Illinois Farm Families Blog

At the insistence of our favorite babysitter, Kathy Schnell – think a country Mary Poppins – our parents enrolled my siblings and I in 4-H. Kathy and her sisters showed polled Herefords, goats and vegetables. Their mom was the club leader and Kathy was convinced that we would benefit greatly from monthly club meetings, service projects and those dreaded (my words) talks and demonstrations.

4-H is far from a farm-kid club, and while its history is steeped in traditional production agriculture and homemaking, today the national organization pushes STEAM (science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math) projects with a service-learning, agriculture basis.  Of course, at 9-years old, I didn’t realize how the 4-H clover would shape my life.

As a Face of Farming & Ranching for the US Farmers & Ranchers Alliance, I’ve found myself in front of various groups, large and small, talking about agriculture. Ironically, as a 4-H member, the annual talks & demonstrations required of each member were the banes of my existence.  I don’t know how many “how to make rice krispies” demonstrations I’ve sat through. I know I gave my fair share of “identifying cattle breeds” speeches. We’d all stand rooted in one spot clutching our note cards, forcing those stomach butterflies down. Every speech started the same. “Hi. My name is Katie Dallam and this is my 4th year in 4-H. Tonight I will tell you how to show a cow.”

I think my parents appreciated the 4-H lessons of responsibility, accountability and follow-through more than us kids. As they were prone to point out, it wasn’t their 4-H projects being swallowed by weeds or waiting for morning chores, it was ours. My beef and dairy cattle projects taught me patience (a virtue I’m still learning), commitment to something other than me (those cattle couldn’t feed and water themselves), and the value of the almighty dollar. Those projects funded my college education.

And 4-H showed us the value of investing in our communities; showed us every spring on an early Saturday morning during ditch clean-up.  It wasn’t glamorous work, but the next time we traveled that road we knew who had walked those miles. Pride in work ethic is a powerful motivator for a young person.

So when given the opportunity as a Face to make a donation to an agriculture organization on behalf of the US Farmers & Ranchers Alliance, 4-H was first on my list.  It’s famous four-leaf clover, symbolizing head, heart, hands and health, has given me powerful life-long tools and a commitment to making the best better.

Katie Pratt, Dixon

‘Is that an Easter Bunny on the corner?!’ I thought as I drove through the nearest small town on Friday. Add that to my list of “Things You’ll Only Find In A Small Town”. It’s been six years since I’ve moved from the Chicago suburbs to outside Peoria, IL, and I’m still in awe at the things that take place in small town USA versus those that don’t in busy cities. The big, white bunny was standing at the four way stop outside the new corner doctor’s office in town waving to the cars driving by. In all my years, I’ve never seen the Easter Bunny find his way to a street corner to hail the passing cars.

While I’m still not quite sure why the Easter Bunny was there, I noticed that the bench outside of the doctor’s office had a colorful rug underneath it. He could have just wanted to wish Friday commuters a happy Easter, or he was there for families to stop to take pictures with him, courtesy of the new doctor’s office. I’ll assume the later for the correct answer. I regretted that my own toddlers weren’t with me in the car; I definitely would have stopped to have them sit on his lap to take a yearly picture with my own camera, free of charge, and without having to wait in a line.

My first experience taking my first baby to see the Easter Bunny consisted of standing in line for two hours at a mall in the Chicago suburbs. While visiting my family before Easter, my mom insisted that I had to have my son sit on the Easter Bunny’s lap so that I could have a keepsake picture of his 1st Easter Bunny encounter. Not only was the wait incredibly long for the less than 30 seconds my son was on the Bunny’s lap , but it was not cheap to get a set of pictures to take home for his baby book and all the grandparents.

Suburban and city families share in this annual adventure to see the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus at local shopping malls. I remember years of putting on a holiday outfit to go to the mall with my mom and and grandma, only to stand in a long line of other impatient children to get a picture with Bunny or Santa. I now have years of these pictures to look back upon, and they make for some good laughs, especially those where myself or my brothers want nothing to do with either holiday friend.

