Summertime

We cut the alfalfa, and since then it's been overcast and cold.  This is not the weather you need to dry your hay.  The sun just came out this afternoon ... and it was a mad rush!  All at once, the farmers in the area got out and started chopping.  There was farm rush hour on our road!

Why can't you chop wet alfalfa?  Because it would get all gummed up in the machinery and not be the best quality feed for the cattle.  You try to harvest it at the right combination of moisture and yield.  This cutting, the weather is not fully cooperating.  When it dried today finally ... it was really dry!  Tomorrow will be another full day of chopping.

In other farm news, we have 44 calves out on pasture now, as we're filling up the barn with all the newborns.

And with the end of summer and vacations, scheduling is crazy for Kris and everyone.  We are so fortunate to have our great team members.

***

Today a crew came out to shoot a video about fresh food availability in Michigan, and they wanted a farming perspective.

It's always interesting talking to people about their jobs - they liked asking about our farm, and I liked asking about video production!  

They took some video of the boys, and I'm sure there won't be audio.  If there were, it would have captured this conversation - Cole and Ty want the same calf to show in 4-H.  After much negotiation, Cole traded Ty two of his toys for her.  They really have the bartering system down pat.

The people were delightful and had lots of questions about the farm.  (One I got twice was - what happens to cows when they don't give any more milk?  Answer - we sell them for meat, so they get eaten typically as hamburger.)

When they were leaving, Karen said, "I want to live on a farm!"  Matt said that his son would be torn - he loved tractors, but he hates the smell.  If only they'd been here later, when the air was full of the sweet, delicious smell of fresh-cut alfalfa.  It makes up for the manure!

My boys, on the other hand, are incredibly used to being on the farm.  So today we took a different tour - at TechSmith, where I used to work!  My friend Jim showed them around the office and they were duly impressed.

I asked if they wanted to work in an office, and Cole said yes, but in a skyscraper.  Ty said he wanted to work outside.  I said you don't have to choose just one - you can pick both.

As soon as Kris started chopping at home, they begged to go with him.

More chopping, more farming, more public relations tomorrow!  Let's hope for dry weather and good smells.

If you want to know more, you can like my farm page on Facebook, follow @carlashelley on twitter, or get the posts sent to your email by filling out the form on the right. If you have any questions, please email carla.wardin@gmail.com!

Farm, family, and friends

My Uncle Al, (my dad's brother), and his wife Delia started a dairy farm in New Mexico about 30 years ago.  My cousin Cass, his wife Dorie, and their daughter Mia farm with them.

They came to visit!  We showed them around our farm and then visited some local farms, including Glen and Jill Feldpausch's farm - Rich-Ro.  (The name of their farm comes from combining the first names of the founders, which apparently was popular.  My grandparents named their farm CarDale for Caroline and Dale.  We STILL get mail for CarDale Farms.)

My dad Jack, my Uncle Al, and my cousin Cass.  Wow, I look short.

It's fun giving tours to other dairy farmers, because their questions and interests are so different.  I also like to take pictures of times when the brothers and son all put their hands on their hips simultaneously.

Due to Kris' hand position, you can tell he's not blood related. : ) 

It also gave my dad and Al the opportunity to retell one of their favorite stories - when my dad jumped from one silo to another.  He and Al had judged the distance from the ground, and my dad was sure he could make it.  He did!  And lives to tell the tale.  I haven't told my kids this one ... I don't want them to try it themselves.  (Though really, that is pretty sweet.)

Some tour activity - here's how we push up feed for the cows:

It's a pretty low tech tool - it's a board at an angle.  It works perfectly to drive through quickly and push the feed closer to the cattle.  When they eat, they push it away from them, so this ensures they can easily reach all of it.  We do this at least every two hours during the day.

Three times a week, we scrape out all the sawdust that's currently in the barn.  We then put down lime, which kills bacteria.  After that, we put down new sawdust.  Under the sawdust we have a pad, a mattress, and another mattress pad - but the fresh sawdust provides extra cushion, plus helps keep the cattle dry.

