Harvest 2019

 

One of my favorite memories from my childhood is laying in my bed in the second story of my parents' farmhouse, looking out at the pitch-blackness that is country life, and hearing -- through slightly opened windows -- the sound of farmers still in the field. Combines and tractors and fans on grain bins were always running . . .  from the time I'd lay down at night into the early morning hours.

It was -- and remains -- a comforting sound. It meant someone else was awake, someone else was still out there in the darkness, and all of that was heartening and lovely and a little mysterious. 

It's nighttime now as I write this, and outside, our dogs are barking like it's their spiritual gift because someone is combining across the creek, and even their racket makes me happy too . . . for all the same reasons. 

So if fall ever decides to show up, and if the temperature ever falls from 86 degrees to under 70 in the month of October, you can bet I'm cracking our bedroom window to hear our neighbor's grain bin running as I fall asleep. 

Some people say they love country life because of the stillness. But every now and then, it's the little noises we love even more.

A Merry Band of Bloggers

My sister lives in Colorado, where the sun always shines and the air is always fresh and the temperature is always just right. So when she visited recently and stepped out of her car, she about fell into a small heap in our driveway because breathing humid Missouri summer air is not for the faint of heart.

Or the faint of hair.

So let's hear it for all the food bloggers and dietitians who willingly volunteered to visit the dairy on a hot, humid Saturday morning, knowing full well what it would do to their hair. I mean, hearts. I mean, heat. It was hot.

Ok. C'mon, guys. Just clap.



(And while you're at it, please give a gentle, quiet "Hooray!" -- we don't want to startle them after all -- for the cows, who start feeling heat stress in about January and don't get a break from it until the following December. Well, not quite. But let's just say they love water misters and fans in the summer as much as kids love a good water park. More maybe.)

Thanks to our friends at Midwest Dairy,  we were able to host these brave blogging souls on a warm day in June, giving them a chance to see where their food comes from up close and personal. Like, so personal a calf could suck on their fingers personal. (Sorry for my white legs. My spiritual gift is getting sunburned without tanning. Clearly.)



Our merry band of bloggers got to see baby calves, only a couple of hours old, and hear from my farmer how we care for the littlest animals on the farm. Between the calves and our multitude of kittens, everybody would have been fine being done at that point.

BUT WE PERSEVERED.

And by that I mean that we kindly nudged them on to meet some of the older heifers and the mama cows who took time out of their lunch to pose for photographs.

#2780 showing off her best side.

(Let's face it: Every girl has a best side.)

 

We rounded out the tour with a trip through the commodity shed to see what our cows eat, explain how our nutritionist tweaks the ration, talk about what silage is and discover why it's an important part of a cow's diet.

After that, we headed back to the shop to guzzle a bathtub full of water (Did you know that's about how much water a cow drinks in a day? Almost 35 gallons! And here you thought your eight glasses of water were good . . . ) and enjoy a meal together, surrounded by silage choppers and wrenches and flies because that's what life is like on a real dairy.

Lauren Lane, one of our favorite food bloggers, even made us brownies for dessert, and I'm not saying that I maybe basically skipped lunch and just went straight for the chocolate, but I CAN say that there was one extra pulled pork wrap left over because, well, I maybe basically skipped lunch and just went straight for the chocolate.

Side note: Brownies taste even more fudgy when enjoyed with milk. And because milk is healthy and so wonderfully good for you, you can even have a second brownie if you want. They basically balance each other out.

This is why you need farmers in your life. We can be helpful when you're trying to make important life choices like this. 

 

We're thankful for our social media influencer friends -- whether they're Instagrammers or bloggers or Facebookers or all of the above -- not just because they took time to come to the farm and see how their food is made, but because as farmers, we're busy . . . you know . . . FARMING. And that means we don't always have a lot of free time to chat with every person in the grocery store or on the street about why dairy is such an affordable, healthy food option.

But people like Cara of Streetsmart Nutrition and Lauren of Lauren Lane Culinarian do. They have the gift of story telling, photography, research and knowing their followers so that they can share information with them in a helpful and winsome way.

