And so I used to be very involved in that, and it was so good and I learned so much from it. And then natural events in my life ended up, it was too much of a time commitment, so I ended up having to make the decision to step away from it. And I felt so guilty about that. But one of the things that somebody has recently told me is like, it served me for a time, like, this was a really good part in my life. Like, this was a really important part of my life, who I became, teaching me discipline, teaching me about being the best person I could be, good character. All of those things are like, I credit back to all of those years in the Civil Air Patrol, but also realizing that that time has come to an end and just like, letting it go and thanking it and saying, "Thank you, this has served me well. This time is done." 

That might sound kind of dramatic, but I think when we are involved in something, particularly something that has been really important or a huge, huge part of our lives, sometimes it just needs to come to an end. And jobs are like that too. You know, I worked out in Washington, D.C., for a while and I enjoyed it a lot, but I knew that's not where I wanted to stay. And so, like, saying goodbye to that and saying, "Okay, this served me well." I don't know. For some reason that really helped me just acknowledge that important, meaningful time of my life, of development, but then also not hang on to it too long. Because, like, if you hang on to all of these things, you know, it's kind of like you said, you end up either giving so little of yourself to it, or it ends up turning you into a terrible person because you're stressed out all the time. So I think, I think assessing those things, prioritizing a list, and let certain things go that were good for a time, but then also keep the priorities at the forefront.

[08:49] Alisha: Let it be a positive experience. Don't let it drag on you if you have to step away from something. And so I think you had said that multiple times. Let it be a stage in your life or a phase in your life. Like, "Okay, this has served me well," and let it end on that positive note. You don't have to drown yourself in something for 50 years, but let it serve its time. Be happy and move on, and be like, what's next? What is next on the line for me?

[09:19] Emmery: Priorities are so important. What are your personal priorities? What are your personal goals and objectives? And obviously, like, you can have this dream or this goal, but unless you have somebody or yourself to say, "Okay, I'm actually going to make this happen," it never will.

[09:33] Alisha: Holding you accountable, having people in your life to hold you accountable for things you want to accomplish.

[09:41] Emmery: So there's obviously the things that we do because we're interested in them. There's the things that we do for, like, personal development or different things like that. But then there's also, like, we're not just flailing individuals, you know, like, we live in families and communities and states. So I'm just going to go off on this here, but, like, like, nerd moment. So when the United States was formed, one of the things that our founding fathers, I think it was Thomas Jefferson, but I'm drawing a blank. One of his big things, maybe it was John Adams, was like, volunteer association is super important. It's the ability of free people to organize themselves together to do a mission or what they want to do. 

That whole theory stems from the freedom of religion that the United States was founded upon, the understanding or the belief that people should be able to worship how they want to. Because a lot of the people that came to the United States were not allowed to worship as they saw appropriate. They were not allowed to worship God as they saw appropriate. And so that was, like, one of the fundamental principles of our founding of our nation was like, okay, these people, they can get together, and they can be Presbyterian, or they can get together and they can be catholic, or they can worship God as they see fit. And then, like, what stemmed from that is this idea of volunteer association. Your ability to connect with another person to form an association together to be something. Most nations haven't had the plethora or, like, the variety of organizations that the United States has, because they haven't, number one, always been free to do that. The majority of the nations in the world have historically or are still severely regulating the types of organizations that can exist. You can't have a church in some of those countries, for example. You can't have, like, a capitalistic organization or, like, a free market organization in some of these countries or, or anything. 

But, like, in the United States, you can literally have any type of organization you want. Like, obviously, if the organization is against law, doing something against the law, that's not okay. I think that that is something that we really take for granted. The whole reason that the founding fathers thought that that was so important was because they understood the importance of the voice of the stakeholders, for lack of a better word. Like, they understood that as an individual, you can't really do much, but, like, as an association, as a group, you have such a strong voice.

[12:31] Alisha: It just blows my mind that we live in a country, like you said, we can wake up and we can go to work wherever we want. We can quit our jobs. We can worship where we want. We can be a part of whatever we want, buy food wherever we want, raise it. I mean, we can do anything here and be whoever you want to be. And maybe that does sound cliche, but if you work hard enough and you have a passion and a drive to do something in America, you really can do it. A lot of other countries, even right now, as we've evolved, do not have those opportunities that we have. And so that sparked a huge thing in me when you're going off about that. Cause it just, it really, like, I truly am proud to be an American.

