A week in the life...

Last week in pictures...

 Sunday, our church hosted its annual fall festival, complete with games, prizes, food and face painting.  Our son, quite the charmer, surprised me with this (and a hug):

 

 

 

Yeah, he's learning real fast!  Not to be outdone by a 3rd grader, my husband came back with this:

 

 

 

...followed by an explosion of laughter!  So did the son learn his charm from the dad, or is it the other way around?   THEN.....

 

 

This little guy just stole my heart.  I said, "its not even Mother's Day!'

 

 

 

***

 

 

Wednesday, we celebrated our 11th anniversary of farm ownership.  I'm not sure if we're celebrating the debt, 11 years of debt pay-off, or the fact that we're still in the game (LOL)! Either way, its fun.

 

 

 

 

***

 

Thursday, we played dress-up and went visiting to all of our favorite neighbors.  Some of them we didn't get to this year, hope to see you next year!  Yes we "do" Halloween, but we do not celebrate evil and fear.  We do make the day of many older folks who love to see the kids & their costumes.

 

(a Lely salesman, a farmer, a mouse, a bumblebee and an elephant)

 

 

***

 

 

Saturday we celebrated a 1st birthday with family...

 

 

 

Can you guess what color this kid is getting?

 

Finally, we attended an awesome worship celebration Saturday night with friends.  The message was about listening to what God is trying to tell you, then trusting him enough to follow.  We are a fearful people; it is much easier to stay where we're at instead of stepping out in faith and making a sacrifice to reap something better in our eternal life.   Is God trying to tell you something? Have you been listening?  Sometimes God's voice is that gut feeling you get, followed by your own voice in your head that says "No, that's not right...", "Something is wrong here..." or "I should really....(insert action)".  Another pastor we know once said that you know its an idea from God if it

1) benefits someone else

2) if its something for YOU to do (not someone else)

3) if its in line with God's word

 

God bless you in the week ahead-

 

-Terri

 

Market Pigs and New Digs!

Wednesday was a big day here!

In the morning we took the pigs to the butcher.  That's right folks, it's harvest season!  Mary and Jerry were very well-behaved....

Usually, we all go on this annual trip-but I told Rick we couldn't really take another day off of school for something so trivial.  To my surprise, he called in a substitute!  Mom came over and facilitated the boys while they worked on their lessons.  Rick and I took the "littles" with us, and it was a nice break.  We're so thankful that the hogs were healthy and made it to harvest without incident.  We are very fortunate to have home grown grass fed beef, chicken, turkey and pork.  Although we're taught to store up our riches in heaven, I'd be lying if I didn't admit I'm storing some up in the freezer.....

And....

The cows moved into the new barn!  As I waited for them to exit the parlor and come into the barn,  I took a deep breath and thought about how far we have come.  The past 11 years have not always been easy, but they were so full of joy.  Some of the best memories we have are from some of the most challenging issues we faced.  Good times, indeed.  Nope, I wouldn't trade or change any of it.  God's timing is perfect, and "slow and steady wins the race".

I took some video of the cows entering the barn.  They're like kids on Christmas morning!  It's the same as the first day of grazing in the Spring, with the running, jumping and mooing as they check out their new surroundings.  If you read this blog via email, and you want to see the video, you will have the visit the blog page itself at faithfamilyonthefarm.blogspot.com .

Video:

 

 



So, we'll cross "build a new barn'' off the list.  Occasionally I say to Rick (in terms of the farm and our future) "now what?" and he says "...now we enjoy it!!!"  I'll let him win this discussion-for now.

-Terri

Off the Farm

One of the most challenging aspects of dairy farming is maintaining that delicate balance between work and family.  Living where you work creates special challenges.  Where many people leave their place of employment and go home, we technically are always "at work".  Many aspects of the business are handled in the house, including finances, phone calls, record keeping and meetings.

So just when do you quit working for the day?  How do you convey the message to others that you are no longer "at work?"

We make quite an effort at keeping certain parts of the day for family time.  This does not mean that we are always doing something fun with the family. This means the time is spent doing something that benefits  the family. Examples would include church, meals, laundry, housework, schoolwork, or time reading or watching a documentary with the kids.  This takes quite the effort to carve out this time, and sometimes it just doesn't happen.  We have spent many evenings hauling hay, paying bills or going back out to finish chores.  The trick is keep the big picture in mind and not let that become the new normal.