This tradition now carries into my own family, but because I now live in outside of a small town, I’ve found that there are multiple opportunities to engage in holiday festivities that the local communities, schools, and businesses support. Not to mention, activities that are usually free of charge and without a two hour line. This week’s Weekly Post newspaper reported, “There is no shortage of Easter egg hunts schedule for this weekend,” followed by a listing of eight different activities in local towns. While we ran out of time to catch a photo-op with the Easter Bunny this year, next year, I’ll definitely keep my eye out for the Bunny on the corner. You can bet it’ll be free with no wait.

Kristen Strom
Brimfield, IL
Kristen is a city-gone-country girl after her marriage to her husband, Grant, who is a full-time farmer.  You can follow her stories and adventures on her blog at Little Dahinda.

The Illinois Farm Field Moms had the wonderful opportunity to tour a Hog Farm at the Old Elm Farms in Sycamore, IL (February 23, 2013) 

Give them a label-Not a name

"Don't get attached, the hogs are our income and food." This is the advice Steve Ward, president of Dayton Farms of Sycamore, IL, gives his two children Sarah and Dayton, when a new litter of piglets are born.

It's in the Marketing

Of course it's in the marketing. Marketing is key; it is what sells the product. So from that said did you know that hog producers never give hormones to their hogs, EVER! So why does that packaged pork you just picked up today at the grocery store say NO Hormones Added? To clarify Steve Ward and other hog farms like his just are the wean to finish farms and have nothing to do with the label you see in the grocery store. The final destination (or grocery store) of each of Steve Ward's hogs is unknown to him. The big companies who sell the finished product may add that "No Hormones Added," label. According to the Ward family this is just a marketing scheme to make the buyer believe they are getting a healthier piece of pork for their family.

To Market to Market

To buy a fat pig. Two hundred and eighty pounds that is.  Free Range, Barnyard, Organic Pork? You might want to re-think this option next time you buy your pork at a grocery store especially if you are on a budget. Tim Maiers who works for the Illinois Pork Producers Association questions what exactly makes that choice of pork healthier. Tim, along with Steve Ward and his father John Ward, president of Old Elm Farms, described the possible uncleanly conditions of hogs raised in the outdoors and the added cost of grain needed to keep the hogs warm in the winter(hence the markup in price at the supermarket). We learned that these hogs have to share their living space with other rodents and birds that may carry diseases. Hogs raised inside such farms like the Ward Family Farm provide a more controlled environment which means less grain is needed for consumption since it is all climate controlled. The hogs living conditions inside the farm are very clean and the hogs definitely have more roaming room then I previously envisioned. However, what this all comes down to are choices for the consumer. Steve and Tim stress nutrition-wise, free range or not, they are both the same.

Five Key Observations

I’d like to recap my experience with five things that I learned and found to be very interesting.

1. The children who are born and raised on the farm willingly take on the responsibility at an early age to help their parents with much of the work on the farm.
2. The hog manure never goes to waste but instead is plowed into the corn fields.
3. Farmers recycle almost everything.
4. Hogs are killed by means of gas.
5. Old Elm Farms got its name from the oldest living Elm tree in Illinois. It lived to be 375 years old until it was cut down due to Dutch Elm Disease.

Christina Lee
LaGrange Park

I was debating what blog topic to write for the Illinois Farm Families website this week.  While I was out helping Chad feed the cattle on one of the unusually warm days we’ve had, I thought about how much easier it is to care for all the critters when the weather is warm.  But, then I got to thinking about the terrible heat of the past summer and decided that each season has it pros and cons.  My preferences are spring and fall!  For winter things would go a little smoother when if we didn’t have to worry about frozen waters, cold calves, heaters not working, etc.  In the summer things would go smoother if we didn’t have to haul water, worry about overheated animals, or storms that cause power outages.

