We had so much fun with the three kids that stayed with us over the weekend. Jennifer, Jessie and Josiah were great to have around. For not coming from a farm, they sure didn’t mind pitching in and helping out with the tail washing.

I made Luke take time out from seeing if his Farmall would start in the cold weather and cleaning his pens to pose for a picture for me. Yes, he had to start my tractor first to get it out so he could get his piece of junk out….and yes, mine started right up….I think.

When it came to the cow tail washing extravaganza, Jen even had a smile on her face! I didn’t make them stay out too long, they got through soaking all the tails and then I went through and washed them. When they were finished, Sarah took them in the house and made hot cocoa for all.

Jessie got to curry the manure off the cows, although she is an animal lover and she thinks she might like to be a vet…after the tail washing I think she decided she’d be a small animal vet. Heck, she’s just a wiff of a thing, the first time she had to preg check a cow and put her arm up a cow’s behind, if that cow moved from one side to the other, I’m afraid it would pick her up and move her too! No, she better stick to dogs and cats…in the south…this weather is way too cold for these kids who spend 12 months out of the year wearing shorts and running around barefoot.

Well, now I need to get another load of laundry started and get on dinner…we travel to Camden tonight for Luke’s basketball game. Tomorrow JW has a game, Wednesday we’re in Waldron for Luke’s game, Thursday we have Jake’s Christmas program and Friday JW has a home game….and we’re off!

Well, it was a good day out in the barn this afternoon. Just like we wanted, Holly went excellent…with 90 points. We wanted 91, but he said she needed another calf through her and her best days are ahead.

The real surprise was Elvira who also went excellent. She was in one of our first heifer crops and she has just steadily gone up a point every time she’s been classified. Now she is excellent and we didn’t expect it at all! That is kind of an early Christmas present for us.

After the classifier got done scoring the cows, he came in and had coffee and a sweetroll with us and he and Bobby talked cows and cow people and I just sat and marveled at how they knew all the same people and all the same cows but didn’t know each other. I just love listening to people talk about cows and when they start telling stories from the old days…that’s even better. I’m sure the stories are much better than the actual events…but I don’t care, it’s still fun listening.

Here on the Knolltop we are busy getting ready for the classifier. For those of you who have no idea what that is…I’ll give you the Readers Digest condensed version. A classifier is a person who works for the Holstein Association and goes to farms and puts a numerical score on a cow. He is “judging” her bascially. There are many different areas that he judges, breaking down the total cow into different categories like mammary system, feet and legs, dairy character etc….giving all these a score, he computes her overall score.

One hundred would be a perfect cow and so from 90-100 they are excellent, from 89-85 is Very Good, 84-80 is Good Plus and so on down the line. Anything under 80, I don’t want to discuss…I don’t want any cows like that…and so far we don’t have any. Bobby said he was at a guys farm clipping for classification and he had a cow score 60 and was proud of it. So I guess it’s all relative.

Today, the big event is when Holly will be scored…she is 88 right now and as a two year old she could only score as high as 89, so today we are looking for her to go excellent. I think she will score 93, but Bobby is skeptical and says he’ll be happy at 90. Only having two calves, she can only score as high as 94.

Well, that’s it…I’ve got to go wash dishes and then head out to wash tails! Results will be posted later!

It’s a cold, breezy, kind of sunny day here on the Knolltop. They say we’re in for a snow storm tomorrow…I’ll believe it when I see it.

JW had a scrimmage last evening and I guess they did well. We didn’t get to it simply because it was too early. He loves his new uniform…the warm ups have snaps all down the legs so he can just snap them off and toss them on the sidelines. Kind of reminds me when he was a toddler and all his pants snapped up the inside so I could change his diaper. He used to love to unsnap his pants….I haven’t reminded him of that….yet.

I’ve still got to write my column today…yesterday I had other things I was writing. I just got a new writing contract with Farmworld, it’s a weekly paper much like the Farmers’ Advance that circulates in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and is now moving into Michigan….hence the demand for Michigan writers. My first story will be in next week.

