I left early, thinking I was so ahead of the game – leaving myself lots of time to get ready to broadcast a Jersey sale held at the Wayne County Fairgrounds in Wooster, Ohio.

The sale was scheduled for 5 p.m. on Saturday night, so we decided to head down early Saturday morning. After a four-hour drive, we arrived a little after noon, in plenty of time. My plan was to set everything up, go check into the hotel, freshen up, get a bite to eat and head back over to the sale.

My daughter and I began working and things were going smoothly. It was a bit cold in the auction arena, but I knew once it filled with people we would be warm as toast during the sale.

As we set the broadcast up, I couldn’t get the new camera to work. I fiddled and worked and even read the directions, but still – no luck. I was beginning to get a little worried because I knew I had a list of other things to accomplish before we could breathe a sigh of relief.

Two hours later, I finally plugged the camera into the right port and it worked; it would have to be the last USB port I tried! Then it was time to make sure I had a fast enough Internet connection – and I didn’t.

This was a very big deal. If I didn’t have a fast enough connection, there would be no broadcast. As I sat and pondered my next move, my daughter pondered eating lunch since we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.

Maybe it was the cold arena that was making me a little testy. Or it could have been the slow Internet connection, or maybe it was the fact that these people were paying us to broadcast the sale and at that moment there would be no broadcast, but when my daughter asked when we were going to the hotel to change and eat, my head made three revolutions and smoke came out of my ears as I said: “The van is as close as you’re gonna get to a hotel room, and help yourself to my leftover donut and cold coffee from breakfast!”

It was when this young, cute, blonde woman walked up and asked if she could help that I transformed back into a human being named Melissa and with my pasted smile, I said, “Yes, I would be so thankful for your help!”

As the auctioneer and pedigree reader hopped in the box to start the sale, my godsend, Nikki Owens, listened to my problems and then went to work. While she claimed she was no computer whiz, what she lacked in knowledge she made up for in tenacity and she stood by my side until our last-ditch effort was successful.

She walked up with someone’s cell phone and said, “Here, Evan said to try his cell phone as a hotspot.”

In my head I was thinking, We have tried every other Internet connection in the barn, and now you want to try this? Oh yeah, right, like this is gonna work – but I said, “Okay, let’s try it; what have we got to lose?”

I hooked it all up and held my breath as we waited to see if this Internet connection would work … and it did! We were all able to breathe again and enjoy what ended up being a spectacular Jersey sale.

For the next four hours of the sale, I counted my blessings in being surrounded by great people who were willing to help in a time of great need. When the sale was finished, we enjoyed a hot meal, checked into a warm hotel room and thanked God for a great ending to a long, cold, trying day.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.