Getting past the terrible 2s in a blog's life

Can you believe it? The Capital Press has been blogging for three years. On March 15, we will mark the three-year anniversary of Blogriculture.

I can't believe it's been that long. And, obviously, when we started this thing in 2006 we weren't even sure it would last, as my first official post here indicated this was a trial transplanting. I was afraid it wouldn't last a month, let alone three years.

Now look at us. The number of Capital Press websites continues to grow. We have another blog, back4d.com, that is building steadily. Another new website, Ag Directory West, allows ag-related businesses to create their own entries so their customers, current and new, can find them and the services or equipment they offer.

Sometime this week, we will reach 30,000 visitors to Blogriculture. It's certainly not the draw our main website is, which attracts averages about 30,000 visitors a month. But then again, it's probably 30,000 visitors who may not have found us any other way. The posts here are unique to this site. We may touch on the some of the topics the Capital Press news staff reports on, but we don't do it in the same way here. So, we appreciate the blog visitors.

I may even appreciate them more today than I did when we started this venture, as there are a lot more websites and online agriculture related resources available to people today than there were in 2006.

Before the official launch of Blogriculture, I wrote an item on the Capital Press website and moved it here. It was titled: "Do farmers blog?" The answer, I know know, is a definitive yes, there are some farmers and ranchers who have blogs. And there are a lot of agriculture-related businesses with blogs too. Now, you can even follow farm-related topics on Twitter (which also launched in 2006) using the hashtag #farm.

As we learned from the 2007 Census of Agriculture, America's farms have gotten smaller (and we also learned this year that rural broadband access has improved). You might say there are a lot of micro farmers out there. Those folks are the focus of our back4d.com blog. But I've become more of a micro farmblogger, posting ag-related updates and links more frequently through our Twitter profile than the Blogriculture website. Using that tool, which I didn't even know about at Blogriculture's birth, I can share some of my warped view of the farm world as well as post updates from both blogs and news updates to the Capital Press website.

Since Blogriculture began, the Capital Press has planted its flag on the video services YouTube and Brightcove. We've got a Facebook page. And some members of the blog team here have changed. Our newest member, Tim Hearden covers agriculture issues from his Northern California perch near Shasta Lake. He has quickly become our most prolific poster here. And small farmer and marketing guru Kay Marikos keeps things humming along with help from Editor Joe Beach, among others, at www.back4d.com.

We even had a podcast for a while, but it has been retired, at least for now, while the principle podcaster (yea, that would be me) focuses on other things.

Thinks keep evolving, changing and growing in the multimedia world, and we are evolving too at the Capital Press and at Blogriculture. Thanks for stopping in and sharing some of the ride with us.