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!

Christmas in the Country Reveal!

Merry Christmas.........Happy New Year..........Oh wait it's the end of the middle of January.......so this will just be a tradition that my Christmas in the Country post is late! This year I didn't have the excuse of having a baby, but I was busy the first half of January getting ready for my littler farmer's first birthday. Yes excuses, excuses! But don't let that diminish my enthusiasm for probably my favorite blog activity of the year again: Christmas in the Country 2014!

This year I sent a taste of my hometown to the lovely Katy of Little House on the Horizon. My gift  was packed full of my favorite things made right here, coffee and everyone's favorite chocolates form our local chocolate shoppe. I also including some homemade jam,. *Note to self for next year, pick lighter items to ship! Hehe, but I truly had so much fun putting Katy's gift together, and even though I haven't heard from her I am hoping she enjoyed and had a wonderful first Christmas in their new home!!

  I was so excited when my package slip arrived on the 23rd, I knew it must be my exchange gift! I couldn't wait till Christmas so I opened it early and found an awesomely packed box of goodness from Danielle of High Heels and Shotgun Shells. She did an awesome job of  "stalking" me to put together a meaningful gift.
First out was a box of Christmas cookies, that I didn't waste any time breaking into! I even shared some with my boys, they loved the ones filled with M&M's and pretzels! I throughly enjoyed a chocolate cookie with my coffee, great combo! We finished them off Christmas morning as we were opening presents.

 Next I spied something lacey! Danielle was SO thoughtful to throw in something girly for me, cause she's right, I am overrun with boys around here! An awesome pair of boot socks!

The rest of the box was filled with awesome pieces from Danielle's new home state Kentucky. BBQ sauces that I can't wait to try out, thinking it will go great on pulled pork sliders! Salsa......mmm Salsa! I kind of have a thing for good Salsa, don't think I've ever admitted that, but chips and Salsa are definitely up there with my favorite snacks. This one did not dissapoint, sweeet, spicy and all around awesome! It was a perfect snack after a long night just the other day. Of course some Kentucky Bluegrass seed, which will some in handy, I have a strip in our yard that is still resisting regrowing after two summers ago pipe work. And lastly, but definitely not least Danielle caught onto the idea that I kind of collect ornaments from trips around the States. So now I have a Kentucky one to proudly hang on my tree!

Didn't waste any time on getting it put on our tree and it looks pretty awesome if you ask me! Enjoying my little piece of Kentcuky that will get to join us every Christmas!

Danielle rocked my present! And I've been having so much fun following along with her on all her channels. She's fun and has great style, go check her out!

Blog

Facebook 

Instagram 

I really enjoyed participating again this year in Christmas in the Country! A huge shout out to our hosts who help make this happen! I am still friends with my gift giver from last year Jenny from The Magic Farmhouse and I think it's an awesome way to connect and make like minded friends from across the country! Looking forward to Christmas in the Country 2015!!

2015 Resolutions

I've never really been one for New Years resolutions, but I seem to always find myself thinking about all the possibilities that seem to be more readily available as the calendar turns over. Why is it that we are more ready to make a change when the date changes? I'm all for motivation, and anything that helps is great, but I find resolutions seems to hang a heavy weight over some heads. So I'm here to encourage you to let go!
If anything that has been my theme for the last year, anyone hear the Frozen song Let it Go playing in the background? In all reality embracing that thought, and only attending to what has to be done, has been liberating. I'll be honest that some areas of my life have suffered greatly from this mantra: my house is literally a disgusting mess, my long lost friends rarely get to see me and my to do list is literally a mile long.
So what have I been doing? Surviving, living, and even sometimes enjoying motherhood with two young boys and a dairy farm. I've embraced the thought that I literally can't do it all and am completely alright with it! Don't get me wrong, it took me a while to get here, and at times it feels like a lonely dark hole that I dug myself. But I find I am so much more happy, less stressed and free. And let's truly be honest, if we don't take care of ourselves, it's really hard to take care of the others in our life.
I am all for making positive changes in your life, just don't be afraid to examine them realistically and be easy on yourself if you don't at first succeed. Above all, take some time for you. Enjoy that extra cup of coffee and chocolate without counting the calories, leave the laundry for tomorrow and play with your child instead, pick up that book you've been meaning to read, go for that run because you want to!
I understand this fast paced crazy life often leaves us with little time for the things we really want to do. Stop longing to do them and make them a priority! 

Above all don't believe that investing in your own happiness is selfish!

 Happy New Year! I hope 2015 is a blessed, healthy, prosperous and HAPPY year for you! ~Darleen

  

Hello 2015!!

Our first calf, a heifer, arrived this afternoon! A great way to Welcome in 2015!

Happy New Year! 

2014 Year End Review: Farm

After I highlighted my efforts in agvocacy in 2014 I thought it would be fun to take a look at what happened on our farm this year!

