How Feeding Calves Helped This 33 Year Old Farm Mom Recover From a Devastating Brain Tumor

If you’re trying to imagine a California dairy farm family, the Ron and Sherri Prins family could easily paint that picture for you. Holsteins and Jerseys, a handful of employees, four children, one spouse that grew up on the farm and one that married into it.

California daiy

Fifteen years into growing a farm and a family together in the Central Valley of California, everything changed for Ron, Sherri and their family. Sherri was 33, and the kids were six, eight, 10 and 12. Sherri had been dealing with migraines, and she recalls the evening in May of 2000, when Ron took her to the emergency room.

“Soon after our emergency room visit, we had a diagnosis of a brain tumor,” she says. “Life changed for all of us. We knew God had a plan for our lives and would take care of us, but we still had so many things that lay ahead of us.”

Doctor visits, MRIs, phone calls and trips to a major city were only part of what was to come. The kids were all involved in school, church and sports activities, and there were 600 cows to be milked.

“We have an amazing family and church family that helped us with our children, meals and driving, and so many others that offered their help on the dairy farm,” Sherri says. “Ron’s dad took some of the workload, as well as other members of our work force.”

Sherri had brain surgery on her 34th birthday, October 3, 2000. The surgery was successful, and coming home after a week, Ron was juggling a lot. “I don’t know if I could have done it all on my own. We were so fortunate to have most of our family close by, and a lot of friends who helped out,” Ron says.

The surgery was just the beginning of a long road to recovery for Sherri and continued adjusting for the rest of the family. Sherri remembers how the kids each handled the whole thing in different ways, and was grateful that their pastor was there to help them process things.

“There was a lot of juggling schedules with everything the kids were involved in,” Ron says. “And their roles increased on the farm as they got older. There was always something for them to do after school and on weekends if they weren’t busy with something else.”

California daiy

But it ended up being a specific role on the farm that made a world of difference in Sherri’s recovery. The tumor had been in the frontal lobe of the brain, which is responsible for short term memory. Ron pieced together the need for Sherri to exercise that part of her brain with an important, daily, repetitive task on the farm: feeding calves.

One year after her surgery, Sherri stepped into that role, with the kids helping after school and on the weekends. “It became a type of occupational therapy,” she says. “Working on remembering cow and calf numbers and working through calf issues translated into redeveloping the ability to manage a schedule for a family. Working back into being able to multitask was a long process, but I was pushed along by the calf feeding routine. Along the way, I learned how much I loved calf care and how important it was to helping me recover.”

Another 20 years later, Sherri is now retired from calf feeding and has redeveloped her short-term memory to the point that her farm job is to manage the bookwork. Throughout the whole process, Ron and Sherri made a point to put their trust in God’s guidance and will never take for granted the type of perspective their kids gained at such young ages.

“Life in general is full of things that are out of our control,” Sherri says. “We learned at another level that our lives as farmers, parents are all in the hands of God. We had to trust God for what was ahead, and that wasn’t always easy, but we felt his protection and direction all through the process. Our children also saw and experienced the hard things and gained a great life perspective of what is really important.”

While the hard times have the potential to cast a cloud on the family’s story, Ron and Sherri are quick to point out the good times and the blessings they’ve experienced since Sherri’s diagnosis.

“We have been able to grow our dairy (now 1,100 cows), and add acres to the farm. Which is great, but it’s also added more work for everyone. We doubled our employees, cows, bookwork and everything,” Sherri says.

Ron adds, “I think it taught us that when life throws tough times at you, you learn to push through and work it out, and in the end it always seems to work out. Like any business, it takes a team effort to be successful, and we had that.”

Sherri describes it as chaotic and wonderful at the same time. “When 20 years ago we didn’t know what the future held for us, we can look at where we are now and know that God allowed us to have so much more than we could have ever imagined.”

How Feeding Calves Helped This 33 Year Old Farm Mom Recover From a Devastating Brain Tumor

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