Even more difficult than carving out our own time, is conveying the message to others.  People know that we are here.  Even if we are "off" it is assumed that we are available for anything and everything farm related.  One very cold and snowy Sunday afternoon a couple years ago, three men showed up to look at the parlor.  We stalled at the door.  We said "its Sunday.....we just put in a movie....chores are at 3...." but they just wouldn't budge.  They said they could look at it themselves.   Trying not to be rude,  Rick put on his coveralls.  Our parlor and milk storage is no different from other food production businesses.  I doubt other businesses would let people wander around whenever it suited them, without an employee or owner present.  This is just one example.  There's salesmen, evening phone calls....

We've figured out that to really be "off" you have to be absent.  Removing ourselves makes us immediately unavailable, and only available to those who have our number (like our hired team members and family).  It also allows us to not be distracted by unfinished work that we see every time we look out the kitchen window.  Ultimately we would like to be able to be off and home at the same time.   This will go on the list of goals, with the steps needed to get there. Until then, I'd like to share what we did on our last weekend off.

Mom watched the kids (Thank you, Mom!!), our team members milked the cows (Thank you!!) and Rick and I stayed in Pentwater at the Hexagon House.  It was an excellent stay! Matt & Sandy, the Innkeepers, were wonderful people who are obviously in their element with the B&B business.  The breakfast was very tasty, the coffee always hot (and available), and the conversation intriguing.  The house was warm, comfortable and clean, with many amenities to enjoy.  check it out:

Hexagon House



We browsed antique shops, went biking, walked out on the piers, watched movies, enjoyed a bonfire, visited 2 state parks and the Frederik Meijer Gardens. All in 48 hours!

Thanks, Matt & Sandy, for a wonderful stay!

-Terri

Resiliency

Resiliency:
1: The ability of a body to regain its original size and shape after being compressed, bent or stretched.
2: An ability to recover from or adjust easily to change or misfortune.

Farmers are some of the most resilient people I know.  Over the years we have been witness to or made aware of serious situations that have happened to farmers that may have compressed, bent or stretched them.  Whether it was their wallet, their heart, their physical endurance or their faith, they somehow seem to recover, although I would never call it easy.  For some reason farmers have an ability to see a very small light through a very narrow tunnel.

We know of farmers who have had barns burn, crops fail and cattle drop dead in the parlor after eating a rare poisonous plant.  We've watched droughts and floods age farmers well beyond their years.  We've had neighbors lose family members or employees in farm accidents. We've lost friends ourselves.

Many people have said to us "I don't know how you do it".  We don't really understand this, because we're not sure how not to do it.  How many people do you know that stay in the same career for their entire lifetime?  Are you still working in the same field that you were in after college? I am. Literally.

I'm not sure what keeps these farmers going sometimes. Whether its the next milking, only 12 hours away, or the next calving, only a couple months away, the next crop....maybe we just don't have enough time to even consider quitting.  I mean, you just can't stop milking the cows.  You wouldn't leave that standing crop in the field.  Somehow we are called to a level of responsibility that is above and beyond and involves things that just keep growing.

Last week there was a horrible freak snow storm in the Dakotas.  Tens of thousands of cattle were lost in the storm.  The storm came in much worse than predicted, and the cattle were caught off guard far from home.  The West does not operate the same as the East.  Ranches are gigantic in size with herd numbers sometimes in the thousands.  It takes days to move cattle from pasture to pasture, not mere hours.  The storm was surprising to so many people, but was is not surprising is the reaction, both positive and negative.  The comments made on some of the articles, obviously by non-ranchers, are offensive. The actions taken by other ranchers and those in the agricultural community are more than heart warming.  Here's a great blog post in response to some of those questions people were asking. When you have the time, it would be worth it to read it.

Questioning Cattle Deaths in South Dakota

News article with pictures:
Rapid City Journal

If you want to help (or be encouraged by people who are):
https://www.facebook.com/pledgeheifer

God gave me this verse today:
Isaiah 40:28
Have you never heard?

