Harvesting Romance

While I have a hard time winning anything from a lottery scratch off, I have to admit that I have been lucky in love. And yes, my husband will tell you he's a catch even with the dirty barn boots tracking crud in the house, paint sticks in the washing machine and 15-hour workdays. Dealing with that is a snap as opposed to the alternative of trying to find your soulmate online.

According to an survey, some 40 million Americans - nearly half of all unmarried people - have tried Internet dating in recent years, turning it into a $1 billion business. That song "Love Don't Cost a Thing" - don't believe it.

If anyone knows anything about a farmer or rancher's life, it's a lifestyle that's not real conducive for dating. Even when we were dating, I would often wait until 9 p.m. before he pulled into the driveway. Because of the long hours and 24/7 commitment to the farm, there aren't a lot of opportunities to hook-up with the opposite sex unless she's the milkman, veterinarian or feed salesperson. But there are other avenues.

The Feed Mill ~ If you're lucky, the person running the scale will be of the opposite sex, but don't expect to find too many women lugging around feedbags out on the dock.

The Meat Market ~ Unless you have a hearty appetite for homegrown beef, trips to the local meat market to butcher steers is usually a once a year event. However one young lothario told me that 'it's hard to flirt with a woman wearing a blood-stained smock'.

Farm Shows and Cattle Sales ~ These events fortunately occur a little more often and most farmers are there to check out the latest in farm technology (meaning affordable) and good bloodlines of cattle (or say they say). Of course, you need to have a good pick up line. Please don't try the following: "Nice looking udder on that one, wouldn't you say?"

County Fair ~ With only a five-day window, farmers need to network fast and move further down the midway than the farm machinery display.

Fast Food Joint ~ While some folks claim that love can be found in the produce aisle of the local A&P store, it's much easier for farmers to search for sustenance at a drive-thru window. Unfortunately the morning crew working at Mickey D's may be old enough to be your mother and the late night crew, young enough to be your kid sister.

But take heart, there's a new online dating service just for the rural folk called www.FarmersOnly.com launched last year by Jerry Miller, owner of the marketing and public relations firm for the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association. Already 2,000 folks have signed up and there's a wedding and five engagements that have spawned from the online activity (future offline activity may boost student numbers in rural school districts! - while farmers may be slow to get started, they make up for lost time in a hurry!)

So if you're looking for someone who's outstanding in your field, love may only be as far away as a few keystrokes. Fortunately for me, all it took was one hayride at a 4-H meeting.

All in a Day’s Work

Do you think the Austrian Oak (Arnold the Terminator to the rest of the world) got his body building start pushing stubborn sheep and goats around in his homeland of Austria? Maybe not, but there are a lot of homegrown musclemen right here on local farms.

I wasn’t surprised to read about the Clark County farmer that blew away the competition at the National Strongman Competition held last week. To read the blurb for yourself, visit Wisconsin Ag Connection web site at

http://www.wisconsinagconnection.com/story-state.php?Id=1266&yr=2006

In winning the overall title, Carl Frommel had to press a 300 pound log, drag a loaded truck more than 80 feet and carry other assorted weights. What’s funny is that Frommel probably spent a lot less time training for the event than the other 60 competitors. The farm holds a virtual plethora of muscle-building activities 24:7. Here’s a sampling of the daily regimen that your average farmer encounters every day:

The Bovine Squat – for those still milking in stanchion barns, you probably have thighs as big as Olympic speed-skaters from the repetitive motion of putting on and taking off milk machines. Some fussy cows will enhance your workout by kicking them off a few extra times.

The Sheep Scramble – will test the dexterity of even the most nimble of farmers when trying to upend the sure-footed creatures for a shearing.

The Harvestore Crawl – excellent cardio-workout, especially when the blower pipe clogs up and several trips up and down the ladder are needed.

The Hernia Maker – when the hitch on the chopper is eight inches from the self-unloading wagon and you choose to make up the difference with a little elbow grease rather than jump back into the tractor and try again.

The Resistance Training – the act of pulling, pushing, and (at times) towing a stubborn animal into any place she refuses to be.

Barnyard Buddies

Long winter days spent in the close proximity of another may do one of two things: drive the other person crazy or forge friendships.Take Alfred and Abby for example. From outward appearances you would think they have nothing in common. She has four long legs and he has short stubby ones and tends to waddle when he walks. But they seem to speak the same language and haven't tired of one another's company.

