1. I saw a robin two days ago for the first time, then again yesterday, and today all day. They are here to STAY.
2. The sun was shining and the birds were singing.
3. The boys played baseball. (We did too.)
4. I picked up a million sticks in the yard.
5. It smells like spring, which is a mix of dirt and joy.
Spring really comes on Wednesday, and I am so ready! In fact, I'm ready two days early.
The farm is ready, too. Lots of new adventures ahead!
The spring edition of Michigan Dairy Cattle News came out, and here are my articles. Please note, the new cheese plant is in our town! We like to check on its progress since we drive past it ten times a week.
I love writing, I love agriculture, and ... I love spring! Hope the birds, the scents, and the warmth are balancing out the amount of mud in your life.
This winter is/was/is continuing to be a REAL winter, with lots of snow and cold! Some winters it only snows a couple of times and melts away, but this winter we've had the chance for lots of sledding, and even skiing and snowboarding!
It's tough when the waterers freeze, or when the fuel gels, but overall things have been going well. No power outages, no furnaces breaking, and so the regular work has gone on like usual.
I was thinking about how many things have changed since we came back to the farm, and we've done some pretty big projects.
2008 - added an irrigation pivot
2010 - built cement pad and cattle crossings
2011 - built calf barn
2012 - remodeled the dairy barn
2013 - built freestall barn and manure lagoon
2017 - remodeled freestall barn to change to sand bedding
2017 - remodeled dairy barn to add an aisle leading to the parlor
2018 - added a second bulk tank
Five years ago, my mom made us a book about our homestead. After a long history, Kris and I have a liiiiiittle paragraph at the end about what we had done since we moved here. It's interesting to see how tiny your time is here over the 140 years that the farm has been here.
It's also interesting to think about the next 10, 20, 30(?) years that we will be here. What projects will be next? How will things change around here? When will non-gelling fuel be invented?
It's all still yet to be written.
In the meantime, we're alternately enjoying/withstanding the winter, taking care of our cattle, working with our teammates, and writing the history of our farm. Here's to the next winter, and all the ones after that! Happy 140!
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Today was a balmy 46 degrees, and when I was running by the creek at my house, I saw an animal slip into the water.
It swam with its head up, making a squeak/bark noise, like it was calling another animal. How funny, I thought. I've never heard a muskrat make that noise before.
Another one appeared, making the same noise. The two of them dove down, came back up, and chewed what they had found on the bottom.
I stared at them. They didn't look like muskrat. They didn't look like beavers, either. Plus, they were huge. They were also cute! They looked like ... otters. I watched them for a long time until they didn't come back up.
I went home and googled otters in Michigan, and came upon a video in Michigan that sounded exactly like these otters! They were OTTERS!
I ran back down to the creek, but they never returned. At home, I looked at trail cam pictures, news stories, and videos about otters.
This is so exciting to me, since you figure that the outdoors is kind of going to be the same, but this was an entirely new animal I've never spotted here - and it was a cute one! My parents, who have lived here 30 years longer than I have, haven't ever seen an otter either. It was - and is - SO exciting!
This goes for eagles, too. Growing up, we never had eagles here. Now we have tons of eagles and see them at least once a month, often flying right over our farm. In December I saw eagles five days in a row. They're often eating road kill along the side of the road, or perching in trees.
I have a friend named Greg Smith who takes amazing wildlife photos, usually of birds. I asked him about the otters and he said he knows of two pair that hang out at the Maple River State Game Area (not far from my house), and he said there are at least six eagle nests he knows of in the area.
I told my brother Gage about this, and he said, "Are you going to write about this and tout that your farm's environmentally friendly farming practices are attracting all sorts of new wildlife?"
I laughed and said that was a great idea, and then in the above article I read that otters "tend to seek out areas with clean water and abundant fish." So, thanks for the plug, otters. I also read that eagles have doubled their number of nesting pairs in Michigan in the last 15 years, and there are now about 800. They must like it here.
I talked about this with Gage, and he said, "Eagles, otters. What's next ... a wolverine?"
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On December 12, I was just running down the road and a FedEx Ground guy handed me a water out his window. Best surprise!!!
I was so delighted, and I snapped this picture as he drove away.
Today, on this super cold day, I was getting ready to go running outside, and an unfamiliar pickup truck drove into our driveway. The guy in the passenger seat started up toward the door, and I opened it to meet him.
"Hi, is your farm open today?" he asked.
I thought this was a charming question, because almost everything IS closed today. Libraries, schools, state government - even the mail in Michigan was suspended today, because it was cold. (This cracks me up. Most of us walk just from our cars into buildings, so why were these things closed? But we were definitely open, just like lots of other places. I digress.)
"Yes," I said. "What can I help you with?"
"Hey!" he said. "You're the girl I gave the water to!"
I then noticed he was wearing a FedEx coat, and I recognized him from before. I introduced myself, he said his name was Steve, and I thanked him for the water. My boys had come on the porch to see who it was, and they met him, too.
He told me his FedEx truck was stuck on the road in the snow about a mile away, and he wondered if we had something that we could use to pull him out. He'd gotten a ride from someone who had happened to drive by, and then they drove over to our farm to see if there was anyone around to help. I called one of our team members who said he could do it. Steve thanked me and went back to his stuck truck.
I started down the road on my run and before I even got a half a mile, the guy in the pickup truck came back, alone. He told me that the road commission had happened by and was getting the FedEx truck out. I cancelled the distress call.
At the next mile, the FedEx truck flew past me, with Steve (we're on a first name basis now) smiling and waving.
So we ARE open, but then the team went back to dealing with a flat tire, staying warm while working outside in the cold temperatures (it's -13 now), trying to keep the waterers from freezing up, and dealing with all the things that happen when it's cold outside. Kris got ski goggles for the guys operating equipment. Your face does get really cold in this wind. Update: It's 3:30 a.m., and Kris has not been to bed yet because he's working on a machine that won't work. Oh, the cold...
So - thanks to neighbors, thanks to our team members, and thanks to random FedEx guys for making our days bright. It's so nice when we all work together.
On a side note, the kids have been off school all week. We did the fun 'throw boiling water and watch it freeze' experiment in the cold. It turned out great. This is take two. On take one I splashed some of it onto my foot and burnt it so bad it blistered. Ridiculous mistake. Where was Steve with that bottle of water then?!
Saturday Team Chocolate Milk was at the Portland Winter Run. Matt and I came in second in our age groups, and Kris won first place for the first time! It snowed the whole time - check out our frozen eyelashes.
Wearing my Team Chocolate Milk gear is so fun. People always yell at me and cheer me on. I did drink chocolate milk I brought myself afterward - they also had homemade chili, hot chocolate, and cookies. I love races, and it's even more fun when people go and do them with you! Go team!
My plan is to run a race every month this year. I'm pretty sure this will be the coldest one, but we shall see ... My next one is on Super Bowl Sunday in Okemos if anyone wants to join me in a chocolate milk toast!
Our manure lagoon has to be pumped out so we can use it to fertilize our fields. We rent a magical manure boat to churn it up since it's chunky and frozen and has sand in it. The weather behaved perfectly for us to almost empty it.
Isn't it great that cows produce something we need to then GROW their own food?! What a perfect system.
Ah...it may be ugly to you, but it's all part of the process to bring you good-looking food.