Our hogs are raised in climate controlled buildings.  There are sensors that we set to control the temperature, air flow, fans, and ventilation.  We make adjustments as the hogs grow. We are raising a group of wean to finish pigs right now.  They require a little bit more TLC at the beginning.  They were started with special feed mats and heat lamps to get them growing well.  As they have matured, the mats and lamps have been removed and they are eating out of the regular feeder in each pen.  This winter we have not had to worry about frozen pigs, bedding them down, slopping through the mud to feed them or trying to keep them cool in the summer.  Hogs can’t sweat and can get overheated easily. It has been 15 years since we switched to feeding out all our hogs inside.  It was an excellent choice for us and the hogs are all the more comfortable for it.

Our cattle are pretty easy to care for, but there are challenges in the winter and the summer.  In the winter we deal with frozen automatic waters and hydrants, the cattle require extra bedding in their shelters and extra feed to keep them warm and full.  Newborn calves can have a harder time keeping warm and when the weather yo-yo’s it is harder to keep everyone healthy – cattle and people included.  We are still hauling water to the wells in the winter and we have to keep our water trucks unfrozen to do that.  The summer months we need to keep the cattle cool.  The bulls don’t always breed as well when it is hot – just too hot to do their business.  The summer drought kept the grass from growing much.  We started feeding hay a lot earlier, feed prices went up, and we hauled water to the wells.

We love what we do, even with all the challenges that are faced.  Raising livestock is rewarding.  There is nothing like seeing a newborn spring calf running and bucking through the pasture, or sitting in pen with little piglets chewing on your boots.  The pros definitely outweigh the cons in raising livestock.

Stacy Schutz is a farmer, wife, and mother of two daughters located in central Illinois. She farms with her family; raising corn, cattle and hogs. She loves her animals, food and is happy that they go hand in hand!  You can find out more about her at her blog, From Our Farm to You.

Did you have the day off of work Monday?

Since my "boss" lives in one of our upstairs bedrooms, there was no day off here in our little white house on the prairie.

But at least I don't have a morning commute...and I get to wear my sweatpants to work...and the boss takes a two-hour nap every day which allows for a little down time. (Just between you and me, when she's not around I drink iced coffee and plan my spring time assault on our garden and landscaping. When I'm feeling really crazy, I also watch Friends re-runs...Shhh.)

This spring-y-ish weather has really given me the gardening itch. My garden catalogs have started rolling in by the mailbox-fulls and they are starting to resemble my daughter's Toys R Us catalogs around Christmas time, dog-eared pages that are full of thick red magic marker circles. Truth be told, I already have an order prepared for everything from sunflowers to cilantro.

Matt and his cousins, Jack and Christopher, have been spending their winter "down time" helping local farmers do exactly the same thing. Only instead of sunflowers and cilantro, they are placing orders for corn and soybeans.

In modern agriculture, filling out your spring seed order isn't as easy as choosing between corn or soybeans. Genetically modified or non-gmo? Drought resistance? Food grade? Disease tolerance? How many acres of corn are you planning to plant? What about soybeans?

When farmers are paying an average of $260 PER BAG of corn and $50 PER BAG of soybeans, it's not a decision that one should take lightly.

Just as a point of reference, one bag of soybeans will plant just over one acre (1.1 to be exact) and one bag of corn will plant 2.3 acres. If a farmer plants just one 80-acre field of corn, his seed bill will be just a shade over $9,000.

Eeesh. That's like 45+ grocery trips.

I'm no math whiz, but I'm not sure that my $100 off any order of $200 or more coupon from Gurney's seed and nursery would get anyone very far. But for those farmers who really have their ducks in a row this winter, the earlier the seed order is submitted the larger the discount.

While my "boss" gives me my own daily dose of education on every subject from what's in Dora the Explorer's backpack to the finer points of proper princess tea party etiquette, Matt, Jack, and Christopher are spending their winter "down time" attending Pioneer seed meetings to learn about different varieties of seed corn and beans so they can better help farmers prepare for the fast-approaching spring planting season.

When the boys aren't attending meetings, they are visiting with local farmers, preparing seed information, organizing the seed shed, and training our seed shed watch cats to be fierce guardians.

I think they aren't spending as much time as they should on that last part.

