Menu

She may be a "Tap Water Girl in a Bottled Water World," but Shirley Garrett’s message was crystal clear when she spoke to county leaders at this year’s OFBF annual meeting: Be true to yourself, have compassion for others and laugh along life’s way.

Garrett was the annual meeting keynote speaker and kicked off this year’s meeting in Columbus.

More than 400 county program chair people participated in the training and even more packed into the meeting room to hear from Garrett, a Georgia native who told stories of her childhood that encouraged listeners and carried a message of hope and caring.

She joked about the many different labels of bottled water and that there was even a brand from Georgia on the store shelves in her home town. "I have visions of someone standing at his tap and filling bottles with water to sell down at the local store," she said, laughing. "I just don’t understand why someone would pay for something that you can get out of your tap at home for free. I guess I’m just a tap water girl in a bottled water world." She used that phrase to title a book that contains "reflections on belonging and believing," according to the book’s cover.

Her keynote presentation, "It’s a Juggle Out There," shared how people today juggle many kinds of responsibilities. When deciding what to keep in the air and what to let go of, Garrett said "You’ve got to look at yourself and see what you’ve got when you take off the packaging. … Many times we don’t know who we are or where we’re going" until we look at our own core beliefs to determine what’s important.

She used the annual meeting theme, "The Power of One," to illustrate that the more OFBF members come together, the stronger they are and the stronger the organization becomes.

She asked participants to "have a little courage this week to get off your own point of view and look at the world a little differently – from a new viewpoint."

She also asked the participants to have compassion and caring for each other throughout the meeting and when they go home to their farms. Garrett told the story about a conversation she had with her grandson, Zeke. After she hugged him one day he told her that a hug from a person could "fill up your heart a certain number of spaces." He then explained that he had 10 heart spaces and that he needed seven of them to be filled to feel really good.

"People with full heart spaces don’t … fly airplanes into buildings," she said. "It’s hard to fill a heart on an empty stomach." She then commended the participants for their choice of occupation as farmers. "I know one of the hardest things to do is leave the farm behind to come to a meeting like this," she said.

The county leaders participated in this one-day training in Columbus instead of traditional regional cabinet meetings this past fall.

"We’re really pleased with how well our training went with those county chair people who came into Columbus," according to Jeff Watkins, OFBF’s vice president of field services. "Not only were we able to get our county program chairs some important training, but we also exposed them to our annual meeting, which is something many of them may not have experienced in the past."

Watkins said he wasn’t sure if a similar program will be held in conjunction with the 2005 annual meeting. That decision will be made next summer.

Caption: Georgia native Shirley Garrett spoke to county leaders about having courage to consider another’s point of view and compassion for each other during her presentation during a special training program held at the start of this year’s Ohio Farm Bureau annual meeting in Columbus Dec. 1.