Truth or Dairy

New from Evergreen Dairy!

2025-02-19T11:39:00.006-05:00

New from Evergreen Dairy!

We are now regularly offering freezer beef from our pasture raised, grass & grain fed beef herd. The perfect blend for delicious, local beef!

Customize the way you like with our local processors.

Contact me for details. Thanks!

National Dairy Quality Awards

2025-01-30T06:17:00.001-05:00

I'm so incredibly proud of Kris and our fantastic team members for winning a Gold National Dairy Quality Award!

This is the fifth time our farm has been named a national award winner.

The award is judged on producing consistent high quality milk, udder health, milking routine, health protocols, and strategies for overall herd welfare.

Thank you Hoard's Dairyman, sponsors, and Rachel Brown of MMPA!

I post frequently on Facebook at TruthorDairy and Instagram at TruthorDairyfarm. Feel free to follow along there!

National Dairy Quality Awards - 2024

2024-02-01T05:45:00.001-05:00

We are so honored to receive a National Dairy Quality Award! I am so proud of Kris and our wonderful team. The award is for consistently producing high quality milk, measured by quality, udder health, milking routine and protocols, and strategies for overall herd health and welfare.

Evergreen Dairy received a Silver Award, and this is the fourth year we’ve been a recipient.

Thanks to Lindsay Green at MMPA, the NMC and sponsors, and our entire team on and off the farm!

More here.

12 Days of Christmas - 2023

2023-12-25T06:00:00.007-05:00

I did this last year and had a lot of fun with it. For the next 12 days, let's take a walk down memory lane!

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

It's our Christmas card picture from this year, taken by our friend Andrew! Somehow he knew that standing in the ditch right off our lawn was going to be a great view of the leaves.

Merry Christmas to all of you. Thank you for reading about our farm all year long!

On Christmas Eve...we love a photo recreation, and what's better than a photo recreation of a Christmas card photo? The calf had no interest. We had so much fun doing this one!

These boys have been putting tires on the pile since they could drag one.

Thanks to the many people who have helped over the years - not only our wonderful team (they are so fast and strong!), but our family, tons of friends (even from out of state), our pastor, our kids' friends...you have all made this giant job go quickly!

The pizza tastes even better when you're looking at all the hard work of the year - the planting, growing, irrigating, worrying, harvesting - in a nice, tidy pile, all covered up and secure, ready for your cattle to eat the rest of the year. There's no other feeling like it!

And...it's three kids and three calves! Helping with calf chores was one of the boys' first jobs, and probably the cutest one we have.

Kris and I both grew up watching our parents (and grandparents) work, and we're trying to instill the same work ethic in our kids. Living on a farm makes it easier, since there's always some work to do!

On the fourth day of Christmas...

Below - my dad and little me sitting on the porch swing on our front porch in our first house on the farm. Based on what he's wearing, you can tell dad is just taking a break from working to say hello. (Terrible colors back then, right?)

Top - my dad and little Ty and Cole, on the same swing! It's still on our porch today! You can tell they are fascinated by the candy they are about to eat...and their grandpa.

Kris and I both grew up living next to our grandparents, and we wanted the same for our kids. My dad told us he would work with Kris for a year on the farm when we came back, and then he wanted to do his own thing. And he did! Got his private pilot's license, flew all over, followed his own interests...while always still helping, giving advice, working anytime he was asked, and best of all...helping raise our kids. And still is today!

On the fifth day of Christmas...

Field rocks can be used for so much! My mom has hauled so, so many rocks out of rock piles over the years. Not only has she built a rock wall at her house (now mine), she built one at her new house, too! This picture is after she revived mine, since it's been there so long it was sinking into the ground.

My ancestors moved here when the land was first being settled and cleared trees and rocks to make fields. It seems like such hard, manual labor.

The rocks still emerge from the ground any time we work the soil. We rock pick fields - one of my favorite jobs, because it's so easy to see the results - every year. We have rock piles next to the fields everywhere, and we even have one next to our yard, waiting for our next project.

