My wife, kids, and I made our first family trip up to Nashville last week. It wasn't really a vacation in a classic sense (I was there for a conference), but we had a good time over the two and a half days we were in town.
After settling into our downtown hotel room late Thursday afternoon, we made the short walk over to Nissan Stadium to attend Nashville SC's match again Atlanta United. For all the soccer my son and I watch on television, it was our family's first time to attend a professional soccer match. We. Had. A. Blast! NSC had to settle for a 2-2 draw after two of their goals were disallowed, but we had too much fun to care about the result.
Friday's conference agenda called for a morning meeting and evening dinner, leaving us with a free afternoon. We ventured to The Row Kitchen & Pub on Lyle Avenue for lunch where we all ordered the Nashville Hot Chicken. It did not disappoint. From there we made the short drive over to Centennial Park and spent an hour touring the Parthenon. After returning to our hotel, we walked a few blocks to get ice cream and cookies at Mattheessen's.
We enjoyed a late lunch Saturday afternoon at Puckett's Grocery & Restaurant on Church Street. The Country Music Hall of Fame was next on our agenda, and I really enjoyed all the different exhibits that walked you through the origins and evolution of country music. After returning to the hotel room for a nap that we all needed, we finished the day eating supper at a little place in the Germantown district called Jack Brown's Beer & Burger Joint. If you ever find yourself there, you can't go wrong with the Dr. Gonzo burger and sweet potato fries.
One day I'd like to go back to Nashville and take in more of the live music scene with my wife, but I'm thankful for the quality time the four of us spent together this past week.
The Parthenon at Centennial Park, Nashville
we enjoyed watching Nashville SC play at Nissan Stadium
inside the rotunda at the Country Music Hall of Fame
I loaded my kids and kayak in the truck after finishing the early morning farm chores Saturday and made the hour-long drive up to Bear Creek Canoe Run outfitters in Hackleburg. We had an 8:30am reservation to rent two kayaks and have them shuttle us to the Mill Creek ramp on Bear Creek near the intersection of state highways 172 and 241. We spent the next four hours paddling and floating down the creek and having a grand old time enjoying both light rapids and smooth, slow moving water.
This was my fourth time to float down Bear Creek. The first was in the summer of 2015 when a group from our church went down in canoes. Once was enough for my wife, but my son and I really enjoyed it. The two of us have made it an annual trip each summer since 2019 and included my daughter for the first time this year. She loved it and is already looking forward to the next opportunity to make the run.
If you are looking for a place to canoe or kayak in northwest Alabama, this section of Bear Creek is definitely worth considering. As I said, we put in at Mill Creek and spent four hours on the water until BCCR picked us up at Rock Quarry Branch off of Hwy 172 some 6-7 miles downstream. Most of the rapids are on the first half of the run before Factory Falls (a mandatory portage point), and there are long stretches past the falls that are so calm I nearly dozed off while drifting downstream. The scenery is gorgeous throughout. The creek runs through private property so you can't get out and venture beyond the stream bed, but there are a few small sandbars you can moor against if you need to stretch your legs or jump in for a swim. BCCR is the only rental and shuttle service in the area, but you can DIY the trip if you and your family/friends have your own boats and can self-shuttle. You can get more information about conditions and access points here and here.
What are your favorite spots to kayak, canoe, or float in northwest Alabama? Do you know of good stretches of the Buttahatchee or Luxapalila with good access points in and out? Let me hear from you!
I've noticed as I've scrolled through Twitter today that many people are going beyond their usual December 31 "year in review" posts to recap the whole last decade. I guess I might as well play along, too, so in a few broad strokes I'll try to paint you a picture of what life has been like on the farm over the past ten years.
Me at the start of the decade versus me at the end of the decade. I'm ten years older and wiser...and about twenty pounds heavier.
We entered 2010 coming off what was considered to be the worst stretch for milk prices in a generation. We obviously survived, but we've been hamstrung by it ever since. Prices briefly recovered, then fell again. Then we actually went through a couple of years of really good milk prices, but they would soon be offset by another sharp decline and stagnant recovery. Plans to build new and update existing facilities were tabled indefinitely then scrapped all together once we decided that the capital investment wasn't worth the risk based upon the long-term outlook for a 200 cow dairy in Alabama. We began the decade with plans to keep our dairy operational well into the future, but we're closing it out as we work through a plan that will see our farm fully transition from dairy to beef production.