[13:21] Emmery: Well, I mean, I totally, I totally agree, and I think that is one of the consequences of living somewhere where you do have so many opportunities and you have so much, for lack of a better word, privilege, because you end up taking it for granted. And it's so easy to become like a spoiled brat because you're like, oh, I have everything. And then you almost get to the point of resenting what you have. I don't know. Everything's so easy. So you lack that drive that people in America have had of, like, knowing where they have come from and knowing what they have. And, like, you think about patriotism or anything over the history of our country and people who came from countries where they didn't have anything or came through the war, like revolutionary war, and then every war following really knew what they had given up.

[14:18] Alisha: And I find myself doing this, too, where it's just super easy to be like, well, I can't do that because I have this, this and this when if I took a step back, I could step away from those three things and make my life easier. And that's a change I have the opportunity to do. So it's one of those things where people are really easy to also complain about all these. It's so weird to say complain about all these opportunities that they have because, I don't know, maybe in a sense, it's so overwhelming that people don't know where to turn or what to keep in their life and what to cut out, because we have every option out there and it can be overwhelming to be like, okay, I want these three things in my life right now, and everything else I'm just gonna kinda push aside. But it's...it's the access is at our fingertips for everything.

[15:16] Emmery: And I think as free people, so the United States being free people, Americans, that's where that discipline is so important. Being able to control yourself, being able to control your passions. I mean, I know people and myself included, that have missed so many opportunities just because I'm spending all of my time on social media. And if I had just cut that out, I would actually have energy to show up. Cause I wouldn't just be, like, living vicariously through my phone. And so, like, having the discipline to govern yourself, to govern your passions, enables you to show up and do things and, like, prioritizing what's important to you. So, like, to kind of pull it back here. Like, the personal development side. Like, okay, what's important to me on the personal development side? What's important to me on a spiritual side, talking about church, but then, like, what is also important to me: Family and thinking about them...

[16:16] Alisha: And your community. 

[16:17] Emmery: Yeah. And that was the next thing I was going to say. So the community and who those people are to kind of segue a little bit into Farm Bureau. I think that's where organizations like Farm Bureau really play a role as an agriculture state. But we really are a community, like, and there's a lot of things that come down the pike that end up affecting us. And so thinking about, okay, like, obviously there's, in community, there's, like, school boards, there's township boards, there's city boards, there's, you know, all of these different things that we can be involved in and should be, like, we should probably all be taking turns on our township boards. And we should probably all be taking turns on these things because the things that happen directly affect us. 

I mean, my township just voted to up our property tax, of all the ridiculous things, and if I had been on the township board, that might probably wouldn't have happened. And so thinking about the things that directly are affecting our community, but then also thinking about the things that affect our state. And so, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I have stayed involved in Farm Bureau, because I really see how effective the volunteer association, the organization of the North Dakota Farm Bureau, is for defending the things that are really important to me. And it's way easier for me to say, "Hey, I'm part of a member organization of 28,000 other families that all agree, have the freedom for this, that, or the other thing than it is for me to say that by myself. And so even though I don't always enjoy every meeting that I go to, I think the value that putting voices together brings is worth it. The priority is how do I protect my community? But then how do I protect my farm, my livelihood?

[18:18] Alisha: And tagging off of what you said, Farm Bureau also has many different categories to it, too. Like, we have the policy side, like you said. Like, if you're interested in policy, there's a spot for you. If you're just getting started farming and ranching, qe have younger committees where you can be around like-minded people and brainstorm and meet different people from across the state or even go to national conferences. We have the local county level. One example is I have quite a few collegiate students graduating, and they said one of the first things they want to be involved in is their county Farm Bureau, because that will be a way for them to meet people within their communities that they may not be familiar with, especially if they're moving to a new community for a job. What better way to meet people, have friends, connections, whatever it may be, by joining a local community board where you are not only benefiting yourself, but then you're helping your community, too. So it's like killing two birds with 1 stone, essentially. But there's just so many different things that you can benefit, too, from being a part of Farm Bureau as well, with not only your professional life, but also personal growth as a person. Because if you'll talk to anybody that's in Farm Bureau, especially if they've been in it for a longer amount of time, some of them will be like, you know, I grew up in the Farm Bureau world, and I've watched so and so do this, and I've watched so and so become a senator or gone on to do really cool or big things. And so that's really neat to see people grow within the organization and kind of where they end up in life, too.