 So when a Lauren or a Cara or a Steph of KC Cheeses or Shanna from Wellness for the Win want to know or be reminded of see for themselves where their food comes from, and when, seeing how we care for our animals and land and each other, they believe as strongly as we do about milk and butter and cream and eggs, they help us tell our story in really fun ways.

And we are -- and remain -- grateful for that.


Photos courtesy Wheat Photography

rye silage

Amy Grant may think that Christmas it the most wonderful time of the year, but at the dairy, we think silage chopping time is actually the best!

Or maybe just the most high energy. 

Ok, fine, Amy. You were right all along. But silage is still a pretty sweet time of year, no matter how many CDs you sold!

Where was I? Oh! What is silage? you're wondering. 

It's ok. I was too the first year. Turns out I have this handsome farmer who is happy to explain. Have a read!

Me: What is silage?

Chris: Silage is harvesting and ensiling a forage. 

Me: Wait. What's a forage? Isn't that what dogs do behind dumpsters?

it's harvest time in the city -- errrrr --- country

When combines emerge and dust starts to fly, I basically start singing, "It's Christmastime in the city" because harvest means fall and fall is basically winter and winter is essentially Christmas, so I'm pretty much ready to start wrapping presents. 

While summer will always be my true love, I cautiously admit to not completely disliking fall and the sound of all the activity in the field, hearing the dryer on the grain bins running at night, sleeping with the windows open and watching the leaves change colors. 

 

But, oh summer, how our little family will miss you. Fall and winter bring their joys, but gone will be the days of playing in the kiddie pool, scratching around in the sand box, eating our snacks on the front porch, picking flowers from the garden and smelling freshly mowed grass. 

 

Farming, perhaps more than most livelihoods, reminds us of the seasons. It's not just switching from lemonade to pumpkin spice latte weather. It's switching from drinking gallons of water and trying not to get sunburned while welding on hot tin roofs to wading through the muddy slush of winter, chipping ice from ponds for cows to drink and warming hands around thermoses of coffee before heading back out into the cold. 

But it's not winter just yet. So for now, we will wave at the combine, cheer for truck drivers, disregard all the dust, slow down for tractors on the highways and light a fire in the fire pit when the evening gets cool. 

Summer may be on its way out, and winter may be on its way, but for now, it's simply harvest time in the country.

merry Christmas eve

We could say something profound and heartfelt this Christmas Eve, reminding you that a farmer has to "get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of a school board."

We could remind you that a farmer "has arms strong enough to wrestle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild; somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon, and mean it." 

day 8 of farmacology: neighbors helping neighbors

One of the things you may not know about farm folks is that

we take care of our neighbors, and they take care of us. 

Here in Missouri, we're falling asleep to the sound of grain bins drying corn and combines running late into the night. 

And coyotes. 

But it's also one of the times when we get to see most clearly how neighbors take care of neighbors here in the country. 

You shouldn't be surprised if you see two pick-ups stopped on a gravel road so farmers can have a little chat. 

And you shouldn't be surprised if you see a Gator driven by your neighbor go whizzing by, only to have him wave and holler, "Hey!" as he kicks up dust. 

And you definitely shouldn't be surprised if your neighbor offers you three puppies, and even though you already have two dogs, you somehow end up taking two puppies anyway. 

Uffda. 

You shouldn't be surprised if your neighbor brings you a package because the mail man got your houses mixed up.

And you shouldn't be surprised if his wife drops a batch of cookies by at Christmastime just because. 

And you shouldn't be surprised if you get sick and all your neighbors band together to bring your harvest in because you can't. 

Like this farmer in Illinois who was blessed to have 40 folks show up to bring in his harvest. 

Or this farmer with the pesky pancreas who saw 60 people turn out to harvest his wheat. 

When I was a young girl, a farmer passed away and the whole town showed up to harvest his widow's crop. Some people drove combines. Some drove tractors with grain carts. Some hauled semis to town. Some made sandwiches and side dishes. Some ferried coffee and hot chocolate back and forth from the house to the people driving the machinery. 

We may not live right next door to each other. We may not share a trash can or a backyard fence or even a block party. But we do keep tabs on -- and take care of -- each other, and in this day and age, that counts for something. 

Want to read more of my 31 day farmacology writing challenge? Click here. 

day 3 of farmacology: naps

One of the things you may not know about farm folks is that

we take naps, and we take them in really strange places. 

