Illinois Farm Families Blog

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.

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.

Before the question was even asked by the fourth grade class my husband and I adopted through the Adopt-A-Classroom program with the Illinois Ag in the Classroom, I took it upon myself to explain what a farmer does during the winter months.  Contrary to popular belief and children’s books, winter duties do not include darning socks, housing livestock in the kitchen, or falling into a deep Rumplestilskin-type sleep, although that does sound rather enticing.

I explained the importance of book work and record keeping, equipment maintenance and general winter care of livestock.  We sent pictures of my husband and his brother hard at work in the shop welding, greasing, organizing and keeping busy while winter weather swirled outside.

What I neglected to write was that the busy work eventually runs out and soon the farmers – the active, outdoor, workaholics they are – come inside . . . bored to tears.

So what does a farmer do on a snow day?  My dear farmer watched movies, spent a day catching up on my never ending honey-do list, and re-read a month’s worth of farm magazines.  I found him one afternoon on his knees praying for a good snow, so that he could rev up the snowplow and take to the township roads.

Well, God listened to him.  He left the house rather willingly at 3 a.m. and arrived home around 7 a.m. ready for a hot breakfast and a short cat nap.  That took an hour to accomplish and then the day stretched before him – long, cold, and empty of miscellaneous tasks to keep hands busy.  I suggested, half-heartedly that we could begin reorganizing the bedrooms and closets upstairs, an annual task usually completed half-heartedly by me.  To my chagrin – at first – he tackled the task with gusto.

With his work jeans cuffed to just above the ankle (his attempt to keep snowplow dirt off my floors), a pair of brown, sheep-skin slippers covering his feet, and his pliers and phone hooked solidly to his belt, my farmer began cleaning the house.  He went through closets with dust rag and vacuum in hand, sorting, organizing, folding and tossing.  I could hardly keep up.  We emptied our home of almost a dumpster full of stuff that day.  Tossed an entire bed frame, but together four large bags of clothes for Good Will donation and wiped down every nook and cranny of practically every room.

By night fall, he was happily putting the final touches on his newly reorganized work closet which now had specific places for work gloves and caps, jackets, boots and coveralls.  As he plopped next to me on the couch, pants still cuffed, pliers still in place, he said, “So is that what people do on a snow day?”

Nope.  Only a farmer.  

Katie Pratt
Grand Prairie Farms
Dixon, Illinois

 

Back to the pigs’ living conditions and comfort level:  during most of the sows’ time on our farm, they’re pregnant.  After all, they’re pregnant for almost four months, nurse for three weeks, are weaned, and usually are ready to be bred again about one week after weaning.  During the time they are gestating, or pregnant, they stay in a large building that has a slotted concrete floor.  This allows waste to fall through to the pit, or basement, and allows the sows to stay dry, warm, and clean.  The barn is heated to 72 degrees in the winter, and cooled as much as possible during the summer.  Using various techniques, we can usually keep it 8-10 degrees below the outside air temperature, so if it does get to 90 degrees, it’s still 80 inside.  The sows definitely don’t like it that hot, but it’s better than 90.

When the sows are due to farrow we move them to appropriately-named “farrowing rooms.”  They’re our version of Labor & Delivery.  These rooms have the same basic design, although the floor is woven stainless steel with much smaller gaps so the newborn piglets’ tiny hooves don’t fall through.  The sows are held within crates which allow them to stand up, lie down, eat, drink, and take care of personal business, but otherwise confine them in a fairly small space.  This minimizes the sows lying on the baby pigs, which have additional space to move around mama.

Because the sows like it cool and the piglets like it much warmer, we use rubber mats under and heat lamps over the piglets to help keep them warm and comfortable while maintaining room temperature at 72-74 degrees.  When it’s time to move the piglets to the next farm, we use a converted Jewel grocery store trailer.  Because the trailer is insulated, we can heat it and keep the piglets warm until they arrive at their destination, about 20 minutes away.

This system is fairly typical of a modern hog farm.  We can compare this to the good old days of sows farrowing in uninsulated huts in pastures, carrying straw through the snow drifts to bed the huts, breaking ice in frozen water troughs, and picking up frozen or laid on baby piglets.  Sows, piglets, and caretakers are all much happier with the current system.

Chris Gould
Gould Farm
Maple Park, Illinois