Snowstorm!

We had a snowstorm!  In 24 hours we got about a foot of snow.

February 23

February 24

This is also the same week Kris and five of his farmer friends went to Florida to tour dairy farms. Unfortunately, due to the threat of the storm, his flight was cancelled.  Since they couldn't get a flight until two days later, and they all wanted to be back on their farms ... they drove the 24 hours home.  (I strongly suggested that Kris wait it out on the beach, but these business owners are so darn responsible.)

Thanks to our wonderful employees, everything still went pretty smoothly.  The milk truck got a little stuck, but it didn't take them that long to get it out.

I tried to leave today to go sledding with friends, but the roads were still drifted.  I thought it was going to be okay, but then there was a truck pulling a car out of a ditch on my road ... right in the middle of the road.  I couldn't get around it, the side roads were even worse, and Kris wasn't home to call if I got stuck!  So, we turned around and came back home.

Instead, we made snow ice cream.  It consists of -

5 cups of snow
1 cup of milk
1/4 cup of sugar
2 t of vanilla

We added chocolate syrup and sprinkles.  The kids were very happy.

However, we used the last of the milk.  I didn't want to try to leave again, so I asked Kris to buy some if he and the guys stopped at a gas station.

He said he did buy some, but when they got out they opened the back of the SUV ... and the milk gallon fell out and exploded.

What a fitting end to a dairy tour!  Milk everywhere.

***

Thank you to Eureka Elementary's Mrs. Markman and her first grade for inviting me to do a dairy lesson yesterday!  The kids, as always, had tons of questions, and I loved answering them.  "Where did you buy that calf bottle?" followed up by "Where did you buy that milker?" and "Where do they sell cows?"  made me think these kids were pretty entrepreneurial and ready to start their own dairies!

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Winter is here

Today it was 10 degrees outside.  It was so cold that when I went running my phone shut off.  When I returned to the car and plugged it in, it gave me an alert I'd never seen before - a thermometer and an exclamation point.  It was fine for humans, but TOO COLD for a phone!  I guess I need a phone that's made for Michigan.

When it's cold, it increases the chances of things going wrong on the farm.  The machines always need extra special attention.  Today, the waterers tried to freeze, but we were able to fix it.  When there's snow, there's always extra plowing.

We're about to start feeding the cows the snaplage (corn cob and husk ground up) that we harvested this fall.  We're basically trying to keep everything running smoothly every day, without a ton of extras ... those can wait for warmer weather!

Of course weather is always the biggest variable in this business.  The farmers in New Mexico and Texas just dealt with a horrible blizzard that killed an estimated 30,000 dairy cows:

***
LUBBOCK, Tex. — After a mild and dry Christmas Day, a fierce blizzard whipped across the rolling plains of West Texas and eastern New Mexico. The wind blew mercilessly for 48 hours, leaving snow drifts as high as 14 feet.

Though winter storms are not strangers to this region, the unrelenting wind — sometimes gusting to 80 miles per hour — and blinding snow of this blizzard surpassed even the most dire of forecasts. Dairy farmers in the region, who produce 10 percent of the milk in the United States, are now tallying their losses.

So far, more than 35,000 dairy cows have been found dead; many other animals developed frostbite and could still die. In West Texas, about 10 percent of the adult herd was lost. Farmers are trying to decide how to dispose of the carcasses that dot the landscape, though others might not be found until the snow melts.

“It was just beyond anything we ever saw,” said Nancy Beckerink, who moved her dairy farm, Dutch Road Dairy, to Muleshoe, Tex., from western New York six years ago to escape the harsh winters of the Northeast. Her dairy lost 300 of its 2,200 cows, and Ms. Beckerink said she might lose 50 to 75 more to frostbite.

You can read the rest here.
***
   
We're thinking especially of my family that dairy farms in New Mexico.  Everyone knew it was coming and prepared for it, but some blizzards you just can't beat.  We wish everyone well in their recovery.

We're hoping for a mild winter, of course.  The animals, the people, the machines, and even the phones prefer it that way.


