Hello Guernsey Dairy Mama

Have you enjoyed following me? You can now find me at: 

Guernsey Dairy Mama

It's almost with a heavy heart that I say goodbye to this space! This has been my blogging home for the past four years, and it definitely feels like home! But I have finally taken the plunge to have more creative freedom with my little space on the web. It's a whole new adventure and challenge that I am really looking forward to! 

Seriously Thank You for joining me here, reading my posts and following along with my journey. When I decided to re-brand last Fall, I didn't really know what a journey it would be. But I am excited for the future and where this fun little hobby can continue to go. So I hope you'll all join me:

www.guernseydairymama.com

Mid-Week Meal

So I am always looking for recipes that make good grab and go meals, cause lets face it there are lots of times dinner is literally consumed on the go around here. Our big meal for the day is consumed at lunch time, where we actually all sit down together and eat. Dinner is usually more thrown together or left overs because we often don't get in from the barn until it's time to eat. Last night was one of those nights and I was staring into my fridge trying to figure out what to whip together with what I had. The chickens are laying like crazy so I wanted to use up eggs, and I remembered seeing recipes that cook eggs in a muffin tin. And they came out great, even better they might be one of our new favorites!

I'll call them On the Go Eggs:

1/4lb lean hamberger
1/4 cup diced onion
10-12 Farm fresh Eggs
 1/2 cup frozen tater tots
Pepper jack cheese
Spices to taste: Salt, pepper, garlic and I used paprika this time

Preheat oven to 350. Throw in your frozen tater tots as the oven is preheating.
Grease a muffin tin and set aside.
In small frying pan cook the onion in a dollop of olive oil until translucent. Add hamburger and lightly brown.
In a separate bowl crack eggs and whip together. I added probably about 1/4 cup of milk because our yolks are so thick, helped the eggs to whip up better. Add spices and mix again. I really did just go on taste and you could use whatever spices you wanted.
As the oven reaches temperature pull out your tater tots (I'm sure frozen hashbrowns would work well too). Crumble into small pieces, they should just fall apart if they have cooked enough. Let cool slightly.
Fold in the hamburger mixture and tater tots into the eggs.*Update* I forgot, that's the problem with making up a recipe as you go. I shredded in some pepper jack cheese, probably about 1/4 cup.
Divide equally into the muffin tin. I kind of poured the liquid egg into the tins and then spooned the thicker mixture in after. That way you got the same consistency in each tin.
Bake for 25 mins. They should really puff up, and just be the slightest bit brown, don't over do it!
Let them sit for about 5 minutes before serving! If you have littles eating with you, I would pull a couple out and break them open, they really do keep the heat in as they are so dense!

This was my first attempt at these and I see doing lots of different varieties. This is one of those recipes you can't really mess up and would be a good place fot that stuff you want to use up sitting in your fridge! I was somewhat worried they might be a little crumbly, but they really do make awesome on the go eats. My husband grabbed a couple as he was running out the door for drill as a volunteer firefighter. His first comment was how easy they were to eat while driving!

We all have those meals that are on the go, make them a good one!

Enjoy!
 

Happy Earth Day

Farmers don't just think about Earth Day once a year. For us Earth day is Everyday! That means taking care of the land that in turn takes care of us, our farm and our Ladies! My hope as a farmer is to leave the Earth better for future generations! Proud to part of the industry that is the original caretakers of this amazing planet!

Dairy Farmers visit the Capital

Democracy only succeeds with engaged citizens.

I'm excited to have begun my journey with the Oregon Young Dairy Leaders class of 2015/16. The first session certainly pushed me out of my comfort zone as we headed to Oregons Captial. We spent the day behind the scenes and met with 12 representatives. Truly interesting to see the inner working of our state government and those that govern us. I honestly have never been a very " political person", but I know if we don't make our voice heard, then someone else will tell our story for us. Especially in this legislative session there are several bills that would be extremely harmful to the whole of agriculture in Oregon. I was really impressed with the openness of those we met with and their encouragement to truly feel that the Captial is our building. They really want us telling our stories and how pieces of legislation will impact us so that they can make informed votes for the betterment of their constituents. 

Really a great kick off to becoming a better voice for the dairy industry. Looking forward to the next year with this great group of young adults from the Oregon dairy industry! 

Rep Mike McLane is an FFA & 4H supporter

Enjoyed our time with Senator Betsey Johnson

OYDL with Rep Greg Barreto

A big thank you to all the representatives that took the time to accept appointments with our class. Great introductions with them and I look forward to building on those relationships.

~

P.S. if you get a chance to visit Oregon's stunningly beautiful capital, seriously an amazing building! Make sure to check out the carpet on both the house and senate sides. More than certain it gives the PDX carpet a run for it's money! ;-) It also fun to wear non barn clothes for the day! 

