Over the weekend...

Every Monday my kids report to their class about what they did "Over the Weekend."  Here is a Farm Mom's report after a busy weekend...


Friday, March 22, 2013
4:00PM:  Get the kids off the bus.  Finish packing up a few last items and head into Lowell to setup our first-ever Expo booth!
6:00PM:  Head to the St. Mary's for the Fish Fry  (Yay!  I don't have to cook!)
7:00PM:  Hubby drops me and my daughter off at my friend's house.  She did a presentation on her mission trip to Kenya.
9:00PM:  Answer phone calls, texts, gather a few more items for the booth, get kids to bed
10:00PM:  Bedtime














Saturday, March 23, 2013
3:57AM:  My alarm goes off (but I don't get up because I like to push Snooze 2 times)
4:11AM:  Eat a bowl of cereal and put on 3 layers of clothes- Spring has not sprung here yet. BRRR!
4:20AM:  Arrive at the farm.  (I have a 1 mile commute.)  Mostly, I feed grain/milk/hay and care for new or sick babies.  A few highlights from Saturday morning chores:

A few days ago our vet put a cast on this calf because her momma stepped on her  right after she was born.  He is giving her a painkiller and perscribed me to do it for 3 days.  So, I had to tend to her.

I got to see Pepper giving birth to a new litter of kitties!

She had them in the rooster's hideout!  He was so freaked out he didn't even crow once  all morning!

This guy here was born around 5AM.  After his momma licked him clean , I fed him colostrum, gave him his vaccinations, and tucked him into his pen. (That's just the flash from the phone camera. His eyes really aren't scary at all.)
7:51AM:  Speed home to take a light-speed shower and grab a few more items for the booth

8:30AM:  The Dairy Discovery/SwissLane Farms booth at the Lowell EXPO!  We had 500 cartons of TruMoo (donated by DFA- Thank you!), SwissLane Specialty Cheese samples, and Farm Fresh Maple Syrup.  It was a great day!  We sold out of 2 kinds of cheese and all of our Quarts of syrup and gave away all the milk!
1:10PM:  Do a radio interview about Dairy Discovery/SwissLane Farms being a first-time vendor at the EXPO

3:00PM:  Tear down EXPO booth
4:30PM:  Head to the mall with Mom, Sis and the girls for our annual Easter dress shopping trip!
8:00PM:  Home.  Throw some left-overs and frozen goods together for a Not-So-Impressivve dinner
8:30PM:  Head to the gas station for a Red Box movie.  We watched Brave.  (Pretty cute movie but I will not be accepting any "peace- offering" baked goods from any of my children.)
10:00PM:  Bedtime


Sunday, March 24, 2013
5:37AM:   My alarm goes off (but I don't get up because I like to push Snooze 2 times)
5:50AM:  Wake up my daughter(the farm kids will work 1 or 2 mornings a month feeding calves).  She can't drive so that means I get to help too
6:12AM:  Arrive (fashionably late) to feed the bull calves

8:30AM:  Come home to a Pancake Breakfast!  Dad and the boys even made us some bacon to go along with :)  Get the kids/me/hubby in our Easter-best for the Sunday School program at church

10:30AM:  Church. (Got all teary-eyed as I listened to my kids sing At the Cross and He Arose.  PTL!)

12:00PM:  Me and daughter leave straight from church with my Mom and Dad to go to my niece's graduation from Michigan State in Lansing (its about an hour drive).  I am a proud "Auntie."  (I did hesitate to post this pic- I couldn't for the life of me, find an Easter dress for me.  Just look at my beautiful niece and daughter OK?)
3:30PM:  Grab a snack at Old Chicago to celebrate!  Me and daughter leave the party early to go to another party
5:45PM:  Arrive at my God-daughter's 9th birthday celebration
8:50PM:  Home.  Put kids to bed.  Crash on the couch.
9:15PM:  Blog post on a busy weekend.
11:59PM:  Bedtime *Please note this is only an estimate as I am deeply upset at the format of this post!!  I will probably try for way too long to fix the margins.  I added all the pics through the Blogger App on my phone because I thought it would be easier.  I know...TMI.  But sometimes a rant can make a lady feel better.

Say Cheese!

