or Why We Can Be Hard To
Catch up With!
Where to start? At the beginning I guess.
Mike & I were married in 1976. In 1982 we bought the family farm from my uncle and moved our dairy operation from Mike's home near Whitewood SD to our present location 1 mile west of Belle Fourche, SD.
Our 800 acre farm has been in my family since the early 1920's. Our children, Matt and Marissa are the 5th generation to live here. My great-grandfather started the dairy, my dad remembers loading the cream cans onto a horse drawn wagon to be hauled to town. All milking was done by hand, thank heavens for modern milking machines!
So for almost 23 years we have been in the dairy business, currently we are milking 120 cows, our total cattle herd numbers around 270 dairy animals, Jerseys and Holsteins, and one Brahma cow.A dairy involves a certain amount of, shall we say hard work and determination! We run our operation with the help of our two children and one employee. A typical day around here starts out at 3:00 a.m. for Mike, day in and day out. He heads out to start feeding and cleaning, kids and I follow at 6:00, off to do calf chores. We calve every month of the year and raise about 150 calves on bottles and buckets, sometimes we are feeding as many as 50 calves. All chores have to be done before heading off for school! Along with calves there are the various other critters to be cared for, horses, plus dogs, cats, multitude of poultry (chickens, ducks, peacocks and guineas) rabbits, goats, a pet pig, and sheep.
Milking takes about 4 hours twice a day. Too bad cows don't take a day off once in awhile! Besides the daily chores involved with milking and critter care, along come farming and haying season, we farm and hay around 400 acres of our ground and leased ground. Under usual circumstances we put up enough of our own hay to feed heifers, dry cows and horses, but the past several years have seen our area suffer a prolonged drought, necessitating purchase of additional hay. In a typical year we feed around 700 tons of hay, 1200 tons of silage, 400 tons of haylage and 780 tons of grain.
A mile of the Belle Fourche River runs thru our place,
this photo is taken from atop one of our hills on our river valley.
Ghost & his mares enjoying spring
grass in the back pasture.
A farm is a great place for kids. Our cousins spend a lot of time together,
from left to right is Riley, daughter Marissa, Treanna, Brodie and son Matt,
along with Missy Dog.
| Newest Cousins, Nicole age 6 months and Gabe age 2 |
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Mike holds old Daisy, age 19 in photo, shown
with her great, great, great granddaughter. She was
Matt's 4-H show cow, long retired from the milking herd.
My sisters help out with horse rides on Farm
Day.
Left is sister Melissa to the right is sister Marcia. Marcia is
attired in standard farm fashion, also known as barn boots.
To the right are various photos
taken over the years of Farm
Kid Day
Kids watching milking.
Petting baby calves.
Kids with our Irish Wolfhound Buddy. Unfortunately we lost Buddy to old age the spring of 2004. He is very much missed, a gentle, loving soul who loved "sharing" the kids lunches.
Mike & Missy dog, who is leading who?
Human Kids share lunch with pygmy goat kid.
