ADGA Grand Adventure Convention

Yesterday afternoon, we visited the American Dairy Goat Association Grand Adventure Convention, an annual event that was held in Grand Rapids this year, which is about two hours away from us. It was our first time at an ADGA convention. We were only there for a few hours, but it still allowed us to visit with vendors, other goat owners, and check out some of the goat and dairy products in person that we otherwise only usually see in catalogs or on the vendor websites. I was personally thrilled to meet some of the folks who are breeding Guernsey Goats, and I really hope that ADGA decides to accept the breed as one of their standards, because they are just lovely caprines, very nice milkers, and it would be a shame if the breed was not officially recognized. Being recognized means that the goats can be registered as purebreds through ADGA’s registration program.

Our primary purpose for our visit, however, was that I was speaking on “Agvocacy: Using the Web to Promote Your Farm.” The presentation was about an hour long, and we had a great group with lots of questions, so we ran over by a few minutes, but as it was the last session in that conference room for the day, that was A-OK! It is always exciting to meet others who recognize the value of using the Web to connect with customers and others who are interested in their farm. It’s simply not possible to teach anyone the technical skills required to build a website in an hour’s time, but hopefully our attendees were able to glean helpful information to launch them into getting that accomplished, whether on their own or by hiring someone to get them started.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise, I recommended the use of Content Management Systems – with my preference being WordPress – to build their websites. The great thing about WordPress and the other CMS products out there is (1) they are Open Source – meaning community-driven, free-to-use software and (2) once the framework is in place, it’s so easy to update your site using the WordPress Dashboard. You login to the Dashboard through your browser, and adding Blog Posts or Pages is done using a word processor-like interface – no knowledge of coding required! I discussed this in a bit more detail on our other website, Trasentino Consulting, last month. Visiting there will show you a screenshot of what that interface looks like.

We had a really pleasant time, and came home last night to get our chores done. Three of our Guinea Fowl decided to stay out for the night, instead of in the chicken coop. I get so nervous when they do that, but I was relieved to find them all alive this morning, and desperate to get back inside. It’s been raining pretty steadily all morning, and they were soaked.

I’m having a slow start this morning; I drank quite a bit of tea yesterday, and consumed some of it too late in the day, clearly, because I woke up at around 1 AM this morning and didn’t get back to sleep until just after 4 AM. Needless to say, I really want to go back to bed for a bit, but I still need to get outside and milk. I’m sure our herd is getting quite annoyed, because they are used to being milked about…oh…three hours ago.

So, I should sign off for now! If you attended the class yesterday – first of all, thank you! If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to email me. My address is trase@ the name of this site, omitting the www. portion. Or you can use the contact form located here, which will also give you an idea of what I meant yesterday when I said to make use of that type of form instead of publishing your email address on your site. 🙂

If you’d like to download a copy of my presentation, here it is: Agvocacy: Promoting Your Farm On The Web

Have a great day, everyone!

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