Field trip today with our home school co-op at the largest dairy farm I've ever been to. Now, you have to realize that we live smack in the middle of dairy farm country, surrounded by the old order Amish with their primitive horse-drawn buggies, to the Mennonites, a few centuries more modern than the Amish, all the way up to the 21st century state-of-the-art factory farm: THE farm of the future.
I have to say that I have somewhat of a prejudice of these oversized megafarms, mainly because we are former owner/operators of a comparatively midget-sized family dairy farm, which now has been downsized to a one cow/one calf hobby farm. Laughable to even call ours a farm, and I don't even want to mention that fact to the owner of this megalopolis just 12 miles from our acreage, or he'd likely laugh us off his place. But even though I have a small-farm preference, I go with an open mind and grateful for the chance to see the wave of the future in dairy farm technology.
After a short zigzaggy drive through muddy, slushy, potholey, sloppy excuses for roads, we survive the trek to arrive at a sparkling monument of a barn that makes me sit up and take notice--hmmmmm, are they making some money here, or what? Not what I'm used to with our experience in farming, where the money coming in goes out even faster...well, I think to myself, the bank is their best friend, no doubt. Okay, my judgement may not be fair, so I try to make myself be open to something new. We're greeted by Kim, our tour guide and the nutritionist who the farm has hired to manage the rations for this 2500 some head of cattle owned by this "factory farm".
Kim, beaming with joy at all the people who have come to learn from her expertise in all things bovine, greets us with pairs of plastic booties to put on over our shoes. I think to myself, "I should have these for folks that come over this time of year, with all the mud and junk...", then I realize my own family'd never fall for that, so I file it away in my mind under "useless information". Kim takes us all through a heated part of the "barn", into an unheated open area where all the cows and calves are neatly penned off into their own specialized areas. First to our right are the newborn baby calves, still wet from birth and lying comfortably in clean straw--awww, so cute and innocent looking. To our left is a huge open area with all kinds of holsteins, who are as curious to see what we're doing as we are of them.
My daughter is of course familiar with cows, since we live surrounded by them, so I concentrate on watching my city-slicker friends' kids reactions to the animals. The kids seem to really enjoy watching the cows from a comfortable distance, and it's funny when I hear some of them saying how bad it smells. Boy, I was thinking it smelled pretty good considering how many cows were in one big confined area, but I guess I'm just used to the smell. As some farmer friends of mine like to say, "Smells like money to me!", although I know better than that. If money smelled like that, everyone would be a farmer...hmmmm.... (to be continued)
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