2012 Taste From Indiana Farms

Last week I spent 3 days at the Indiana State Fair working the Taste From Indiana Farms event. This event is put on by the Women’s Leadership Committee of the Indiana Farm Bureau every year.

The Indiana Farm Bureau has 10 districts. Each year, every district is assigned a different commodity. This year, my district had fruit. I found an orchard in our area, and loaded up the back of my truck with 120 pounds of apples – enough to give a sample to each of the almost 5,000 people we expected to see over the next 3 days.

Bye bye, babies

Our babies are all grown up! Well, at least as grown up as we get to see them. Our calf babies were born in January through March of this year, and we got to see them grow up until early in November. Our cattle farm is a cow-calf farm, which means that we keep our adult cows, they get to have babies every year, and when the babies are around 8-10 months old we sell them. We wean the calves from their mothers when they are 4-6 months old (then they are called weanlings). When they are a year old, they are called yearlings.

This is Hank back in April. He was only about 3 months old then, but he was always our biggest calf.

Taste of Indiana Farms

One of the fun things I got to do at the Indiana State Fair in August was to run the Farm Bureau Taste of Indiana Farms booth for the southwest part of Indiana.

Each part of the state (“districts,” in Farm Bureau talk) had a commodity to feature. We had pork. Yum!

I worked with Dewig’s Meats so we had some great barbecued pulled pork to give away to everyone who came through the three-day event. We had some great volunteers from our district, including my husband. Hubby Doc had a blast talking to almost 5000 people over three days!!

There was free popcorn in the front of the building, and lots more free food in the back of the building.Everybody had a blast, even the kids!This is not just a Farm Bureau event! The Indiana Watermelon queen was there, giving out watermelon slices. And the Indiana Honey Queen was there, passing out honey samples.

(We tried to get them to have a Queen showdown, to see who was the “Top Queen,” but they wouldn’t go for it. Such well-behaved young ladies!)

Did I mention that Indiana Pork gave us temporary pig tattoos to give out? Everybody wanted a pig tattoo, even me! (I may have put on more than one…)

Yes, you could say I got into the spirit of things and collected some flair over the couple of days…Mark your calendars – we’ve already got the dates scheduled for next year! Come visit us in the Farm Bureau building at the Indiana State Fair on August 14-16, 2012. I’ll be organizing fruit for next year, so come on by and learn what kind of fruit Indiana grows. I bet you’ll be surprised! There will be free popcorn, free food, and more flair than you can shake a stick at! What else is there?

Oh, and the whole rest of the fair. You’ll probably want to see that also.

Young Farmers take a trip

Every year, the Farm Bureau District 9 Young Farmers group tries to get together and go on a tour of an agricultural operation in southwest Indiana. Last year, we visited New Generation Dairy in Gibson County.

This year, we headed to Perry County, on the other side of our district, to visit Blue Heron Winery and Phil Etienne’s Timber Harvest.

We got a very nice tour of the little winery.

Blue Heron Winery uses stainless steel tanks to age all their wine.There are sculptures and pictures of herons hiding all over the winery.We got a chance to get up close and personal with some of their grapes, and we had a chance to taste some of their more popular wines.I brought home a bottle of their On Deck Red. I also meant to get a bottle of their cherry wine, but I grabbed a bottle of blueberry instead. That’s okay, I like blueberry, too!

And did I mention the view? They are high above the Ohio River and have a great view of the river, and Kentucky on the other side.One of the other features this winery has is the Celtic Cross.This sculpture was carved out of a natural rock formation. It took the sculptor 11 months, working dawn to dusk, 6 days a week.

You can see where they did some excavating to uncover more of the rock (below the dark diagonal line, the rock was buried in the hillside). The rock had an odd leaning shape, so the base of the cross “stepped out” of the rock to match the natural angle. There is some beautiful detail in the sculpture. We also went to a timber yard. This wasn’t as exciting for me (I wanted to go try some of my wine!), but the boys seemed to like it.I guess anytime you are dealing with huge power tools, the boys perk up and pay attention. We ended the day with a picnic and some grilling in part of the Hoosier National Forest. This was one of those weekends that was ridiculously hot, but in the forest, in the shade, by the lake, with a frosty beverage, it didn’t seem all that bad!

Cycle of Life – Beef Cattle

Here’s a special feature – a joint post with my other Real Farmwives of America & Friends!

