Illinois Farm Families Blog

We’re in Chicago this weekend! I’ll be joining many of the farmers who have shared their stories and experiences on this blog when we come together to meet Chicago moms and answer their questions about food and farming. You are invited to join us.

We’ll be at the Palmer House Hilton (17 E Monroe Street, Chicago) this Sunday, Dec. 4 from 3:15 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.

You’ll meet Holly Spangler, Emily Webel, Carrie Pollard, Katie Pratt, and Chris Gould, among other Illinois family farmers. Even though we have different types of farms, you’ll see we all share a commitment to have conversations with consumers, answer your questions about how we grow safe, healthy food, and share what happens on our farms.

We are excited to spend an afternoon learning what’s important to you and your family when it comes to food. We hope you’ll enjoy having some coffee and desserts along the way!

There is no cost to attend and you are welcome to bring a few friends. You can find all the details and RSVP on our Meetup site: http://www.meetup.com/Chicagoland-Field-Moms/events/39983882/.

See you soon!

Deb Moore
Roseville, Illinois

Let’s keep with cow’s milk (my favorite kind)!  First, “Vitamin D” milk is whole milk.  People think that whole milk is bad for you because it has all that fat in it, right?  Wrong!  Whole milk has a whopping fat content of 3.5% (the average fat content of milk right from the cow).  Look through your frig & pantry, and I bet you’d be hard pressed to find a lot of foods under 4% fat.  If you like the taste of whole milk, as dairy farmers, we thank you, but if not, you have lots of other options.  Reduced-fat milk (that being either 2%, 1%, or skim, 0%, fat) offers you the same nutrients with a little of the cream scraped off the top.  A good friend of mind once said, “Carrie, I’m desperately trying to drink the Vitamin D milk, because I know I need the Vitamin D, but I just can’t stand the taste!”  She was worried about maintaining her bone density, as should many young women, especially those who are busy professionals that don’t get a chance to sit down for supper with a glass of milk every night.  I had a giggle, as I told her ALL milk, whether it be chocolate or strawberry, whole, 2% or skim, has all the same vitamins and minerals (A, D, calcium and so on) in each glass!  

When an animal is sick, it is my responsibility to care for it.  Sometimes, the best way for me to do this is to use an antibiotic.  However, that animal product (be it milk, meat or eggs) is removed or withheld from the food supply until that antibiotic has cleared the animal’s body.  All milk is tested for antibiotics on the farm and at the processing plant. Any milk that tests positive for antibiotics cannot be sold to the public and is discarded. I won’t give anything to my animals that I do not feel is safe for them, my family, and yours.  Furthermore, all mammals (that includes you, me, as well as the cows and pigs) produce hormones in our bodies.  It is part of how our bodies work.  That means that things that come from those bodies will contain hormones.  They are broken down by our body, just like other things we eat.  Just remember to keep things in perspective, vegetables contain hormones too.

So, whatever your fancy, you will always get a nutritious, good-for-you glass no matter what jug it is out of.  The pick at our house is “Mixed Milk”, a white skim and chocolate (1 or 2%) mix, served alongside pork tenderloin!  

Carrie Pollard
Po-Cop Dairy
Rockford, Illinois

Visit Carrie's blog at http://www.mycowsandpigs.blogspot.com/

 
We headed out to the corn fields and got a chance to watch the grain cart empty into a semi waiting for another load of corn. As a combine approached, I couldn’t help but marvel at the amazing size (and cost!) of these machines. The way that this machinery and process has evolved over many years is nothing short of unreal. The combines could pick 12 rows of corn at a time and hold up to 25,000 pounds of corn. They pull the stalk down, shuck the ear, and wrangle all the grains off the cob, emptying out the chaff at the back and ejecting the corn grains into the hopper at an amazing rate. I couldn’t believe we could roll along doing that much work at once. My mind was going a thousand miles a minute watching the combine work. The partnership with the grain cart driver also was amazing, as he could just pull up to the combine’s chute and anticipate how much corn he would receive… the operation was nothing short of a dance!
 
Learning about the way cattle are handled was interesting also. We eyed them, and they eyed us. Some were curious, some were wary, but it was an experience I won’t forget to see how laid back and lazy the cattle were in their pens. They were laying around, chewing the cud, chilling out, not a care in their bovine world. And to learn that they have their own NUTRITIONIST was also a fun fact. I can’t afford my own dietician, but these cattle get one!
 