~

Cows on Pasture

My favorite day of the year has arrived! And a whole month earlier than last year. Today we let the Ladies back out onto the pasture! It is always so much fun to watch them return back outside to the lush green grass. After a little bit of fun and kicking up their heels they got right down to business grazing and then taking a snooze in the warm sunshine!
We do everything we can to make their winter care the best that it can be. The reason we pull the Ladies into confinement for the winter to protect our ground. The pacific northwest just gets too wet in winter, and if we allowed the cows to stay outside they would make a complete mucky mess of the pasture. This break throughout the winter not only protects the grass, but also allows it to get a wonderful healthy growing start. This in turn helps to provide feed for our cows.
It's all one big circle that dairy farmers care greatly for; we care for the land so it can in turn help care for our Ladies. It is definitely my favorite view to see those gorgeous brown and whites on the lush green Spring grass!

Freckles leads the herd

Bette takes off running!

Bookie and Ramira butting heads

Notice Jolanda jumping for joy in the background?!?

Muzzle deep the grass is lush! Jesusita and Anna are enjoying!

All settled down for a nap!

Brooklyn soaking up the sunshine!

Seriously my favorite day! And it was so warm here today, the sunshine felt amazing! I hope you had an equally great day! Happy Thursday!

Robot Tour

When I throw the word robot out there, dairy farm probably doesn't come to mind first. But that is exactly what I am talking about, robotic milking on the dairy farm. We are excited to be launching into the adventure of transitioning our farm to robotic milking. After much discussion we felt it fit our management style and where we want to take to our herd for the future.

So while our start of date is still a ways away we are currently taking the time to visit as many farms as we can that are currently using robots. We are in the research and development phase of our plan and touring other farms lets us learn from them. Last week on my facebook page I mentioned we were headed on a little adventure; that was to tour 3 farm in Washington that are robotic.

Here you can see the collar the cows wear.  I think they enjoy them as a fashion statement!

On a robot farm the milking is done by a robot that lets the cow visit and be milked as she likes. She enters an individual stall, much like our current parlor, and her information is read from a collar on her neck. That information includes pretty much everything under the sun about each cow, but it gives the robot a map of her udder so she can be prepped and milked. While she's being milked she's eating grains fed according to how much milk she is producing. Each quarter of her udder is on an individual take off, so they come off as she is done giving milk. Once she is completely done she is sprayed with teat dip, the stall opens and she goes back to her day. It's pretty much exactly what we do now, just a robot is doing it. Click here to see a robot in action.

A big part of success in a robot barn is the layout and design of the barn. As the cow is free to come and go as she likes, the flow, as it is called, is very important. The three farms we visited retrofitted their robots into their existing barn, instead of building new like we plan to, but it was still beneficial to see how the cows moved through their designs.

It was also great as all three farms also graze their cows as we do for as many months as the pacific northwest weather allows. Those insights on grazing were very beneficial. Part of grazing success is a sort gate the cows must go through before leaving for the pasture. This gate reads her information on her collar much like the robot and either lets her out to graze and sends her back into the barn as she still needs to be milked.

Graze Gate

One thing completely evident on all three farms is how calm, relaxed and contented the whole herd of cows is. They really enjoy getting to pick their own schedule and that frees up the farmer's flexibility. Since we've announced our plan to move to robotics we've heard lots of people ask what we are going to be doing with all our free time if we aren't milking cows. A farmer doesn't put in a robot to not manage his cows, it's simple another tool we can utilize, I guarantee we won't run out of things to do!

We are all very excited for this adventure. But there is definitely still a lot to learn and decide, it almost all feels very overwhelming at times. Without a doubt though we are excited for this future and what it will bring to our farm, our family and our Ladies!   

Happy Robot Cows!

Healthy Start

Hello February! 

Sometimes it take some healthy determination to make a difference. This month I am determined to carve out a little bit of time for myself! After a few months of just feeling blah by the afternoon, I knew I needed to make a change. It's easy to feel like I just need a break, Mama's need a break, and nap time is my usual down time. But this month I've decided to add in a little movement to help my body feel healthier.

I am not a workout person, and things have to be simple and easy or I won't stick with them. So I am simply trying to move for 20 minutes every day. Yesterday I simply carved out 5 minute intervals in between house clean up. One time I walked our stairs, the next I did a few easy exercises; push ups, plank, lunges and squats and lastly during chores I pushed myself at a little faster pace than usual. Those ten minutes during the afternoon really helped to boost my energy level and clear my head.

So after day one I am sticking to it! One more thing I threw in for fun is drinking more water. I get plenty of water every day, in coffee form, so I'm making a conscious decision to grab a glass every time I think of it.

Small changes, simple baby steps for a healthier and happier ME.
Cause we all need some time for ourselves!

Join me on instagram #30x20challenge, we'll keep each other accountable!