Have you never understood?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

the Creator of all the earth.

He never grows weak or weary.

No one can measure the depths of his understanding.

29He gives power to the weak

and strength to the powerless.

30Even youths will become weak and tired,

and young men will fall in exhaustion.

31But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.

They will soar high on wings like eagles.

They will run and not grow weary.

They will walk and not faint.

 

But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.  They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.

Twice a Day, However You May...

Through the years we have tried many different milking schedules.  Cows, at the very least, need to be milked twice daily.  Some farmers milk their cows three times per day, very few have tried four, and often some seasonal producers will back down to once per day right before dry off.

There is research that has shown that cows need to be milked every 8-12 hours;  no sooner than 8 hours from the last milking, but no longer than 12 hours after the previous milking.

Growing up most of the time we milked twice per day, early morning and afternoon.  For a little while we milked three times per day.  During that time I was in the 8th grade I did the afternoon milking.  Once, for a little while, my parents tried milking five times every two days.  So on day one, there would be two milkings, and on day two there would be three.  That was a scheduling nightmare!

After college, when I worked full time for my parents, I convinced them to try a 10am and 10pm milking schedule.  At the time, I was doing both milkings each day with exception to my weekend off.  One of my selling points was that Mom and Dad would only have eight milkings per month on this schedule (four milkings for two weekends that I was off).  They gave me the go-ahead. For a week.  Then they gave me the "stop".  Mom said Dad was too tired.  Too tired?  He wasn't even milking! Turns out, he was in such a habit of getting up very early, that he still did. Then, he stayed up at night in the house until he seen that I had chores done and had gone home.  I reminded him that I was an adult now, he didn't have to wait up for me....guess some habits are hard to change!

On our farm, we started with the 10 & 10 schedule.  We really liked it.  We got more sleep, sleeping from midnight or so until 8am....or later.  We weren't milking during the hottest part of the day, the cows are grazing at dawn & dusk, and the hay got done, given that we didn't have to stop in the middle of the afternoon to milk.  On Sunday morning we would just start early enough to get to church on time.

It is a bit more difficult to find hired help to milk that schedule, so we eventually went back to a more traditional 5am and 4pm.  As our home school evolved, I also needed the morning for school with the kids.  After baby #3, we went to a 3:30am and 3:30 pm.  This fit the baby's 3 hour feeding schedule at 3am, 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm, and finally midnight.  We had to juggle things around as we didn't have any hired help that year. Or sleep.

No matter how we try to schedule it, there is still only 24 hours in a day.  The key is finding the right one for your life right now. Problems do not arise until we become so stuck in our ways that we are not willing to change or try something else. Farmers tend to get stuck in a rut, with the reasoning of "that's the way we've always done it".

Around here, we do our best to schedule the farm around the family. Why? Because that's the way we've always done it.

I'm attempting to include a short video with some clips from the milking parlor.   If you think of a great song for this clip, let me know!  Summer 2012-

 

 

Hitch Pin Disease

Do you have it? Do you wish that you had it?

Do you even know what it is?

Hitch Pin Disease:
1.  A slow overwhelming desire developed by the farmer to have one tractor for each piece of machinery, creating a pair, hence seldom having to "un-hitch" and "hitch" implements up to tractors to complete tasks.

This is often an inside joke between us farmers; prodding and giving each other a hard time when we see new pieces of equipment arrive on their farms-now when we get something new, we often don't say anything at all, waiting to see how long it takes the other farmers to notice the piece when they drive by on their  "crop-checking" trips.

I didn't think we had a problem with hitch pin disease. For a long time we had just one tractor, an 806 Gas, that was sold to buy an 806 Diesel. Then we added a 60hp New Holland, to scrape, load bales, rake, etc. Then, Rick's uncle called and said he had a little Ford 2000, and we could have it if we got it running. We did. THEN, the owner of our original 806 Gas tractor called and said he was selling it, would we want to buy it back? It was our first tractor. We bought it.

Over the years we have purchased a loader (for the 806 gas) a discbine (on the diesel tractor), a bale wrapper (loaded by the New Holland), and finally this summer, a rake.