Farmers are notorious for working from sun up to sun down. But that doesn't mean they don't take a break here or there to recharge. 

My dad took a nap almost every day after lunch. Somehow, no matter how hard he was sleeping, he only napped for 15 minutes. Then he'd pop up, refill his coffee thermos and head out the door again.

Heck, I lay down for five minutes and I can be out for the rest of the afternoon. So that capacity clearly skipped a generation. 

But if you're chopping silage, you can take a 10-minute nap in the chopper while you wait for the next truck.  

If you're waiting for a cow to dilate so you can help pull her calf, you can lean your head back in the Gator and catch 40 winks. 

If you pull your truck up to your house after an 16-hour day and you're too tired to even walk inside, you can sleep in the pickup for an hour or two before getting up the energy to go in the house and shower . . . and then go to real bed. 

If you're planting or tilling, you can stop your tractor, turn off your phone and stay right there in the seat while you catch a nap. 

If you're milking cows in the parlor and you're waiting on the girls to finish, you can pull up a bucket, hold your head in your hands and get a good five minutes in before having to wake up. 

If you're stopping home for lunch, you can fall asleep on a . . . pile of dogs. 

The napping options are virtually limitless for farmers! You get up early, you go to bed late, you nap when you can. 

And where you can. 

If you can. 

Sometimes, even with the dogs.

** This post has been paid for my farmer . . . who has napped in all the places mentioned above. Except he didn't actually pay for this post. He just likes naps. **

Want to read more of my 31 day farmacology writing challenge? Click here. 

of mice and tillers

It all started on Saturday afternoon when I was cleaning out our little chicken coop and a mouse/vole ran at me. One minute I was sweeping, and the next minute I was hopping around on my toes like a ballet dancer on point, stabbing at the critter with a broom.

I then did what all good millennials do: Text someone about it. 

So I wrote to my farmer: "A mouse just ran out of the grain bin. We're all going to die."

He said: "You want me to bring the turbo till up there?"

Me: "Probably. Or we may just have to burn the whole farm down."

the birds

One of the best things about living in the country is that it's (a) quiet, (b) relatively private, and (c) see (a).

There are no sirens, no car horns, no screeching wheels. Every now and then, a tractor or the feed truck drives past, but we consider that a virtual traffic jam out here. 

So with the exception of a dog bark or a cow moo, most days it's pretty quiet.

Which is why it didn't take long to figure out something was up earlier this week when the WORLD'S ENTIRE SNOW GOOSE POPULATION SHOWED UP AT OUR HOUSE.

chopping thanks

I can't drive a silage chopper. 

Or a gigantical tractor. 

Or a truck. 

Or anything more than a Gator or a lawn mower really. 

the day the cupcakes died

The weather in Missouri has been pretty nasty this year. So when it started snowing (again) and the forecast called for sub-zero temperatures (again) and the wind starting biting (again), I decided--in a very magnanimous way--to do my part to cheer up the dairy employees.

After all, I thought to myself, they have to endure the cold every day. They get wet and slog through snow and slip on ice and blink through snowflakes, while I get to stay at home with hot chocolate and a lot of blankets. Which is, realistically, not all that different from how I live in the month of July. (I am really only warm when sitting on black asphalt in the 90 degree August heat. But that is neither here nor there.) 

Aha! I thought. Food is a morale booster! Everybody loves a food day at work! And while champagne toasts may not be the ticket, baking some cupcakes is the least I can do to bring some joy into this cold, wintry mess.  

So I made thee most beautiful batch of red velvet cupcakes you've ever seen. I mixed them for the right amount of time. I baked them in beautiful wrappers. I made homemade frosting, slaving over a hot stove to make a roux, then mixing in sugar and vanilla and shortening. I got out my cake decorating box of goodies and piped beautiful circular mounds of frosting onto each cupcake. 

Then, feeling quite satisfied with the outcome and rather proud of myself for my creativity, I Instagrammed a picture of the little wonders, complete with the following caption, "Took a little break over lunch to make the dairy guys some red velvet cupcakes. They are no Kellee Zweifel creations, but maybe it will make them think of something other than ice, snow, and cold for a few minutes. #thankafarmer"

Later in the day, when Chris and I headed to town for our meeting, we swung past the dairy to check on how things were going and to drop off my illustrious cupcakes. As we pulled in, we saw two employees braving the weather to move snow, one in a tractor and one in a skid steer.