I was excited to participate in my first farm tour, and to answer my questions: Yes, I learned a TON; No, it’s NOT a slow paced world on a farm; and Yes, my kids and husband “survived” no worse for the wear. I give a big thank you to Larson Farms and Mike and Lynn Martz for sharing a piece of their daily lives with me. I am better for the knowledge and truth from my first farm tour, and really wish those who want to be informed about our food supply would take the time and make the effort to properly educate themselves straight from the source, like I had the privilege to do today.

 

Jennifer Weiss
Big Rock, Illinois

When my husband and I met eight years ago, everyone agreed we were made for each other.  We were cut from the same cloth, born and raised country, both returning home with college diplomas in hand and ready to begin a life that included a family and a farm.  Perfection.

Except for one minor detail.  My family farmed red and my husband’s family farmed green.  

Just as you may bleed Bear blue on game day and your neighbor run wild with cheese on his head, in the country a farmer’s loyalty to his equipment color runs deep.  And never is that more apparent than during harvest and planting, when a farmer’s equipment – and its performance – is on full display.  

You may be most familiar with John Deere green or Case IH red.  There are a smattering of other colors all associated with a specific brand of farm equipment.  Ford blue, Caterpillar yellow, AgCo orange.  Regardless, a farmer can show his brand support with the usual hat, coat or shirt or branch into home décor with cookie jars, pillows and bed sheets, and all sorts of wall hangings.  The latter three were banished from the house even before we were married.  (I really have nothing against John Deere green.  I just had a different decorating vision than my husband.)

A farmer’s loyalty to his equipment color mirrors the loyalty of a Cubs’ fan . . . even after 103 years of no wins at the World Series.  (I can bring this up because my husband is one of those Cubs’ fans.)  And why you ask?  Why does a person paint his stomach and sit shirtless in Soldier Field in December?  

Probably because his father did and his grandfather before him.  Generations of farmers have gathered at the coffee shop (although today it’s facebook or twitter) and discussed the merits of a Deere versus a Case sometimes making valid points but more often than not delivering the punch lines to jokes.  It’s just like the relationship between Cubs and White Sox fans.

Obviously and on the serious side, farmers use a brand of equipment because of its horsepower and performance.  Today, the technology linked to equipment is staggering.  Tractors are mobile computers linked to satellites shooting information about soil fertility, crop growth and final yield to home computers.  Computer systems can be moved from a tractor to a combine to a sprayer and back again taking with it all the information about the crop and the field.  Therefore, each piece of equipment is responding to that unique area of soil.  And when I say unique area, I’m talking about a square-inch.  That’s how specific farm equipment and technology can be.  And that is how we can produce the crops that will feed and fuel the United States.

Does it matter what color of tractor does the farming?  Well. . .I’ll plead the fifth on that.

Katie Pratt
Grand Prairie Farms

 

Growing up, I learned about the importance of farmers and how they contribute to the meals we enjoyed. My grandfather was a farmer and my parents grew a garden every year that my siblings and I tended to each spring and summer. Now as an adult with a child of my own, I wanted to get hands-on, interactive experience learning about the ways our everyday food is grown and raised, from farm to table. I soon learned about the Illinois Farm Families 'Field Mom' program. This program involves selecting a group of Chicagoland moms and giving them the opportunity to venture out to Illinois farms and meet the farm families. Through this interaction, these moms have the chance to get hands-on experience about the farmers' lives and the journey our food takes prior to getting to our tables. It's something everyone should be aware of, especially children. I was thrilled to be selected as one of the 10 moms participating in this program and here's a great video that recaps our day.

We learned quite a bit about beef cattle farming, field corn farming and dairy cow farming all in one day... so you can imagine how much information we soaked in! Because of the large amount of things I learned, I'll be featuring a few posts in the coming weeks on the various topics that resonated with me. So stay tuned for some interesting things about our food and how it goes from farm to table...

Joelen Tan
Chicago, 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

I’ve driven many highway roads past corn fields, somehow always just assuming there was no difference between the sweet corn grown for us to eat and the corn grown specifically for feed.  I now know the difference between a corn combine and an auger and even had the privilege to ride on both amazing machines.  I used to think that ultrasound machines were mainly seen in hospitals, and certainly not on farms! And raking my tiny city backyard of leaves and sharing my neighbor’s compost bin pales in comparison to the idea of harvesting over 6,000 acres of land as the Martzes do and being responsible for milking over 100 cows two times a day, 365 days a year as the Drendels do.