We're thankful for my mom making our yards and farm beautiful. Have I mentioned she also mows all the lawns?!

Sharing about the farm on my blog and social media made me a photographer, because I wanted to show what I saw.

There were wonderful shots like this one - in 2019, we had to clean debris off the irrigation screen when the water was low. Now we cover it with a moving screen so this isn't needed anymore. But for a time, this was a job that needed doing that no one really liked. On this day, it appeared that Cole was perfect for the job.

#12DaysofChristmas

In 2012, Faces of Agriculture did a little article on us, and that's how this picture came about. Did they take it? Did I have someone take it? How did it come about that I was wearing a dress, holding little Max in our pasture? I don't remember that part, but I do love this picture!

In that article I said, "My favorite part about having a farm is the lifestyle. Not only is this our business, but it’s a way of life. Since there’s no real separation between work and home, the five of us are often together. Of course, it’s hard work, there’s not a lot of time off, and it’s stressful. But so is owning any business. At least with this one, we’re producing something we’re proud of, and we have a great view while we’re at it."

On the 8th day of Christmas...we spend a lot of time not only feeding, milking, and caring for the cattle...but looking at them on the pasture. It's one of my favorite sights. My house has pasture in front and behind, so I see it a lot!

I love seeing them excited and jumping around, when they come to greet me, when they run alongside me, when you get in there and they grab your clothes with their mouths, eating and calm, lying down and sleeping. I love living alongside them.

On the 9th day of Christmas...this is our calf cart, which Kris made so we can take milk from our dairy barn to feed our calves.

When Kris worked for Caterpillar, he was gone a lot. He wanted to farm in part because he wanted to be around his kids (who weren't born yet.) This picture is a good representation of their younger childhood - we always visited Kris for some entertainment! You can tell how used they are to calves that they are mostly interested in this cup!

On the 10th day of Christmas...

This is in May 09, as our two-year-olds were walking out to the field. Kris and the tractor are in the background. This may have been the last time they wore jeans.

Taking Kris lunch, riding with him in the chopper, the kids falling asleep in the tractor, taking turns - all good memories. I'm sure many of you have similar ones!

On the 11th day of Christmas...

I present the farmiest picture that also shows the strength of genetics.

Four years ago, my dad headed up building a place to feed our cattle. Here we're discussing it as he, Cole, and I stand in the same position. Bare feet, barn cats, and silos also make the scene. Photo credit goes to my mom, who was also working on the feed pad while recording gems like this one.

On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

We moved from Connecticut to Michigan in February 2007, and we had our twins in June. I rarely dressed them alike, but I apparently couldn't resist these Santa outfits in Christmas 2008.

Also - photo quality has come such a long way in such a short time!

End of 2023

2023-12-15T06:08:00.000-05:00

Life has really changed from when this was the only writing I did each day. Although I frequently post on Facebook, I just wanted to do a wrap up of another year on the farm. We moved here in Feb of 2007, so this makes it 16 years!

Activity collars, artificial insemination, and sort gate - These all tie in together. The sort gate moves the cattle where they need to be based on their activity collars. For instance, if a cow is in heat, it moves her to the management rail where she will be bred with artificial insemination. If she's not eating, it'll move her to the pen where we can check her and treat her if necessary. Kris tracks every individual animal on the computer.

There have been so many technological advancements even since we began farming, and the fact that this works is amazing to me. It's not perfect - there are some cows who don't like the gate and will just time it so they can run through it and then we have to move them manually like the olden days of 2022. But it works for the majority!

Ice house - We had a building next to our house that was the old ice house. My great grandpa carved his name in it on May 17, 1899. It's when I assume they finished building it. My aunt and uncle called it the bath house, because we used to change clothes in there before using the pool. My parents used it as a garage.

This year, we cleaned it out totally and found so many treasures in the loft. One of them was a brick hod, used to transport bricks and mortar. We didn't even know what it was - we had to research online!