I knew we caught the disease when Rick said "I'm gonna marry that rake to the Ford!" Oh-no!

Its understandable, though.  Having one tractor means you are constantly hitching and un-hitching the equipment that you need: The discbine, the rake, the loader. The discbine, the rake, the loader. Over and over, and over, again.  Some hitches are simple, some are not:

The rake hitch is simple: 1 pin and a hydraulic hose.

The speed rake on the Ford 2000....for life.

Simple bale wagon hitch with a safety clasp on the pick-up.

This little guy LOVES hauling bales!

A more complicated discbine hitch.  2 hydraulic hoses, a P.T.O shaft and draw bar hitch.  Its much more time consuming to hitch and un-hitch this machine.

In the beginning, we did a lot of hitching and un-hitching.  We were just grateful for the one tractor that we did have.  We also made dry hay, which meant there was more time to switch machines while the hay dried down.  Now, with high-moisture bales, we need to move a little faster.  We can also be more efficient, and having somebody mowing down the next field while someone else rakes in front of the custom baler-all at the same time.

 

The next time you drive by your neighborhood farm, take a glance at their equipment.  Is it hooked up to something? Is it always hooked up to that machine?  Just be careful to not look too long. Pretty soon you'll realize that you need a second vehicle.  And it sure would be handy if you had a truck to pull the boat. And one for the camper.  And an ATV for the lawn cart, because you don't like taking it on and off the lawn mower.  Then you'll need a trailer for all of that. And something to pull it.....



 

4-H: "To Make the Best Better"

We just wrapped up the 2013 Clinton County 4-H & Youth Fair.  I think I can speak for a lot of people when I say it's always bittersweet.  As tired as everyone is,  it's a little sad when it's over...  Just ask my oldest son.

I reminded him that it had been 15 years since I have been actively involved in the fair, and yet here I was again. I told him he can be involved for as long as he wants....his lifetime, possibly.  I think that helped...a little.

Our oldest, now a regular 4-Her, did well at the fair this year.  There were no trophies or rosettes, but he did get all "A" rankings on his model, diorama, fudge, and performing arts.

More importantly than that, we learned (and demonstrated) a huge lesson on not giving up, and finishing the job, no matter what.

Clover, the 4-H calf, created quite the spectacle at the fair.  At home our oldest practiced leading him around, setting up his legs (lining his feet up square or staggered, as if showing in the show ring), and holding his head up high.  He practiced almost every day. 

Clover must have been a bit nervous at the fair.  When it came time for novice showmanship, They entered the ring. The first 30 seconds went great.  Then it all went downhill from there. Clover pranced around and jumped...on our son! More than once, he would practically get his front legs on his shoulders. At 442 lbs., he was no longer a little calf, and it took a lot of arm strength to get him under control. Each time Clover would jump, the crowd would gasp, our son would stagger or stumble, and then regain control and continue to show him, staring down the judge, holding the calf's head high, and giving it all he had.  He never quit. Clover jumped and jumped, many times, and our son continued on.  In fact, he made it into the final round of showmanship.

As he  came out of the ring the first time, we consoled  him. We encouraged him. We gave him pep talks.  We told him he had to go in the ring again. The look on his face...

It got worse, and he continued.  I offered him an out. As he passed by me, I told him he could quit.  He said no, and kept going.  At the end of the show, he placed last in the final round, but what he learned and what we learned from him was just as important as winning. The judge pointed out how he never quit.  He said he knew when he first walked into the ring that he was going to be in the final.  When the animal acted up, he never quit. He kept showing Clover the best that he could, until the show was done. The crowd clapped.  We cried.

If all our son learns from 4-H is to never quit until the job is done, even when it's hard, then its been worth it. 

Pictures from the show:

Before Showmanship

Staring that judge down....

Zach, the show ring helper (black sweatshirt), stays close to help out when needed.

Zach, now making the rounds with our son & Clover....

Our second son with a borrowed calf for Cloverbud showmanship

So proud of our boys!

Thanks to all the volunteers this past week.  Your efforts help kids like our boys learn life-long skills and lessons in character, work ethic, integrity, and responsibility, just to name a few.  You make a difference!

-Terri