But it's not all been doom and gloom on the dairy these past ten years. Yes, some years the milk price was good and more years it wasn't. Same goes for our forage crops...some years the weather was kind, others it wasn't. And while we make plans for the weeks and months and years ahead, we can only live one day at a time. Thankfully, there have been a whole lot more good days than bad. For all the challenges we've faced, I've been able to lay my head down each night knowing that what we do is all worth it.
my father & my kids in our milking barn, Spring 2015
Switching the focus from the farm to farm life, it's been quite the eventful decade. My wife and I began it with a toddler and an infant and are ending it with a teenager and a preteen. It's been such a blessing watching our kids grow and develop! Both are excellent, gifted students and involved in all kinds of activities. There's no telling how many hours we've spent at ball fields and in gyms over the past ten years, and now we're adding music to the mix. Our son may have found his niche playing trombone in the high school's band, and our daughter has recently taken to playing the piano like a duck to water. What we're most proud of though is that they both have placed their faith in Christ and are growing spiritually just as they are in every other aspect of their lives.
And since I mentioned faith, one of the positive turning points for our family this past decade was the decision to step away from the church I grew up in and be open to God leading us somewhere new. It only took a couple of months to find that place. I've said before that there's a difference between going to church and having a church family, and that's exactly what we've found at Fellowship Baptist over the past five years.
Looking ahead to 2020, better milk prices should lead to a good year on the farm as long as the weather cooperates and we do good with our forage crops. I have no idea where we'll stand by the time 2030 rolls around, though. Our oldest kid will be an adult and our youngest should be halfway through college. The last dairy cow will have long since left our farm by that time as we will have already completely transitioned over to beef production. The biggest question (worry) I have is whether or not our beef herd will generate enough income for both my parents and my family. If so, great! If not, I reckon I'll be in my 40s looking for an off-the-farm job for the first time in my life. Come whatever may, there's not much I can do but take things as they come day by day, trust in the Lord, and do the best I can to serve my family, church, and community.
My parents, wife, children, and I on the farm in 2010 and at my deacon ordination service in 2019.
I hope both the coming year and decade bring blessings to you and your family, and thanks so much for following along with me over the past years both here and on social media. I hope I've given you an accurate glimpse of what life's like on a small dairy farm in rural Alabama...and maybe a little something to smile about along the way, too.
Sometimes I catch myself staring at a particular spot in a field or pasture for no apparent reason. Occasionally I'll park a tractor in the middle of doing field work, climb up onto the hood, and spend a minute surveying the farm around me. I enjoy soaking up the beauty of my surroundings in the the quiet moments I often spend on my front porch after the morning milking or at the end of the day.
There's something about this place.
the view from my front porch this morning
I was told growing up that I was smart enough to go anywhere and do anything I wanted. But there's something about this place that made it impossible for me to believe I could ever be happy being anywhere else or doing anything else.
I've spent the last fifteen-plus years heavily involved in several different farming organizations, and that involvement has often required me to spend significant time off the farm. Perhaps the effort has not always yielded the intended results, but there's something about this place that drives me to use my abilities in a way that helps enable myself and others to farm more freely and successfully.
I've spent countless hours sharing the story of my farm and industry with classrooms, reporters, civic groups, and thousands upon thousands of people I'll never actually meet on the internet. It can be a grind at times, but there's something about this place that's worth telling people about...especially those who have no personal connection to such a place.
I wonder if my ancestors ever reflected on the past and pondered on the future of this little spot of ground like I do. I think about all the decisions that must have been made by my family members over the last century-and-a-half that have led to my opportunity to call this place home, as well as how many times a different decision along the way could have completely re-written my story before it ever started.
Our farm isn't blessed with especially fertile soil, and we fight more than our fair share of kudzu and privet and pigweed. But it's ours, and it's home. It's both where I live and make my living, and I pray that holds true until I draw my final breath. Perhaps our kids will choose to make their lives and rear their families on the farm, perhaps their dreams will carry them elsewhere. Only God knows what the future holds for this place, but we are thankful He's entrusted its stewardship to our family for multiple generations.
There's something about this place that makes it worth conserving.
There's something about this place that makes it worth fighting for.
There's something about this place that makes it the only place I'll ever be able to call "home."
My sister and I were blessed to grow up in a Christian home with a mom and dad that loved us and were (and remain) engaged in our lives. And since today is Fathers Day, I thought I would share with you a few of the many lessons I've learned from my dad over the years.
Dad taught me how to drive a tractor. This would prove to come in really handy seeing as how I've never worked anywhere but on our family's farm. By the way, he taught me how to milk cows, too.
Dad taught me how to play sports. Or perhaps more importantly, he taught me how to make time for my kids even at the end of a long work day.
Dad taught me how to always look enthusiastic on family vacations, as this photo so clearly shows. While he really enjoyed our snow skiing trips back in the day, he had little use for the beach or the Smokey Mountains (as pictured).