We knocked down the ice house/bath house/garage to build a garage that fits our cars. Before we did that, we took a lot of boards and the door to use in our new garage.

Drought - June was pretty scary, because it didn't rain. I hate this feeling, and I've been through it my entire life! My dad repeated his old quote, "A flood will scare you, but a drought will starve you." Just the absolute scarcity of water made everything crispy, hard, and barren. And there's nothing - save for irrigation - that you can do about it. Then the rains came, and immediately the crops responded. Thank goodness for seed development and the hardiness of plants! We ended up having a great crop.

Community - This year all three boys took steers to the 4-H fair. They had a great time, and we really enjoyed it! I joined the Clinton County Farm Bureau Board as the third member, and it's nice to be involved in that aspect of farming. Kris was elected treasurer of the United Dairy Industry Association, which is a national board of farmers that makes decisions on how the national dairy checkoff promotion money is used. He was already on the board of Dairy Management Inc and our milk co-op. For him, it's great connecting with people and working on the marketing aspect of the industry, which is ever-changing and interesting.

Coming up - Next year I'm part of a leadership class through MSU Extension, and Michigan Farm Bureau, GreenStone, the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan, and the Great Lakes Leadership Academy are supporting me. I'm really excited about it, and it has an agricultural background and focus. As for the farm, we'll continue making improvements, including in the parlor.

As always, thank you for reading, and thanks for being interested in our farm!

We put Fitbits on our cows!

2023-08-31T10:49:00.006-04:00

We put Fitbits on our cows! They're not exactly Fitbits (they're actually Allflex) but they do a lot of the same things.

They track:

Activity level - If she isn't moving around as much, it tells us that she might not be feeling right. This way we can check her even BEFORE she gets sick.

Rumination - If she's not eating as much, it could mean something is wrong or the feed isn't agreeing with her.

Other points:

AI - Not artificial intelligence...artificial insemination. By tracking her activity, we can see when she's ready to be bred.

Sort gate - You can set up the gate to automatically sort them by their collars into different areas.

Tools - It's all set up the software on our phones and computer. Everything is tracked to make sure that we have eyes on our cows and are using tools to provide them with the best quality care possible.

I've worn a Fitbit for six years. It's probably high time that our cows have them too!

Barns painted!

2023-07-13T08:03:00.003-04:00

Last year I was at the barn with John and Tracy, and I said offhandedly that they needed painting. (My dad couldn't remember if they had last been painted in the late 80s or early 90s. Definitely not in the last 16 years we had been farming here, anyway!) John said he wanted to paint the barns next summer.

I thought it was sort of a ... that would be nice, but Tracy and John talked about it over the year, and it became apparent - they really did want to do it!

It was a hard job. They power washed, but it really didn't take the paint off, so they scraped both buildings. It was hot, and they were covered in paint chips and sweat. We got a lift, because the barn is really tall, and it seemed really hard to do it with a ladder.

After the scraping John sprayed red paint and Tracy painted the white. It took them long days and many hours and...they look so great! Thank you so much to my dear sister and John! I can't thank you enough.

We still use these barns. They were built over 100 years ago. Still going, and better looking now!

I rarely write here...but I do here!

Cereal bar

2023-04-17T06:30:00.003-04:00

I've always wanted to go to a cereal bar ever since I've heard about them, and I finally did! It was as much as I had hoped and dreamed. 6 cereal + 2 toppings + MILK = Joy.

I got Reese's Puffs, Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Golden Grahams, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Oreo O's, with fresh blueberries and sliced strawberries on top, with 2% milk.

Yes, I can of course do this at home. But somehow it was even better out! They arranged it all so beautifully, and the whole place had a fun, happy atmosphere.

It wouldn't be the same without milk, our wonderful and delicious product!

Wanna Spoon, Nashville, TN

On the farm...we hauled so much manure last week, and it went well. Always a race against the weather. We even seeded a field of alfalfa! It feels like spring for sure.