Roganne Murray

Roganne is a farm wife, mother to a spunky two year-old and all-around farm girl. She and her husband Matt live in a white house on the Illinois prairie, and you can follow their adventures raising what they hope will be the sixth generation of Murrays to farm in Champaign county at White House on the Prairie.

In the farmyard:

• Hauling grain. My family has hauled corn from on-farm storage to processing plants that are buying it to produce ethanol fuel, industrial alcohol, livestock feed and food-grade corn meal. Soybeans go to a terminal on the Illinois River, where it either is railed to processing plants for domestic use or barged downstream for export.
• Field edge repair. Winter provides a good time to clean up brushy field edges. 
• Equipment maintenance. We like the tractors and implements to be ready when warm weather prompts field work this spring.

Inside the farmhouse:

• Bookwork. We “farm” at a computer, a desk in the office, the dining room table and kitchen counter. 
• Tax preparation.
• Paying for and/or placing orders for seed, fertilizer and crop protection products. (a.k.a. more bookwork – bad thing is, bookwork gives me the munchies)

Off the farm:

• Farm trade shows and meetings. Gives us an education in anything from new equipment to trucking regulations and crop insurance.
• Pesticide applicator exam. Our family’s farm must be educated and licensed to buy and apply restricted-use pesticides. 
   

For fun:

• Playing in the snow (or rain puddles!).
• Family board games and card games.
• Extra movie nights. 
• Watching for bald eagles. Our family’s main farmstead is near a small river, which attracts the majestic birds every winter. Pretty cool.

 Happy Winter!

Joanie Stiers farms a little, writes a little and mothers two young kids in western Illinois.

 

Knowing that the snow storm was just beginning and I’d soon be driving in the dark, I became nervous. I noticed that there was a road in front of where the emergency vehicles were parked and that I could possibly make it around the other cars and turn onto an open country road. I assessed the situation: if I remained stopped on the highway, I had no idea how long it would be until we’d be allowed to continue our journey. I still had to pick up my kiddos and drive 10 miles in the blizzard all the while losing daylight. I also knew that after five winters of living in the country (and trading in my cute sports car for a huge Tahoe after my first winter on the farm), that I’d be able to brave the country roads on my own. So, with the courage of an “experienced” country driver, I turned on my hazard lights, slowly drove around the stopped cars in front of me, and turned onto the empty country road with the blizzard to brave on my own. I was able to detour around the accident and make it to my babysitter’s house before dark.

 

My drive home from the babysitter’s house was a whole different story. With the dwindling daylight the visibility was so poor, I had to stop completely a few times because I literally couldn’t see out my window. I had never felt so unsure of our safety. I even considered pulling off and knocking on the closest farm house in hopes of warm shelter to wait the storm out. Thankfully, I somehow made it home safe with only the frozen snow on vehicle to show the beating we just took in the blizzard.

 

While growing up in the Chicago suburbs, I rarely worried about road conditions during less than ideal weather conditions, just the traffic it would cause. Snow plows were constantly on the move and the weather never kept us from our destination. This is not true of country living. Things can get dangerous, and they get that way fast. During the winter, most country drivers are sure to travel with blankets in case of emergency as well as fully charged cell phones. We also don’t leave home unless it’s necessary. The school district I teach at even builds in five snow days to our school calendar, assuming we may have to take all of them. In the five years teaching there, on average we take three days off due to snow/ice/below zero temperatures. However, growing up, I only ever remember having one snow day...and we took advantage by sledding in our backyard and sipping on hot cocoa. 

 

While living in the country, I’ve learned many things, most of which include how to brave the elements of snow, rain, ice, and wind. If I hadn’t had the experience of living in the country, I would have never dared to blaze my own path during a blizzard through untraveled country roads, and I surely would have waited until the storm died down to leave my babysitter’s house to drive home.

 

My third winter on my husband’s family farm, a massive ice and wind storm caused power lines to blow down, leaving us without power. Our thermostat dropped to under 50 degrees, and we contemplated sleeping over at my in-laws across the road who had a generator hooked up so they’d have heat. Thankfully, the power came on before bedtime and we snuggled under the covers to keep warm.

