I went over to a neighbors to buy a horse one cold mid-December long ago. It rained the whole way and I thought of what my father said,

"It's the kind of day you want to buy a farm because the farmer is sick of mud, wet hay, pugging, and spring seems so far away."

This farmer was nowhere in sight when I pulled in the driveway. Nor was there any evidence of a horse. However, the kitchen glowed from within and through the besotted window panes a woman moved effortlessly back and forth, carrying things, bending, and lifting.

I expected a quick, "I'll get my coat and we'll go the barn." Instead she invited me and my small son in and sat us around a table ladened with cookies.

On every counter cookie pans, tins, and platters crammed against one another. This woman was awash in cookie baking. I'd never seen anything like it!

As she told me about the horse, she continued to cream butter and sugar, cut bars, pack wafers. A flurry of controlled energy unfolded; I baked cookies, yes, but never in this quantity and variety and all at once! It was the first time I had seen multi tasking at its finest. And I loved it!

All the flurry, the shapes and colors, the smells and warmth set against the bleak and dull world outside opened a whole new way to approach life. Hit it head on, embrace the joy, pull against the pits that threaten to suck you in, create a can-do and do a lot of what you like.

This woman liked baking. I liked farming, animals, employing the land to produce. And I liked people who liked the land.

I didn't buy the horse. Instead I went home and in due course, opened a B & B, built a small dairy herd, and created an on farm cheese business.

I helped renovate a run down house into a youth center, wrote articles for a local newspaper, continued with some aspects of ministry, worked for several non--profits and baked cookies.

When our former First Lady protested baking cookies, I knew she didn't understand the power of the cookie bakers!