National Dairy Quality Awards

I am so proud of Kris and our team members for winning a national milk quality award!

Our farm was named a Platinum Level winner of the National Dairy Quality Awards - one of six in the country.

Thanks to Britti Tucker of MMPA for helping with the long application process, our vets, our team, to the NMC for the competition, and congrats to all the winners!

The Hoard's Dairyman article above isn't online yet, but a link to a Michigan Farm News article is here:  Michigan Dairy Producers Dominate in National Dairy Quality Awards Recognition

This week we went to Orlando, Florida to the NMC meeting to receive the award.  They had a really nice ceremony, and it was great talking with all the other farmers, sponsors, and conference attendees.  It is really such an honor, and we feel so fortunate to have such a great team and wonderful support.

New year, old recipes

At my wedding shower in 2001, the lovely women brought favorite recipes to give to me.  Over Christmas break I was looking at them and decided that one of my New Year's resolutions would be to make all of them this year.

It has been so fun to do!  I love seeing their handwriting and their notes for helping make it turn out the best.  I also love thinking about all of them - those that I see all the time, and those that I miss.

This is also my family's favorite resolution I've ever made.  I'm a make-dinner-every-night-we're-home person anyway, but we're all just having fun with it.  First time I've stuffed manicotti (boys did it too), and purchased Worcestershire sauce. My kids eat a lot, so this works well for all of us!

Enjoy!  Here's January - 

Chocolate Crunch Bars, Mary Ellen Pung

Big hit.  I mean, if you put peanut butter and chocolate on anything, how can you go wrong?

 

Applesauce pancakes, Tracy Anderson

I have a griddle as of Christmas (thanks, mom!) and I love it.  I've made pancakes more in the last month than I have my entire life.  (If you're wondering, that is four times.)

Easy Taco Casserole, Mary Kingsbury

I miss Mary.  She also had three sons, and she always talked about how they took good care of her.  She knows what they like to eat!  This was gone in minutes.

Buttermilk Pancakes, Holly Phinney

Everyone loved these.  The boys said they were "like a restaurant."

Frank Oz's Glop, Moriah Newman

Great name, great taste!

Yoda Soda, Moriah Newman

The boys made these for days afterward, and then we bought more limes to make more!

                                         

 Mexican Chicken Manicotti, Bev Davis

Why haven't I been making this all my life?

Peanut Butter Cookies, Louise Ferguson

We had a couple extra boys over, and everyone ate them in about two seconds.

Meatballs, Lisa Warnke

I had to ask on Facebook whose handwriting this was, and Lisa's niece quickly identified her!

I'm already looking forward to February!

The 12 (Years) of Christmas

I was looking back at our Christmas cards for the last 12 years we've lived on the farm - which is also the same amount of time we've had children.  So for the 12 days of Christmas ... here we are!  

In 2007 we quit our jobs, moved from Connecticut to Michigan, bought the farm, and had twins!  Kind of a big year.

Then came 2008! I said in our Christmas letter that we put in an irrigation system, knocked down a silo, and had a great year for crops, which is what's showing in the picture - a towering cliff of corn!

Kris is very critical of this past-pile because we do it all differently now.  : )

Those santas got bigger! They were two. The fact that they were both looking even near the camera was a win.

This was our second full year on the farm. We gave a lot of tours to our friends, because we all had kids this age!

And then we were five. Max was born in 2010. This is also when I started Truth or Dairy!

On the fifth day of Christmas...

In 2011 we built our new calf barn. Not that raising calves in a 100-year-old barn wasn't fun, but it wasn't as convenient as you might think. : )

I also wrote my first book, Every Other Twin Book is Wrong, because I was afraid I would forget all the things about babies as my kids got older. I totally did.

This picture was not taken in December!

Kris spent a lot of 2012 planning for our herd expansion, which included building a free stall barn and manure lagoon.  I still love the word lagoon - so exotic!

On the seventh day of Christmas...we added 200 cows to our herd, built a barn and modified another 
one, and went to milk meetings around the country.

Our friend Andrew Jenkins (Canfield Jenkins House of Photography) took this picture in our yard. I was the only person in this picture who wanted this taken. The other four had questions like 'Why are we doing this when we have a million pictures?' Because I just want a nice one. 'Why can't I wear this sweater that looks just like yours?' Because you would hate me for it later.

In 2014, I won the Anderson Olympics. A lot of other seemingly important things went on, like installing a manure pump and becoming a Face of Farming & Ranching, but that was the first and probably last time!

Obviously I just picked a picture from the summer...at a spot where we spend a lot of time, and where everyone was wearing exactly what they wanted.

We all tried to represent what we liked doing best - farming, climbing trees, Legos, games, and running.

I love that we were able to feature the classic glove in our Christmas celebration.

I listed all of our likes and dislikes. Max's dislikes were: "Wearing clothes, going to bed."

Three years later - Max is still never cold.

We indoctrinated our children, and it even shows in our 2017 Christmas card. They were all super excited for this one.