Our Illinois farmers are truly amazing people.  They are dedicated to their work, their families and most of all to the scores of people they never see who reap the nutritional rewards of the food they ultimately help put in our refrigerators and on our tables.  Our farm families have passed down generations of knowledge, strive to be on the cutting edge of today’s technology in every aspect of their farms and they can’t imagine doing anything else as a profession.  To me, that’s pretty impressive.

Today, farming is a business in every sense of the word when it comes to science, technology and modern day machinery. And that certainly was something I don’t think I ever connected in terms of the depth and scope until I toured the farms first hand.   But farming is also still very hands-on, whether it’s nursing a sick baby calf back to health, filling the troughs with the daily perfectly balanced mix of feed or the farmers and members their extended families offering a lucky group of Chicago area moms their most generous hospitality on a fall day.

The women of the farm are also amazing in their own right. Jamie Martz could drive, maneuver and empty the corn auger with amazing precision and finesse. I wouldn’t doubt her ability to be able to parallel park the auger on a city street!  It was evident that Lynn Martz runs a tight ship from the business negotiation side of the farm while also having developed a vast network of resource partners and suppliers that keep the daily cropping operations running smoothly.  Linda and Julie Drendel were also very impressive, educated, well-versed and multi-tasking women who helped shape my “new view” of what it is like to be a modern day woman on a farm.  And I was surprised to learn that these family farmers don’t actually live on their farms as I had assumed.

I am very excited for the journey I have embarked on as a Field Mom.  As much as this program strives to teach about today’s agriculture and bridge the gap between farmers and consumers, it also very naturally bridges the gap between people with different livelihoods and helps us understand how we are all ultimately very connected.  

Julie Barreda
Chicago, Illinois

 Like many other field moms, I was quite surprised when we arrived at the Larson Farms. We were expecting a farm house and instead got a modern house that functions as an office for a very substantial farming operation.  Within the first few minutes I was struck by how the Martz family uses technology in their farming operation. Mike described using ultrasound to determine the fat/muscle ratio for the cattle.  Lynn later described how they use GPS on the farm machinery to determine how much nitrogen or phosphorous is in the soil, the amount that needs to be added, how much seed to plant where and the yield of each section of field. In both instances the use of assistive technology allows them to be restrained in the use of their resources to keep costs down and reduce their environmental impact.

 At both the Larson and Lindale Farms I was pleased to find animals being very well cared for. Larson Farms finishes cattle, meaning that the cattle on this farm are here to gain weight in preparation for sending them to market. They have cows that arrive weekly and are generally on the farm for about 150-200 days until they reach their optimal weight for sale (different for each cow as determined by ultrasound). The 2700 (!!) cows are kept in open-sided barns designed with thought to protection from the elements, sunlight, space, waste disposal and even their comfort with new cushioned pads for them to stand on. Additionally they use wasps they purchase to eat fly larvae to keep the fly population under control.  This is definitely a well thought out business! In contrast to the huge beef cattle operation of Larson Farms, over at Lindale Farms they have 150 registered Holstein dairy cows and 130 heifers/calves in their care.  Despite being a business requiring a lot of time and dedication, the nature of the work allows for them to personally know their animals over the many years they keep them. All the cows are named and their histories known. Linda would refer to her “favorites” but had stories to tell about all the animals from calves to prize winning cows. The animals on this farm were kept in separate barns, divided by age, and given time in the pasture as well. At both farms the animals have individual medical charts, are attended by vets and dieticians and given antibiotics when ill.  With regard to the antibiotics each farm and related industry requires multiple rounds of testing to assure that animals receiving antibiotics are not entering the food chain.

 I was surprised to hear about the environment repeatedly on our farm day. The Mississipi River, run-off, and strategies for nurturing their land were all mentioned multiple times. It was apparent that each family farm valued the land they had, but were also aware that their actions affect others down the road or downstream.  Both families referred to the growing world population and what they personally were doing to try to meet that demand (much of the grain and soybeans in IL and specifically at Larson Farms already goes to China).

 Overall it was an amazing, busy day that taught me a ton about the planning and processes that go into making some of my families favorite foods. There is no way to capture all of the day’s events and discussions adequately. I am thankful for family farms like these when we sit down for steaks on the grill and ice cream for dessert!

 

Amy Hansmann
River Forest, Illinois