Roll, Borden, Roll!

It doesn't take people very long to figure out that I have a real passion for promoting the dairy industry and dairy products. And those who know me well can attest that my passion for dairy is almost equally matched by my disdain for all things Crimson Tide. With that in mind,  I feel a little conflicted about what I'm sharing with you today. I guess I'll just have to focus on the good and overlook the bad...

I feel dirty posting this on my blog

Borden Dairy Company is currently running a promotion in which they will give away four tickets to each of the University of Alabama's final four home football games of this season: Mississippi State (Hail State!), Texas A&M, West Carolina, and Auburn.  Check out www.bordenultimatefan.com or their FaceBook page for more details.

Now to quickly take the focus off of 'Bama, let me tell you just a little bit about Borden Dairy Company. Borden owns and operates a milk processing plant near Dothan, Alabama. The dairy cooperative we're members of has a supply contract with Borden, so all of our cows' milk is shipped to and processed at their Dothan facility. From there it goes on to grocery store coolers and your refrigerator in containers stamped with the plant's unique code, "3801". 

So there you have it! If you're a fellow Alabamian or a resident of Mississippi, buy lots of Borden milk products and maybe you can win one of the sets of four tickets to a game in Tuscaloosa. And if you would rather endure an anesthesia-less root canal than spend an autumn Saturday surrounded by 100,000 Bammers, you could always give your tickets away to a friend or a charitable youth organization.  Either way, just make sure you and your family are getting three servings a day of delicious, nutritious dairy products!

"Vacationing" in Auburn

After a long week on the farm, I'm "vacationing" down in Auburn. Actually, I've been invited to participate in a discussion about social media and agriculture at the 2010 National Extension Technology Conference. I'll be talking about the how's and why's of "telling my story" and engaging the public about modern agriculture by using tools like this blog, my Twitter account, the farm's Facebook page, and my YouTube channel.

The session I'm participating in will wrap up around 10am tomorrow. Afterwards I may take a little time just to tour around the Auburn campus, which by most accounts is really nice (but it ain't no Mississippi State). Hopefully things will work out to have lunch with one of my old high school friends who now lives in these parts (check out his blog!). I'll be heading home early afternoon, doing my best to avoid the rush hour nightmare from Hwy 280 all the way through to downtown Birmingham.

Even though two days does not a real vacation make, the break from the farm will give me a chance to catch my breath and get a little rest. I'm gonna need it, too, because we're going to be running just as hard as the weather will allow this week.

Tuesday's odds and ends

• The Gilmer Dairy Farm.com front page has been slightly redesigned.
  
• Fourteen yearlings decided to exit their pasture and explore the world sometime late last night or early this morning. We found them only about a quarter mile from where they should have been and put them in a pasture with some older heifers.
• After some routine maintenance to our hay mowers, a couple of our employees spent most of the day cutting more signalgrass.
• Our milking cows continue to enjoy the mild temperatures and cool breeze that blows late into the morning. They have started showing their "heats" due to the cooler weather.
  
• Two specialists from Auburn University will be visiting with us on Wednesday. They would like us to plant about 10 acres of lupin, a forage legume, and ultimately harvest it as baleage in the spring.
  

What a good week!

This past week has been pretty doggone good. We got some rain on Tuesday, we got alot of rain Friday morning, and the weather turned just beautiful after that. And to cap it all off, my Mississippi State Bulldogs went down to Auburn and won there for the first time since I stood and cheered their incredible end-of-the-game comeback victory in 1999. The only downside to yesterday's win was that I was offered tickets to the game but decided not to go.