I stepped out of the truck with two pans of cupcakes in tow. I kicked the door closed with my foot. I headed toward the office behind Chris. Then I heard the horn on the skid steer. I turned around to see the skid steer driver giving me a sad look, his hands upraised, undoubtedly asking me with his eyes, "What? No cupcakes for me? But it's so cold. And I am working so hard!"

Ever ready to please, I trotted his way, eager to deliver--right to the skid steer's door--a little sweet treat to this hardworking young man.

And then I wiped out.

Big time.

On ice. 

Under snow. 

The cupcakes went up. 

I went down. 

The man driving the tractor stopped. The man in the skid steer looked horrified. Chris came rushing over. 

Twenty-four cupcakes made the trek from the little house on the dairy. Twenty-four beautiful, frosted red velvet cupcakes. 

And now, only four remained. 

Twenty lay in the snow, covered in gravel and straw. 

I let out a wail not unlike the wronged heroes in epic battles. I had icing--somehow--on my face. And my gloves. I turned to Chris and tried to bargain with him like Abraham interceding with the Lord for Sodom. "What if only 10 good ones remain? What if only 8? Are there even five?"

By then the two young men had scooped up the remaining four--while, proving that chivalry is not yet dead, not even laughing at my Nancy Kerrigan-esque pirouette on the ice--and eaten two of them. 

Blackjack, the dog, scarfed down 20.

And now, only these two remain: faith, hope. No, wait. 

Only two cupcakes remain. 

The few, the proud, the red velvet. 

So now I have a banged up shoulder. And an only slightly damaged pride. And if today is any indicator, tomorrow's lunchtime baking adventure will include, what else?, humble pie. 

Sigh. 

a merry dairy Advent

One good thing about Advent: It's the time of year in which the Lord causes us to hold up, slow down, and just chill out while we wait for His return. 

First step: Hand model for Zinpro. Next step: Ruggedly handsome action shots for his very own cooking show. 

It's also the time of year that we bake cookies. 

Lots of cookies. 

With butter. 

Hey, we're dairy people after all. 

The only thing that could make those cookies better is a big topping of bacon bits. 

Basically a whole hog. 

The third best thing is if you lick the cookie batter off the mixer paddle while thinking your wife won't catch you. 

And the good stuff just doesn't stop!

There's pizzelles . . . made with butter. 

And apple-walnut-granola cookies . . . made with butter. 

And snickerdoodles . . . made with, well, I think you get the idea.  

And to top it off, my friends Sarah and Martha showed up to decorate sugar cookies that have, um, well, don't judge us. 

We have to support our industry. 

And to be fair, who can resist them?

Especially when Sarah, who made her first visit to a dairy farm, converted a horse cookie into . . . a Holstein! 

Or Holstein-ish. 

Umm, Holstein-esque? 

Speaking of Holsteins, neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor hail keeps a dairy farmer from making sure his cows are fed, even on snowy Sunday afternoons. 

Cows are very grateful for this. 

You can't see their gratitude, but we know it's there.  

While I was chillaxing nice and toasty in the cab, this guy was out cutting the net wrap off the bale. 

It's kind of like a magic trick. 

First he's here. 

Then he's there. 

The man's like a Flying Walenda walking a tightrope, I tell you! 

And while he did, the heifers were very patient. 

Just kidding. 

They were swarming him like a dairy farmer's wife making cookies with butter. 

Cows like water too, so while I delicately hop-skipped over the electric fence, my guy was already down at the water, hacking away at it like a lumberjack. 

(Also, if you scroll this super fast, you get your own little digital flip book.)

Ready. 

Set. 

Go.

HI--YAHH!

The victor gets the spoils, 

heaves it across the pond in a feat of strength,  

drops his wife off in his luxurious ride, 

and heads off to do the same thing for the next set of cows . . . 

while his wife, fixated on the next opportunity to indulge in butter, cookies, and milk freaks out at the sight of a coyote eyeing the cows. 

Yes, Advent has been very good to us indeed.