Dad taught me how to be a sharp-dressed man. Actually, I'm pretty sure that mom picked out both of our outfits on this particular day. (note: I've long since relieved Dad of that sports coat and now claim it as my own).
Dad taught me the value of good conversation.
Dad taught me how to be a good husband. I don't think Mom has had too many complaints over the years, and up to this point I don't think my wife has either.
Dad taught me all of these things and so much more, all which added up to teach me how to be a good dad myself. And now he's teaching me something for future reference: how to be a good granddad!
Last week we were joined in the milking barn for a couple of hours by Jon Reed, a reporter for The Birmingham News and AL.com, who was working on a story about the gradual disappearance of Alabama dairy farms over the past few years. His article, "Where have Alabama's dairy farms gone" (link), does a good job of exploring the reasons behind the decline, the current challenges to our industry, and what family farms like ours must do to remain viable. Mr. Reed also wrote a short follow-up piece about my social media usage (link).
I hope you will all take a few minutes to read the article, and share it with your friends if you feel so inclined.
Hello, y'all...it's been a while. After a long blogging hiatus attributed primarily to my preference to nap during meal breaks rather than type away on my old, slow desktop computer, I'm back to let you know what's been happening on Gilmer Dairy Farm and also with myself.
can't plant corn, but the grass is green
If there's one word I could use to describe the first 3.5 months of the year, it would be "wet". We're currently in a holding pattern of sorts, unable to begin planting corn or harvesting spring forages until we can string together several days of sunny weather. More rain is likely for the next several days, so we'll be out of the field for at least another week. Once we finally get favorable weather conditions for field work, I foresee some longer-than-normal days in my future.
On the cow front, we have been turning our cows out on grass for supplemental morning grazing over the past three weeks. We currently have 212 cows milking, and they are holding steady at an average of 66 pounds of milk a day each (we peaked at 70 last month). We won't be having many calve or dry off in the next few weeks, but we'll start seeing some turnover by late May. Meanwhile, it's time for our younger heifers to receive their vaccination boosters, which we started administering today.
Personally, I'm about as "free" as I have been in a while. My term as one of USFRA's "Faces of Farming and Ranching" came to a conclusion at the end of last year, and I am no longer a part of any other groups that would have me traveling on a regular basis. And I'm telling you, it sure is nice to take a step back for a while! I'm getting more done on the farm, spending more time with my wife and kids, and will hopefully be a little more visible around our community. I might even be able to set aside enough time to play golf once a week...though I doubt it.
Between now and whenever I blog again, I'd love for you to connect with me via the social media channels over on the right side of the page. You might even catch me live streaming on Periscope if you play your cards right (and have an iOS device). And for you locals, let me know if you'd like me to come talk to your group about my farm or farming in general one evening...I'd love to do that once or twice a month once we get caught up on our farm work. Until next time, y'all have a "dairy" good day.
glad to be spending more time with my cows and my kids
Twenty years ago today my grandfather, Gray Gilmer, passed away at the age of 82. He was the youngest of his parents' nine children, was born and raised on the farm our family still calls home, and established the dairy my father and I operate today. A few years ago I wrote a blog entitled "My Farming Forefathers" which included a little bit about his life and my own childhood memories of him, and I hope you will take a few minutes to check that out. In addition, here are three passages my grandmother wrote about his early life in her memoirs, For Sentimental Reasons.
Gray Gilmer, 1911-1994
On his name:
George Gray Gilmer was born October 10, 1911, on the farm that is still in the family's possession. He was named for his father, George Franklin Gilmer. Even though Papa Gilmer was the most respected man in Gray's life, he didn't like the name "George". In our courting days, he wouldn't even tell me his first name.
On childhood farm chores:
As a little boy, he and Annie Mae were assigned the job of shelling and feeding corn to the chickens and everything else that ate corn. The despised job was tending to the geese to keep them from getting more than their share. There was always an old gander that kept watch, and when Gray's back was turned, the old rascal would latch onto him with his strong beak and beat the daylights out of him with those powerful wings. He said he always carried some ammunition of corn cobs in his overall pockets in case he had a chance to defend himself before the attack.
Summers were spent working in the fields of cotton and corn. He never minded the hard physical labor, but used to say what galled him the most was when Papa would insist on his helping their nearest neighbors "catch up" with the hoeing and chopping of cotton...He said he'd get his work done and then go help those slow and lazy boys while their father sat on the porch and instructed them as to how the job should be done.
George Gray Gilmer, 10/10/1911 - 4/15/1994. Husband to Mary, Dad to Don, Marianne, Josephine, and David, "Daddy G" to Donald, Doug, Mark, Tommy, Leanna, Amy, Charlie, Will, and Lydia.
