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When my last article, “How ‘one thing’ has changed me, my marriage and my family’s business,” published in early February 2020, little did I or anyone else know how radically different our lives would look less than 30 days later. Nor could we have foreseen the roller coaster ride in the months that have followed.
Editor’s note: The author began home schooling her children prior to COVID-19 and the trend of virtual learning. Perhaps some of her tips can apply to dairy farm parents who have chosen to home school or are figuring out the virtual classroom experience.
I had a problem here when it came to putting up hay off of my clover field: mad hornets. My clover field has a woods on the south side of it. Along the edge, there were some weeds and brush some hornets started to build a hive in.
I stumbled across some posts on Pinterest of lists of questions to ask your spouse, children, friends, etc. I thought, “Well, this might be fun” and clicked on a post. I called the kids in the room and began to ask them random questions.
Our farm is in the midst of expanding by diversification. We dairy farm, crop farm and run a coffee and gelato shop in our hometown. We have a lot of irons in the fire, to say the least. And, noticeably enough, all three of those things are busiest (except for fall harvest) in the summer.
My brother and I both had the privilege of working off the farm after high school before we came back to take over the dairy. One of the things we learned in our experience in manufacturing settings was in regard to equipment usage, specifically in terms of the numberof hours a day a piece of equipment was used.
When I go from my home in Minnesota to Ames, Iowa, for business meetings, Interstate 35 is a good road to take. When I go to the Black Hills of South Dakota for vacation, however, taking I-35 would be a terrible choice. Driving all day on I-35 would leave me farther away from the Black Hills than when I started.
My husband and I officially bought the cows three years ago. We’ve been learning together, working together and making the farm ours, slowly but surely. We took over the farm in the middle of a long downturn of the industry, and Michigan (where we live) was hit especially hard. We joked about why would we want to start farming in good times? Our mantra has been, “If we can make it through this, we can make it through anything.”
I want to start this with saying, trust me, I know we all have to market our products. But in this article I want to discuss the tactics we use to promote our products and how they can harm the image and greater good of agriculture.
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