It's days like today that make me dread the rain.  It is about 33 degrees rainy, misty and windy.  Days like these make it hard on our outdoor livestock.  It is easy to get wet and chilled and like humans, that makes your immune system work harder.  It is muddy and sloppy, one degree colder and at least things would be frozen.  Now on the other hand, our wells are really low from lack of rain throughout the summer and fall.  That means any moisture we get is a blessing, so I shouldn’t complain!  Easier said than done.

The hoop!

Today I am thankful that a few years back we built a large hoop building to feed cattle in.

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I awoke Saturday morning at 4:10 a.m. Bright eyed. Awake. Not excited to be awake. But excited about the day ahead.

(Contrary to popular belief, not all farm people are automatically morning people. 4:10 a.m. is a ridiculous hour of the day. Amen.)

By 5:15 a.m., I was pulling out of the drive and pointing the car north. Northbound to Maple Park and the Mike and Lynn Martz farm, where the very first group of Field Moms would soon be gathering. Chosen by the Illinois Farm Families among scores of Chicago moms and bloggers, the Field Moms were making their first trip to the farm, accompanied by Roseville farmwife Deb Moore. I tagged along as both a member of the media and a farmwife myself.
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I’m really excited about the Field Moms coming to visit us on Saturday, October 15.  I’m looking forward to hearing their questions.  Sometimes I think that’s a problem with agriculture – we need to open up more, listen more, and communicate with our customers. We need to be more consumer-driven.

I’m also looking forward to showing the Field Moms around our farm, and putting them in our combine. I love bringing groups through here, and opening their eyes to what modern agriculture is really all about. It’s always interesting to see what the biggest surprises are.  

For instance, when we bring teachers here, they’re surprised at how much technology we have on the farm, like GPS and precision farming technology on our machinery.  

Another big surprise is that even with our size, it’s still a true family farm. Our farm supports eight families.

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Hi, my name is Lynn Martz and welcome to our farm. My husband, Mike, and I farm with my parents, brothers and our son, Justin. Our farm consists of beef, corn, soybeans and wheat located in northern Illinois just 65 miles west of Chicago.
  
We are one of the farm families you can tour on the Watch Us Grow website. We hope, along with other farm families, to help answer questions about farm life and why safe nutritious food is important to us too. I hope you will follow along with our blog and ask questions if you like.

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4:00 am. .  . up to finish last minute chores before guests arrive (shavings down in the calf barn and for milk-a-cow, feed samples out, etc).
 
5:30. . . workers begin to arrive: FFA students to help with parking (our front hay field, with its second crop finished, turns into the parking lot); workers for the pancake breakfast (our tool shop and machine shed turn into kitchen and eating area); workers to serve ice cream (our garage turns into an ice cream parlor); other volunteers are here to give out information at the milking parlor, in the milk house, at the heifer barn, and I’m out in the calf barn with my sister.

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I'm so excited to help kick off the Watch Us Grow blog!

I am Holly Spangler, farm wife to John, farm writer for Prairie Farmer, former farm kid from southern Illinois, and farm mother to three little farm kids. That's a lot
of farm, and I am a little bit exhausted just thinking about it.

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