My brother-in-law David, who owns Abby the chocolate lab and has more or less adopted Alfred the lone Pekin duck, said a winter spent together in the shed cemented the friendship between the odd couple. In fact, the two seem inseparable with Alfred standing guard 24:7 on the perimeter of Abby's pen.

Over two years ago, Alfred and his brothers and sisters were props for Easter photos shot at a local studio by David's daughter. When the little flock was no longer photogenic (nor cute and fuzzy anymore), they migrated down the driveway to the creek. Unfortunately a hungry coyote must have had the same idea and left Alfred the lone survivor without a friend in the world - that is until he spent last winter conversing with the dog.

David said the duck (who is notably slower than his canine friend) tries to follow Abby everywhere, even on a stroll out to the freshly tilled fields to look for arrowheads last spring. By the time David and Abby were ready to head for home, there was Alfred, making his way among the clods of dirt. Being the tenderheart that he is, David gave the tenacious duck a lift home.

Along for the Ride

I have to admit I miss the rides to the Co-op during the fall harvest, especially when the kids were little. Whenever it was time to haul corn in to the old AgriLand Co-op elevator located off of Forest Avenue I secretly hoped my husband would draw the truck driving duties.

Armed with storybooks and a blanket (depending on whether the heater in the old red truck worked or not) we hitched a ride into town when the combine filled the truck to overflowing. Back then the intersection of Hickory and Pioneer Road didn't have a stop and go light and we timed our trips to the Co-op to miss the shift changes at Mercury Marine. You can't get a jack-rabbit start with a grain truck hauling 16 tons of corn.

From the vantage point of the cab, the kids loved watching the grain disappear into the underground holding vat. It was hard for them to imagine the corn being fed into the dryer and then into the large silver holding bins. If we had to wait in line behind an assembly of grain trucks and tractors pulling gravity boxes, we fogged the windows by singing every song in the Disney Movie hit list. If we had to wait more than an hour, we often resorted to Tennessee Ernie Ford's classic "16 Tons".

Once the empty truck was weighed, they fought over who could go into the office to get the weight sheet. Please note that the boys hadn't the least interest in corn tonnage, but rather what color sucker they would get from the red, plastic fire hydrant by the door.

Back then it didn't take much to entertain the kids. Today.....it's another story.

You Gotta Love this Woman

I met US Fish and Wildlife ranger Molly Stoddard back in 2000 when I officially hooked up with The Reporter. Molly was the ranger at the Horicon Marsh and is a walking wildlife encyclopedia. Like her state counterpart Bill Volkert, the two radiate enthusiam for God's critters. Here's Molly's interesting reply to my blog on stray cats...

That was cool and I have to add that house cats, stray or wild, are not native to the United States but were brought here with settlement.
They are over-populated and consume millions of native birds and rodents each year that other native species would rather not compete for for their food source such as raptors. Cats have a very low survival rate in the wild due to car collisions, disease, and people who worship evil and sacrifice them in bizarre ceremonies.

Ever noticed how careful the shelters have become in who they adopt black or white cats to especially around Halloween? I am an advocate for keeping all cats indoors and spay/neuter. As much as I love cats, we do not need more of them nor for the ones we have to lead an inhumane existence. The root word of humane by the way is human. It's our job to be humane.

Thanks for hearing me out! I'm off my soap box now.

Molly Stoddard

...so if you're ever pondering about some critter your child (or husband) has dragged home, experts at the DNR or US Fish and Wildlife Service can help.

Feline Dumping Grounds

Are farms magnets for unwanted pets? Any farmer can tell you that the eclectic collection of felines hanging around the milkhouse door aren't likely to be homegrown - at least not the first generation. They are permanent boarders that have either been dropped off at a discreet distance away from the driveway (under the cover of darkness) or by a friend of a friend of your wife's second cousin who just couldn't keep the cat because of allergies (what they really mean is that the cat has an aversion to its litterbox or leaves juicy hairballs at the side of the bed).

True strays can usually fend for themselves and know what the business end of a mouse looks like. Former housecats are another story. Each day my mother-in-law tosses out of the house two or three cats who manage to scamper in before the door closes. These cats wear an aura of entitlement and make no secret of their indignation as their backends hit the top porch step.Don't worry PETA, they're fine and back at the back door within seconds.

