United Dairy Industry of Michigan

The United Dairy Industry of Michigan put on their annual meeting. There were many things to love about it. The top ones for me were:

- Our CEO Dwyer Williams invited her family to see her at work. They were also going to visit a dairy farm for the first time!

- A class from WMU won a contest against other schools on coming up with the best campaign for milk. They spoke and were so great. Made me proud of my undergrad alma mater.

- A dance troupe finished out the meeting. They promised it would end with a bang, and it did.

- Dairy farmer Tim Hood retired after 17 years on the board. He very briefly said, we make the best product in the world. It shouldn't be hard to sell! : )

Enjoy your dairy...

New construction!

New construction!

We're building a management rail (also called a palpation rail) where we can take care of cows. We're also putting in a dedicated area to trim their hooves, which we do on a regular schedule.

It will all be controlled with an electronic sort gate which is run off the RFID tags in our cattle's ears. This way, it's easier for them to know where to go, since the gates will open automatically to guide them to the correct area. This is less disruptive for them.

This includes an office where the computer running the sort gate will be housed in half, and the other half will store pallets of minerals and supplemental feed. 

We're excited!

~

Check out this old blog on hoof trimming ... Josh Salisbury, once our longtime employee, is our trimmer now, (Sheldon moved away), but it's the same idea! Click here: Hoof trimming.

Tour with Olympian Lindsay Tarpley

 

That milk is glowing!

She loved, loved the calves.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Lindsay Tarpley came to our dairy farm today for a tour that was streamed to 3700 students! She and her kids were delightful, and thank you to United Dairy Industry of Michigan for helping share about dairy farms and nutrition!

The video is here:

https://youtu.be/QA8MyRI9xuQ

It was so much fun! Thank you to our moderator Jolene and everyone behind the scenes. There was so much planning involved - many cameras, headsets, Dan running all the mics from another city ... plus working on all the questions, coordinating everything with Lindsay ... there were five UDIM staff members alone here doing it all! (Plus, this was their second visit here - we had one to check all of the technology a month ago.)

We met Lindsay once before in 2018 when she spoke at our kids' school. That story is here. She really is a delight. She brought her kids, and they were so inquisitive and interested, and I liked them so much! It was great showing them around. Lindsay is also a fantastic speaker and advocate for dairy nutrition!

Ty and Cole left school to come to it, but Max wanted to stay, and today his class watched the video. He said they thought the calves were cute - a good review! 

I love showing people the farm, and the fact that we were able to show it to 3,700 people at the same time really makes me happy. Thanks to everyone involved!

Stalls are free, feeder is in, manure is hauled, corn is planted

What a busy, busy month on our farm.

Yesterday we were at dinner with friends and one said, "I have no idea what it's like on a modern farm."

Kris and I started to explain a little bit, and one part I wanted to emphasize that I normally don't is this:

There is continual activity here. Milk truck, feed truck, electricians, builders, vets, salesmen, plus all our regular team members. There is always someone coming and going. It's a beehive of activity and people and vehicles.

Free stalls

We added 140 free stalls overall to our barn. We had to do this to make room for the additional heifers we're keeping. To explain this, our cows have a calf every year, and about half of them are heifers. If we keep every heifer, then our herd grows, because obviously we don't cull half our cows every year. (We still have to sell heifers, but this helps.) This was a giant project that required tons of work, which was done by our building company, and it lasted from December until now.

Feeder

This was another project that lasted from December until now, due to parts and timing and everything else that happens with multiple companies working on projects! We would have put in a system like our new barn, where you just put feed on the cement in front of them, instead of this feeder system that is mechanized and can break, but we have manure pits under the barn. As a result, the floor wouldn't be able to support our tractors and wagons. So! We put in a feeder that we hope lasts the rest of our CAREER. It also speeds up the feeding process, which everyone is happy about!

Manure

We use a company to haul our manure, and now we have so many cows that we have to do it multiple times a year. They got even bigger equipment, and in two days they hauled 2.5 million gallons of manure out of our lagoon and spread it on our field. I think back to when we had one tiny manure hauler and it took weeks. Of course, we had fewer cattle then, but this is still a nice time savings, especially when the weather doesn't always cooperate.

Corn planting

The corn is halfway in as of yesterday, and the rest is going in today! It is warm but very dry, and already everyone is worried, because that's all you can do about weather. It is a universal trait about farming. Check the weather, worry about the weather, talk about the weather ... despite my vow that I would never have a job that depended on the weather ... I do! Of course, I also work from home as a writer, so that has never depended on the weather, so it partly came true. 

On to May and more and more and more activity!

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December 2020

I started blogging in December of 2010. I started it because I liked sharing with people about what was going on here on our dairy farm.

Now TEN YEARS later, we've covered building up the farm, growing our herd, raising our kids, and doing dairy promotion.  

Today, something momentous happened ... I got left a present on our front porch. 

 The return address was McDonald's. I excitedly opened up the box and inside I found a bib, pop socket, and gift certificates for a free McRib!  