The Indonesian kids will come tomorrow and spend the night. When they visited before they were begging to stay the night, so we set up this weekend….little do they know they will be washing cow’s tails tomorrow. The classifier will be here at 2 pm, so they cows have to look good. I wonder how they will take to standing behind a cow and scrubbing her manure filled tail. Hey…it’s all a part of visiting the farm!

Better get to writin‘!

Good morning, we are blowing off the hill here on the Knolltop. It’s windy and cold…well it wouldn’t be too cold if it weren’t windy…but anyway…it’s cold.

Yesterday I spent an interesting day away from the farm at the Michigan Farm Bureau Annual Meeting in Grand Rapids. After getting up and doing my calf chores, which was all I had time for, I headed west and 2.5 hours later I was in big G.R. sliding in just in time to drop my coat in the media room and head to the first discussion.

It was held at the Amway Grand Hotel….probably the most impressive part of the day was that I could park in a parking structure a block away from the convention center and I didn’t have to walk in the cold to get to the hotel…it was all enclosed in a skywalk. Yes, this country girl is easily impressed! I also love escalators and revolving doors, those are just so much fun!

Anyway…about the meeting…it was a fun day of visiting with people and taking pictures and listening to the discussion meet competition and the most important…eating lunch and dinner that I didn’t have to cook! Easily amused…I know.

I was able to spend a few minutes listening to the delegates make policy and that was interesting in itself. I enjoyed watching the big organization discuss the policies and how it all worked.

I also enjoyed listening to young farmers compete as they discussed many hot topics. But my favorite part of the day was listening to Dr. Wes Jamison reveal some facts about animal welfare issues that we really didn’t want to hear but needed to listen to.

What made the biggest impact on me was that we as farmers want to stand up to the attacks from PETA and the Humane Society of the United States(which, by the way, has nothing to do with and is completely different from your local human society or animal shelter) with the wrong argument. When animal activists attack us and our animal husbandry practices we fight back with research and economics. When in all reality, their attack has nothing to do with sound science and good economics, but everything to do with emotion and morality. They think we are immoral to raise animals for human consumption. It doesn’t matter to them that we do it efficiently and safely, they don’t want us doing it at all. Period. End of discussion.

Dr. Jamison made it clear that we need a different approach to our fight. He said we need to stop being ashamed at our husbandry practices and stand up and say, “Yes, we use farrowing crates so the sows don’t kill their babies…and yes, I have a free stall barn so our cows are comfortable….and yes, we harvest meat from our steers so we can have protein to eat and not get DEPRESSED!”

There’s so much more…I’m going to have to write a column on this topic….it’s fun to write about this kind of stuff.

Bacon and pancakes are ready!

Yes, that’s right, we are still cheering this morning as we celebrate the boys win last night over Jackson Christian and my beloved Pastor Mike.

I know I may sound like I’m a bit overboard…that’s because I am! The boys beat the Royals 31-26 in a very sloppy game. Our boys didn’t look all that great but they kept chipping away and after the first quarter were never behind again.

It’s very strange for me to listen to a wonderful man preach great sermons Sunday after Sunday and then have a burning desire to beat his team on a Monday night. I guess that’s because I’ve never had a pastor who also coached a team…which is really kind of cool in my book.

After the game I took my green North Adams shirt and rubbed it all over Pastor Mike and even offered to get one for him so he could wear it next Sunday to preach in. He declined my offer and we had a great time sparring over the game…all in fun.

But the parents of his team didn’t see as much humor in our victory and the fun we were having. I guess they don’t realize that our families (the Lee’s and us) go a long way back and they are very precious friends to us. They probably also don’t realize that our friendship goes so deep that when Jake had his accident, from Kentucky the Lee’s gathered people around them to pray for our son while we waited to hear if he would live or die. They also don’t know how much we treasure their friendship and what a fine example of Christian servants they’ve been to us. I could write on and on and on what the Lee family means to us, but I don’t want Pastor Mike to read this and then get too proud of himself….he has a tendency to do that…get all puffed up and proud….but this week, we have knocked the wind out of his sails and he will have to find another way to navigate his way to another mark in the win column.

It’s chilly this morning on the Knolltop and the snow is still here…we had a nice batch of snow yesterday…it makes things seem more festive.

