Illinois Farm Families Blog

Since I am a bit late joining the Field Moms, they brought me up to speed last night on a call.  Last month they went out to a pig farm near DeKalb.  The latest update is the farm owners dedicated a litter of piglets, baby pigs, to the 2013 Field Moms.  The mother, a sow, gave birth to 17 of which 2 were still born. The remaining little ones are so cute.  The mom and piglets stay at the sow farm, think labor and delivery for pigs, until the piglets are 20 days old. The farmer was explaining the extensive biosafety measures in place to ensure the health of every pig at the farm. One example is they needed to take showers in and out of the sow farm with special clothes just to visit their pigs.  Their camera needed to wiped down with a bleach wipe. Wow!!  I never imaged the sanitation level a farm needs to go through for pork.  Kind of always thought it was a lower quality meat since some religions ban it in their diet.

Getting back on the pig track........  When the piglets are a few days old their tails are removed to prevent fighting within the pen.  It was explained that they can be very agressive to one another and this reduces the likelihood of picking on the smaller animals.  The detailing makes everyone equal.  Who knew?

The biggest takeway from the call was how concerned the farmer was with her sow and new piglets.  She explained the safety measure for the mom and little ones.  The sow stays in a confined pen with her piglets to prevent her from laying on the little ones.  The pen gives the piglets enough warning the mom is moving and to get out of the way. I never realized how small piglets are in comparison to a full grown pig.  Now, it makes sense.  In years past, piglets were known to die under their mother's own weight. Kind give new motivation for a human to lose the baby weight.

Revin’ Up Roger's Disney Piglet is cute, but not as cute as the 15 piglets we saw last night.

On a side note, the other field moms explained on their blogs that pigs are never given hormones. Hence, you never need to buy hormone free pork, it already is!

Sharon Blau, Des Plaines

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

February buzzed by, literally and figuratively.   Granted it has three less days than other months and it’s usually plagued by clouds, snow or rain and chilly winds, so I suppose if it buzzes by there’s not much to miss.

But this February started buzzing for me from the beginning.  It must be all this focus on food and farming that has my senses on high alert for buzz words.  There is no shortage of them in food advertising as I mused on in my blog post “When Buzzwords Stop Buzzing”. 

The second week of February I flew to NYC and joined celebrity chef Danny Boome on a satellite media tour. We talked with television and radio morning show hosts about buzzwords, the ones we see most often on restaurant menus and on grocery shelves – organic, hormone-free, grass-fed, local and natural. Click here to watch the video.

A week later, I got an email asking me if these buzz words mean different things to a farmer than a consumer. I think that’s part of our problem in attempting to converse about food and farming. Definitions can be so ambiguous and seem to change depending on the person doing the defining.

As a farmer and a consumer I define organic, hormone-free and grass-fed as the how of raising a crop or caring for livestock. I think some people use them to define the nutritional content of food, however as Chef Danny said in our interviews the nutritional value of food depends largely on how it is prepared versus how it is grown.

Local, to me, is my community, my little niche in Northern Illinois.  It is the farms, the towns, the neighbors (who live on the other side of our square mile country block).  It is the businesses we patronize and organizations we support.  Locally grown for me is what I’ve found in my backyard garden or my mother’s garden and locally grown meat comes from farms of other family members.  But, local can also mean purchasing food that has been raised in a certain mile radius of a store or restaurant.  What’s the magic radius?  I don’t think anyone can say for sure.

Natural is probably the hardest to define.  Webster says “existing in or produced by nature” and to me that is farming.  We exist in nature; have learned how to reap its rewards, survive its challenges and how to make our lives better by caring for the environment better.  Are we perfect in this relationship? Absolutely not.  Are we improving every day?  Most certainly.

So, are the definitions of buzz words even clearer than mud now?  Yea, for me too.  I guess this is why this movement to converse, to respectfully listen to the opposite opinion, ask questions and broaden our scope of understanding is so important. 

This year’s group of Field Moms has already tackled some buzz words. I can’t wait to read more about their adventures and the buzzwords they try to define.

Katie Pratt

Grand Prairie Farms

Being a typical mom who wants to feed her family well, I was very excited when our Field Mom program officially started on February 23. I was determined to find out myself how our food is produced and by whom. It is not hard to panic in today’s environment when it comes to food production. Should I buy organic? Is the meat safe? Where did the meat come from? How do I buy locally produced food? And what does politics have to do with food production?