So many people associate farms with being hostels for orphan felines. "They won't notice one more cat and there's plenty of milk", you think as you toss Fluffy out the door and speed away. How can farmers not notice the Siamese hissing at the other cats as she tries to fight her way to the food bowl? We also notice when some of the regulars disappear but we don't spend a whole lot of time looking for them either. If they're like the neighbor's cats, they're probably off enjoying a little R&R at the farm across the field. In fact, we fed our neighbor's cats all summer. And when they left, the only thanks we got were more pregnant female cats!

Of course all the kids on the farm adore the kittens. But it's not so endearing when the pathetic little things are struggling to survive during a bitter cold winter, especially the last litter born at the end of the summer. Those kittens are usually born to the farm trollop whose nurturing skills equal that of a termite.

And it's even more disheartening when someone leaves off a sick cat that infects the other healthy ones at the farm. I still get angry when I think of the young puppies someone dropped off near our farm years ago. While we were able to turn one of them into the Humane Society, the other wasn't quite as lucky. Someone had struck her as she wandered along the dark road. The vet told us she had too much head trauma to survive, so the only thing we could do was pay to have her put to sleep. Not such a happy ever after ending.

So, if you have a hankering to donate a cat to a friendly-looking farm - ask first.

I Could've Used a Farmer's Almanac

Ok. Raise your hand if you've ever purchased an Old Farmer's Almanac? You're in good company. It's estimated that over 18 million people read it annually and not just farmers. With topics ranging from cooking to weather forecasting or how to how to fix the toilet (see Toiletology 101)...this little softcover magazine with the familiar yellow cover is educational. I purchased one last week at the Farmer Mecca (Fleet Farm). In hindsight, I should have purchased it much sooner.

In the magazine's 217-year history, there have been some pretty entertaining features as well. Like the folks who swear they can predict the weather by examining a pig spleen. I personally prefer the evening news. But if you're the adventurous type or a purist, just butcher a hog (maybe Al Feucht of Brandon Meats would be willing to part with a pig spleen for the sake of science) and divide the spleen into six areas - each section representing a month. Where the spleen thickens, a change in weather is indicated and a pronounced bulge means inclement weather. And if the spleen indicates a monsoon or tsunami, you just might be holding it upside down.

Some folks prefer a more scientific approach to calculating the severity of the winter ahead. The familiar wooly bear caterpillar is a favorite among the oldsters and youngsters. Unfortunately most of us cannot remember is whether its the black or reddish brown band that is the telling forecasting feature. According to legend, the wider the middle reddish brown band, the milder the coming winter will be. I meant to look up the difference when my son brought one into the house a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately before I had the answer, the wooly bear had slipped away. If this particular wooly bear predicted an unusually mild winter (inside of my house) he would have been right on the money!

That's OK. The caterpillar is in good company...with the two hamsters that escaped from the cage in my son's room. After they both went AWOL (on two separate occasions) I alerted my fat cat that she was officially on high alert for the elusive creatures. Unfortunatley her idea of mouse patrol is surveying the household from a comfy chair. The latest escape was the most frustrating.

We had purchased "Lily" at a local pet store. An employee told me that the small blackbear hamsters were just babies. Looking back now I wish the owner of the store had required his staff to read the gestation and mating table in the Old Farmer's Almanac (ok, so it doesn't contain info about children's small pets...but it should!) Two weeks later we were the proud owners of five baby hamsters. While we knew that first time mothers might cannabalize their young, much to our chagrin (and my son's delight) Lily turned out to be quite the proficient little mother - until she discovered an open door five weeks later.

She couldn't have picked a worse time to defect from motherhood. With only minutes to get my son to his cousin's to catch a bus the morning of my husband's surgery at the hospital...we scrambled around our sprawling farm house, peering under beds and looking into dark closets. The babies were barely alive. With no time to consult a knowledgeable source (surely not the pet store that sold her to me), I pointed a reading lamp over their nest whispered a good luck and bolted out the door. Six hours later they were cavorting around inside of the cage, nibbling on hard food (I only had to teach them to drink water). Then I had to educate myself on the finer tips differentiating between boy and girl hamsters before they figured out how to multiply again.

