Moving Forward

The past couple weeks have full of activity in finding employment land. Last week I drove an hour to an interview, flew to Phoenix for an interview at a trade show and flew to Ohio for another interview. The last trip was fraught with flight delays and I was hardly home all week, but it ended up being worth it.

In early August I'll be starting a position in marketing with Lallemand Animal Nutrition. I'll be working primarily with the silage inoculant part of the business and will have a variety of roles ranging from developing product literature to coordinating trade shows. The interview process was rather long and extensive, which made me even more confident in the position and company. It just seems like a good fit and I'm excited to get to work and stay in the agriculture industry.

The position means I will be moving to Milwaukee, WI which is both exciting and a bit sad. I've been in Madison for almost a year now, have an absolutely fantastic group of friends and enjoy the Madison area. Milwaukee isn't too far from Madison though so I will still be able to come back to Madison to visit. I've started the process of finding an apartment in Milwaukee and I've decided that I will be getting a cat in the new apartment. I currently have a rabbit in my apartment and I've been wanting a cat for a while. To make things more interesting, the bf is starting graduate school at the University of Minnesota in August. We've done long distance before, but it's never ideal.

Here's to hoping this next position is a great fit, as it seems to be, and the move to Milwaukee goes well. It's definitely exciting!

Creating Dairyland

I have always loved to read and I finally got my Madison Library card, which made me really excited. One of the first books I got was "Creating Dairyland" by Ed Janus, a Madison man who was a dairy farmer for a couple years and writes a historical account of how Wisconsin became America's Dairyland. This was fascinating to me as someone not from Wisconsin, but from a dairy in Minnesota. It's really an interesting read for anyone, but especially for anyone in the dairy industry from Wisconsin or otherwise.

My dad was raised on a dairy farm as well and he has told me a lot about the history of our farm, but there was many parts of the book that I hadn't thought of. For instance, my family's farm has 3 silos that we use to store our silage and hayledge in for feeding after harvest. Creating Dairyland explained how the silo was a huge advancement in agriculture as it allowed dairying to be profitable as farmers could store feed for cows year-round so they could milk year-round. It makes sense, but I simply had never thought of it before. Silos had just always been on the farm for me. I know my dad didn't always milk with a pipeline and milking machine, but he had never discussed the history of silos before.

It was also interesting to learn more about the importance of Hoard's Dairyman to the dairy industry. Hoard's is one of my favorite magazines and I have visited their office and dairy farm. It's been around for so long that  we can really learn a lot about the history of the industry by reading their historical archives.

Creating Dairyland tells many stories of current and past dairy farmers, and some cheese maker stories, and their histories. Its full of rich detail of farm life and many parts of the book rang true for me. I was desperately missing the farm almost the entire time I was reading the book. One of the parts that struck me as this quote about dairy farmers and cows: "Cows require kindness, routine and predictability, and long-term investments for their well-being and our profit. Dairy farmers must be dedicated to caring well for other living beings and for the resources that feed them." - Creating Dairyland, p. 3

The historical aspects of learning how dairy farming came about in Wisconsin and how Wisconsin became the dairyland was fascinating, but the farmer stories really hit me. A wide range of farmers were portrayed from a pasturing homestead farm to the Crave Brothers Farm whose place I got the opportunity to visit in high school to a college student developing a niche on the genetics side while her farming focuses on milk in a tie-stall. There was even a story of an Organic Valley farmer who milks his cows seasonally to allow them to east only grass.

The Crave brothers history stuck with me. The oldest brother talked about how his dad quit milking cows. His dad milked 35-40 cows and was a one-man show and had to be there constantly and deal with huge milk price fluctuations, which was a frustrating way to farm. The story of his dad reminded me so much of my own father - milking 35-40 cows and a one-man show. The Crave brothers now run a 1,000 cow dairy with 4 brother managing the farm that makes its own cheese and has two anaerobic manure digesters.

Creating Dairyland's stories are truly a testament to the dynamic dairy industry and the passion that lies within dairy farmers. It's a testament to the fact that a love for cows is what drives dairy men and a testament to the perservance of today's dairy farmers. It's further proof to me that I love the dairy industry.