Kris has been going to lots of meetings, as as they wind down on those, it starts to be the busiest season of all.

This is our 16th year living here, which seems amazing to me. It's all gone so quickly.

Here's to another great season of growing, harvest, and eating cereal and milk every day.

United Dairy Industry of Michigan

2023-03-17T09:29:00.005-04:00

The United Dairy Industry of Michigan put on their annual meeting. There were many things to love about it. The top ones for me were:

- Our CEO Dwyer Williams invited her family to see her at work. They were also going to visit a dairy farm for the first time!

- A class from WMU won a contest against other schools on coming up with the best campaign for milk. They spoke and were so great. Made me proud of my undergrad alma mater.

- A dance troupe finished out the meeting. They promised it would end with a bang, and it did.

- Dairy farmer Tim Hood retired after 17 years on the board. He very briefly said, we make the best product in the world. It shouldn't be hard to sell! : )

Enjoy your dairy...

Meeting season and 4-H calves

2023-02-21T14:04:00.001-05:00

It's meeting season!

Kris is on our co-op board, and he's been to the other district meetings across Michigan and Indiana. He couldn't make them all, since some are scheduled on the same day. Our own district is the last today.

It's hard for Kris to be away from the farm for days on end, but it's also really important to meet with farmers from other places. Everyone has different ideas, news, and information to share. He loves going to see everyone.

We sold so many 4-H calves this year! Our boys are taking them also. We haven't done 4-H in years, and Max hasn't done it at all, so we're looking forward to it.

Sasha and Cayden came to choose and meet their 4-H bulls yesterday. I had not met Cayden, and he was polite and shook my hand which I immediately loved, and Sasha is my cousin so I already loved her. She is actually my dad's cousin's daughter's daughter, but isn't cousins what we all feel?

It'll be time for fair before we know it.

Home sweet farm home

2023-01-24T06:46:00.009-05:00

Progressive Dairy asked me to write an article. Here it is:

There are a lot of memories and nostalgia surrounding a farmhouse, since for generations your family gathered there. Our house is 145 years old, and my kids are the seventh generation in our family to live in it. My great-grandma was born in it, my great-aunt got married in it, my parents improved it, and now it houses three teenage boys who jump to hit every door frame each time they go through a door.

What people often don’t talk about is that, along with the happiness, there are also issues.

Read the rest: Home sweet farm home

12 days of Christmas

2022-12-26T09:15:00.000-05:00

On social media I did a 12 Days of Christmas of past farm pictures. Enjoy, and merry Christmas!

This is my favorite view from our backyard. The sunset in the summer is right in the middle of our view. Every night I'm home I go outside to watch the sunset, and if someone is home, I pull him out with me.

I've seen a lot of beautiful sights, I've been to national parks and all 50 states and many countries, and I love traveling. But this view is the reason I won't ever really leave.

In 2017, we decided to space out our calving, so our summer help went back to college, and my mom Cherie Anderson volunteered to do calf chores for months. She made a binder complete with pictures outlining exactly how to do it. 

This is just one of the millions of ways she worked with my dad on the farm in the past, feeding, watching cattle on a camera to see who was in heat, drawing them for records, as well as working on off the farm. And then today as she mows at the houses (including mine!) and barns every week, landscapes them, plants flowers, and makes everything look nice, as well as supporting us in every way possible. 

When I told her in 2006 that Kris and I were contemplating moving back and buying the farm, she said, "Oh, we'll have so much fun!" She was right!

I love this picture from when we brought Kris lunch in the field yesterday. Wait, 11 years ago. : )

We're going way back in the vault to a picture I remember my mom taking when I was 6 years old, going out to feed our 4-H calves in our backyard. This swingset, the bin, the wagons, the Guernsey calves, the bare feet on gravel...such a farmy shot.

Here are little Cole and Ty being funny with giant pieces of grass in their mouths. I love the looks on their faces. Look! Someone is wearing shoes!