And now I am wondering if the Farmer's Almanac has a tip for getting rid of the awful smell emanating from my heat registers. Yup, you guessed it. What a perfect hiding place for a hamster until she electrocuted herself chewing through the wiring in the furnace. Ugh. In the end, that little $6.99 hamster has cost me another cage, quadruple the food and bedding and now a $350 bill for cleaning out the ductwork in my home. Perhaps I should have read the Almanac's tip about poisoning unwanted pests or motivating a lazy cat.

Have a Cow - Please!!!

What do Elsie the cow and David Beckham (the English soccer star) have in common. If you answered that they both can kick, you would be partly right.
The answer is they both have served as the poster children for the dairy industry - namely encouraging the health benefits of milk.
While Elsie and her beau, Elmer, were quite the couple back in the day (think late 1930's) milk marketing boards have embraced the "Got Milk" ads. And you've got to admit, they have done the job in getting the word out about milk. Who doesn't know the catch phrase "Milk, it does a body good".
What is interesting is the glammed up ads designed to hit the younger, target audience. Who didn't love the first "Got Milk?" ad that ran in 1993 with the history buff who couldn't answer a radio station's trivia ad because his mouth was full of peanut butter and his answer was unintelligible.
Back then the commercials featured ordinary people in various situations involving dry or sticky foods and the unavailability of milk.
Go to part II of the ad's campaign in which celebrities from the fields of sports, media, entertainment and fictional characters (The Simpsons and Pikachu the Pokemon) began posing in print sporting milk moustaches. (note: many folks - especially those familiar with the actual qualities of milk - know that liquid milk doesn't linger on the upper lip unless you're skimming the cream off the top!)
Actually the moustaches are made with a mixture of milk and yogurt - not Elmer's glue! (sorry Elmer, I know that was your big spin when you were loaned to Borden's chemical division). Remember the kids that used to eat glue in your grade school days? Maybe they should have been cast as models in "Got Glue?" ads? Now that would have been funny - only if they were eating it and not sniffing it!
According to the "Got Milk?" web site, the ads have garnered over 90% awareness among US households and the tag line has been licensed to a multitude of dairy boards across the US since 1995. That's almost as good as the name recognition back in 1939 at the World's Fair at New York when 6 out of 10 people knew who Elsie the Cow was - back before the age of television).
But is milk consumption up? I'll tell you what is up in bedrooms across the country; it's the glossy pictures used in the new magazine ads sporting the "Body by Milk" campaign. (Think hot, scantily-clad models and shirtless athletes proudly displaying their six-packs).
I'm not making this up. One day a copy of my Blender (an edgy music magazine that I admit is my one guilty pleasure and draws the scorn of my husband) was laying on the table when one of my son's friends happened to be looking through it. As he was thumbing through the pages, he came across one of the ads (you can guess it wasn't Snoop Dog). "Are you done with this?" he asked with a sheepish grin. Sure, my husband was only going to sneak it into the garbage can anyway.
I don't suppose any 17-year-old boys were pinning up photos of Elsie on their walls in the early 1940s?

And for you trivia buffs? Do you remember the names of Elsie and Elmer's offspring? If you answered Beulah, Beauregard and twins Larabee and Lobelia you are A) older than me B) a great trivia buff with an amazing memory for little known facts or C) peeked at your old Elsie poster hanging out in the milkhouse.

A Horse Apiece?