It's official...SwissLane Farms is now a place to buy cheese! 
A friend of the family is an award winning Cheese-maker from Wisconsin.  Our family is what you would call Cheese Snobs and big fans of Decatur Cheese.  For years, we have been talking with him about making/selling cheese and one day he showed up with a whole cooler full of cheese- and that settled it. 
No more talking its time to start doing.  
So its not "our" cheese made with our milk- but its a start!  
We've got big plans and one small step at a time we will get there.
Stop in to get your Specialty Cheese- no shipping and lots of flavor!

(The New sign)

Don't Mess With Milk

I love Sunday's.  The Lord's Day.  A day of Rest.  The beginning of a new week.  And the only day you can take a Sunday afternoon nap.  I love Sunday's.
Just to give you some background...
  We have been a little lighter on the labor force this week(end) due to some much needed vacations.  It was our(Jerry and I) weekend "on"  (we are dairy farmers so really almost all weekends- unless we are on vacation- we are working.... but just not- well.... lets just say it's complicated and pretty much if you're a dairy farmer you don't get a day-off very often.  Even when it's not your "weekend-on")  So anyway, busy weekend.  But it went very well.  Even though it was the hottest, record breaking, sweltering heat I have ever endured- my calves all look great!  Very satisfying.  I have been looking forward to my Sunday nap since 4:30am Saturday. 
After church, I decided to check Twitter "real quick" before I snuggled up, and came across this article:
Got-milk? You Don't Need It

And that is what killed my Sunday nap:(
Here is the comment I posted (that took me way to long to write):

Mark,
I am not too familiar with your work but reading your bio above it says you wrote “Food Matters,” which explored the crucial connections among food, health and the environment."
Food, health and the environment are some values very important to me too. That is why I find satisfaction in being a dairy farmer.
I am a mom of 3 and listening to my kids pour and mix chocolate milk for their snack as I type. I am glad they don't have an allergy so it is very easy for them to get 9 essential nutrients from 1 little glass.
I have been a runner for about 20 years and completed a couple of marathons. I have found my recovery to be much quicker when I started using chocolate milk as a post-run drink.
I love, love being outside with my animals and am so humbled to be responsible for the land that my great-grandfather passed on to other generations. I know that my job is to leave it in better condition for my kids.
As you were posting this article, my family was working 10-16 hour days during the hottest week in history trying to care for our animals. I am on my way back to the farm now trying "to make a living producing and selling milk." This article makes that just a little more challenging today.


Yes, and then I can't just leave it at that- I go and take even more of my precious Sunday-Afternoon-Nap-Time to tell all you fine folks about my frustrations.  Post/Rant Completed:) 
And now, back to the barn!  Have a great Sunday!

Robot Dairy- Month One

--An update on the first 5 weeks at the Robot Dairy--
I can't believe it has been 5 weeks already! It has been quite a ride! While it has been challenging both physically and mentally for our team- but nothing beats walking into the barn at the new dairy! You can just sense that the cows love it there.
The cows have been averaging right around 97lbs of milk per day and milk quality is excellent (SCC under 100,0000)!
I do need to mention here that we hand-picked these cows from our herd. They are all younger (1st or 2nd lactation) cows too because the older ones are more set in their ways and may take longer to train. After the first week we did end up taking about 10 cows back to the parlor because their udder was just not the right shape for the robot or they were just weren't getting it.
At start-up we had 360 cows to train and since we have been adding 10-20 cows every week. In a few more weeks we will finally be at capacity- 500 cows. What this means is that there are 10-20 cows every week that have needed to be trained. This will be the case too after a cow has her first calf she will need to be trained. It takes about 1 week for the cows to "get it" so until then they need to be ushered to the robots 3 times per day.
Some other firsts this week:
-The first cow to go into the "sick" pen:(
We have a separate pen for cows who need extra attention located right next to the vet office. The vet came to check her out and she's on the road to recovery. Until she is 100% the robot will be dumping her milk.


-We were able to move cows into the heifer and dry (the ones that don't give milk)cow barns at the Robot Dairy today!