Here's my dad Jack Anderson talking to Max in the barn. My dad stayed on a year after we moved back to Michigan from Connecticut to work with Kris on the farm, and then he went off to get his pilot's license and fly around. But...he never stopped helping, giving advice, fixing things, and supporting us, and now our kids! That's an every day job.

These could be any little farm kids in any year on any farm. But these are mine, and I loved these little boys who liked climbing things then and now!

Babies and cows, am I right?! I love seeing the cows on pasture, and they always welcome us when we join them.

Here's when my twins sort of looked like twins.

It's two cuties in a corn field...there are so many things I love about this picture. The way Kris is looking at Max, and the way Max is looking at the camera. The difference in skin between people who work outdoors and babies. Kris' Caterpillar hat and how tall the corn is. The fact that this picture is over a decade old, but it seems like yesterday!

When Kris and I decided to farm, one of the reasons we thought it would be fun is because our kids would grow up like we did. And they have! I feel it's captured in this picture with the swimsuit, the boots, and the calves in the barn.

.A few years ago we were having a party, we all went out to the pasture, and my friend took this picture. It's got the land we first bought when we moved here, the cows, the pasture across from our house, and the guy I've been married to for almost 21 years!

What a year!

2022-12-20T07:02:00.002-05:00

What a year! Let's look back...

Jan

We started the year visiting my Uncle Al, Aunt Delia, cousin Cass, wife Dorie, and daughters in New Mexico on their dairy farm! Dairy farmers love to visit other dairy farms, especially when they are owned by much-loved family members. We got up to do chores with them, and it was so fun seeing how other people do things.

Feb

Kris' grandma turned 90 and attributes her long and healthy life to raw milk. Since it's not always legal to drink raw milk, just go for pasteurized, I say.

March

Cole milked for the first time. The next in a long line of milkers!

April

Kris and the boys repaired the landscaping around our centennial farm sign. We're now up to 144 years in 2023, which means in 2029 we'll have a big 150th birthday party - a sesquicentennial, so I can practice spelling it now.

May

Eighteen friends (plus my dad!) volunteered to help us cover the pile of alfalfa on Memorial Day weekend. We felt so lucky! Look, they come in all sizes.

June

We did tours with college students, elementary students, news reporters, and playgroups. The kids asked adorable questions, and one kindergartner told me it was the best day of her life. I don't care if she says that every day. I'll take it.

July

Our families visited, and I love being on the farm with all our little nieces and nephews!

August

Rock picking is one of my favorite chores on the farm, since I feel like it's also a great workout. Don't say we don't have fun family activities. Harvest continued.

September

We chopped the corn! It stopped raining for quite some time this summer, (insert stress and worry here), so the corn was shorter than usual, but still not a bad harvest overall!

October

We hauled manure again, which totals about four times a year, and Kris and I attended the National Milk Producers meeting in Colorado. You could spot a dairy farmer from 100 yards in the hotel, and if there's one characteristic dairy farmers have in common, it's friendliness. Everyone just talked. We talked farming, of course.

November

We started a construction project, making a management rail, a trimming area, an office, and some storage.

December

We like to reflect on the year. It was a really good one for us, and we're fortunate to have a great team with us, including my parents, our employees, and all the companies and individuals who support us. We're talking manure haulers, builders, dairy supply, nutritionist, vets, suppliers, equipment dealers, milk haulers, our co-op...the list goes on an on, and I don't want to miss anyone. We appreciate you this year and every year!

Here's to a great 2022, and cheers to the upcoming new year. As always, thanks for reading!

#Pilkandcookies

2022-12-20T06:09:00.001-05:00

I saw a news story about a video made by Pepsi about mixing Pepsi and milk. The hashtag was #pilkandcookies. I posted about it on Facebook, and a lot of people told me that they drank it in Laverne and Shirley, and this was an old idea resurfacing. However! We hadn't heard of it before, so we started some experiments.