My family gathered together at my parents' home for our traditional Thanksgiving meal on Friday evening. Mom had cooked just about everything one could hope for: turkey, ham, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green beans, rolls, and deviled eggs (I ate eight). After feasting on the great meal that had been set before us, we all excused ourselves from the dining room and eventually congregated in the living room to watch a subpar, non-SEC college football game.
Dad stepped out a few minutes later to check on a heifer we had suspected was in labor earlier in the day. Sure enough, she was in labor and was going to need our help with the process. So Dad, my brother-in-law, and I all scarfed down some dessert, put on our heavy coveralls, and headed up the road to the dairy.
Once we arrived, we secured the two-year-old heifer into our catch-pen's chute and began to help her deliver. The calf was turned correctly and wasn't unusually big, it was just as if the heifer had decided the calf should do all of the work and get out by itself. Regardless, we had him safely out within a matter of a few minutes. We left the new cow and her bull calf alone to spend the evening together as we went back to rejoin the rest of the family and resume falling asleep in the living room.
Some might see the interuption of a family gathering to pull a calf, chase mischievous heifers back into their pasture, or address any other possible "emergency" farm chore as an unwelcome aggravation. For this dairy farm family, though, it's just part of life.
It's Thanksgiving Day, or as we refer to it on our farm: Thursday.
Just kidding. Yes, the essential farm chores...milking, feeding, keeping the equipment clean...must be completed just like every day, but we will take a little time off from our normal daily schedule. Our farmhands are only going to work for a couple of hours this morning, then my dad and I will handle the afternoon milking while watching the football games on our barn's old television (that's right!). We won't have our big family Thanksgiving feast until tomorrow evening, but I'm sure we'll still manage to eat well today and will certainly take a little time to reflect on how we've been blessed beyond measure.
Whether you are going to spend your Thanksgiving eating, traveling, hunting, shopping, working, relaxing, serving others, voting for me in the Faces of Farming & Ranching contest (I had to throw that in there), doing a lot, doing a little, or doing nothing at all, I hope you have wonderful, blessed, and happy Thanksgiving!
I've often joked that one advantage to dairy farming is that I have a legitimate built-in excuse to avoid going to my in-laws' house over the Holidays. And while I say that lightheartedly, it really is very difficult to balance the demands of the dairy farm with all of the different family gatherings happening this time of year. Here's how my weekend schedule is shaping up:
Christmas Eve (Saturday, December 24)
3:00-7:00am: dairy chores
7:00-9:00am: breakfast, shower, spend too much time on the computer, maybe a nap
9:00-11:00am: travel to my inlaws' house (my wife & kids have been there since Thursday night)
11:00am-3:00pm: eat lots of food, exchange gifts, hope everything's running smoothly on the dairy
3:00-5:00pm: travel back to Lamar County
5:00-6:00pm: Christmas Eve Communion Service at church
6:00-9:00pm: Supper and gifts at home
9:00-who knows?pm: Ho, Ho, Ho.
Christmas Day (Sunday, December 25)
3:00-7:00am: dairy chores
7:00-10:30am: breakfast, shower, unsuccessfully try to nap while the kids play with toys
10:30-11:30am: Christmas Day Worship Service at church
11:30-1:00pm: skip my aunt's Christmas lunch so I can pass out from exhaustion
1:00-5:00pm: dairy chores
5:00-8:00pm: eat leftover dressing from Thanksgiving (ah, the miracle of deep freezers!) at my parents' house
The Day after Christmas (Monday, December 26)
5:00-6:30am: dairy chores (yes, I'm sleeping in)
6:30-8:00am: nap???
8:00am-1:00pm: family Christmas brunch and gift exchange at my parents' house
1:00-5:00pm: dairy chores, and everything's back to normal
Of course, my schedule is subject to change if we get a call that we have heifers out, a cow needs assistance delivering a calf, or some other unforeseen (but not surprising) farm issue should arise. But somehow, someway, I'm going to enjoy time with both sides of the family, eat too much, and still find time to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas without missing much time on the farm.
Please enjoy the following little bit of holiday cheer and, from my family to yours, have a "dairy" Merry Christmas!
***update, Fri., 12/23, 12:30pm:
Our two regularly scheduled weekend workers have expressed that they intend to work all four weekend shifts, so that will thankfully take a little bit of pressure off of me & Dad. Merry Christmas to us!
