Stay in Missouri

Stay in Missouri

Click here to see the next page in this series.

Click on the back button of your browser or click here to see the previous page of this series.

Click on any of the little pictures to see it full size (as big as it goes).

Thursday afternoon, the 18th, we went to a meeting of the Green Hill Farm Project. Green Hills is an informal name for about nine counties in northern central Missouri. They meet periodically at members' farms to socialize and talk about different problems and solutions they have had. They are a quite progressive group. This is the Bright's farm where we met. That is some rich pasture land, but they mostly run a dairy where the quality of the feed is quite important. We had a pot luck dinner, farm tour, and then meeting.
Inside one of the barns shown above is their milking operation which was active when we arrived. There the actual milking is done by machines with suction devices. Here is the area where the people attach the suction cups from behind and below the cows.
Here are the cows enjoying a mixture of grain and such as they are milked. The set up has space for another eight cows or so on the other side, but they only used this one side while we visited.
They also had several pens set up with calves. The calves were born at the farm (to refresh the cows) and were chosen to be kept and raised as replacements as other cows got too old. They are 'bottle' fed milk from the cows through that white plastic container on the left with the black nipples.
The Bright's also experiment with other possibilities. This is a greenhouse that they are just setting up to produce seedlings and whatever else works out. They got a S.A.R.E. (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) grant to try out a large wood stove to heat the greenhouse. It seems to be quite effective and should be most economical for them as they have timber land as well as gorgeous pasture.
This is one of the children of another farmer who visited. A neighbor had sheep triplets, but the mom only accepted one. She was given this baby sheep which she is bottle feeding.
Often when we are feeding or moving the herds, there will be groups of calves who seem to have their own little herd. Those groups can be over a dozen and are always running and jumping, full of energy and playfulness. Here is a short video (five seconds, 120K, about 40 seconds to download) of a group of calves running to rejoin the rest of the herd.	If your browser is not set up to show movies you will get an error dialog box instead of a player and can just press cancel.
While I was visiting, they started getting low on soy hull pellets which they feed to the very late term and lactacting cows as a supplement. Here is the truck delivering new pellets into the silo. They are pumped into the silo. Then each morning there is a smaller pump which pumps the pellets into buckets.
Here is a short video of Martin and Bev loading the buckets with pellets of soy hulls. There is an electric 'pump' that draws the pellets from the base and then a hose of blue jean leg cut offs to direct them into the buckets. It used to be my job to shovel the pellets onto the intake of the 'pump', but now that the silo is mostly full, I can retire and take videos and such.	If your browser is not set up to show movies you will get an error dialog box instead of a player and can just press cancel.
Here is a picture of one of the herds crossing the highway from one of Martin's pastures to another. This highway (State Highway 149) tends to run along the ridge, so I was just dashing up the hill following the cows (there was still a little grass left in their current pasture so they weren't eager to move on and Bev and I encouraged the laggards). We had put tape between the two gates so the cattle went from one pasture to the next and didn't wander down the highway. Fortunately there is not much traffic on this highway and no cars needed to get through.
Here is a somewhat out of focus picture of the highway and Martin's pastures on each side. You can also pick out the tape we used to keep the cattle from heading down the highway. This highway was not even paved 40 years ago and still follows the lay of the land.