Manure

Kris and I attended the MMPA Young Farmers Conference, featuring a farm tour at Hillhaven Farms where the Rasmussen family uses a Gea Houle Manure Separator.  What does that mean?  It means they turn the cattle manure into bedding.  (Cattle bedding, not people bedding.  I prefer cotton.)

In barns cattle need some type of bedding in their freestalls to lie on - farms can use sawdust, straw, sand, etc.  They chose a method where the bedding is produced every day by the barns' inhabitants!

In this system they scrape the barns with a vacuum sucker.  It sucks the manure into a tank:

 

They empty the manure into a pit.  They pump the manure into a machine.  First the machine crushes the material and gets rid of anything hard that might have made its way onto the barn floor. 

 

Then the manure goes through three rollers that compress all the liquid out of it.  The liquid goes from a pipe into a liquid pit, and the hard material goes on a conveyor belt into a pile.  Then they take that pile of dried manure and put it back in the freestalls.

 

Liquid squeezed out

Compression and dry matter

Mike Rassmussen and his cattle's new/used bedding

In the freestalls

It was a dry, soft-looking material. (I didn't feel it with my own hands, but I listened to Mike.)  The whole process was interesting, since I'd never seen it before.

I told my brother about it, and he asked, "Do cows know they're lying in their own poop?" 

According to Mike, though cows will try to eat almost any kind of bedding, including sand, he's never once seen them trying to eat this.

Get ready, get set

Yesterday Kris and the guys dried up the cows.  This means we're not going to milk them for a bit before they have calves.  So drying up means - you check if they're pregnant, give them an antibiotic so they don't get an infection by halting their milking, and put a sealant on their teats.  (For more detail, check on my post here.) 

It takes all day to do it.  Then we let them out onto the pasture for the first time this year!  It's so nice to see them out there again.  Kris said they were excited to get out there too. 

The vet came today to check the ones that didn't seem pregnant.  While yesterday they checked from the outside, by feeling the cow's side, today the vet checks from the inside. Yes!  Just the way you're imagining!

He also used an ultrasound machine, which was a first for us here.  He put the wand inside the cow, then he had a headset.  One of the eyes of the headset was a screen that showed the ultrasound.  Kris and the guys all put it on, and Kris said it was just like looking at a human ultrasound.  There's a grid on the screen, so you could gauge exactly how big the calf was.

So we're only milking the non-pregnant or recently-pregnant ones.  (Once the pregnant cows have calves, we start milking them again.  They have to have a calf every year to continue giving milk.)

Now, you may be wondering, doesn't that mean that we don't send much milk, and that our milk check is really small?  Answer again - yes!  But it's the same every year, so we plan for it.  It's not like it's a surprise, just like we won't be surprised when the calves are all born on a Saturday when we're having people over.  It's so predictable!

Rocking it

Kris is looking at using a rock picker to clean up the fields. Rocks are a real problem, especially when you're doing hay. Rocks can bend the knives on a discbine, and they can also shoot into tractor cab windows. (It happens!) When you chop hay with the chopper, the rocks can wreck the equipment.

We're going to pile them up for eventual landscaping use. My mom has built rock walls at my house and her house. The fields will be nicer and I'm sure our yards will be too!

There are rock piles around every field. For as long as people have been farming, they've been getting rid of rocks in their fields. They would pile them in the closest border area - because why carry them farther than you have to? They're heavy!

When I was younger, I'd sometimes go with my mom to get rocks. We'd drive the truck out to the woods and take rocks out of the massive piles. We'd marvel at the amount of them. I'd also marvel at what a great weight training program it was. My mom could lift rocks twice the size that I could! She probably still can ... but this rock picker will have us both beat.

My mom's latest rock wall

Prepping

My friend recently got in an accident - a guy towing a trailer with a farm implement on it backed into her car.

While she was telling me the story I said, "What kind of farm implement was it?"

She said, "Hmmm. I don't know."

I said, "Did it have circles or things that looked like rakes? Because then I'd guess a plow or a rake."

She said, "No."

I said, "Then that ends my guessing."

I'm not really equipment-minded. So today Kris told me that Mike leveled out spots in the field with a disc. Tomorrow we're having another company come and "work it down."

I asked Kris what they would work it down with. He answered, "A soil finisher."

I nodded. No picture came to mind. I realize that there are many, many tools for 'working down a field' but to me they all sort of run together. Because until you're personally doing it, buying one, fixing one, or renting one, they all look like 'farm implements.' Even when they're coming through your windshield.

****

Josh went around and checked all the fences today in preparation for letting the cattle out on pasture! (This is earlier than usual. Last year at this time we had a snow day at school.)

Kris said there were just the regular fixes - places deer or trees had knocked against the wires needed tightening. Nothing major.

The cows were really excited, Kris said. They saw Josh on the quad out in the field and THEY WANTED TO BE THERE TOO. Looks like Wednesday is the day!

****

My sister Tracy visited recently. We were talking about the weather and she said, "I remember when I first went to college and it started to rain. I thought ... I don't care. I don't have to worry about the corn, or the hay being down ... it doesn't matter!"

