On the farm

Jon Adamy from Michigan Farm Bureau worked with Samana Sheikh at WLNS to do some 'On the Farm' segments about dairy farming. You can watch the videos here.

It's been a whirlwind of a month! My brother, sister, and their families came, my cousin, his wife, and their three kids visited, we camped and canoed, we had people over for pool parties and wiffle ball, we did our third cutting of alfalfa, and Kris' sister, her husband and kids are coming today! 

(We also had two family reunions. My brother Gage and I won the Anderson cornhole tournament, and Kris and I won the Wardin cornhole tournament! These are my greatest athletic achievements.)

On the farm, it's busy all the time. Calves everywhere, things breaking and getting them fixed, getting bulls from other farms, milking, chopping alfalfa, and making sure everything is getting covered, from machine maintenance to calf care and everything in between.

We were fortunate that our team member Dave and his wife Lisa sold us my grandparents' house back, so now our other team members could move closer. 

I'm also working full time now, from home most days but also going into the office, and it's been going great. I'm a marketing communications specialist (which means writer) at an ag lending co-op. It's wonderful being able to combine my love of writing with my love of agriculture!

I hope your August is going well, too. The cicadas and crickets are loud at night, there's a chill in the night air, and I'll be wearing a winter coat before I know it. But until then ... it's swimming every day until school starts!

And last but not least ... my Uncle Stuart took this video, my cousin Marilyn Cotton had it digitized, and my cousin Pat Fitzpatrick put it on YouTube. It is precious to me. It shows my great-great grandma in my house, my great-grandparents having fun, my grandparents young, my aunts and uncles, and my dad as a baby! 

But...what might be interesting to you is the vintage farming footage! How did they not lose all their limbs and fingers? Go to 8:45 and check out my great-grandpa and grandpa farming. My great-grandpa is the one with the horses and my grandpa is the guy laughing. My Uncle Dave is the little boy on the wagon.  

Watch it here.

What a weekend

On Friday we were supposed to go to our friends' house for fireworks with a bunch of other friends. I was talking to them in the morning and said we were going to go, but I didn't know what time we'd be there because we had to cover the pile of alfalfa we were chopping that day.

I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but six families came to help us cover the pile! 

Of course, it's impossible to time when it's going to happen, so we thought it was going to be 5:00 p.m., but then the chopper had some trouble, so then it was 6:00 p.m. ... so my parents went and picked up the pizza and we ate at our house BEFORE covering the pile - and the kids swam - and then finally it was time! 

With all of our wonderful friends helping, it took 27 minutes to cover it, and then we all went for fireworks. What a great night! 

(I think they are still our friends.) 

Also ...

Kris high on the 4th of July!

Also knee high by the 4th of July!

Field one - planted April 28. 

Field two - planted June 4 after we cut alfalfa off of it.   

I hope you're having a great July!

Last day of June

Kris was interviewed by Nicole Heslip about the dairy outlook for the summer.

It's nice owning a business with someone who is so positive! 

Happy last day of dairy month! (July is ice cream month, so we'll keep the celebration going!)

Listen to the interview here.

Throwing wrenches, mending fences

The wonderful Sarah Zastrow has a podcast called Throwing Wrenches, Mending Fences, and she interviewed me on it  - Listen here! 

Sarah teaches people to manage stress with podcasts, coaching, and speaking. She is a delightful, positive person.

The next week I visited her and Sara Reisinger at Leaman's Green Applebarn, and my friend Hailey and I did goat yoga, led by Sarah!

It was all very adorable. I hesitate to do this with calves because 1) calves are bigger, 2) their manure is bigger. But if you want to come and do yoga in my barn after signing a waiver, you're welcome to it!

Me, Hailey, Sarah

Goat with adorable name like Sprinkle Donut or something similar

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!

The corn popped up!

 

The corn popped up!

My entire youth I said I would never have a job that depended on the weather, because my family spent so much time hoping it would rain or stop raining. I particularly remember sitting on the porch swing with my mom, willing the clouds to open up. So now... raindrops on the window woke me up Saturday night, and since we really, really needed rain, it was great. I definitely didn't follow through on that weather-related goal, but the risk is worth the reward!

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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