I just asked Kris, "What do you really call the sawdust shooter?"  He said, "Sawdust shooter.  That's what it's named."  Somehow I thought there was a more technical term ... but here it is, shooting the sawdust out!

Then we went to Rich-Ro and talked with Brett, Glen, and Brianne Feldpaush.

Brett

Glen and the lovely Brianne

On their farm, they milk with timers - you can see the 120 in the picture.  When a milker begins prepping a cow, he starts the timer.  It counts up, and when it hits 90, he can return to the first cow and attach the milker.  He also gets back to the first cow before the timer hits 120 seconds.  The timer is there to make the milking process more consistent for the cows, with the ultimate goal of comfort and increased milk production.

They also toured a rotary parlor, which is like a slow merry go round - the cow gets on, gets milked, and walks off.  And of course saw the robot milker, where no human attaches the milker, because the robot does the milking for you.

There are so many ways to milk and increase cow comfort and production.  We're all working on it - all over the country and all over our gene pool.

If you want to know more, you can like my farm page on Facebook, follow @carlashelley on twitter, or get the posts sent to your email by filling out the form on the right. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me!

CALVES on pasture

Our CALVES are on pasture!  Our cows are still delivering, and we need newborn pens for the new heifers.

So, we moved the oldest group of 20 calves outside on pasture.  They're all two months old.

They were very excited!  They ran, frolicked, and checked out how far they could run.

We all watched them to see if they were going to get out.  One little calf shimmied right through the wires.  Cattle are predictable though - as soon as she got out, she wanted back in with her herd.  She waited around until Kris opened the gate and moved quickly to get back with everyone.

There was lots of mooing - from the calves and from the other cows, who love the excitement.

After about ten minutes, they'd all calmed down and were starting to nose around in the grass.  They checked out their regular feed in a feeder and the water tank.

We've never had calves on pasture before - only year-olds and older.  So it's a big change for us and for them.

"Every time I see them out there, I keep counting them," Kris said to me later.

"Me too," I said.  "But I didn't see 20 ..."

"I know!" he said.  The grass is so tall and they're so little that when they lie down you can barely see them!"

But they're growing bigger every day.

Just like ours.

If you want to know more, you can like my farm page on Facebook, follow @carlashelley on twitter, or get the posts sent to your email by filling out the form on the right. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me!

Gorgeous Monday

There were gorgeous sights wherever I looked today!  First - we have our first and only brown calf. 

My grandpa had registered Guernsey (brown and white) cattle, and my dad bred them to Jersey (commonly light brown with black hooves), then later to Holstein (black and white).  Now we also breed to Holstein bulls.  

So there are a lot of genes pooling around in there, and every so often we get a Jersey-Guernsey-Holstein looking calf!  Note her black hooves, too.  Like all newborns, she's adorable ... and will be easy to pick out on the pasture for years.

Tonight, right before Kris left to check the pastures for calves again, he stepped outside and yelled, "Rainbow!"  The boys weren't asleep yet, so we had them run outside to see it.  Kris told them the rainbow ends not in a pot of gold, but on our cows.  If you look closely you can see it's right on a white one in our pasture.

After that, we had a stunning sunset ...

 Beautiful clouds ...

And RAIN!  It rained most of the day - a great, steady, soaking rain.  Our crops and pastures and trees - and everything that grows - really needed it.  I hope rain didn't ruin any of your plans today, because it made the day even more beautiful from our perspective.

If you want to know more, you can like my farm page on Facebook, follow @carlashelley on twitter, or get the posts sent to your email by filling out the form on the right. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me!

Irrigation

It's a giant sprinkler!

And yes, like all sprinklers, it's really cold.

We've had a wet (and great) spring and summer, but now it's getting dry, and we had to turn on our irrigation systems.

My dad put in the first irrigation pivot in the 90s, and when we moved here, we put in a second pivot. These aren't on our crops, (though we do rent some land that has an irrigation system), but they are on our pastures.

