Nine years ago, when BSE first appeared on U.S. soil, I wrote in my column for Prairie Farmer how the timing was really quite horrific for us. My husband recalls sitting on the couch, watching the news when the story broke on Christmas Eve. We were to sell our entire calf crop three weeks later and as he so colorfully recalls, "I thought I was going to throw up." The fear, of course, was the outbreak would spark food safety fears, ravage markets, slam exports and bring the reality of horrible prices all the way back to rural Illinois, where we would then get very little for our calf crop at the Fairview Sale Barn. An entire year's worth of work, down the tubes. Money, gone. Income, gone.

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I am not a coupon-savvy shopper by any means, but I usually go for “store brand” items most of the time.  Recently, I was able to take my time and double-check prices and brands on milk.  I've always said that "milk is milk is milk", regardless of the label.  It is all safe and nutritious, and you can take your pick in the dairy case of whatever suits you and your family.

There is a really cool trick you can try at home with your milk.  Go to:  www.whereismymilkfrom.com, and type in a 4 or 5 digit code that is printed on every dairy product, next to the "use by date" info.

 

 

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When you go to the grocery store, you are offered lots of choices.  I grew up on a dead end gravel road.  It was 30 minutes one way to the grocery store, and we only went once a week (and that was usually after some other errand:  church, school, or even delivering pigs to market).  Now, I live just a stone’s throw (literally) from the city limits of Rockford, the 3rd largest city in Illinois.  While I miss my dead end gravel road, I do enjoy being minutes from many conveniences – one of those being grocery stores with lots of variety.  

I counted over 10 different versions of milk on my last grocery trip.  Not only is there skim, 1%, 2% and whole milk, but there is chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla flavored, and other choices, including organic.  All this means you have lots of choices when you go to the grocery store, but what does it all mean?

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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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This statement has defined our lives, for better or worse, for the last 4 months.  It is the question I asked every time I got home after dark and hadn’t yet had a chance to see the day’s progress.  It is the question that all of our friends, neighbors, and families ask us when they see us.  You see, “The Barn”, has been the focal point of the summer projects.  On the farm you typically have a list of summer projects.  Sometimes that list may have things like paint the barn or re-roof the barn, but complete rebuilding of the barn is another level of project entirely.  Therefore, we have spent a great deal of time deciding all the little things that will make our cows lives better.  For some reason, we had the idea that we would turn the barn around & have it finished in May.  It is now September.  However, like at the end of planting or harvest, we can see a light at the end of the tunnel.  

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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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Hello all.  My name is Katie Pratt and welcome to our farm. Literally. Welcoming tour groups to our farm is a family tradition starting back in the early 1970s when my husband’s grandfather hosted students from Chicago-area schools on his dairy farm.
 
Some of my best childhood memories are those that include the people who visited our farm.  There were the formal “industry” groups – farmers from Asia, Europe and Australia – visiting in the 1980s to see how my father was raising mother pigs and their babies indoors sheltered from Mother Nature’s unpredictable mood swings. There were friends and family from the city who brought new playmates and cousins with whom my sister, brother and I had great fun, racing through the rolling wooded pasture that stretched south of our farmstead. 

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Hi! I’m Carrie Pollard, a self-described farm junkie from northern Illinois. I am known by friends and family for my passion for raising livestock, of all shapes and sizes. I grew up on a hog and beef cattle farm in western Illinois, and went to college at the University of Illinois, where I met my husband, Brent.

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