Jumping through Hoops

Well, it's been another series of crazy weeks for us at the farm.  Beside the usual hussel and bussel of fall field work and running a dairy farm...we've been working hard on pushing forward our fall project for our cows.  Since we are young, starting dairy farmers, we have limited resources to use as collateral for the bank.  As a solution to help us better our farm, our banker suggested working with a branch of the government to secure financing for the riskiest portion of our barn project.  Sounds like a good plan, BUT just when we thought we met the criteria of the government agency, we only learn we have more hoops to jump through.  First, it was the need of an appraisal of our current farm, then it was forms that we had signed in early September that were now outdated and needed to be resigned, and now we needed to get "official" quotes for ALL work scheduled to be done on our barn project!  Oh good grief! 
If you've ever built anything, you know timing is everything and the longer this process continues, the farther into the fall we get, thereby increasing the risk of...oh that dreaded "s" word, SNOW!  We desperately need to make these changes to our farm for the betterment of our cows, so we can only hope that we are done jumping through hoops~!

Getting Ready for October

Well, it was yet another busy morning at our farm today.  We have been working dilligently on a couple large projects for the farm the past few weeks....namely, trying to improve the overall comfort and health of our cows.  With that comes a LOT of prep work: paperwork mainly.  I am eagarly awaiting the "ok" from Jon to blog about the details, but for now all I can say is that we are working hard on applications, permits, financial statements, and other related paper work!!! And hoping for a little luck ;)

The other daily tasks continue, but as we approach fall and winter, we have an "extra" to take care of: drying off cows.  As our cows approach the end of their pregnancies, we give them the last 2 months off, to relax, eat and enjoy life.  This gives them the opportunity to grow a calf instead of making milk.  It's also a good opportunity for the cows to enjoy some outdoor yards for daily exercise and allow their udders time to grow new "milk-making" cells.  Today we "dried" off 7 cows.  Last week there were another 7 cows....and next week there will be another 7.  As you can see, we have a LOT of calves coming in 2 months....OCTOBER!!  My math work tells me that we will be calving over 20 animals each month October-March!!!  That's a lot of calves, and I can't wait! 

So even though it is only August, at the farm, we are getting prepared for the fall already!