Activity collars, artificial insemination, and sort gate - These all tie in together. The sort gate moves the cattle where they need to be based on their activity collars. For instance, if a cow is in heat, it moves her to the management rail where she will be bred with artificial insemination. If she's not eating, it'll move her to the pen where we can check her and treat her if necessary. Kris tracks every individual animal on the computer.
There have been so many technological advancements even since we began farming, and the fact that this works is amazing to me. It's not perfect - there are some cows who don't like the gate and will just time it so they can run through it and then we have to move them manually like the olden days of 2022. But it works for the majority!
Ice house - We had a building next to our house that was the old ice house. My great grandpa carved his name in it on May 17, 1899. It's when I assume they finished building it. My aunt and uncle called it the bath house, because we used to change clothes in there before using the pool. My parents used it as a garage.
This year, we cleaned it out totally and found so many treasures in the loft. One of them was a brick hod, used to transport bricks and mortar. We didn't even know what it was - we had to research online!
We knocked down the ice house/bath house/garage to build a garage that fits our cars. Before we did that, we took a lot of boards and the door to use in our new garage.
Drought - June was pretty scary, because it didn't rain. I hate this feeling, and I've been through it my entire life! My dad repeated his old quote, "A flood will scare you, but a drought will starve you." Just the absolute scarcity of water made everything crispy, hard, and barren. And there's nothing - save for irrigation - that you can do about it. Then the rains came, and immediately the crops responded. Thank goodness for seed development and the hardiness of plants! We ended up having a great crop.
Community - This year all three boys took steers to the 4-H fair. They had a great time, and we really enjoyed it! I joined the Clinton County Farm Bureau Board as the third member, and it's nice to be involved in that aspect of farming. Kris was elected treasurer of the United Dairy Industry Association, which is a national board of farmers that makes decisions on how the national dairy checkoff promotion money is used. He was already on the board of Dairy Management Inc and our milk co-op. For him, it's great connecting with people and working on the marketing aspect of the industry, which is ever-changing and interesting.
Coming up - Next year I'm part of a leadership class through MSU Extension, and Michigan Farm Bureau, GreenStone, the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan, and the Great Lakes Leadership Academy are supporting me. I'm really excited about it, and it has an agricultural background and focus. As for the farm, we'll continue making improvements, including in the parlor.
As always, thank you for reading, and thanks for being interested in our farm!
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