Changes

A lot has happened in the last couple months. The biggest thing: I was laid off from my first post-college job in May. The marketing department was going through restructuring and there just wasn't any entry level jobs for me, nor any open in the company to move into. It's been a long, frustrating, up and down 2 months since then of job searching. This is especially the case since I moved to Madison, WI solely for the job that I was laid off from after just 9 months. When I first moved here I knew nobody. Though I have made many amazing friends in my new city whom I'm so grateful for, it's never easy to lose a job in a city that's still relatively new to you and is 8 hours from your hometown.

When I was home, I got to help move these heifers into new pasture. They then proceeded to break down a fence to get into pasture they didn't belong in. 

In less depressing news, my youngest brother graduated from high school and my unemployment allowed me to go home for a week for his graduation and party. Graduation parties in my family are great because it's the one time so many friends and family get together. Almost all of my extended family lives in the Twin Cities area so they enjoy being able to visit the farm, and I spent much of the party showing my relatives and family friends the farm. It was interesting and fun to show them around and answer their questions about the cows. The party was the first time I'd seen many people from my hometown in over a year, and in such a small town everybody knows everybody. When I wasn't helping get ready for the party, I got to help my dad with chores and feed cows.

My 2nd cousin feeding the calves at my brother's grad party

In other big news, I got accepted to attend the AgChat Foundation Agvocacy 2.0 conference in Kansas City, MO at the end of August. I had been wanting to go to this conference since last year and was so thrilled when I got my acceptance email. It's the perfect opportunity to learn about the best ways to advocate for agriculture, and as a bonus meet lots of other great agvocates. I may not know where I'll be living in August, but I do know I'm going to the AgChat conference.

Community Development

Today I came across this video about the important difference between roads and towns. At first glance, it didn't sound particularly compelling but it had a lot of views and I thought I'd check it out. Turns out, it was all about roads and towns and what each means for community development. I hadn't thought it that way before but the difference betweens roads and streets in this presentation is a road connects two places and a street is in a place. So roads are like highways and streets are smaller and found in towns. The presenter talks of his hometown of Brainerd, MN, only a few hours from my hometown, and how the streets have become more like roads. This transformation caused the main street, which used to be busy and bustling with people, to look much more deserted. The idea is to get back to fostering community development, and the presenter founded the Strong Towns organization to reflect this idea.

Listening to this reminded me of a couple sessions I attended a few weeks ago at the Wisconsin Ag Women's Summit. Sabrina Matteson, the Farm Bureau Director of Rural Affairs, presented sessions on community development focused on rural communities and I was able to attended a couple of those sessions. Community development isn't something I necessarily think of on a day to day basis, but it's helpful to have a good reminder of it once in a while and make conscious decisions to make our communities better. Of course, there was talk about youth leaving rural communities and I happen to be one of those youth that left a rural community. However, I hope to someday return to a rural area.

My hometown is small at a population of almost 500, but I can think of many ways that it invests in community development. They have your usual community organizations like the Lions, there's a nice town park, and the K-12 school is still thriving.. Certain businesses - like the hardware store - have closed while others like the cafe and grocery store have changed hands and closed and reopened a few times but are currently doing well. There's a few historic buildings, but there's also new businesses coming in, staying and creating jobs. These businesses have put their corporate headquarters in a tiny town and it allows for more opportunities for people to get good jobs in town rather than having to move away.

Quality of life relates a lot to community development and it's something I'll certainly think about more as I get more and more used to Madison and as I go back to my hometown.

Family Farm Day at the Museum

This time last week I was volunteering with the Dane County Farm Bureau at Family Farm Day at the Madison Children's Museum. We had baby animals (a dairy heifer calf, 2 piglets, and 2 lambs)  and activity stations set up on the rooftop of the museum in downtown Madison. Activities included making butter, identifying beef breeds, learning about Wisconsin crops, and having milk after exercise.