 

The following winter, we were stuck for four days inside our house during a blizzard. We prepared in advanced by buying our own generator, shopping for the major grocery staples, and filling the bathtub with water in case we lost power to our well. Our road wasn’t plowed for 48 hours, and even then, we didn’t dare to drive through snow drifts. That same blizzard hit Chicago, and city-dwellers were upset that Lake Shore Drive shut down and that their cars were stuck on city streets, sometimes in the middle of them because they tried to drive despite the warning not to. When I lived in downtown Chicago for a couple of years, I kept a shovel in my sports car to get myself out of a parking spot in case I got plowed in overnight. I don’t miss the shoveling, but I do miss the ease of travel during snowy weather. For now, I make sure we all have our hats, gloves, and winter coats when we leave home and that my Tahoe has a few warm blankets just in case of an emergency. And if there’s a blizzard, we stay inside our cozy home where it’s safe and sound, and hopefully warm.

 

Kristen Strom

Brimfield, IL

 

(Pictures were taken during the 2010-11 winter blizzard when we were stuck in our house for four days. You know there's a lot of snow when your father-in-law has to use the HUGE snow plow to get you out of your house!)

 

So let's get started on some good conversations. But first, introductions are in order.

Hmmm. What can I tell you about myself?  I suppose the basics are always good, so here goes.

I grew up on a close-knit farm family in western Illinois. My parents, Roger and Julie Newell, raise corn, soybeans and alfalfa, manage a herd of cattle with my grandparents and my two uncles and also run a small swine operation. I spent a great majority of my days working outside with my Dad, taking care of our livestock. On a day like today, when there was no school, my brother, sister and I would leave our Christmas presents in piles on the floor and venture outside to help Dad feed and water the pigs and scoop near-frozen manure. Ahhh, memories.

When all of the water tanks had been thawed and the feed buckets have been hauled, Dad would usually reward us in giant snow piles (if there was any snow to be had). A giant snow pile held such great potential for three farm kids. It could be anything, a fort, a hill for sledding on or a peak for playing king of the mountain. Most often though, giant snow piles were hollowed out and used as backyard igloos. It was during days like these where I really wished that we had neighbor kids that could walk (within a reasonable distance, of course) over to our house.

Nowadays, I don't have any pigs to feed or manure to scoop, but I definitely consider myself a "farm mommy". My husband Matt and I make up part of the fifth generation of Murrays to farm in Champaign county. Our two year-old daughter, Teagan, makes generation number six (or so we can hope). We raise corn and soybeans and the occasional chicken flock when we feel so inclined. Matt and his two cousins, Jack and Christopher, also make a living in the farming "off-season" selling Pioneer brand seed products.

We are in our fourth year of marriage and farming together and are just beginning our journey as a young couple dedicated to agriculture. Life is pretty good.

I am so glad to meet you and I am eagerly looking forward to many more blog posts to come!  Here's to a happy and healthy new year!

 

Roganne Murray

Roganne is a farm wife, mother to a spunky two year-old and all-around farm girl. She and her husband Matt live in a white house on the Illinois prairie, and you can follow their adventures raising what they hope will be the sixth generation of Murrays to farm in Champaign county at White House on the Prairie.

This time of year, I always have people ask me the same question: “What do farmers do in the winter? They don’t have much work to do, do they?” While this is an honest question, and I’m sure my husband and in-laws would like some much-needed weeks of rest, this is not the case. Yes, my husband gets home earlier than usual, but this only means he’s home by about 6pm rather than midnight. During the winter, he works the typical business hours compared to the early mornings and late nights of planting and harvest seasons. There are no crops in the ground to tend, but he still has paperwork to file and bills to pay by the end of the year. There is also a list of projects on the farm to take care of that go by the way-side during the busy seasons (some projects have been on the to-do list for years). Farm families are business owners, so time spent out of the tractor is used to repair equipment, prepare financial statements, tend to relationships with customers and suppliers, attend conferences and seminars, and the list goes on (just like that list of projects at home that need attention). 

