It is said April showers bring May flowers. This year, for Brownfield Ag News, it was all about baby showers instead of April showers. The network welcomed three new additions to its extended family.
Brownfield reporter and anchor Rhiannon Branch shared she and two colleagues all had children within 16 days of each other during the month of May. Branch added she and the other mothers, Nicole Heslip, and Amie Simpson, are part of a group of people at Brownfield who “share the same passion and drive” and who “make work fun!”
“I found out I was pregnant at the Farm Progress Show last fall, and soon found out that Nicole and Amie were also pregnant,” Branch said. Branch recalled in the summer of 2021, Brownfield staffers were all at a team retreat together, which was about nine months before the births of their children.
“Now, they all joke that there ‘must’ve been something in the water’ that week,” Branch said.
Branch and her husband, Ian Stroud, welcomed their daughter, Kimber Grace Stroud, at 1:18 p.m., May 12, 2022. She weighed 7 pounds, 1 ounce, and measured 21 inches long.
Nicole Heslip and her husband, Kyle, greeted Rory Thomas Heslip just before 9 a.m., May 25, 2022. He also weighed 7 pounds, 1 ounce, and measured 18-5/8 inches long.
Amie Simpson and her husband, Erick, were blessed with Olivia Michele Simpson at 10:39 a.m., May 28, 2022. She weighed 7 pounds, 9 ounces, and measured 19.5 inches long.
Branch said she knows having three reporters on maternity leave at the same time was not easy on the rest of the team.
“I want to thank our colleagues for embracing the challenge and covering for us so we could spend quality time with our families. I know our listeners also appreciate the extra work they put in to make sure our news coverage remained top-notch,” Branch said.
All three mothers are National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) Broadcast Council members and attend the NAFB Convention every year.
“Kimber, Rory, and Olivia are all more than two months old now and doing well,” Branch added. “I can’t speak for the other two yet, but I know Kimber has a set of lungs on her, so we very well could be raising the next generation of farm broadcasters! Stay tuned.”
Brownfield’s award-winning team consists of a dozen full-time farm broadcasters with agricultural programming in more than 560 affiliate radio stations across the Midwest and Delta.
PHOTO 1: Branch/Stroud family
PHOTO 2: Nicole Heslip & children
PHOTO 3: Simpson family