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Crazy ancestors

Last night Kris got home at 10:30 p.m. because the milk pump wasn't working correctly.  He was able to mess around with it and get it started again.  He got a text from the guys at 4:15 a.m. this morning - same thing.

It was -11 this morning.  Yes, -11!  What were my ancestors thinking?  I asked my brother, and he said their brains must have frozen.

So, the milk pump didn't work right.  The foamers (which we use to clean the cows' udders) froze. Kris fiddled with the air adjustment, and the guys milking had to shut the doors in between the cows coming in and out so they wouldn't freeze again.

The waterers for the cows were frozen, which is never supposed to happen, so Kris had to go around breaking all of them.

The vacuum lines - which make the milking units have suction - were freezing from the outside.  Kris had to pour hot water on them.

A cow slipped on the ice and hurt herself.  She's recovering ... a guy at church had done the same and torn his rotator cuff.  (Ice! So tricky.)

The skid steer won't start.

But other than that, everything is fine!  It's windy, it's cold, and we're all buckling down and trying not to go outside until this all blows over.  I mean, my ancestors weren't so crazy to settle here ... it's not like they picked Boston.



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Big snowstorm!

From morning ... until night ... 

Sunrise

Moonrise

We cleaned up from the snowstorm.  We got a lot of snow - 11 inches recorded in Lansing, and a TON of wind and drifting.  Kris got up extra early to push snow so he could feed the cattle.

Here's an example of a drift he had to scoop away:

So he could do this, which is putting the feed from the pile into the mixer to take to the cows in the barn.

Did you know that cows, like a lot of animals, grow a thicker coat in the winter?  Look how shaggy our heifers look!  On their backs ... 

And on top of their heads.  I love this look.

When there aren't serious problems, everything on the farm is beautiful in the snow.  From perfect drifts, icicles and blue sky ... 

to curious cattle and pink cheeks.

Or no faces showing at all.

Home work

My friend is a crop farmer, and today she wrote about 'what crop farmers do in the winter', because all the dairy and livestock farmers tease them that they only work a few months a year.  This never gets old (to us!)

What this dairy farmer in the winter pictured above does - along with the regular daily work on a farm - is go to meetings.

All the meetings are in the winter, because there's no way you'd get a farmer to a meeting on time during any sort of harvest.  (Or a graduation open house ... or a wedding ... or a funeral.)

Just to name a few, together we have our local, district, and annual Michigan Milk Producers Association meetings.  I've got the Voice of Ag next week.  In addition, he's going solo to a Purina meeting, an extension advisory meeting, and a Farm Bureau natural resources advisory meeting.    

Kris went to a meeting today put on by the MSU Extension office about energy audits.  After he got home, he got out his file of last year's bills to get proof for potential energy rebates.

We marveled at it together.  LOOK AT THAT FILE!  And these are just the paper bills - not counting the ones we get online!

So, farming is more than just the daily outside work - there's the business side of it that you have to tend to every day too.

... This is probably true even for crop farmers.  (See? Always fun.)

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Wintery week

Tonight Kris and I were supposed to go a neighborhood party together.  He came home from the barn and showered, but he got a call ... a cow had a calf!  This was a surprise calf ... the vet had checked her in May and said that she was "open".  (Meaning she wasn't pregnant.)  

This just happened in the news this week.  A girl didn't know she was pregnant until an hour before she gave birth, and had a 10 lb, 2 oz baby.  Having been pregnant twice, I don't know how this could happen, but it seems to happen all the time.

June 2007

For me, it was hard to miss it.  

To be fair, the cow didn't look pregnant either.  

After the two of them were taken care of, he came back, reshowered, and went to the party.

It was a cold, cold week.  -11 wind chill one morning.  Wind gusts of 20 mph, a little snow.  On Thursday Kris wore five layers on top, two on the bottom.  I posted this picture on Facebook, and everyone kept commenting on his smile.     