Well the coffee is perking…better get on the day!

It’s been a long weekend around here. Not only because of the holiday, but because I must have eaten too much pie or turkey or cranberry relish or something, but I haven’t felt well all weekend. But I’m back among the living and ready to head into another busy week.

It’s another chilly morning here on the Knolltop, actually it snowed last night and is kind of foggy now….very strange weather we’re having.

Okay, now pardon me while I talk about sports for a few minutes. Tonight Luke’s undefeated 8th grade basketball team will take on one of the toughest rivals in the league….Jackson Christian. They are a private school, but then again, you could tell that by the name….anyway….they have a reputation for having a great basketball program.

Last year their Varsity team was in the semi finals and beat Redford Covenant Christian…why is that team important? Because Durell Sommers was on that team and Durell is now playing for Michigan State, he promised himself to Tom Izzo when he was a sophomore, so you get the picture…he was flat out good. And Jackson Christian beat his team…so now you know they were good too.

So with that part of the picture painted, let me go further in telling you that we belong to a church in Jackson called Grace Church and the senior pastor just so happens to be the 8th grade basketball coach at Jackson Christian. So now…do you get the picture? Luke will be playing against his pastor’s team.

While Pastor Mike is a great guy and a wonderful preacher, he is also very competitive. His children all played basketball and he has a son on the varsity team at J.C. Mike stood in church a couple of weeks ago and in front of 600 people started talkin’ smack to Luke. He told Luke that Jackson Christian was going to take North Adams down. Now “them’s fightin’ words!” Really, putting this into context he was actually illustrating a point in his sermon, but “them still fightin’ words”

So now, we will be headed to Jackson tonight all prayed up, yes I prayed that we would win…and don’t think Pastor Mike hasn’t been sittin’ at the throne of Grace asking for a win too and I hope this one time God has more mercy on us than him because I want Luke’s team to win.

And if we do end up beating them we will all sit in the front row of church next Sunday with our green and white North Adams shirts “talkin’ smack” without saying a word.

It was a chilly 20 degrees this morning when we walked over to milk. My hands stay cold the whole time I milked. That moon was so bright and beautiful this morning, it was amazing how it lit up the whole farm.

While others are out shopping this morning, I’m in my nice warm house fixing blueberry pancakes, sausage and perked coffee. After I enjoy that we will all head back out to the barn to finish up chores and wash the rest of the windows on the east side of the barn. Bobby is on a cleaning kick in the barn, last Saturday he and the boys washed the pipeline and swept down cobwebs. He also washed all the windows on the west side of the barn….I think there are 15. Then tomorrow we will curry the cows off and wash tails….we classify in a week and we want the cows to look nice. Yes they will get dirty in a week, but next week we won’t have as much washing to do if we take the first few layers of manure off this week.

I don’t think I’ll get much shopping done this weekend, instead I think Sarah and I will make some garlands for the porches. We’ve got some cedar trees and lots of bushes we can cut greenery to decorate with. I also have a grape arbor I think I might trim up and use the vine for something. I also have to put up the lites around the little oil shed across the road….that is the only place I put outdoor lights. The building is small so I can put the lites up easily and I’ve stored them right there in the shed. I guess I really don’t have time to shop even if I wanted to!

JW and Luke have to work today and tomorrow JW and Luke have basketball practice.

It’s snowcovered here on the Knolltop. When we went across to the barn this morning we were bucking the wind and snow. I had to move fast to keep warm, but once I got in the barn, the girls kept us warm with all their body heat.

A first happened last evening…Jake made his first batch of brownies. He wanted something chocolate and so he decided to make some all by himself. I was looking at all the shopping flyers that came in the mail and I heard SArah and her friend Sidney giving him pointers. When I went out there to check on him, he had all the ingredients dumped in the bowl and was ready to mix. Not your conventional way of making browines…but they were delicious as we enjoyed them at 9:30 pm…not the best time to be partaking in such a treat.

Time to go make the breakfast…this morning we’ll have biscuits and gravy and blueberry pancakes and bacon. I hope you all have a great thanksgiving!