We’ve had a few nice days on our farm, and the cattle are really enjoying it!

This time of year, the cows and calves are all turned out on the pasture together.

On the left is one of our still-pregnant cows (she should be having that baby any day now!). Charlie’s mom is in the middle. She had a skin infection after her C-section, and is pretty skinny since she is trying to nurse a growing baby and recover from her surgery at the same time. Charlie is on the right. He’s still getting bottle-fed twice a day, and is doing great! Once we get him on more of a solid food diet, his momma will put weight back on and be back to fat and sassy!Some of the cows are catching up on their spring grooming.And, as any baby likes to imitate it’s momma, the calves are following suit!

The calves love to run and play in groups.

Although sometimes there’s a very fun stick that can only entertain one at a time.And sometimes, all they really need is a little quality time alone with momma. Who can disagree with that?

Happy Spring!

Have you met Charlie?

Charlie was the bull calf who was born by C-section on our farm.

(You can read more about this in my guest post on Heather’s Three Kids and Lots of Pigs.) Charlie has done great, but his mom has had a little bit of a problem.

This is her first baby, and she is still a young cow. Sometimes, first-calf heifers don’t make enough milk for their babies. We need to make sure to keep an eye on the calves from these mommas.

After we turned Charlie and his mom out with the rest of the herd, Hubby Doc noticed something strange.

Charlie was trying to nurse from cows that aren’t his momma! Those mommas, and their babies, weren’t too happy about that.

But it wasn’t Charlie’s fault. His momma is a new momma, and she is spending a lot of energy trying to heal from her C-section, and she wasn’t making enough milk for Charlie.

Poor Charlie.

So we brought them both back into the barn, and started bottle-feeding Charlie.This is a little tricky. You want to make sure that you feed the calf enough so he’s not hungry all the time, and is getting all the energy and calories he needs. On the other hand, if you feed him too much, he’ll be full, and he won’t want to try to nurse from momma. And if he doesn’t try to nurse from momma, then she will completely stop making milk. And we don’t want that, either.

Charlie is getting fed 2 quarts of milk replacer twice a day.And boy, does he love his milk! He can finish that 2 quart bottle in less than 2 minutes! He’s a good eater.

When we check on him between feedings, he is still trying to nurse from mom. We know we are striking a good balance with his feedings because he is gaining weight, but he is still trying to nurse from mom.

Hopefully, as momma has a chance to heal more from her C-section, her milk production will increase and we will be able to stop bottle-feeding Charlie. If not, we will keep bottle or bucket feeding him until he is ready to be weaned and transitioned to solid food (3-4 months).  Way to go, Charlie!

You ARE creative!

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions over the last week.  I had lots of great name options, here and at my WordPress blog (mirror site). 

All the names were great, and it was tough choosing my favorite.  I had my hubby chime in on the options.

My favorite suggestion was “AgriCulturing” by Kerry.  I love the idea of that!  The trouble is, the domain name “agriculturing.com” is not available.  All that is posted there right now is “coming soon,” and I don’t have a guess as to what will be there in the future, so I am hesitant to go for “agriculturing.net.” 

A very close second was Jessica’s idea of using the word “raising” in the name somewhere, to pull in the idea of raising food and raising families.  I also love that idea!

So, two winners!  Kerry and Jessica, please email me at alarmclockwars at gmail dot com and let me know where you want your Starbucks gift cards sent!

Now…  I’ve been brainstorming over the last week, and my current choice for a name for this budding business is “Farmers Raising Families.”  Any other brilliant ideas on this?

Thanks so much for all your help…  I had a ball reading the names as they came in!

Are you creative?

I’m working on a business plan.  I know what I want to do, and I have a pretty good idea of how I want to do it.  I don’t know what I want to call it.

My goal is to help moms understand where the food they buy for their families comes from.

I want to help address some misconceptions in agriculture.  I want to help busy moms understand how food gets from the farms to their families.  I want to explain the procedures used in raising animals and crops for our food.  I want to talk about why things are done the way they are – with both the emotion and the science behind it.

What would you call this business?

Chime in with your suggestions.  I’ve got a Starbucks gift card to give away to my favorite name!

I’ll take suggestions until Sunday (November 14) at 10:00pm Central time.  I’ll pick my favorite, and post the gift card winner at 8:00pm Central time on Monday.

Give me as many options as you want…  No limits!