My wife dropped my son off at the dairy after school dismissed this afternoon, but she didn't bring a change of clothes for him. So there he was, wearing good jeans, a white shirt (white!), and his tennis shoes. In an effort to keep him as clean as possible, I brought a short bucket into the parlor and told him to sit on it. We were going to be milking cows for another hour-and-a-half once he got there, and I knew there was no way he would stay on that bucket for that long. But, the longer he stayed seated the less chance he would have of returning home with a greenish-brown manure stain on his clothes.
Two mintues later he was up roaming all around the parlor. Predictably, he was sporting manure splatters on his clothes in no time. Did it bother him? Of course not...he's just a typical farm kid! He enjoyed "helping" us in the barn without a care about the foreign materials that occasionally landed on him.
Now that the day is over, one question remains: who gets to do the laundry?
I have many, many things to be thankful for and know I have been blessed beyond measure. I have a great family, make a comfortable living doing what I love, and have a strong faith in God. I don't know if there are enough hours in the day for me to fully count my blessings and name them one by one as the old hymn instructs.
Other than trying to list all the things I'm thankful for on this blog post, I'll simply give you one that's proved to be very important today. I am thankful that our farmhands (and my brother-in-law) wanted to come work on the farm this morning. Otherwise, my dad and I would still be trying to dismantle and remove this old, collapsed roof off of the cows' feed trough.
uh-oh!
We spent several hours on Wednesday tearing out the old wooden trough underneath this roof and replacing it with the concrete bunks you see in the photo. The roof's bracing was weakened in the process, but we thought it would stay in place until we could tear it down next week. We were wrong, as the photo clearly shows. Luckily (or "thankfully") none of our cows were injured when it fell last night.
It took the five of us about two hours (and two tractors, three chains, a sledgehammer, crowbars, and a chainsaw) to break the roof into pieces and clear it out of the way. I hope by this time tomorrow I can be thankful for no flat tractor or feed wagon tires due to old nails that we might not have gotten up.
Before I sign off, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention one more thing I'm thankful for, and that's all of you. Thank you for being interested enough to read about what happens on my family's farm, and more importantly thank you for your overall support of American farmers.
May God bestow his richest blessings upon you and your family, today and always. Happy Thanksgiving!
If you follow this blog, my twitter account, or our farm's facebook page, you probably understand that it takes a lot of dedication to be a successful dairy farmer. That dedication is not just about the amount of hours spent working as it extends to how carefully we care for and manage everything about our farm. Our dedication to our cows, our milk, and our land has enabled our farm to operate for nearly sixty years, and that same dedication will allow us to continue dairying for as long as there are Gilmers who want to make their living on the farm.
All dairy farmers share the values of responsibility and good stewardship, and we all work hard to do the best we can with what we have been entrusted with. And though our dedication and values are the same, we each have our own stories to tell.
Our regional dairy check-off program recently launched the "Dedicated to Dairy" campaign to help Southeastern dairy farmers give consumers a closer look at how and why we do what we do. The D2D website has lots of good information ranging from cow nutrition to milk quality to conservation. My favorite part of the website is the "Videos" section, where you can actually see and hear dairy families from around the Southeast talking about their farms and their dedication. I highly recommend you check out the video of me and my father, as it is of much higher quality than what you're used to seeing on our YouTube channel!
I hope you'll spend some time perusing the Dedicated to Dairy website, and follow along on Facebook/Twitter so you'll know when new content is being added. And, of course, don't forget to check out our own social media accounts or GilmerDairyFarm.com to learn how my family is dedicated to dairy: our cows, our milk, and our land.
I've gotten accustomed to spending time away from the farm over the past few years. A hectic travel schedule is part of the deal when you've had the opportunity to be involved in agricultural leadership as I have recently. I'm away from the farm this week, but it's not for a meeting or conference. Nope, I'm "relaxing" down at the beach with my family.
Now don't get me wrong, I love spending time with my family. Time away with my wife and kids is a really good thing, and they deserve my undivided attention from time to time. So here I am, sitting on a sandy beach doing nothing but sipping a cold adult beverage, listening to classic country music on Pandora, watching the kids play in the sand, and typing out this blog post (while my wife rightfully accuses me of ignoring her). Is it relaxing? Yes, but with relaxation comes a little guilt. Why? Because I know my dad and our employees are having to pick up the slack while I'm down at the beach doing nothing that improves our dairy. At least I feel like I'm indirectly helping our family business when I'm at a meeting/conference.
I was fine for the first 45 hours I was away from the farm, but I couldn't resist calling Dad at 8:00 this morning for an update. And I couldn't resist calling again after looking at a rain-filled RADAR image after lunch. Much of my thoughts from this point on until we get home will center around spraying Round-Up and planting forage sorghum.
