Ten years ago I walked into The Extra newspaper office looking for a “town” job with a resume plumb full of “farm” experience. Long story short, it’s been a heck of a ride and I’ve learned a whole lot about the print world from advertising to editing and everything in between.

As you may have heard (or will soon see), The Extra is changing its format and structure from a tabloid to regular broadsheet newspaper format. With this change comes less columnists and more news so I opted to take a break from writing a weekly column for a while and concentrate on the new layout.

The first column I wrote back in 2005 was “Honey, I need a pull” and then boss John Kolness said “you wrote one, now you need to keep going.” It was fun for a few years and I even self-published two books of my columns. Now, let me tell you a little something…Castrating pigs is a heck of a lot easier than putting a book together! Scalpel, check. Iodine, check. Rubber boots, check. Sometimes even a 6 pack was checked, depending how hot it was in the barn. Easy as pie and when you were done, you were done for a month or two. Not like this newspaper stint where it’s on your mind 24/7 and deadlines run all over the top of each other. It’s a great trade though and I can’t see myself doing anything else.

So folks, thank you so much for all the “atta gals”, emails and letters of encouragement throughout the years. I’ll start up again sometime in the future but for now it’s “see ya later.”

Sincerely,

Tammy