I joined the other field moms and a few farmers on February 23 when we started our year together, all full of questions. We had a lot of them answered on the bus on our way to Sycamore. Deb, Pam, and Jim were able to give us very concrete background information on farming in Illinois today.

While we were mostly talking about pork production, it was also obvious that all farmers have a lot in common: family farms are still the most common form of farming in Illinois where 94% of all farms are family-owned. Children join their parents from young age and learn to work on the farm. Some of them enjoy it and want to stay on the farm, some of them want to leave as soon as they are done with high school. But the common theme was the children’s attitude to work and their pride in growing up on a farm.

Our visit to the Ward family’s pig farm could not have been more informative. The farmers, John and Steve, were willing to answer all of our questions about pigs’ lives from birth to the slaughterhouse. How the pigs are fed, whether they are given antibiotics (only for medical reasons), are they given hormones (no), etc. We also had a long discussion on GMOs, why a farm is or is not organic (requirements on available space to access to organic feed), corn and soybean crops, the needed equipment, and the availability of land in Illinois where subdivisions are creeping closer and closer to farmland.

On our tour of the pig sheds, Steve was once more willing to answer all of our questions about the pigs. Why are the pigs kept inside (controlled environment, health and nutrition of the pigs); what the pigs eat (corn, soybean meal, bakery products); and how you make sure all of the pigs are doing well (an experienced farmer sees signs immediately). Yes, there is a smell in the sheds, but the pigs were surprisingly clean and they are able to move around. There were absolutely no signs of animals that had been mistreated (I expected chewed ears and tails as signs of stress).

My first visit to an Illinois farm (or any farm in the U.S.) was eye-opening. The amount of work, investment and time needed to farm is enormous. My guess is that even though there are differences between farms, the basic work and commitment to a lifestyle is the same for all of them. One of my reasons for joining the Field Mom program was to be able to tell my children where our food comes from and we have now been able to have several discussions on pigs and meat production in general. I’m looking forward to our next visit and learning about other farms.

I had an extremely informative day at the Ward farm, thanks to both generations of the family!

Five things I learned on our trip to a pig farm (there would be many more, but here are the first five):

• The price of farmland whether you buy or lease in Illinois is very high. It is hard for farm families to be able to buy more land to support more than one family.
• The life cycle of a pig from birth to slaughterhouse. I had no idea about the time it takes for a pig to grow to market weight, etc.
• The tour of the buildings where the pigs are raised was important. Heating/air-conditioning, cleanliness, etc. were important pieces of information.
• Information on how the pigs are slaughtered was informative and useful.
• Information on the use of hormones and antibiotics was useful.

Tanja Saarinen, Oak Park
Field Mom

Ask me about farming, and my face might momentarily look like a TV screen test.

Let’s just say my basic knowledge of tilling the soil and raising livestock is limited to Old MacDonald, the Amish, and bottle-feeding calves on childhood petting farm field trips. But as a parent, I feel it’s my responsibility to pay more attention – to learn about the origins of the foods my family eats, and the processes that raise/grow/harvest them.

The flagship Field Mom program focuses on sharing that farm-to-family information with an open door policy. A hand-picked group of 10 Chicago-area moms have been given the opportunity to visit working Illinois farms and meet the folks who run them with the expectation that what we learn will be shared through social media.

Who knew that a lot of the food I cook up and feed my children was coming from just a few counties over?

What awaited me next was an amazing learnathon:

• “Prime,” “Choice” and “Select” refer to meat grades from highest to lowest
• Marbling - the fat in your steak - is monounsaturated, which is actually good for you
• “USDA-inspected labels on beef can be misleading - all beef has to be USDA-inspected
• The term “grass-fed beef” is also misleading – at some point all cows are fed grass and/or roam in pastures
• More than 98% of cattle on feed in the U.S. are given hormones to aid their growth and strength
• You would have to eat 2,900 lbs. of implanted steer to equal the amount of hormones in birth control pills (example: Beef from a steer treated with estrogen contains 1.9 nanongrams – a billionth of a gram – while a girl prior to puberty has 54,000 nanograms of estrogen naturally occurring in her system)
• Nutrition wise, there is no difference between organic beef and "traditional" beef
• Antibiotics pass through cattle before they even go to market
• Market Day Ranch Steaks (we order ‘em every month) come from a packing plant in nearby Aurora – and some of the Martz cattle
• Farmers are eating the same beef we are at home
• A dedicated cattle nutritionist creates a very specific feed recipe for the cows
• Farmers and veterinarians are working to reduce antibiotic use in cattle by focusing on good nutrition and the use of vaccines in comprehensive preconditioning programs (before they get big enough for us to eat)
• A “squeeze” machine developed by Dr. Temple Grandin is used to keep cattle stress free
• One ear of corn can tell a farmer what to expect in terms of yields for the year
• Combines on the farm can harvest 12 rows of corn at one time (some combines can harvest 18!) and hold up to 25,000 lbs. of corn

Stay tuned as I learn and share more about the anything-but-slow-paced farm life.

Pilar Clark
Lisle, Illinois

 We walked thru the cattle and were surprised at how they (weighing on average 900-1,000 lbs) were afraid of us moms. We learned that those that come to the farm together, always stay together. The Martz family has spent a lot of time and money investing in the items to make their farm work efficiently while making sure that their cattle are well taken care of. They demonstrated an ultrasound machine which could show how much marbling a cow had and how much they needed to eat in the future to reach their potential weight. One of the most interesting things to me on this farm was the lack of flies, I saw maybe 2 flies the whole time we were there. Mrs. Martz told us that they have wasps delivered weekly which eat the fly larvae, thus controlling the flies without the use of pesticides.  They had a lot of pride in their farm and assured us that they are eating what they produce and would not harm their family.  We rode in the combine that was equipped with GPS, TV, WiFi and a multitude of gadgets that helped the plant and harvest the farm. I learned so much from this family and know that they are truly doing what they love.

 After a quick lunch stop at a 100 year old restaurant we headed on to our 2nd farm for the day. We arrived at Lindale Holsteins just as it was time for the cows to be milked and boy were they ready. We made a quick stop to look at the calves. They were absolutely adorable and you could tell that these were Linda’s babies, she had little stories about each of them. They were quite curious and wanted constant contact with us, I think most of us kept getting licked by them as we walked by.  We made our way to watch the cows be milked. (150 cows, milked twice a day). We asked tons of questions, about the quality of milk, where it goes once it leaves the farm and about hormones.  Our questions were answered openly and honestly even their veterinarian stopped by to chime in on the concern with hormones.  They went on to say that they drink their own milk and that we all have to make our own choice as to whether we feel we need to drink milk that was not treated with hormones.  

 I needed clarification from Linda Drendel on the hormones and below is a little more info she provided:

 *1. Cows naturally produce BST, a growth hormone that stimulates milk production. Therefore, any glass of milk has BST. A scientist nor a consumer can tell the difference between a glass of milk with BST and one without rBST. There are NO definitive studies that show harmful effects from rBST milk.

*2. NOT every cow in our herd (or any herd) is given rBST. She must be in good physical condition and be in good health. She first receives rBST 90 -100 days into her lactation; the dose is mere mls compared to her weight of 1500 pounds plus it is given once every two weeks and it continues to the end of her lactation.

*3. About it being a choice to make: We agree; however, it is NOT a choice between a healthy, safe glass of milk without rBST and one with rBST incorrectly assuming it is not as safe, healthy. It is a choice between paying a higher price (usually if not always) for organic. Also it can be said that virtually all milk (organic or not) is labeled as rBST free.

 The milk is picked by a truck which then goes on to pick up milk from a few more farms. This milk is then taken to the coop and sold. When we asked which milk is “better” from namebrand  Vit D to store brand Vit D, we were told that the milk is probably exactly the same, just marketed differently.  We ended our visit Lindale Farms with chocolate milk, cookies and ice cream, a delicious treat after a long day.  

 Visiting the farms was an amazing experience. I feel like I am armed with more knowledge about farming and the process from farm to table and can now answer questions for family and friends.  The farmers are passionate about what they do and it shows in how they operate their farms.  

 Each day, I remember something that I learned on the farm and happily share it with my kids. They love the fact that farming doesn’t feel so foreign anymore.

 Angel Ishmael
Chicago, Illinois