We have one more full day down here before heading home Thursday morning, and I expect I'll fully enjoy myself and my time with my family between now and then. But I can guarantee you that we won't be back on the farm one moment too soon!
Thinking back on some of the family vacations we took when I was a kid, I guess I'm becoming more and more like my old man.
My sister and I were blessed as kids to have a father who always seemed willing and able to spend time with us. Even after a long day of farm work, he would find the energy to throw a baseball with me in the back yard or roughhouse on the den floor after supper. And there's no telling how many workdays he had to cut short to coach my ball team or attend some other activity we were involved in. Even today he takes on more than his fair share of the farming chores so I can be involved in different agricultural organizations. Dad taught me to honor God and my family by giving my best effort in everything, fulfilling my responsibilities, and making sacrifices when necessary.
Now that I have two kids of my own, I realize how difficult it is to balance the needs of the family with the demands of the family farm. Thankfully, I have a great example in my father of how to be both a farmer and a family man.
And since we Gilmer men aren't very vocal with our emotions, I'll sum up my feelings like this: "I live across the road from the man, I've worked with him for 10 years, and I ain't got no complaints."
As the old saying goes, "anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad." Happy Fathers Day, Dad, and the same to all you other folks who have earned that noble title.
Happy Friday and happy June Dairy Month everyone! Here are a few tidbits about what's been happening on and around Gilmer Dairy Farm:
It's HOT, Man! - The weather around here has been brutal this week as we've seen record-breaking temperatures push into the upper 90s with afternoon heat indexes well over 100. We're running 8-10 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year, and trust me when I say you can definitely feel the difference. The cows are feeling it too, despite our best efforts to keep them as cool as possible with fans & sprinklers. More on this in a moment.
the official drought is still to our south
It's DRY, too! - We aren't officially under drought conditions according to the latest US Drought Monitor, but we are eight days past our last rain and have only received a total of 0.4" over the past three weeks. The soil moisture in our bottom land is still good enough to get our corn growing thanks to a wet winter and spring, but our fertilized hayfields and pastures are basically doing nothing. We also can't begin planting our forage sorghum crop until we get enough rain to soften the soil. If there is a bright spot in the dry weather, it is that it's better for the cows. Why? Throw in lots of moisture with this kind of heat, and cows will wallow-out mud holes in the pasture and run a higher risk of mammary infections.
the milk decline is udderly depressing
Milk production is FALLING! - The cows seem to be producing less and less milk every day. The heat is a major factor, but there are a couple of other factors as well. We're entering the summer with the youngest herd (based on avg. lactation number) we've had in 5 years, so our overall potential production isn't quite as high as it would be with older cows. Also, we have the highest average days-in-milk and days-pregnant we've had in 60 months. This means that an average cow in our herd has been milking for over seven months, is 5 months pregnant, and her milk production would naturally be in decline. The heat stress and related loss of feed intake (like most of us, cows don't eat as much when they're hot) speeds up that decline. Our milking herd currently stands at 186 cows and will continue to shrink to 165-170 until we begin "freshening" more cows than we dry off sometime mid-Summer.
Nutrient & Pest Management - The dry weather has given an opportunity to spread fertilizer on hayfields and kill weeds in a few pastures earlier this week. The last couple of days we've been working on building a 3-point hitch mount for our 30-foot sprayer boom. If all goes well it will be field-ready by the end of the day, and I'll spend much of next week applying a post-emerge rate of Atrazine in our corn fields and glyphosate in our sorghum fields.
me & my boy
Tee-Ball & Graduation - In the "farm family" category, there are a few things that are coming to an end. School is now out for the summer, so my wife will enjoy being able to stay home for a couple of months. On a side note, I hope this also means that I get a better quality lunch everyday for the next couple of months! Secondly, our twice-weekly trips to the ball field will be on hold until next spring now that our 5 year old's tee-ball season is over. I had a lot of fun helping coach his team, and it was gratifying to see how much he and his friends improved over the past couple of months. Best of all (and most importantly at their age), the kids seemed to have fun from start to finish. And finally, our son will "graduate" from pre-school tonight, which just happens to be the 11th anniversary of mine & my wife's first date. I'll tell you what, time sure does fly when you're having fun!
I hope you all have a great weekend, and that the weather is agreeable to you wherever you are. Don't forget to celebrate June Dairy Month by enjoying lots and lots of nutritious, delicious dairy products! And remember...there's only one more week to enter our farm's Milk Mustache Contest. We've had some great winning photos in the past, and expect the same this year. If your kid loves milk and you think he or she has what it takes to be our Milk Mustache "poster child" for the next year, hurry up and grab your camera, pour one more cold glass of milk, and get some photos coming my way!
