Karen Healey

My name is Karen Healey, and I live on a tiny farm northeast of Greeley, Colorado, in an old farmhouse that I proudly claim is the ugliest in Weld County (even though I've been told differently).

For more years than I care to admit I raised day old Holstein calves. The object was to grow them to about 250 pounds (3 - 4 months old), take them to the sale barn with a prayer to the market gods, and get a check big enough to pay the bills. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Like any farming venture, it was labor and capital intensive. 2007-08 was nuts when, thanks to the banksters and the speculators, commodities climbed into the stratosphere while at the same time cattle prices fell off a cliff, especially Holstein steers. Some producers were forced out of business, some declared bankruptcy. I was one of the former. Everyone else hung on by their fingernails, dairys and feedlots were hit the hardest.

Currently, I'm employed to babysit smaller weaned calves. I enjoy what I do even though, occasionally, questions about my sanity crop up, like when it's below zero and the wind is blowing.

Favorite indoor activities include reading, baking when the mood strikes, and keeping up on politics and the shenanigans of the banksters. Hooray for Occupy Wall Street!