First - Pepsi and milk!

Positive reviews all around.

Cole - Tastes like carbonized milk with a little Pepsi taste. I like it. The consistency is weird. Sure, I'd drink it again.

Max - It tastes like Pepsi with the texture of milk.

Ty - Pretty good! Blends the taste. Pepsi tastes like metal and this doesn't.

For me, if I closed my eyes, I would just think I was drinking Pepsi. So it's like a ... nutritional glass of Pepsi!

Next up - Diet Mountain Dew and whipped cream.

All of us looked askance at this combo, but...you can't deny the results!

Cole, Max l, and I liked it better than Pepsi and milk, while Ty stayed in the Pilk camp.

Mostly this made mornings before school more fun!

Next a suggestion - orange pop and milk

TrueMoo sells an orange-flavored milk at Halloween called Orange Scream, and we've gotten it and liked it.

Max - It tastes exactly like that TrueMoo orange milk. I think they're just putting pop in it.

Kris - It's pretty good. It tastes like an orange pushup.

Me - Delicious.

Cole and Ty practically in unison - Orange popsicle.

Several friends suggested a Boston Cooler - Vernors and vanilla ice cream mixed in a blender. This is actually a Michigan drink.

Although we had all had a Vernors float, none of us had tried it in a blender.

Kris & Ty said the exact same thing at different times - "Best one yet."

Cole - "Good to me."

Me - "Better than a float."

Max - "Weird, good ice cream."

What have we learned? It's all fine. No one has asked for a repeat. We drink milk every day without pop in it, and that's probably good enough for us. But I love trying them, and I love the marketing. What should we try next?!

Eat butter - WLNS news story

2022-12-08T05:49:00.002-05:00

Nate Salazar from WLNS, organized by Jon Adamy at Michigan Farm Bureau, came out to talk about inflation and the effects on farms. Thanks to them for a good story!

The video is here.

New construction!

2022-12-02T06:47:00.002-05:00

New construction!

We're building a management rail (also called a palpation rail) where we can take care of cows. We're also putting in a dedicated area to trim their hooves, which we do on a regular schedule.

It will all be controlled with an electronic sort gate which is run off the RFID tags in our cattle's ears. This way, it's easier for them to know where to go, since the gates will open automatically to guide them to the correct area. This is less disruptive for them.

This includes an office where the computer running the sort gate will be housed in half, and the other half will store pallets of minerals and supplemental feed.

We're excited!

Check out this old blog on hoof trimming ... Josh Salisbury, once our longtime employee, is our trimmer now, (Sheldon moved away), but it's the same idea! Click here: Hoof trimming.

First snow

2022-11-17T10:08:00.002-05:00

Does everything take longer and require more prep? It is also worth it for the beauty? Yes!

Winter came a little early this year, as we usually don't have snow until the last week of November...but it's been the most lovely fall all around. Just last week it was 74 degrees! Lots of people took the time to put out their Christmas lights. I used the time to finish cleaning leaves out of our yard. It was wonderful to be doing it in shorts instead of a coat.

On the farm - our farm truck died. It really did a great job for us. It has been through a lot, and it looks like it. We were patching it together with hope. We're replacing it with something smaller, since trucks are not the most fun item to purchase right now.

We are doing a lot of construction down at the barn, and that will make work even easier...coming up!

Brownfield ag article

2022-10-25T13:13:00.002-04:00

Michigan dairy farmers are working to increase access to milk and dairy foods at local food pantries.

Kris Wardin serves on the United Dairy Industry of Michigan board of directors.

“It is one of the most requested food bank items, we just haven’t had necessarily the logistics to be able to get it there, but that has really changed over the past several years,” he says.

The St. Johns dairy farmer tells Brownfield new check-off funded grant programs allow food pantries to purchase dairy foods and also improve their distribution process.

“It’s really a program I think our dairy farmers can feel very proud of, they can feel really good about it, and I think from our feedback from our partners at the food bank, they’re so very appreciative of it,” he shares.