Happy Mothers Day to all of you ladies out there, and especially to all you farm moms. Whether or not you have a direct role in "day-to-day" farm responsibilities, farms couldn't function without the love and support you provide. Our farm is no different, so I'd like to say a big "thank you" and recognize the moms who have and continue to keep Gilmer Dairy Farm rolling right along:
Mama G
Mom
Joni
Thank you and Happy Mothers Day to Mama G, Grandmama (my mom's farm mom), Mom, & Joni...I love you all!!!
And, of course, I'd also like to wish a Happy Mothers Day as well to the 200+ milking mama cows on the farm!
the herd enjoys their Mothers Day brunch at the Ryegrass Buffet.
Lots of folks are "born into" a family business, and I count myself among their number. Some are born into the practice of law or medicine, others into industry and manufacturing, still others into endeavors ranging from retail to politics. I was born into agriculture. The following are stories about the men in my family who have paved the way for me to be where I am now, including the things I know of or remember about them that have may have more to do with family than farming.
George Gilmer
My great-grandfather George Gilmer established our farm in part with land he purchased from his father-in-law (and my great-great-grandpa) Evans Jackson. Papa Gilmer farmed cotton corn and raised livestock on the farm, and was at successful enough to make a lifelong living doing it. He passed away in 1949 (six years before my father was born) so I know very little about him other than what my grandmother recorded in a book of family biographies she compiled nearly 15 years ago. The following are excerpts from page 63 of her compilation, For Sentimental Reasons:
"George Gilmer was known as a man of integrity. His family and neighbors sought his advise in decisions concerning politics on the local, state, and national issues. He helped formulate marketing practices that were new for the farmers of this area, such as the "pooling" of cotton that brought more favorable prices.
Friends...went to George Gilmer for counsel of personal problems. The advice he gave was always sound and practical. he had a way that was remembered by those he counseled. He'd sit quietly listening, twisting off a piece of the home-raised tobacco. He'd then put the chew in his mouth, as if that were a process of the thinking. Friends said he never answered weighty questions with haste."
Though I don't have any hard evidence yet to back it up, I've been told that Papa Gilmer was one of the first presidents and a charter member of the Lamar County Farm Bureau (now Lamar County Farmers Federation).
My grandfather, Gray Gilmer, had left the farm and his own fledgling egg business in the early 1930's to take a job with the TVA. He built dams all along the Tennessee River, starting first as a common laborer at Pickwick. He continued with the TVA through the Great Depression and World War II, rising through the ranks as a carpenter and ultimately holding the position of safety engineer. Following the construction of Fontana Dam he took a similar position with USF&G Insurance's Kingsville, TN affiliate. As my grandmother states in her book,
"Gray loved his work with USF&G. They valued his judgement and gave him many good perks. I would wonder why he couldn't just be satisfied and forget that dream he'd always retained through the years - that of coming back to the family farm in Lamar County, Alabama."
Gray Gilmer
If coming back to the family farm was his dream, he fulfilled it about a year after his parents died. He planted his first corn and cotton crop in the spring of 1951 and started our dairy on a limited basis the following summer. After a couple of years he realized that the dairy provided a more stable source of income than did crop production on hilly, marginal ground and made that the main focus of the farm. He continued to grow crops to feed the livestock and raised hogs and chickens for the family's own consumption. Gray was a "Master Farmer Award" recipient and a long serving president and board member of the county's Farm Bureau. Above all else, he was a very dedicated, hard worker.
Though he was already semi-retired, Gray's farming career ended for good when he suffered a massive stroke in 1983 that debilitated his speech, personality, and general health. My little sister and I, the youngest of his nine grand kids, have no remembrance of him before that tragic event. Perhaps that was a blessing, as Lydia and I grew up with what I felt was little difficulty communicating and interacting with our "Daddy G". I spent a lot of time at the farm and at their house as a kid, and many of my childhood memories center around time spent with him watching an afternoon Chicago Cubs game on WGN, sitting in a lawnchair in the front yard looking out at the fields across from his house, or his amusement at watching this youngster get frustrated trying to herd full-grown holsteins into the milking barn.
I'll never forget the early morning I was awoken by a knock on my door and my mother shared the news that Daddy G had passed away. He had been complaining of chest pains and my grandmother phoned for my father to come over to help get him into the car for a trip to the emergency room. A massive heart attack suffered as dad was helping him to the car claimed his life in the early morning hours of April 15, 1994. I'll never forget the disbelief I felt when my mom broke the news, or the look of stunned, defeated grief on my dad's face when I went into my grandparents house to hug my Mama G before reporting to the dairy barn less than 100 feet away for the morning milking shift. In times of both family celebration and tragedy, the dairy doesn't take a day off! Anyway, my grandfather had been in failing health leading up to his passing, but the prior day had been a "good" day. He had mowed his lawn and spent time sitting in the front yard with my grandmother, watching tractors operating in the fields in front of their house. According to my grandmother, it is just how he would have wanted to spend the last day on his beloved farm.