While winter does bring colder weather and snow, it doesn’t always mean that harvest is over. January 5th, 2010 was the last day of the 2009 harvest. That Christmas, my mother-in-law joked that we should decorate the tractors with Christmas lights and wreaths in order to get everyone in the Christmas spirit. Many mornings, the farmers went out to harvest the corn only to be brought inside by a snow fall that stopped them from picking.  Harvest is always an exciting time of year for farmers, but by the last couple of weeks they are anxious to get out of the fields. You can only imagine the frustration at harvesting through Thanksgiving, Christmas, AND into the new year of 2010.

Thankfully, this year our family farm was done harvesting and assumed “shorter” working hours by Thanksgiving. That meant we could go to the suburbs to enjoy a long Thanksgiving weekend with my family. This will also be true for our Christmas where we can travel and celebrate the holidays with family and friends. In addition, his winter days keep him home on weekends where we can take care of our own to-do list around the house that grows during harvest, catch up on missed TV shows, spend some much needed play time with our two children, and schedule family parties. We even squeeze in some date nights, which we don’t get during the harvest months of September-November and again from April-June during planting.

While this schedule, ruled by the seasons (and the weather), is typical for farm families, it is not what I grew up with. In the almost six years of being a farmer’s wife, I’ve learned to live the life of the farm family and really look forward to having my husband home during the winter months. While winter brings the joy of the holiday season, for farm families it also means that husbands are usually home for the holidays, which I’m always thankful for.

Kristen Strom
Brimfield, IL
Kristen is a city-gone-country girl after her marriage to her husband, Grant, who is a full-time farmer.  You can follow her stories and adventures on her blog at Little Dahinda.

There are many times that I question why we live where we live, geographically speaking. 

And then I have a mid-day like I did today, and I am thankful to live where we do.

So, quickly because I have pumpkin bread in the oven, small group to attend, birthday party invites to address, laundry to fold, and some other odds and ends to do, here’s my list.

*If we didn’t live 30 minutes from a Target, then my girls wouldn’t have the opportunity to ask me great questions like, “What does indescribable mean?” because of a song we heard on the Christian radio station. And, I was able to take the time to answer the question in great detail, only to be answered, “Well, I can describe Jesus…he’s the Christmas baby!”
Point well made.

*If we didn’t live where we live, I wouldn’t have to be truly diligent in my list making for a Target run…and if I do forget something big, like, oh…let’s pretend it was SNACKS for small group this afternoon…then I wouldn’t have been able to make pumpkin bread and smell up my house with that yummy cinnamony goodness that is pumpkin bread baking.

*If we didn’t live in the country, I wouldn’t be able to look out of my kitchen window to see my two big girls running through the freshly Turbo-chopped field, chasing the dog and getting excruciatingly dirty. My mantra for this to not drive myself crazy is, “I’m thankful; I’m thankful; I’m thankful.”

*If we didn’t live where we live, my kids would probably go to a different church. Instead, we go to a church in a neighboring community, a community where the kids go to the rival school, and we’re the outsiders. Although this is sometimes annoying, because sometimes I wish my kids could be with those whom they attend, we’re teaching them that friends can be from all over, and it doesn’t matter if they’re a Farmer or a Trojan. We’re all on the same basic team.

*Finally, I’m thankful for my gravel road. Although dusty and dirty and the bane of my OCD condition to keep my car clean, it announces the presence of a car with its dust and crackly sound, allows my life to slow down once I head off the hard road, and remind myself that nothing is perfect. Nothing can stay perfect, and I should be focusing on the things that I love and cherish and be thankful for them.

Timer’s dinging…bread done! Thankful for that!
Emily Webel
Emily, a town girl plunked out in the middle of nowhere, chronicles the surprises she's found living life with her husband and four children on a working grain and livestock farm in Farmington, IL. Confessions of a Farm Wife: The Good, TheBad, and The Dirty Truth of Life on the Gravel Road allows Emily, a former teacher, to use her educational expertise to share the truth about food and farmers to consumers everywhere. As a Farm Mom with the Illinois Farm Families campaign, Emily has enjoyed one on one experiences with city moms, fielding questions from fashion to fertilizer.