Winter isn't just working in the cold ... it's indoor work!  Taxes and health care and meetings, all of which we did a lot of this week.  But yes, Kris always makes time for seeing friends and family.  It keeps him smiling.  (All work and no play makes Kris a dull boy.  Or definitely not as smiley.)    

He also manages to involve the boys in a lot of his work.  For instance, he lets our four-year-old address the employee paychecks and tax documents.

Sort of makes finding your envelope more of a challenge!

We'll see what new surprises are coming this week ... more surprise calves?  A sudden warm front?  An audit? Haha -  just kidding, government.
 
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Snow, cold, and broken machinery!

We woke up to a beautiful winter day.  The boys and I spent all morning and a lot of the afternoon outside in it.

We were at our friends' house - they have a pony, goats, and chickens, which all the kids loved! - and Kris got a call from home that the wheel loader wasn't working.

At home, they tried to fix it, to no avail.  It seems like something electrical.  And of course you can't call anyone to fix it at 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday.  (Well, he did call, but they didn't answer.)

This is the machine we use to take the feed from the feed pile and put it into the mixer.  Since it wasn't working, they had to take the tip bucket off and put it on the skid steer.  It's supposed to fit both.  But unlike Legos, it never really transfers super easily, so it took a lot of time and tools.  Legos, where are you in the ag equipment market?!

Kris offered to feed tomorrow morning, because even though it isn't his day, he didn't want anyone else to have to mess around with it.

So ... tomorrow at 4:00 a.m., it's supposed to be 1 degree.  Instead of being in a warm, closed cab wheel loader, Kris will be in an open cab skid steer ... which means it's going to be a COLD job!

Kris said he was going to wear all of his clothing that he has.  I fished out a ski mask-type cover from the depths of our coat closet and suggested he wear it tomorrow.  It's a little different - it has little holes for breathing in the mouth area, and it sort of resembles a hockey mask.

He stood in the bathroom, pulled it on, and we both looked at him in the mirror.  He looked terrifying.  It was a scene right out of a horror movie.

"This should help me keep warm," Kris said in a muffled voice.  He leaned close to me and whispered, "I'm going to get you."

Let's hope that wheel loader gets fixed quickly, or he's going to scare the children.


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Covered in ice

When we woke up this morning, it was 1 degree.  By noon, it was 27 degrees.

 

It's so funny when it goes from really cold to not really cold around here.  I had to go pick up some parts at the lumber mill for Kris - and not one guy coming in or out was wearing a coat!  Same with the grocery store and gas station ... once it goes above 20 degrees, it doesn't seem that bad.

 

And it looks so inviting ... 

 

 

 

As for the farm, repairs and modifications are going on as usual.  A gate broke in the parlor, and that's now fixed.  We took sliding metal sheets (sort of like sliding doors) from one barn and are moving them to modify the old calf barn. 

 

When we wanted more ventilation in the old barn for the calves, we took opened it up as much as we could.  Now that we want it closed up for hay storage, we're putting the sliders back on. 

 

Not surprisingly, it never works as easily as that sounds.  It takes a lot of time and labor in the cold - of course, coats are optional.

List

Things that have broken since Friday:

- The furnace in the parlor
- The fuel pump on our skid steer (Yes, the one with a cab!)
- The pipes in both calf barns - they froze
- The tube cooler line - also froze

Friday it was one degree. Today it was 50 degrees. Last night we had a thunder storm. It's crazy, windy, and kooky out there! When it was super cold, the mixer wagon tractor wouldn't start easily, wouldn't keep running - all the ways machinery acts up when it's cold.

Kris doesn't like when the ground freezes and thaws. It makes it harder to get into the fields and super messy. But this winter, it's been the norm!

Right in the middle of all of this, Kris had to leave the farm for two nights to stay with me in the hospital. (This was scheduled - I had surgery.) Thankfully, we have a great team, plus my dad here to hold down the fort. Or hold down the farm, really.

It's not that bad ... if I were to make a list of things that DIDN'T break, it'd be too long to write.