Illinois Farm Families Blog

‘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.

Meet the Sturtevants - a family farm for five generations

Our family has farmed in northwest Illinois for five generations. One part of our land has belonged to the Sturtevants for 150 years! This ground has seen the desperation of the great depression and was once planted with three-horse hitch teams. Now it’s farmed using huge four-wheel drive John Deere tractors and equipment (yes, had to say John Deere, it is a big deal to us farmers what color our tractors are!).

And, our farm continues to be a family affair. Our boys, Bryson and Jaxson, love to ride our gator (a small farm utility vehicle) around in the fields to pick the big rocks and boulders that work their way to the surface in the spring thaw, so the rocks don’t damage machinery later in the season.

When my husband Brian and I first started farming with his family, we had a sow-to-finish hog farm. By 1998, we decided to switch to a wean-to-finish facility, and we moved all of our pigs to indoor facilities. By doing both of these things, we drastically cut down on sickness and death loss on our farm. Controlled-temperature buildings that keep the pigs out of the elements and a good balanced diet have made our animals happy and healthy. 

 

Now, our piglets are born at a sow farm called Elite Pork near DeKalb, Ill. This is a farm that many family farms own together. This type of collaboration is very common among Illinois pork producers. The sow farm has the perfect set-up and expertise for taking care of sows (mother pigs) and baby piglets, while our farm can provide the best care for pigs as they grow. When the pigs “move in” to our farm, they will stay with the same group of animals as they grow. They develop social relationships with the other pigs and enjoy their space to run around together. You can follow a group of pigs on our farm through the Field Moms’ Acre and Pen.

Farming teaches patience. You have to work hard, and it humbles you. But most of all, farming makes us thankful every day for what we have.

Jen Sturtevant
Hog and grain farmer
Lanark, IL

Spring is right around the corner!  There are so many things to get excited about in the springtime.  The grass growing, flowers blooming, and a new crop of sweet little calves running around.  It won’t be very long before we we’ll be planting corn.  It will be time for meals in the fields, tractor rides, and fixing the guys supper at 10:00pm.  The kids will be daydreaming at school about being outside in the beautiful weather and enjoy being in it when they get home.  We’ve moved the clocks ahead and the longer days will begin.

To start off the busy spring season we have hogs that are ready to ship. This week we weighed the hogs to allow us to know which ones are ready to go.  We got these pigs in as 15 pounders last October.  My daughters spent a great deal of time playing with them when they were little. It’s a little more difficult to roll around with 200 pound pigs, so the girls don’t hop in with them now.  They enjoyed us having wean to finish hogs this time.  For the last 14 years we have raised feeder to finish hogs, which arrive at 50 pounds.  Although it was a little more work, it was fun to have the babies to raise.  

The most exciting part of spring on the farm from my point of view is new calves.  One group of our cows calved this fall, but our heifers should start calving around April 1st.  The heifers are the cows that are having babies for the first or second time.  Even though they are new moms, they know just what to do.  Watching those little calves run around the pasture is one of the best views.  They are so darn cute.  The warm weather and the sunny days make for a great time for calving.  Our daughters are great helpers when it comes to tagging the new calves and keeping track of their births.

We are about three weeks away from planting corn.  A load of seed corn was delivered this week and is in the shed awaiting going in the ground.  The guys are working on the planter to make sure that it is fully ready to go, that all parts and systems are set.  There are many, many decisions that go into each planting season, so we are always trying to stay educated on the latest technologies to make each crop the best it can be.

Right now it is cold, windy and snow, but hopefully in a few weeks the weather will have made a turn for the better and we’ll be hot and heavy in the spring farming season.

Stacy Schutz is 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.

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. 

Illinois farm mom Katie Pratt is in New York City today. She’s one of only nine finalists in a national search for farmers who will put a face to farming and share their stories. In her own words, she’s “shocked, surprised and excited about the journey that lies ahead.” Katie’s a great candidate for the job; in fact, sharing farm stories has been a family tradition for years.

 Katie now needs your vote. Through December 15, you can vote for Katie at the USFRA Food Dialogues website.

Katie is a full-time farm mom from Dixon, Illinois (about 100 miles west of downtown Chicago). You’ve seen her as enthusiastic Illinois Farm Families volunteer – blogging here, hosting sit-down conversations with Chicago moms and sharing her passion for farming with those in her own community.

 Katie and her husband, Andy, are seventh generation farmers. Together they raise two adorable farm kids and grow corn, soybeans and seed corn. Katie’s family still raises pigs, cattle, goats and horses only a few minutes away. The family farm has been open to visitors, including non-farm neighbors, urban Chicago moms and teachers, and farmers from around the globe, for more than 40 years. Watch a video from Katie.

Now, one of your favorite farm moms has the opportunity to share her farm story and food conversation nationally with the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance – the group of farmers and ranchers answering Americans’ questions about how your food is grown.

You can get your questions answered from farm moms like Katie. Become a Field Mom and tour Illinois farms throughout the next year. We’re accepting applications now.

I’ve missed 114 milkings….in a row.  We knew this was coming, but counting them up just now makes me feel incredibly inadequate, and sad.  You see, I miss the cows.  I miss the smells (good and bad).  I miss talking to the cows.  I miss their mannerisms.  I miss knowing who is milking well, who is sick, and who calved.  I miss the schedule of it all.  I miss working with Brent.
Having a baby changes life.  Many people have laughed & giggled at me, when I tried to say, oh, they’ll just come along – I can still work.  This was true all throughout pregnancy.  I milked cows the night we went to the hospital, but now – someone else sets the schedule.  
There are benefits.  The house is fairly clean, I’m caught up on laundry, the farm books are up to date, and I’m able to prepare a real supper nearly every night.  A real supper – a main dish, vegetable, even the occasional dessert.  We still eat in the living room, but this is a good 1st step.  And, yes, I get to spend nearly all my time with our daughter. 
It’s November – the time of being thankful.  So, I’m thankful: 
For Family – those that are spending more hours in a barn, so I can spend more time with the newest member of our family
For Friends – those that come and help with milkings, and those that watch the baby while I go for X-rays
For Weather – that is fairly cooperative so that the harvest can be completed, and all the chores can get done, and allows for some excursions out around the farm
For Inspiration – Join us for 30 days: mycowsandpigs.blogspot.com, My Generation
For the Future – a beautiful, healthy baby girl that we can teach about farming, and will be milking cows with us soon.
This is why we farm!
Carrie Pollard Po-Cop Dairy Rockford, Ill.