Switching gears from the Gilmer family for a moment, my other grandfather was also a farmer. Linton Rhodes was a successful soybean and beef farmer in the small community of Biggersville, Mississippi, located in Alcorn County just a few miles south of Corinth. Mom would take my sister and I to visit my grandparents probably 5-6 times a year and they would come here about as often. Not growing up there, I don't have many farming memories of my Papa, as most of my visits involved staying around the house and playing with my cousins. He had a sense of humor and always made a show of "picking" on my grandmother around us. My last visit with him came just after I had finished my third year of college. He had since retired from row cropping, but continued to raise a few cows and did a little small-scale logging to keep himself busy. When I came to visit my grandparents he was recovering from recent gall bladder surgery and was restricted from doing anything taxing. At the same time, my grandmother was suffering from a back problem and couldn't get out much herself. As a result, we spent a lot of time visiting and talking about nothing in particular over the course of two or three days. Just a week or two later he went out fishing one morning in the 12o-acre down the hill from his shop, never to return. His small boat toppled and he fell in the water. Still weak from his surgery and unable to swim, he was not able to free himself from the water weeds and pull himself back into the boat. A neighbor heard his cries for help, found him and pulled him from the water, but by the time emergencypersonnel arrived on the scene it was too late. My Papa had passed away on Thursday, June 1, 2000.
Just as I remember my mother telling me of my father's father's death, I vividly remember the details of how I learned of my other grandfather's passing. I came in to my parent's house at lunch after a morning in the hayfield. Dad had stayed in the field and was going to take lunch once I had finished. My mom and sister were in Memphis waiting on a flight that would be the beginning of a vacation in Great Britain. Noticing the answering machine was flashing and not knowing it was intended for my father, I pressed play (at the time we didn't carry cellphones). I heard the frantic voice of one of my grandparents' friends telling my father what had happened as my grandmother wailed in the background. I was completely floored by that message, and can still hear it word for word, cry for cry in my head. When I came to my senses I called the travel agent to get word to my family not to board and to call home (luckily a cousin who lived in Memphis made it to the airport and delivered the sad news in person). Still in a state of mixed shock and disbelief, I went back to the field to inform dad and within an hour we were packed and headed to Biggersville. Thankfully my Grandmother had a very strong support group of friends to help her through the ordeal, and I myself took some comfort when a family friend told me how much my Papa had enjoyed my recent visit and how proud he was of my good grades and my decision to be a farmer once I graduated college. I already had a first date with a girl lined up for that Saturday and was about to call and cancel it, but my grandmother and mother both told me that my grandfather would have wanted me to keep it. I wasn't sure how a first date only a few hours after my grandfather's funeral would work out, but nine years later we're still together, married for nearly six years with two children. We named our son David (after my father), but he goes by his middle name...Linton.
Based on the length of what I've written above about two grandfathers and a great-grandfather, I don't think I have it in me right now to talk about my own father. That will come before too long, though. Until I sit and take the time to write about all those memories, let me just leave you with this. I love farming, but it takes a back seat to working with my dad. I know it won't always be like that, but I hope we'll be able to continue working together and carrying on our family's legacy for many years to come.
The cows have been milked and fed, and in another hour we'll get back to business trying to get all of our loose ends tied up before the weekend.
After we move our cows into their grazing pasture, we'll be turning our attention towards are harvest again. A couple of flat tires ended yesterday's fieldwork a little prematurely, so we have a little catching up to do first thing. There are about 18 green bales ready to be wrapped (shouldn't take but 45 minutes) and about 15-20 bales worth of material on the ground ready to be baled and then wrapped. We still have probably 5 acres of ryegrass left to cut in the field, but we've opted to wait until Monday due to the growing chance of rain this evening and tomorrow.
After we finish things in the field, we'll load up a couple of truckloads of oat baleage from the stack behind my house and haul to the farm to grind as part of our cows' TMR over the weekend. There are also a couple of other maintenance jobs we need to do, such as reinstalling the injectors and injector pump on one of our tractors.
This afternoon should follow the normal script of milking and feeding, as will tomorrow morning. After finish Saturday morning's duties, we'll be traveling to my sister's house in central Mississippi for a family event. Hopefully nothing unforseen will hapen until we get back on Sunday afternoon!
