All in a Day's Work

Good afternoon you all!

It's been a while. These past few months have been pretty busy... between my co-worker at Gomers Inc. and her family re-locating with her husband's job in Nebraska, to finishing up calving season just a couple of weeks ago, to a few possible job interviews here and there, I have barely been able to catch my breath. And, therefore, I haven't had time to sit down and put together this post that I had been envisioning since my last post in July. WOW, time flies!

Anyway, I have been collecting these photos around my farm S.B. Feedlots to share with you all. You will find descriptions of each beauty I caught below the photo block. Enjoy!

1. This first one is a shot of my dad, sister, and I. My family runs about 200 beef cattle pairs. I help my dad out and split my time between the farm and Gomers Inc. We also have two hired hands, one being my show pig raising boyfriend, and we also rely on neighbor and farm friend help during the busy seasons.

2. As we are out with our animals a lot, and I mean a lot, they are a pretty curious bunch of critters. Calm animals are happy, healthy, and fast gaining animals. They aren't afraid of us at all.

3. Cows aren't always able to get the nutrients they need out of the pasture and silage that we feed them, so we supplement them with salt blocks and mineral tubs. This first year heifer is picking her nose after a few licks off the salt block. (A heifer is a female cow that hasn't had her first calf yet.)

4. Cows eat a lot. Every day. Vacation is slim around here, but if you're doing what do love, it doesn't feel like work all of the time.

5. We cut our own alfalfa for hay bales and chop some of our field corn to last through the winter to feed to our cows as silage.

6. With this summer's drought, feed is somewhat scarce. So, we get "waste" loads from canning factories of sweet corn silage and carrots. The cows go absolutely crazy over the carrots, they're like candy to them. Who would have thought?

7. This year, the DNR offered up grasslands to farmers to bale for their cattle. We got over 100 bales from this field for free. Such a blessing.

8 & 9. Bulls trying to stay cool in this summer's dry heat by laying in the mud and playing in the dirt. We had to be careful with our animals this summer to make sure they stayed hydrated and didn't overheat. It was pretty rough on them for a while there.

10. There's always something to do on the farm. One of this summer's projects was replacing a couple of fence lines.

11. This is our chute made by Morand Industries out of Canada. It is amazing and so easy to use and truly a God send. A lot safer than the ancient chute we used to have to deal with. We use a chute when we vaccinate our herd and when we need to re-tag cows and process our bull calves at weaning time.

12. A new cow calf pair.

13. It takes between 18 months and 2 years for our calves to grow this big. This is our fat lot of full grown steers and some heifers that will go to market for butcher and find their way to your plate. Yum!

14. The replacement heifer lot. We keep back between 20 and 30 heifers each year to replace old cows that we have culled from the herd.

15. Constantly bringing in new genetics with our bulls from the WBIA Bull Sale in Platteville, WI every spring. These bulls are calm, beefy, and help to get our herd better every year.

16. Our beautiful woods on the farm... makes for some good hunting!

Well, that's it for the farm tour and this blog. Feel free to comment with any questions. And in the mean time until my next blog, be sure to enjoy some yummy BEEF. And if you ever need any farm fresh meat, I'd be happy to get you lined up.

Thanks for reading! And until next time, stay curious about agriculture and help me bridge the gap between the city and the farm. Have a good one, everybody!

Farm Life is just not understood in the Big City

One of my favorite blogs to follow is the BEEF Daily blog by journalist and South Dakota rancher, Amanda Radke. She always has great insight to everything that is happening in the agriculture industry. I start off today's blog with an introduction to BEEF Daily for the simple reason that through Amanda's blog, my eyes have been forever opened to one of the biggest issues facing farmers and agricultural professionals today.

That issue is being MISUNDERSTOOD.

I looked up two definitions in the dictionary: farm and city. Farm (n) means: "a tract of land devoted to agricultural purposes (such as raising animals, especially domestic livestock)." City (n) means: "an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village." So, a farm is agricultural and a city is an inhabited place by people, generally more people than are in the country. Makes sense, right? Too much sense. Since there are more people in the city than on farms in the country, our job of educating the general (city) public about agriculture is definitely cut out for us.

Today, I am just going to share some tidbits for you to digest, nothing too crazy. And I welcome your comments!

1. If you're on Facebook, please like Keeping it Real: Through the Lens of a Farm Girl. Erin Ehnle always has great facts along with photos that she shares with her followers. I especially love the facts that show how far agriculture has come along. One of my favorites was a picture of a dairy cow in Illinois and the fact to go along with the photo was "More milk is produced today with only 9 million cows than with the 26 million cows in 1944." (Source: Dairy Farming Today) I thought that was amazing. And growing up on a farm, I know how important productivity is. But a lot of the comments to that photo that Erin shared showed a lot of concern for the cows and even negative comments saying that it couldn't be good for the cows and wondering if the milk was full of hormones, etc. Those comments, I'd be willing to bet, were probably from city folk that just misunderstand how farming isn't the same as it used to be. A cow can be so much more efficient with the right feeds, the right housing, the right everything, and farmers just didn't know what we know now back in 1944. Science and research is truly amazing.

2. Go to your local fairs this summer. Check out the agricultural booths, the 4H booths, the livestock barns. Ask questions, get informed. For those of you in Wisconsin, here are some links for fairs that you could easily visit: Columbia County Fair, Lodi Agricultural Fair, Wisconsin State Fair, and many more!

3. Just take a drive in the country. It's gorgeous. Challenge your family to find as many crops and farm animals as possible, just like the license plate game.

4. If you have questions about animal health, boy have you read the right blog... I hope my grandpa doesn't mind me posting this about him, but he is the most knowledgeable veterinarian I know. I work for him at his animal nutritional supplement business, Gomers Inc. To learn more about us, visit our website, our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter @Gomers Inc., or give my grandpa a call at 608.742.6014 - he'd love to chat with you!

Well, I better get back to work though, being a farm girl never gets dull. Hopefully next time I'll have some pictures and/or a video to share... Thanks for reading!

The start of a new chapter...

Well, here it goes.  ...just a small town farm girl.

I have made a vow to myself that I need to use as many avenues of social media to share the story of country, agriculture, livestock, crops, and the beautiful land that God created as I can. I have become more open-minded to twitter, although I must admit I am still no pro at it. I have made my facebook profile mirror my roots growing up on a beef farm with a farmer as my dad, a farm girl/turned nurse as my mom, a veterinarian as my grandpa, and now a show pig breeder as my boyfriend (of two years this past Sunday!). I am taking a poke at getting some videos going viral on youtube and now I am going to take a stab at blogging. I am going to try it slow... probably bi-weekly at first and see where it leads.

So, sit back, and enjoy the ride with me!