We went back to Andrew Jenkins, and this time it was wonderful.  Everyone was game.  We actually have real smiles too, because my brother Gage was standing behind Andrew making us laugh!

And ta da ... 2019! 

This year, we had the weirdest, wettest year ever on the farm. Not only was it the worst weather for crop farming in 12 years, it was the wettest ever.  We all knew it, and the National Climate Report confirmed it.   (We're standing in one of our corn fields.)

Luckily, it all turned out okay, and it's been lovely and warm this week. You can never depend on the weather on the farm, but I can depend on our wonderful team members, family, and Kris.

Merry Christmas from Truth or Dairy, and thanks for following along. Santa will love his milk and cookies tonight...and here's to a drier 2020!

Thank you, as always, for reading.  I so appreciate you coming along in our farm journey.  Next year my resolution is to do more videos.  To subscribe to our YouTube channel, go to: youtube.com/timelytv

School, Uganda, New Orleans, Snow, and Thanksgiving

Nearing the end of another year! This one, by far, was the wettest year we have ever had. When we were at Thanksgiving dinner last night, my mom commented on how much corn was left in the fields. I made a joke about "Hashtag Things Farmers Say," but it is sad and true. Let's hope for some solid ground soon.

I had the delightful opportunity to go to Mrs. Damon and Mrs. Austin's classes at St Joseph Catholic School, like usual!  That same week I hosted visitors from Uganda.  Courtney Ross from GreenStone Farm Credit Services brought two members of the MSU Professional Fellows Program - Piloya Innocent and Kevin Atimango.  Both women are working on promoting and improving agricultural production and marketing, including direct sales, in Uganda. As a result, their questions were different than most visitors - much more on the business side, and incredibly interesting. They came for a farm tour on one of the coldest, windiest days.

Kris attended the National Milk Producers Federation joint meeting in New Orleans, and I tagged along. The meeting always has a dairy bar, and I took full advantage of trying all the different pizzas and milk flavors!

We got snow early, but now it's gone. It makes everything at the farm take longer...but it's so pretty.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. We ran the Turkey  Man Trot in Lansing and had dinner with my parents. It was all fantastic. We are especially thankful for our hardworking team.

Here's a story...three nights ago Kris got a call that there were some cattle in the road. We were just about to eat dinner, but I hopped in the truck with him to go help. We found them where cattle normally are...four of them in a group, by the feed, trying to get back in. They went in easily as soon as we opened the fence. (Easy for two people - hard with just one!)

I told Kris there are no animals I know as well as cows. They are pretty predictable. Just like people in a kitchen...everyone likes to hang out right next to the food!

Tomorrow is December. Here's to a wonderful holiday season with lots of butter, cheese, whipped cream, more butter...and standing right next to it.

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Sweet as sugar...beets

I went on an awesome tour of the Michigan Sugar beet processing plant in Bay City, Michigan!

I interviewed Elizabeth Taylor, Ag Relations & Communications Manager at Michigan Sugar for the Michigan Grown, Michigan Great podcast I host for the Michigan Ag Council.  (Just how many times can I say Michigan in a sentence?!)  If you'd like to hear it, plus the other 80 + interviews, they are here:  https://michigangrown.org/podcast/

Elizabeth mentioned they had tours, so my friend Julie (Bay City native and willing travel partner) and I immediately booked one.

It was fascinating.  I absolutely love seeing how everything works, and this tour was so interesting!  Like a lot of factories, pictures weren't always allowed, but I did take them where I could.

First, we drove up and saw all the trucks unloading sugar beets. 

They float on water - so debris and rocks and such fall to the bottom - into the plant, where they are washed, cut into hash brown size, and the evaporation and crystallization steps happen.  (For all the details, go here: https://www.michigansugar.com/growing-production/from-seed-to-shelf/)

My favorite part then happened, and we loved it so much, we watched it twice.

The crystallized sugar is spun around in a centrifuge, which spins out all the brown molasses that didn't crystalize.  It was like magic ... it was like brown, in a spinner, then suddenly it was all white, perfect sugar. 

The bagging part of it was also cool, because it was the same exact sugar going into different bags.  Kroger, Meijer, Great Value, Pioneer - we watched them all bagged!  (Jessica, our lovely tour guide, said that people often ask her why the sugar brands have different prices.  She said that for instance Wal Mart buys so much Great Value sugar in bulk, that they get a lower price than another seller who isn't purchasing as much does.)

We got to taste test sugar right off the line, both brown sugar and white.  Funny thing, though I love sugar in food, I don't really love tasting it straight.

I loved the control room where you could see all the amazing technology behind the process, also.  The people working were all friendly and answered our questions, too.

We went to Cream & Sugar, a new ice cream place supplied by Michigan Sugar and Michigan Milk Producers Association.  Julie and I got ice cream flights and it was some fantastic tasting ice cream.

I love a farm tour!  If it ends in eating the product, all the better. 

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