They asked if I would share my McRib experience on social media.

1. I have never eaten a McRib.

2. This marketing works and I'm totally going.

3. I thought all along I was talking about dairy, but maybe this time it's going to overflow into pig farming!

National Dairy Quality Awards

I am so proud of Kris and our team members for winning a national milk quality award!

Our farm was named a Platinum Level winner of the National Dairy Quality Awards - one of six in the country.

Thanks to Britti Tucker of MMPA for helping with the long application process, our vets, our team, to the NMC for the competition, and congrats to all the winners!

The Hoard's Dairyman article above isn't online yet, but a link to a Michigan Farm News article is here:  Michigan Dairy Producers Dominate in National Dairy Quality Awards Recognition

This week we went to Orlando, Florida to the NMC meeting to receive the award.  They had a really nice ceremony, and it was great talking with all the other farmers, sponsors, and conference attendees.  It is really such an honor, and we feel so fortunate to have such a great team and wonderful support.

School, Uganda, New Orleans, Snow, and Thanksgiving

Nearing the end of another year! This one, by far, was the wettest year we have ever had. When we were at Thanksgiving dinner last night, my mom commented on how much corn was left in the fields. I made a joke about "Hashtag Things Farmers Say," but it is sad and true. Let's hope for some solid ground soon.

I had the delightful opportunity to go to Mrs. Damon and Mrs. Austin's classes at St Joseph Catholic School, like usual!  That same week I hosted visitors from Uganda.  Courtney Ross from GreenStone Farm Credit Services brought two members of the MSU Professional Fellows Program - Piloya Innocent and Kevin Atimango.  Both women are working on promoting and improving agricultural production and marketing, including direct sales, in Uganda. As a result, their questions were different than most visitors - much more on the business side, and incredibly interesting. They came for a farm tour on one of the coldest, windiest days.

Kris attended the National Milk Producers Federation joint meeting in New Orleans, and I tagged along. The meeting always has a dairy bar, and I took full advantage of trying all the different pizzas and milk flavors!

We got snow early, but now it's gone. It makes everything at the farm take longer...but it's so pretty.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. We ran the Turkey  Man Trot in Lansing and had dinner with my parents. It was all fantastic. We are especially thankful for our hardworking team.

Here's a story...three nights ago Kris got a call that there were some cattle in the road. We were just about to eat dinner, but I hopped in the truck with him to go help. We found them where cattle normally are...four of them in a group, by the feed, trying to get back in. They went in easily as soon as we opened the fence. (Easy for two people - hard with just one!)

I told Kris there are no animals I know as well as cows. They are pretty predictable. Just like people in a kitchen...everyone likes to hang out right next to the food!

Tomorrow is December. Here's to a wonderful holiday season with lots of butter, cheese, whipped cream, more butter...and standing right next to it.

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And the gang's all here

This is just a little snapshot of a few of the million things that went on this month ...

We finished our third cutting, and this time we used trucks and a bagger.

                     

It's fun to watch.  The chopper blows the tiny pieces of chopped up alfalfa into these trucks we rented.  The trucks drive to the baggers, and they tip into the bagger as it moves forward.  Ahhh...nice, full, big bags of feed for the winter!

               

We had preemies. Not twins, but two tiny girls at the same time.  They were half the size of a normal calf - and so small they looked like goats!  They were healthy, though!  Our team member took them to her grandparents' house to raise them.  Before they left, she put little pink collars on them, which was a definite first for calves around here!  So cute.

                                     

One evening my neighbor Ashley called me and said, "I can see three of your cows in your corn."  Oh no!  I raced out of the house.  My neighbors and I easily got them back in.  Kris rode up on the quad and I said, "We got the cows back in."  Kris said, "Those aren't cows.  Those are heifers."  This meant that they didn't come right from where I could see them ... they had come from across the corn field!

We weren't dealing with three cows ... we were dealing with 50 heifers.  My parents, my neighbors, my kids, the three guys milking, Kris and I started searching in the 12-foot high corn for lost heifers.  We walked through, calling them, and they were so happy to find us and followed us out.  Meanwhile, we were trying to fix the fence, but we couldn't repair it until all of them were out.  It took about three hours for us to find all the heifers, and Kris was able to fix the fence before dark.  Whew!

                       

We had a lot of visitors, including my family.  One night all of her nine grandchildren helped her with calf chores!

                                                 

It's here!  I'm so happy with Sawyer in the Sky, my second book in the Sawyer in the Woods series.  So excited.  My boys loved it, and I hope your kids love it too! Available on Amazon.

                             

Something else new ... I'm going to be hosting the Michigan GROWN, Michigan GREAT podcast!  I start recording in August, and I'll be sure to post the link to the podcast here.  I'll be interviewing farmers and agriculturalists from around the state about what's happening on their farms!  I'm really looking forward to it, and I hope you enjoy listening.

