Day in Farm Life: Central Nebraska

My husband (Mark) and I are 4^th (maybe 5^th) generation farmers/ranchers.  He is from SE Nebraska where his dad and brother farm and raise cattle.  I am from a ranch in Colorado.  We moved to Central Ne about 5 yrs ago when I took a job working at an ethanol plant as the feed market manager and beef cattle nutrition consultant.  Almost 2 yrs ago we were given an amazing opportunity to purchase part of the land of a local farmer/rancher who was looking to retire and did not have children returning.  We bought a portion of his land, the machinery and leased his cow herd (150 hd).  This partnership is pretty good for both us and him.  He gets some $$ for renting us the summer pasture, some of the farm ground and his portion of the calves.  We get to start our own farm on our own.  We could have stayed in SE Ne with his family and worked into the business, there is room for us but after being out here a few years we like this area better and even though it may be harder financially to start this way it will be ours when we are done.  Because the margins are so tight we both have maintained our off farm jobs.  Mark works for a farmer/rancher 7 miles down the road as well.  So we do most of our farming after dark.

We raise corn, cattle and put up hay for winter.  Our cows calve in the spring (March and April) and are Angus based herd and we use both Angus and SimAngus bulls.  We age and source our steer calves and they are sold direct to a feedlot where we get all of the performance and carcass data back.  Our corn is marketed to the local Ethanol plants.  We sell them corn, they make fuel for our cars (part of ours, most of our equip is diesel) and feed for our cattle.  I guess like most farmers/ranchers I love spring time.  After a long cold snowy winter, the signs of warmer days and new baby calves better make you excited, if not you need a new career!  I think with production ag we go from one season to the next all year round, calving and planting turns to haying and checking windmills, which turns to harvest and weaning, then comes feeding and catching up on the books.  With all of the seasons there is something that I love about all of them there is also some things I could do without (rattle snakes, hail, 20 below zero….).

The consumer… Where do you begin….  My biggest problem with consumers who don’t know is that a lot of them get their info from someone who has never raised a calf, planted a corn seed, or stacked hay.  I wrestle with the issue that so many consumers don’t look to those of us in production ag (farmers, rancher, nutritionist, veterinarians, agronomist) to get the facts on how and why we do what we do to produce the worlds cheapest, safest, and healthiest food supply.  I really wished consumers understood they have instant access to the professionals at the tip of their fingers with today’s technology (blogs, informative web sites etc).

The thing I am most proud of is the sense of accomplishment.  At the end of the day or the beginning of a new day (for us lol) when we walk into the house dog tired I know that we accomplished something.  Even though some days it feels like we chased our tails around in circles we made a difference and what we did put food on someone else’s table.

One cold snowy April Sunday, problems began at 9 am with a heifer not giving it her all to get her calf out and by the time the day was over, we had pulled 3 calves, sewed 1 prolapse, made 9 doses of colostrum, helped 1 confused cow figure out which calf was her’s, on top of the normal feeding and watering chores.  I walked in the house at midnight, soaking wet, covered in “calf slime” and too tired to even eat supper.  I looked at Mark and said glad this terrible day is behind us.  He said “what terrible day?  We have 3 calves that would have died that are alive (2 of which are now mobile and nursing their mom’s), 1 cow that is still alive, 4 more new calves in the pasture alive and healthy, everything has plenty of feed and dry bedding to survive through the night, and the vet was only here once, I’d say that was a pretty good day… oh don’t forget more colostrum while you’re in town tomorrow.”