(This is obviously in the day before texting, when mom and dad would have been keeping her up to date on the farm events regardless!)

Though I've been loving the recent warm weather, I knew the fruit farmers were concerned. In this Detroit News article, Freeze threatens state's $300M fruit crop after weeks of warm weather , they explain that since everything is four or five weeks early this year, these cold nights might really damage the crops.

Not only do I know a lot of fruit farmers, but I looooove fruit. Whenever there's a rough year, we notice. I may not notice what tools are in the field, but I always notice the fruits of their labor.

Capitol in the capital

We had the 96th annual state delegate meeting for MMPA yesterday - that's Michigan Milk Producers Association, the co-op where we sell our milk.  It was in downtown Lansing, so when I left the meeting, I was greeted with this view:

Doesn't it look like a postcard? Meetings are usually in the crummy season when you don't want to be outside ... not true right now.

Some interesting things I jotted down during the meeting:

- When there's a surplus of milk, the co-op has to find something to do with it. There's no long-term storage for it like a lot of other foods, since it has a short shelf life.

- Due to the mild winter and spring, cows in the US have been giving a lot of milk.

- One of the speakers made a joke that "It's like picking up rocks. It's a never ending job." This made me laugh, because a joke about picking rocks out of a field can only work for select audiences.

- Kris' uncle was also there, from his part of the state. A farmer at our table said that his 9-year-old left open a gate and the cows got out. Kris' uncle said, "I have a 30-year-old that does that." We all laughed. That joke would work for any audience.

I spent the afternoon outside (hooray!) and happened to go back to the same city block at night to see some friends. This was my evening view:

Much easier to be inside this way.

Want to marry a farmer?

My friend called me today and said, "I walked into the room and Jim was watching TV ... and I thought it was a Saturday Night Live skit. But it was NOT. Have you seen the commercial for FarmersOnly.com?"

I watched the commercial, and yes, it's bad. It's terrible. It's hilarious.




Then I went on the site. Really, they need better marketing, because I was totally won over.

I think online dating is a great idea. I know tons of married couples that met online. This is just even MORE specific!

I'm friends with some very eligible bachelors ... most of them farmers or in farm-related industries. (Hi, guys!)

When I try to think of girls they can date, you always have to take the lifestyle into consideration. Would the girl want to live on a farm? Would she like to live in the country?

These girls do!

Yesterday a neighbor and I were talking and she said it was hard for her son to find girls to date, now that he was back on the farm. (That's the same concept the commercial is trying to get at. You know, through the talking animals. Also, why do they have clown voices?)

Another one of my farmer friends commented that he loves going to sporting events, because he is surrounded by girls his age - which just doesn't happen on his farm. And a different farmer friend said that when you date a girl with marriage in mind, she has to know - and accept - the lifestyle she's going to marry into.

So the site is obviously meeting a demand. It's not meeting good commercial standards ... but then again, I'm talking about it, aren't I? But I'm using a normal voice, not like those creepy farm animals.

First day of spring

We spent the last week in Texas, visiting Kris' family.  His sister and brother-in-law live in Houston, where we went to the rodeo! 

The rodeo is HUGE.  Huge as in there were 74,900 people there, watching bull riding, barrel racing, and mutton busting.  Have you ever seen this?  Five-year-old kids rode on sheep.  The kids were clinging to the sheep, faces buried in them.  The sheep were ambling across the arena.  Slowly, the kids would fall off.  I laughed so hard.  Then they had indoor fireworks, a concert ... and everyone was dressed like cowboys!  The boots!  The hats!  The rhinestones!  It was so fun and so different than what I normally see.

We went to a country dancing bar that weekend.  We were waiting in line.  A woman working there was trying to move the line along quicker and said, "Do y'all have your ids?"  Yes, we did.  "Are any of y'all wearing spurs?"

Spurs?!  Spurs!  I've never been asked that in my life, that's for sure.  We were not. 

Inside, everyone was also in costume.  (I realize it's not, but when you're not from cowboy country ...)  Often a song would start and everyone would stop two-stepping and start THE SAME line dance.  They all knew which songs went with which dances.  It was like stumbling into a musical!

When we go to Farm Bureau events, the ranchers often wear cowboy boots.  Kris' grandma (who is incredibly stylish) left some boots at Kris' parents' house that didn't fit her.  I wore them out one night, pretending I was a rancher instead of a farmer.

On the plane I talked to the guy sitting next to me, also from Michigan.  When I said I was a dairy farmer, he said, "Well, now I have to ask THE question.  ... Which cow gives the chocolate milk?"  We laughed together, and then he said, "Really.  Where do they put it in?  How does that work?"  I was happy to explain it.  You never know unless you ask!   

Everything was different when I returned.  It's the first day of spring!  It's been in the 80s all week, today too.  The barn roof was recoated.  It's a little different color and looks fresh.  The road commission cut down the dead tree.  And the daffodils are all in bloom.

Goodbye, Texas.  Hello, Michigan!  I left my boots there for next time. Here, I go barefoot.