Want to know more about the farm?  Like the page on Facebook, on Twitter @carlashelley, or sign up to get the blog by email - the form is on the right side of the page.

Smoothie bike, dairy, and Olympian Lindsay Tarpley!

When we were at the National Milk Producer Federation meeting last fall, Max entered a drawing for a smoothie bike ... and he won!

 A smoothie bike is a bike that powers a blender on the front of it.  Cole, Max, and Kris put ours together this week - a definite benefit of my kids growing up is that they are perfectly capable of doing things like this that I don't want to do - and we took it in to their school.

After Maddie talked about dairy farms, milk, and the smoothie bike, the curtain opened on Max and the cow (Levi, a 5th grader) riding away!

(Are smoothie bikes a thing around you?  I've been aware of them for about four years now when we had one at a class picnic, but when I mentioned it to some friends, they had never heard of it.  I also thought everyone picked up change and found I was wrong - more for me!)

Two-time Olympian gold medalist Lindsay Tarpley used the ingredients of the smoothie to represent different parts of what it takes to succeed - hard work, perseverance, confidence, and sacrifice.

She also had St Johns High School soccer players there and had them do cool things soccer players do, like hit it on their legs and feet and do fancy footwork.  (One of them, Brian, is Cole's drum teacher and a nice guy, so that was a nice surprise!)

She talked all about her journey in making it to the Olympics - and scoring a goal in the gold medal game!  She did a great job tying it all together and stressed that no matter what the kids wanted to do - hard work would get them there.

She also answered a lot of questions.  They were pre-selected ahead of time and read by the fifth graders, so they were good ones.  (You've seen painful on-the-spot questions by little kids, right?  This avoided that.)

She brought her gold medals from Athens and Beijing with her ... so cool.

Then in gym class, the kids got to make and drink milk/yogurt/strawberry/banana smoothies ...

And in lunch they had milk/yogurt/honey/pineapple/spinach smoothies!

They loved them.  (It was class color day in school today in case you wonder why all the 5th grade boys are dressed alike. In pink.)

Thank you to the United Dairy Industry of Michigan for Lindsay Tarpley, for the smoothie bike drawing, and for the school smoothies, full of dairy!  It was a great day.

What's next after smoothie bikes?  Bikes that churn butter?  Bikes that make ICE CREAM?  I look to you, bike manufacturers.  We'll get the milk, you do the rest.

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End of 2017

Ah, I started this blog seven years ago this month, and I've gone from writing here every day to ... writing for work!

Our farm, our family, and our lives have changed so much in the last seven years, too.  It's changed even in the last year!  So, here's to a wonderful 2018 as we look back.

Project
The biggest project this year was changing from sawdust to sand bedding.  Just saying that doesn't sound so hard, right?

Last summer we had a bad problem with mastitis.  We tried everything, and the next solution was to change to sand bedding.

However, this wasn't easy.  This would require modifying our only five-year-old barn!  We wanted to pay our builders to do it, but they wouldn't be able to schedule such a huge project until after the summer ... when the heat can exacerbate the problem.

So, nearly everyone on the farm, plus the boys and me, helped.  It required taking down the free stall dividers, breaking up the cement, pouring new curbs.  We needed to painstakingly remove the mattresses and reuse them as a base for the sand.  All of this took weeks of manual labor as well as using cement contractors.  As well as all the hard work by our team, Kris and the boys spent their free time doing it.  Finally, it was done, and even better - it really solved the problem!  Saying all of that in one little paragraph doesn't really capture the amount of work that this took, involving new drills that broke bits, buying a sand shooter, bringing truck after truck of cement, moving the cows around to accommodate the work, trying to get done before the cement people came ... ah.  I'm glad it's done!










Cow Walk
Another big project we completed was a cow walk for our cattle.  We built it for them to enter the milking parlor, so we could have even more free stall space in the barn.



This project also had great results, as it gives us more barn space!  The cows liked it too, except one that did not want to walk in the new way.  She eventually accepted that this was what was happening, and moved with the rest of the herd!

People
We are very thankful for the team we have working here.  It's not always easy to find people who want to work on a farm, and we're very grateful to these great people!  I know I say this a lot, but it affects our lives each and every day, and we're so appreciative of our wonderful team.  Also new this year is that Kris is on the Michigan Milk Producers Association Board, which means he goes to more meetings, which in turn requires replacements here!  So thank you, this year and every year, to our farm team.  A special thanks to my mom and dad, who are the best volunteer workers this world has ever known!  My mom fed calves for months and my dad does any driving or running or hands-on-things we even mention, and words can't express our thanks enough.

2018
As for me, I have the farm, three or four other jobs, and these kids I like to see.  I love sharing about the farm and appreciate you taking the time to read all these years.  Here's to a wonderful next year, full of milk drinking, cheese eating, and ice cream parties.

Want to know more about the farm?  Like the page on Facebook, on Twitter @carlashelley, or sign up to get the blog by email - the form is on the right side of the page.