The boys get excited anytime we put them on, and they immediately run to get under the water.  The cows like to stand under it, too.  It must be for cattle and kids.  To me, not only is it cold, but it's hard!  It's not like a soothing shower but more like needles.

It's specific - you program in how much water you want it to put down per pass.  So we put in that we want a half inch of water, and it goes the right speed for the right amount of water.  It then stops after it has gone around in a circle one time.

Of course, it's great for the pasture.  It looks lush, while on our side of the road ... all the grass in our yard is brown.  So the whole 'grass is greener on the other side' is totally true here.

If you want to know more, you can like my farm page on Facebook, follow @carlashelley on twitter, or get the posts sent to your email by filling out the form on the right. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me!

University - Arkansas and China

I was honored to speak at the 5th Annual Symposium: Current Issues and Advances in Food Animal Wellbeing at the University of Arkansas!

It's always great talking with people about all the industry issues.  We kept circling back to the conversation about how there's a disconnect between consumers and farmers.

There were many stories ... one of my favorites was about a boy who held up a drumstick from a chicken and announced, "Look!  My chicken nugget has a handle!"

Arkansas has many poultry farms and not that many dairy farms ... my research told me 75, but I met dairy farmer Susan Anglin there and she told me it's down to 72.  Tough year.  

The speakers addressed challenges in the U.S. and internationally, reducing animal stress, and current research.  

After Colin Scanes, professor at U of Wisconsin was showing slides like this:

I was showing slides like this:  

And it worked out so well!  The balance of the research and the practical application on a modern farm made for great discussion.  

Of course, that's a great part about these meetings too - the people!  I talked to industry people from China, Israel, and learned more about other aspects of agriculture, especially poultry.  I also waited a long time for a delayed flight with Bruce Feinberg, global animal health and welfare officer at McDonald's, and it was interesting to hear about the challenges from his perspective.  I talked to blogger Janeal Yancey of Mom at the Meat Counter, and I loved speaking with the faculty from all the schools.  Thank you to director Yvonne Vizzier Thaxton (which is such a great name - all those end-of-the-alphabet letters make it so fun to say) for inviting me!

We all agreed that farming will continue to evolve and that we need education about food animal wellbeing to start at a young age.  Farmers?  Let's keep on talking.  Get ready, get set, and hold on to your chicken handles.

  

Thanks again to the University of Arkansas and Dr. Thaxton.

A downside of my flight troubles was that I missed our annual tour with students from the Northwest Agriculture & Forestry University of China!  Luckily, my mom Cherie Anderson stepped in to do it for me.  She had a pretty good background, based on it being her farm for over 30 years!

She had a great time, and she assured me the students did too.  She came home laden with gifts and stories from the visit.

The students were curious, gracious, and a joy to show around the farm, just like last year!

And of course, oversized calf bottles always are great for photo ops to send back home - no matter where you live.

If you want to know more, you can like my farm page on Facebook, follow @carlashelley on twitter, or get the posts sent to your email by filling out the form on the right. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me!

Building fences

We have so many calves, we're moving the older ones out to pasture to let the newborns use the pens in the barn.  Hooray!  In fact, yesterday was the first day since the beginning of calving season that NO CALVES were born!  Kris hardly knew what to do with himself.

Since we haven't used this pasture for calves before, we have to build a fence.  Kris worked on it today.  I love the way he works, because he explains all the way along to the boys what he's doing and has them help as much as they can.  Due to size, they get more helpful every day!  (You can see Max peeking from underneath.)

It seemed cooler today, and we had a storm last night that was a lot of wind and not much rain.  We had a big dead limb in our driveway.  It's the perfect weather for being outside - not too hot, not too cold.  The cattle will be loving it - and I can't wait to see the calves frolicking in this pasture.  

Cole worked with Kris longer than the other boys.  He came home and said, "I got shocked and I caught a cricket."  I'm glad the shock factor is just as exciting as catching an insect.  

If you want to know more, you can like my farm page on Facebook, follow @carlashelley on twitter, or get the posts sent to your email by filling out the form on the right. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me!