[20:08] Emmery: I think, like, any organization, the... Like an organization is only as good as the people who show up. I fall prey to this all the time. But, you know, you're like, oh, yeah, somebody else will do it. So going back to this township board thing, I was like, oh, they'll never raise property tax on themselves. That's dumb. That's never gonna happen. And so I didn't go to the meeting. I think there was 15 people there, and I was like, oh, they'll never do that. I won't show up. So I didn't, and my brother didn't either. And then my sister did, and my husband did, and then they came back and said, oh, yeah, they raised the property tax by two votes. And I was like, are you kidding me? It was so embarrassing. I was like, I didn't show up. And this happened. Obviously, that doesn't always happen. It was kind of a...It was kind of a fluke thing. I mean, it's not that much, but still, I'm gonna be paying the consequence of that, not of that action, of not showing up. And. And so I think, obviously, knowing that something is only as good as the people that show up. But then I think we kind of fall into this state of what I say doesn't matter how I vote doesn't matter because we're so used to it not mattering. We kind of see the national news, we see the presidential election, and we're like, really? Me showing up isn't going to make any difference. Organizations like North Dakota, farm bureaucracy and...

[21:35] Alisha: A member driven organization.

[21:38] Emmery: Yeah. And other community things like your township board or whatever, you can change the direction of that, or you can -- if you can't turn it around -- you can affect it. And so maybe if I had showed up at that township meeting and been like, maybe I could have changed the direction of that meeting. Like, I always just go back to, like, the policy process of Farm Bureau.

[21:59] Alisha: Well, and I think a lot of our members that are a part of Farm Bureau do see that, because we. We are a fairly large organization, but we're still small enough where if you don't, you don't like a policy that came through or is coming up, you as one person can get up and speak your mind to the entire state of North Dakota, the delegation that is there, and you can change that by what you say, like, people will change their votes by listening to somebody that they are like, oh, I agree with that and I did not think about that. And this will not be a good policy for North Dakota. And you can, as one person actually change policy within North Dakota Farm Bureau. And that's what we try to encourage new members that are just becoming, whether it's on the county board or state board that might not be familiar with how powerful Farm Bureau is as just being one person in the state or at your county, that you can actually make a change by being a part of this. And like you said, showing up and voicing your opinion.

[23:16] Emmery: But I think what it all boils down to is recognizing the abundance of opportunities and organizations that we can be a part of and the abundance of things that there are to do and...

[23:29] Alisha: And having, what you said, the best discipline, having the discipline to pick and choose what you want to do in life. I'm going to ride on that word discipline because that truly is what it comes down to. Because if you have discipline, you can do anything in your life. Having that actual discipline and being able to stick to it, I think, honestly could be a huge life changer for many people.

[23:57] Emmery: Yeah. Including me.

[23:59] Alisha: And me.

[24:00] Emmery: And the disciplined person is a free person. Like, the disciplined person is not a slave to Instagram, or they're not a slave to TikTok or social media or...

[24:11] Alisha: Or being involved in 15 organizations where you feel completely drained at the end of the day...

[24:18] Emmery: Or food or alcohol. Like, the disciplined person is not a slave. The disciplined person is free, and they're free to prioritize. They're free to make a list of the things that are important, which I would hope would be God, family and community, and personal development thrown in there. But that's what I think was being driven at when our nation was founded on the principle of self governance, which is a fancy way of saying discipline.

[24:44] Alisha: Yep, you are rounding out this podcast season. And I think it's, you know, going into summer, everybody's, you know, it's like go, go, go. Like we talked about at the beginning, it's like there's all these things happening, and maybe this is the season where you, you try that discipline, like start picking and choosing and making yourself stick to things to prioritize your life and goals and whatever else it may be that you want out of life, being more disciplined.

[25:18] Emmery: Well, thank you for being on this season ride with Alisha and I. It has been so much fun to cohost with Alisha.

[25:26] Alisha: Yeah, thank you for letting me tag along and just what Emmery said. I hope everybody has a safe planting and calving season and be excited for summer and honestly be excited to be an American.

[25:40] Emmery: That's awesome.

[Straight Talk stinger]
 
[25:45] Emmery: With that, you've been listening to Straight Talk with NDFB. To learn more about NDFB and how to be involved, visit us at ndfb.org.

[Straight Talk theme]