The biggest change for 2014 was the number of cows in our herd. For the second time ever and in the last two years we opened our closed herd to bring in animals from two Oregon herds that were selling their Guernseys. We used to say the future was near that we might be the only large number Guernsey herd in Oregon, sadly that day arrived. So with mixed emotions we welcomed 16 head from the Bosch family, Kilchona Farm in Tillamook, at the beginning of April. We have never brought that many animals into the herd at once, but the transition went smoothly and the timing could not have been better being out on pasture. Then in November the opportunity to bring 8 cows from the Wil-Rene herd, of the Jansen family from Forest Grove, presented itself. The timing was opposite, but we couldn't say no to these great genetics and again the transition went smoothly. 

Bette & Baja two days after their arrived!

 This brings our milking cows number to consistently over 90 cows and at max for our facility. We wouldn't push our facility if we weren't already planning an expansion into a new robotic facility by 2016, with 120 milking cows. 2015 is going to bring a lot of change, crazy busyness and challenge, but we are so excited to meet this new venture and build the future of our farm!

So let's look at what these lovely Ladies achieved in 2014.

We shipped 1,402,447lbs of milk. That is 163,076 gallons!! 

Received a quality award from our coop for producing milk above the standard requirements for the 2013/2014 fiscal year. 

 We welcomed 80 new calves! 41 Bulls and 39 Heifers. And had a record breaking 5 sets of twins, two sets being born on the same day, which has never happened here before! One set of twin heifers, one set of twin bulls and three sets of heifer and bull.
Welcome to: Jazzelle, Jellato, Regina, Rowdy, RockyRoad, Jentle, Sprout, Babs & Bobbie, Raindrop, Diana, Super, Louisa, Blackcap, Chanelle, Blueheat, Bungalow, Jesstine, Brenna, Fancie, Jorja, Venita, Rainy, Snowdust, Moodini, Minuette, Bessy, Jessandra, Jazarah, Jacket, Spaz, Milan, Jellica, Roana and 5 more newborns awaiting names!

Twin heifers for Babette. Bobbi & Babs

Captured this sweet moment of Velma and her 12th calf!

 A few personal cow achievements. Kicked off the year with one of our favorite young cows Abiqua Acres Martini Jen classifying EX-90. We celebrated Abiqua Acres Goliath Velma's sweet 16th birthday. We also had a successful show season, taking strings to the Oregon State Fair and Northwest National Guernsey Show. We took grand champion with Abiqua Acres Challenge Spirit at Oregon and placed in the top half of all our classes at the Northwest.  Bittersweet this Fall as we lost our favorite show cow Abiqua Acres Aaron Meara, she has been greatly missed!

Grand Champion Challenge Spirit

It's been a good year for the dairy industry. Milk prices were at record highs and feed prices stayed reasonable, meaning we saw a tiny profit this year, which will hopefully hold us through the rough outlook for the year ahead. Just like always most days saw us with ups and downs on the dairy farm. This is the life we love and we wouldn't have it any other way than spending it with the lovely brown and white Ladies we love! So Thank You 2014 and bring it on 2015! 

2014 Year End Review: Agvocacy

Wow! 2014 flew by faster than the speed of light for me! I feel like it's still December 29th, 2013 and I was looking at my second child's due date! Literally, where did the year go?!? I guess you throw two young boys into the daily grind of farm life and time is going to speed right by!

Here on the blog things were a little slow, I just didn't have time with my keyboard; only publishing 26 new posts!  But it was hard to compete when I ended 2013 on a huge  note when my post "Today I Cried Over a Cow" went viral and pulled in over 23,000 views to my blog in December. I was in no way expecting to maintain those numbers, and I thoroughly enjoyed my social media interaction in 2014.

After the birth of my second son I kicked my agvocating skills up a notch by attending the regional AgChat convention held in Portland. It was a great experience and my favorite part was meeting many of the faces behind some of my favorite blogs I follow. It really fueled my passion to hit this year hard. 

Last years end numbers completely blew my mind, to have my writing circulating to that many people was out of anything I ever expected to happen. So while 2014's numbers look slight in comparison, it still makes me proud to know that many people took the time to stop by my little space on the internet. And I fully feel I lived up to new year's resolution and my goal.

My top three posts written for 2014: 

1. What is in a Dairy Farmer's Day

2. Springing in a Dairy Cow

And #3 was tied with

Spring is Here 

&

Factory Farm or Family Farm?    

My personal favorite blog post this year was a project I worked on in coordination with Oregon Dairy Farmer's Association helping to promote the Northwest Farmer's Fighting Hunger campaign. With their increased efforts to promote the campaign they were able to double the donations from 2013. It was so fun to be involved in this project and I look forward to helping make a difference in continuing to promote it! 