The program has placed more than 60 coolers in local food pantries and awarded 10 infrastructure grants and 25 dairy food grants over the past two years.

Wardin says other food security projects have provided six of the seven major food banks in the state with dedicated refrigerated trucks to help distribute dairy.

He also points to milk drives with partner organizations like Busch’s Fresh Market and Spartan Nash stores to help increase milk donations to pantries.

Listen here.

Running

2022-09-19T09:34:00.003-04:00

Alice Murphy sent me this clip yesterday. I've seen it before, but not in a long time. This is my grandma Caroline Anderson, who had five children, then taught elementary school to put her children through college, all while dairy farming with my grandpa, Dale.

I was lucky enough to have my grandma until I was 15 years old, and since she lived so close, she was part of my daily life. I can't say enough good things about her, since she came to everything we did, was funny and nice, did the hula dance at an event and taught me too, always was delighted to spend time with us, and made my childhood pretty magical.

A salute to one of the people that made our farm what it is today!

Corn is done!

2022-09-19T09:21:00.005-04:00

Breathe a sigh of relief...the corn silage is done!

We hire Eric Miles and his team to do our chopping now. Eric very kindly sent me a video from the seat of the chopper, because I do miss riding with Kris (plus the boys) and watching it all happen! I don't miss owning a chopper and wagons. Eric and his team do an awesome job.

Our team also was great as always, and our supplementary team of our neighbors (not pictured) and friends (most but not all pictured) who helped us cover the piles!

This is such a big deal every year. All the eagerness to plant, all the hoping for rain, all the concern about it all summer long...then the payoff of a (hopefully) good harvest to feed our cattle!

It didn't rain much here, so our corn crop was not quite as good as some years, so we're buying some beet pulp we also will store on the cement pad.

End of summer

2022-09-05T07:33:00.005-04:00

Don't you think it's interesting when a child follows in a parent's footsteps?

Obviously this happens a lot in agriculture. Although we are on my family's farm, Kris also comes from a long line of farmers. Here he is with his dad Mike, who delivered bales this week.

I like asking people who I think have great jobs if they would recommend it to their kids...and often the answer is no.

Do you want your kids to follow in your career footsteps?

(Zero of my kids seem inclined to be either farmers OR marketing writers. But there's time!)

Also - there's the beauty of the cows and pasture...and the beauty of technology and machinery!

1. Manure haulers to fertilize our fields, this week after we chopped alfalfa. Thanks guys!

2. This keeps algae and residue from clogging up the irrigation pipe. We used to have to clean it out by hand once or twice a day.

3. The irrigation system that keeps our pastures and crops hydrated during this pretty dry summer!

We're getting ready for harvesting corn. It's kind of short due to the lack of rain, but it still looks good. The kids are back in school, I'm working, and we're all readying (and honestly, ready) for cold weather!

Down on the farm

2022-08-25T10:02:00.004-04:00

Ah, it's been an exciting summer on the farm. Good things, bad things, in between things. Lots of tours, friends, family, employees, parties, meetings, and work. Kris is on two boards and he really enjoys going to their meetings, the other people, and being involved. Our employees are wonderful, and we're fortunate they work here. I've been spending a lot of time at my computer at my job, which is currently in a different industry, which is why I haven't been posting any dairy articles!

The new alfalfa just started peeking out of the ground, and we're getting ramped up for corn harvest. Get ready for a tire party!

Now wheat!

2022-07-22T07:32:00.007-04:00

My mom, Cherie Anderson, has done it again! This time it's on wheat. We don't grow wheat on our farm, but we do buy a lot of it to bed down our cattle. I love looking at it when it's growing and when it's in bales in the field. It's just so beautiful. A friend of mine just had her niece's senior pictures taken in Greece, and in them she's standing in front of ... wheat! Beautiful in any country! Here's what my mom wrote:

The farmers around here have been harvesting their wheat for about the past week. Wheat is a cereal grain in the grass family. Most of the wheat planted around here is winter wheat and it’s planted about the first week of October. When it comes up, it looks like a field of grass and is a very pretty color of green. When the cold comes, the wheat just sits there and it survives all through the winter weather. In fact, it’s desirable to have snow cover the crop as insulation. In the spring, it begins to grow again and as it ripens in July, it turns a beautiful golden color. You know, “amber waves of grain”.

