Hot, dry, amazing July

Wow, what a different type of spring we had.  It rained and rained and rained and ... you get the point.  Since you can't plant a field when it's muddy, we could only plant our corn two days.  One the last week of May and the next - June 19.  We planted a field just this week to sudax, which we'll let the cattle out in to eat after it grows. 

We are very lucky that we have light ground, and not a lot of it, so that we were able to plant.  The devastation of the rain is far-reaching.  The government has declared an emergency, farmers simply haven't been able to plant, and the consequences of this will be felt for a long time.  For instance, crop farmers can't plant, which means they can use the insurance they bought, but they won't be able to make a profit.  Dairy farmers can't plant, but they need to feed their animals, so they need to buy it SOMEWHERE.  Prices will be high, high, high, because demand will be more than supply.

Amazingly, it's already dry.  The creek is low and the corn looks like it could use a shot of rain.  Weather!  What can you do? 

We've been able to do two cuttings of alfalfa, and that went really well.  So, sometimes it cooperates.

It's been doing super well in the sunset category.  Every night we're home we watch it, and it's impossible for me to not take a picture of it. 

Enjoy your hot, dry, and pretty July!

 

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Michigan Good Food Fund

Have you read your Michigan Dairy Cattle News Summer Issue?  (What?  No?)  Now's the time!  I have an article in here about the Michigan Good Food Fund, which provides financing to food enterprises.  So if you're thinking of starting, expanding, or enhancing a business...here's a good place to start. You can read the issue here. 

Rainy May

RAIN

Have you noticed the rain?  Every day?  For days on end?

We sure have!  We were able to get about half of our acres in, and that corn popped out of the ground yesterday.  We haven't been able to plant any more, because the fields are so wet.  No one around here has.  My news is full of charts and graphs talking about the lateness of the planting - in the entire Midwest.

No matter how late it gets, we're still going to plant, because we need to feed our animals.  So, let's hope for some more dry days!

CATTLE

The cattle are out on pasture and it is a beautiful sight.  They make lovely neighbors.  The other day our neighbor Dan sent me a picture of his cattle standing at the edge of the fence hanging with our cattle and said "Neighbor-herd" - and it cracked me up.  We are - as the kids say - literally surrounded!

FARMERS

Kris' dad is semi-retiring from dairy farming, and there was a really nice article about their farm, where milking started in 1893.  You can read about the Wardin Brothers Dairy here. 

On Easter, Kris' mom Joanna (pictured here) gave us a Michigan Milk Producers Association sweatshirt from Jeanne Sandmann, who is a longtime family friend.  Jeanne said that this was hers when she was little!  Sadly, Jeanne passed away recently, and we cherish this vintage gift from her. 

PROMOTION

Kris and I attended the 13th Annual Empty Plate Strolling Dinner and Auction, because UDIM and MMPA are part of the Food Bank cause.  I went to the 2019 Women's Power Breakfast with the United Dairy Industry of Michigan, and I did dairy lessons in two kindergarten classes, with three more scheduled this week.  My podcast about farming through the Michigan Ag Council is at https://michigangrown.org/podcast/ - up to 50 now, with some really great stories from all kinds of farmers!

Thanks for reading, as always.  Happy end of May - and happy dry days ahead!

Hairnets and taste tests - Dairy Communicator meeting

We don't normally dress in matching outfits.

Yesterday was so fun - we had the Michigan Milk Producers Dairy Communicator meeting, and it started with a tour of our Ovid plant!

I looooove a factory tour, and this one even required costumes.  We put on:

hairnets
coats
rubber boots
safety glasses
ear plugs

and removed all of our jewelry.  Every single bit of it.  Watches and fitbits, too.  We were a dull, exercise-not-tracked bunch.  (What is the point of walking if you can't count your steps?  Might as well lie down.)

We had to wash our hands like surgeons - singing happy birthday twice - and wade through cleanser so we didn't track anything from room to room.

We got to see the GIANT butter churn, which was churning butter and putting it into 55lb boxes with the MMPA label on it.  We saw rooms of processing, the loading docks, the valve room - which looked like something out of a science fiction movie - and more.

It was so impressive to see everything that goes on to process our milk.  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but here are some from the outside!

Fellow dairy farmer Jennifer Lewis!

Group photo, trying not to shiver in the cold.

We went to the meeting at AgroLiquid and listened to Kris and then Jim our director of sales.

We are all wrapped up in running our own day-to-day businesses and dealing with the actual obtaining of the milk.  Cropping, animal care, people, calves - so, so many details in running a farm.  Then we saw the actual processing side of it - a GIANT processing plant that gets it to people.  Then we have the sales and marketing side of it - an office that deals with suppliers, customers, market strategies ... basically, it's a huge operation to make, use, and sell food.  It's going on every day for every food and the world is a magical place that this all happens to reliably and safely.  Amazing!

We then did something really fun - a milk taste test!  We had 1% organic, 1% conventional, Lactaid, 2% conventional, whole conventional, and A2 milk, which is a kind of milk that has A2 protein and not A1 protein, so it's marketed as being easy to digest.

It was our job to guess which was which, and this was so fun!  I was not good at guessing them, but I liked all of them.  (I only got Lactaid correct.)  I love milk - apparently all kinds.  It was like a lot of tastings!

Only three people out of the 40-ish there got them all right - and the rest of us were very impressed.

That night I did it with my boys, this time with skim, 2%, whole, and A2 whole.  (We always have skim, 2%, and whole here, but we had some A2 from the meeting.  No one in our family has a problem digesting anything, as far as I can tell.  These kids could eat rocks.)  Fun for the whole family.  Give it a shot at your house and let me know how it goes!

All in all, a super fun day.  We're back on the farm today, doing just one small part in the entire huge process.  No hairnets needed.

Happy Maundy Thursday!

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Michigan Dairy Cattle News - Spring edition

Today seemed like spring! 

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. 

140 years!

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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Otter spotter

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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