I knew it wouldn't last. But what surprises me is how long it took for her to come to her senses. My sister has always been crazy about pets since we were little. Now that she's married and has two daughters of her own, she has allowed a few of them to enter her home: hamsters, a crotchety, ill-tempered cat (that I gave her), newts (that she gave back to me) and most recently a hunting dog that thinks she's human.
When she moved out into the country my sister began to entertain all sorts of possibilities including nurturing the untamed cats that the neighbor refused to feed. Well, she accomplished her goal and now can't get rid of the felines hanging around her porch and crouching below her bird feeder, waiting to nab the bright-feathered creatures.
Her biggest foray into animal husbandry was when she talked her husband into buying two lambs for her daughter's 4-H project. While Arnold eventually made his way to the stockyards, Lucille remained back at home, eating to her hearts content and getting fatter by the month. After a cold winter of hauling water out back to the bellowing wool-lined dictator they tried to find a home for her via a classified ad. The result: no takers. So what do you do? Buy of ram, of course. While it was one of our most docile rams on the farm, my father-in-law warned them not to let their guard down for a moment.
When they brought him home, I honestly think my sister had visions of cute little lambs bounding around the property come spring. What she didn't count on was the love/hate relationship the animals would enter into. The ram's Rambo-style courtship was so aggressive they eventually had to separate the two. Instead the sheep had to content themselves with a long distance relationship. So much for love!
As the months passed, my sister developed an amicable relationship with the ram who follows her every movement as she tends her nearby garden and flowerbeds. While Judy thinks the ram is her buddy, he secretly wonders how he can send her aloft as she bends over to pull out a handful of weeds! As long as there's a fence between them, that relationship should last.
Earlier this year, the wooly couple surprised them by producing a small ram lamb during a bitter cold spell in March. As they weren't expecting the arrival, the discovered him too late and attempts to keep him alive proved futile. I really think that's when their dreams of sheep being ideal pets were dashed. So this year after spreading the word about their flock of two, a neighbor who raises sheep has agreed to take the unproductive pair into her flock.
So what project is next for the farm hobbysists? According to their youngest daughter, a horse, of course!

World Dairy Expo
Last week tens of thousands of people streamed into the Alliant Center grounds in Madison for the World Dairy Expo. Interspersed among the farmers from throughout the Midwest were delegates from several foreign countries, eager to get a glimpse of the latest and greatest advances in farm technology.
Also on the grounds were several breeds of the finest dairy animals from herds throughout the country all competing for the Supreme Championship – the holy grail of all bovine honors.
While this year’s winner, a Jersey cow owned by Arethusa Farm of Litchfield, Conn., held court in the show ring, the spotlight was on another cow inside the Exhibition Hall that drew even bigger crowds.
While perusing material at the Land O’ Lakes booth, my head jerked up as the pumping beats of C&C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat, Everybody Dance Now” began echoing through the cavernous hall.
Just one aisle over at the De Laval display. a dancing 8-foot tall bovine was shaking her groove thing to the delight of onlookers. Powered by high-tech robotics, the cow danced, made faces at the crowd and was the subject of many pictures taken by Japanese visitors.
The amusing antics of this cow attracted such a large crowd that it was hard to get an up-close look. I haven’t attended a World Dairy Expo in some time, but the vendors have upped the ante in attracting potential customers to their booths. With hundreds of vendors vying for your business, some like De Laval (a worldwide manufacturer and supplier of milking systems and computerized dairy management systems) pulled out all the stops.
In fact, I saw one semen dealer with poker tables set up at its display with dealers (dressed in pit boss garb) doling out semen straws to tally the winnings of curious players.
And I remember feeling like I scored big time when I walked away with a free yardstick or pen!

Down on the Farm
Growing up in rural Fond du Lac County, I often viewed area farms as an idyllic slice of rural Americana. Cows out in our neighbor’s pasture would mosey on out of the barn after milking and take their place in the lush pasture along the road, chewing cud and gazing serenely at the surrounding landscape.
Unknown to me at the time was the flurry of activity going on behind the scenes (or barn door if you will): cows kicking off milk machines, a broken chopper waiting out in the machine shed that would keep my neighbor up well past midnight, a calf out of the best cow in the barn fighting scours and a wife ticked off that dinner was growing cold in the house.
When I took the plunge with a farmer 26 years ago, I got a bracing reality check. My neighbor’s problems would become all too familiar. What outwardly appears to be a placid lifestyle is just a calm façade that many farmers embrace when in fact they are inwardly trying to solve 20 problems at once. Next time you pass the farmer on the roadway take a closer look, he’s not counting daisies in the ditch but trying to remember if there’s still time to breed that cow that’s been acting amorous lately or whether or not he shut off the pump out back in the manure pit.
My intent is to journal some of the ups and downs at the farm as well as take a look at the people scratching out a living from the land. Not that the farm isn’t a great place to raise a family, but it does have it moments.
Falling milk prices and skyrocketing diesel prices aren’t anything to laugh about but there are many wonderful things that happen on the farm and out in the back 40 that make even droughts, 15-hour workdays and stubborn animals bearable.