 

While I didn't log much time on this space here, due in large part to horribly slow internet connections. I was able to mobilely update our farm Facebook page Abiqua Acres more regularly. Sharing pictures and posting on a more regular basis saw the audience there double without much effort on my part. I think I am most excited about these interactions because I am literally reaching thousands of people every week! I think most people are already on Facebook, so creating and sharing information there is a great way to reach an audience that might not otherwise take the time to visit the blog here.

With the positive interactions occurring on Facebook I decided to launch my new name there first, I briefly mentioned it here, and am looking forward to finally transitioning my blog to that in the new year. Guernsey Dairy Mama has taken off and flourished on Facebook without my pushing it at all. Launched the beginning of September and I already have 549 followers, my goal was to end the year at 500! Now granted those might seem like tiny numbers, but any number that I can agvocate to makes me happy! 

I am also super excited about the other projects that my social media interactions included. Most notably joining the team of Ask the Farmers. I am so excited to see this group reach a large crowd and the positive direction and conversations that are already happening in this 6,000 strong following! 

While I saw the most reward for my effort on Facebook I also enjoyed branching out to instagram this year. I transitioned my account there to Guernsey Dairy Mama and have really enjoyed sharing pictures I snap while working with my ipod touch. Mobile, easy and a picture is worth a thousand words; it is a quick and easy platform to be involved with. Not to mention their editing tools are a lot of fun to play with on pictures!I've been enjoying sharing a picture of all our newborn calves.  

Here's my favorite from this year on my instagram account:

It really has been an outstanding year for me and my agvocating efforts. I love interacting through my writing and social media and sharing my dairy life. I haven't set an goals for 2015 yet, but I am already looking forward to all the new year may hold! 

~Darleen 

Guernsey Dairy Mama 

      

Christmas in the Country

Sent off a special package to someone! Looking forward to linking up for this fun event! How is your holiday season shaping up? Someone I've found myself really behind this season, I'll be playing catch up this weekend! Tonight I am off to enjoy a performance of the Nutcracker!! 

I hope you are finding some of the magic in this season!!! 

First Birthday Pirate Party

My second baby is fast approaching his first birthday, and with the holidays in between (I started this post before Thanksgiving!) I figured I had better get with it on getting some planning done! While I got started on that I realized I never did share all the details on my oldest boys first birthday. So without any more ado, I give you Mason's first birthday bash!

In another life I would love to be an event planner, so much fun! I enjoy getting to be crafty and am all about the details and with a first birthday I knew I could get away with it. We chose the pirate theme because ARRGH was the first thing we could get our grumpy and opinionated baby to say that he actually enjoyed. I thought it would be fun theme that reflected him for who he was! He looked great in red, so I knew the typical pirate colors, red, black, brown would work well. I there in aqua as an extra fun pop of color.

First up were the invitations. I had happened to find Gwen Marie Designs on Etsy for Mason's birth announcement. I loved how easy she was to work with and created exactly what I wanted, so I was excited to work with her again, and have since used her several more time. I had a design in mind that matched our colors and theme and she created exactly what I was wanting.

 

After scouring pinterest for some fun ideas I complied my own touches to make it truly reflect us and the little boy we were celebrating!

A Pirtae flag greets guests!

 I made triangle fabric banners in five different prints that fit the color scheme. For an added touch I strung them on baling twine, know there is plenty of that around here! Made enough to hand in several locations for fun pops of color. Also one of my favorite accessories I picked up from the dollar store was the nets. I used them to hang with tiny clothes pins favorite pictures of Mason's first year. It worked out really well as an easy way to fill space on the walls in several spots with photos!

No pirate party is complete without a parrot aboard your ship!

 

 Using "pirate language" I worded his birthday banner I be 1. Also added fun textures and dimensions with the scrapbook paper. My favorite part was the shell string I added and pops of color with aqua ribbon.

And the masterpiece, or honestly biggest pain of the party, pirate ship cake! I was honestly impressed with my freelance design and how it all came together, I definitely had my doubts on this one. I mushed it together with cuttings from two separate sheet cakes. I actually ended up having to use a third cause one fell apart on me, that was about the moment I was seriously disagreeing with my attempt to pull this off. But I'm glad I stuck it out,  not bad for somebody who is not an unusual cake maker! It looks like a ship, right? Finished off with blue ocean cupcakes, can't have a ship without the ocean!

Final decoration touches included pirate tattoos for fun and a treasure chest full of yummy and wearable booty! Our pirate party was all ready for the birthday boy who had a custom shirt waiting for him. Party Time!

Unfortunately our little guy woke up with a horrid fever the morning of the party. But he was a true pirate and pulled through to celebrate in style. We enjoyed an amazingly warm day in April and ended up moving our bbq outside! I had so much fun putting together all the details of his party, first birthdays truly are special!