Wheat is harvested with a combine. The combine cuts the plants off and separates the kernels of wheat from the chaff. The last photos show what comes out and is put into the truck or wagon.

Wheat is almost like two crops in one, as the combine can shoot all the stems of the wheat out onto the ground and then the farmer can bale all of that straw up. If he doesn’t have livestock, he can sell all the straw to farmers who do. It is used for nice, soft, clean bedding for the animals. The straw can be baled into big square bales, small square bales, or big round bales, just like hay is.

Wheat is a cash crop, not generally raised for animal feed. The farmer can harvest the wheat and sell it that day for the current market price; he can store it and sell it when he wants to; or many farmers sign a contract ahead of time for a certain number of bushels at a certain price. This happens to be a good year to have wheat to sell!

Alfalfa - the process!

2022-06-29T07:52:00.001-04:00

A beautiful field of aflalfa

My mom Cherie Anderson wrote this on her Facebook page, and since she described it so well, I'm going to use it here! She also took all the pictures. Even though I grew up here, I didn't really pay attention until we started farming here ourselves. Growing and harvesting alfalfa to feed our cattle is a summer-long process with rewarding results!

It’s haying time in Michigan. Everyone knows what hay is, but maybe not everyone knows the process. This is a field of alfalfa. Alfalfa is planted in late summer or early fall to use the following spring. It’s a high protein food for cattle. It’s a legume and has deep roots. A field will be good for three to five years, or even longer, depending on the weather and soil.

When the alfalfa is at the right maturity and there’s no rain imminent, the farmer mows it and the machine lays it in rows. Then a rake or merger will put those rows together into larger swaths, or windrows. Then a chopper will scoop up those rows, cutting the alfalfa into smaller pieces and shooting it into a wagon or truck which is driving alongside. It’s trucked to a cement pad, dumped out, and another tractor pushes it into a pile and drives over it, compacting the pile. When it’s all done, the pile is covered with plastic. The alfalfa ferments, does not rot or spoil, and makes nutritious, delicious feed for cows for later on. It’s called haylage.

You can also bale alfalfa into round or square bales. In that case, it has to be much drier than chopped alfalfa. You can’t bale wet hay. It can actually spontaneously combust, as crazy as that sounds.

Alfalfa is mixed with corn sileage and other feeds and fed to cattle. Hay for horses is generally not purely alfalfa - it is either grass hay or a mixture of alfalfa and grass. Alfalfa is harder for horses to digest. They only have one stomach, unlike a cow which has four.

The last picture shows the field when all the chopping is done. The cool thing is that the alfalfa will grow back and the farmer can get three, sometimes four, cuttings every summer! Of course, at that point you WANT rain, unlike when you’ve got hay on the ground.

Oh, and it smells wonderful when it’s freshly cut!

Alfalfa close up

Cut

Merged

Chopper chopping it

Dumping onto feed pile

Tractor driving on continually to form file and compress it

The alfalfa field afterward

Ready to grow...in just 28ish days we do it again!

Slow ride

2022-06-16T03:23:00.002-04:00

While his brothers are in drivers training, Max is in on-the-job training!

While running the manure pump is Max's favorite farm job, mowing pastures in the tractor is his second. He only drives in the fields (not the roads MY GOODNESS), and Kris had to move the tractor, so Max brought the truck up from the back of the field. He was waving to me after he parked from across the road. This was his first time driving the truck.

It's funny to ride in a car while my older kids take turns driving, and it's no less strange to see Max at the wheel. Soon to be normal on both counts.