I had helped at similar events in the past, such as Lunch on the Farm when I was a Douglas County Dairy Princess, but never in such an urban area. There was a good turnout of families and everyone instantly wanted to see the animals. My favorite parts were hearing people's reactions when they were told that the calf was just born the night before and when one man said we had a Geico commercial when a piglet started squealing.

The rooftop was a great setting to hold the event in a city on a gorgeous day, as it has a pond and gardens and overlooks the capital and Lake Monona. Every kid we saw come through seemed to really enjoy every activity and I enjoyed seeing kids, and perhaps their parents as well, learn about agriculture.

Learning From a Century Farm

While I was back in Minnesota for Easter, I visited the bf's family farm. His family has a 80 cow dairy and plans to put in 2 robots to do the milking in the near future, as his younger brother is taking over the farm and has a 78 head herd of Angus cattle as well. It's a Century Farm - a feat recognized each year by the Minnesota Farm Bureau at the Minnesota State Fair for families farming for 100 years or more. My own grandpa farmed my family's farm before my dad, but it is far from a Century Farm as he bought it and moved from a different farm when my dad was young, so it's interesting for me to see and hear the history behind a Century Farm. My grandpa passed away years ago, but he helped on the farm until he longer physically could. The bf's grandpa similarly helped out until he no longer could, and still talks about farming frequently.

After Easter dinner, the bf's grandpa started talking about when he was younger and farmed the same land the family farms today. He got to talking about how they used horses to do all the field work, how the mares were strong and well-built, and how it was 3 1/2 miles to one of their far fields. With horses, 3 1/2 miles was a pretty long trek. His grandpa is over 90 years old, and it still struck me to hear how different farming was back then and how much progress we've made since then,  even though I'd read about it previously. Somehow hearing it firsthand was just different. It's so interesting to think back to a time before tractors were common, before artificial insemination was used, before many things common on today's operations were even thought of.

His grandpa doesn't often talk about when he worked on the farm, but is fascinating and I hope to be able to hear him talk more about it. As the bf's younger brother starts his own beef herd and prepares to eventually take over the dairy operation as well, the farm has a bright future ahead and it appears to have had a great history as well.

Out of the Office

A few days ago I got to get out of the office for a bit to visit two dairies nearby. A group of us from work went to learn more about either dairy farms in general, for those with no dairy experience, or about the specific operations, for those of us with industry experience. The vast majority of us had a least been to a dairy before, but I was only 1 of 3 who had been raised on a dairy and thus was asked plenty of great questions from those who weren't.

The first dairy we visited was Larson Acres. Larson's is a family operation with about 3,000 cows total separated into two milking parlors. The barn pictured above is the free stall barn for the newer milking parlor. This barn is 1/4 mile long and houses a little over half their herd. Larson's expanded within the last few years to built the new parlor and this barn.

This is Larson's newer milking parlor, a double 20 parallel milking parlor. The parlor holds 40 cows at a time and milks just about 24/7, as the cows milk 3 times a day rather than the more typical twice a day. It's outfitted with the SmartDairy herd management system to monitor milk flow and yield, ID each cow as she comes in, and more. 

I didn't take any pictures at the second dairy we visited, Brown's Dairy. Brown's is a family operation as well, but with 140 cows. The owner hires one full-time and one part-time milker, but otherwise does the vast  majority of the farm work, with both the dairy cattle and the fieldwork, by himself. His 4 kids occasionally help, though one is a college graduate with an off the farm job and another is a senior in college. Milking is done in a double 8 parallel parlor that was retrofitted from an old tie-stall barn and the office has a picture window overlooking the parlor, and is done at 3 am and 3 pm. After leaving Brown's, one of my coworkers in engineering commented that dairy farming is a hard life. I couldn't agree more, but it's one that dairy farmers love.

Getting out of the office to visit farms was refreshing and fun, as I always enjoy visiting different operations and seeing how other farms run. What's especially interesting to me is seeing how the larger farms, like Larson Acres, run because I am much more used to my family's 38 cow dairy and the bf's family's 80 cow dairy.