This means that the biggest project in the history of SwissLane Farms is wrapping up!
It has been great to work with such good people from our community to bring this dream together.
We want to express true appreciation for:
Kaeb Sales
High Tech Dairy
RA Holmes Construction
Steadfast Construction
Huderman and Son's Redi-Mix Inc
Skyline Electric
Sikkema Equipment
GEA Norb-Co Equipment
Bakker Welding & Mechanics LLC
Timpson Transport
Kyle's Computer Solutions
Huisman Construction
Great Lakes Concrete Pumping
Brink Consulting

It was quite a challenge making sure things stayed on schedule but we couldn't be more thrilled with the focus and professionsalism that each of these businesses brought to the project. And guess what.... we are already talking about Phase 2 of the Robot Dairy!!

Robot Dairy- Week One!

We made it!
Yes, I know its only been one week but you need to celebrate small victories, right?
Actually, the week went amazingly well!
"Better than expected" is what I would like to say but honestly, we had NO idea what to expect!
All we know is that the cows are loving it!
The best indicator is their milk production. If you want to know if a cow is happy, stressed, comfortable, sick, healthy, if she's eating right- you look at how much milk she makes that day. Our cows have been averaging around 85 lbs of milk every day for the last few years.
The average pounds of milk for today at SwissLane 2 (Robot Dairy) was 102 lbs!!

It took about 8 hours to haul all 350 cows from SwissLane 1- only 8 at a time.


This was the first cow milked last Tuesday.


Cows are creatures of habit to the tenth degree. Anything new is such a big deal for them! So, a new barn AND being milked by a ROBOT was a lot for them to take in. We had a crew of 16 people (4 at each robot) for the first day to help usher the cows into the robot to be milked. They were so hesitant!

For the first milking, the Robot had to be trained too!

We had to sanitize the udder

enter the cows ear tag number and steer it so it could find the teats.


The robots scan the cows ear tags so each time she comes in it will remember the shape of her udder and teat placement then it will automatically sanitize and place the milker on the udder. (If you look closely at the picture above you can see the laser on the udder.)
One of the incentives to get the cows into the robot- besides having a full udder- is they get a little treat to eat while being milked. There is a little trough in the robot and it will dump a certain amount of grain in there depending on how much milk she gives and how many times she is milked that day.
Some of them have to be limited on how many times they get milked because they will just come in to have a snack so the robot just kicks them out!


It is just amazing how much information we have access to! We can tell which quarter of the cows udder produces the most or how much she weighs at each milking. We can even track how often a cow is chewing her cud!



High quality milk is the most important thing on our dairy farm. The robot uses a laser to scan the milk to check for inconsistencies and color. If it senses bad quality milk it will dump the milk and alert the herd manager.

It is so fun to watch the cows enjoying their new back rub brushes! Merry Christmas girls!


The most amazing thing that I've seen this week had nothing to do with the robots though....
Over this past week there were 52 people who came to help us with this monumental endeavor. I was overwhelmed by the support from the farming community, our family, and friends. We are so blessed.

History In The Making- Swisslane2/Robot Dairy

A new era has arrived to Swisslane Dairy Farms!  In just a few hours, 300 cows will begin to be trailered over to Swisslane 2- or as we like to call it The Robot Dairy. 
It is just a hop, skip, and a jump to the north of our original farm.
We will start at 10am ushering the cows into the robots to be milked.
Over the past couple of years our family has done a lot of soul-searching, brainstorming, business planning, and most importantly praying. 
Now the current owners of the farm (my dad and my two uncles) are nearing retirement age and a solid group of generation nexters (my husband and I, two of my cousins, and my brother in-law) are ready to pursue enterance into the family business.
We needed a plan that would ensure the farm's sustainsbilty for years to come.
When we first met last winter to formulate this plan, all ideas were up for consideration.  Some ideas thrown out: cheese/milk processing, raw milk/cow-shares, buying a farm in Ohio, expanding the original farm, rotary or parallel parlors.  Everything was on the table.  One by one each idea was held up to our circumstances and our Core Values.  And in March of 2011 we made our proposal to the bank for a loan to build a farm for 500 cows with 8 Robotic Milkers and in 2-5 years we plan to begin Phase 2 and milk another 500 then.  
We broke ground in May and here we are- 6 months later- ready for opening day!
The three selling points, if you will, where robotic milking lined up with our Core Values were:

1. Light Years Ahead (This is cutting edge stuff!)
2.  Focused On The Cows (The cows will love consistency of the robotsand the cows get to decide when they get milked!)
3.  Turning A Nickel Into A Dime (Making a capital investment to reduce cost in the long run.)

Stay tuned for more updates and thank you for your prayers and support!