BLOG: Progress on the farm

Holy cow, this has been a busy year for us! The busy we talk about is the ‘good type of busy’ because it means that we have had opportunities knocking.

It’s Josie here, Dan and Debbie’s oldest daughter. I oversee the marketing, sales, operations and anything else needed at the creamery and farm. I have been doing a really awful job of sharing updates with you on the farm other than a photo every now and again, but that ends today. I spent the last week or so solely at the creamery and haven’t made my way to the farm until this morning. The progress that I saw was remarkable and I felt that I had to share some updates for you. I promise, I will make it a point to share weekly updates so if you’re curious about what is going on you can read more.

Flash back one-year ago — we had all but a dream of transitioning our farm from the two-a-day milkings to a 2-Lely-robot dairy farm. It would require finding funding, building a new barn, increasing production at the creamery, getting our cows “robot-ready, ” rolling out new products, creating new partners, lining up contractors, builders and making decision after decision as a family as to what we wanted the future of our farm and creamery to look like……. just to name a few.

In the midst of that, our family was selected for a National Award from Lely (a robotic milking company) called The Way to Dairy Award. You may have heard us talk about this a time or two. It was exciting because being named the winner also came with a FREE robotic milking system or a vector feeding system (robotic feeding system). That award allowed us to move forward with our plans far sooner than we had anticipated and it’s been full speed ahead since we got this life-changing news last December.

I say full speed ahead and chuckle, because our plans to break ground this past spring was delayed by rainy-day after rainy-day. Spring turned into Summer and summer turned into planting season and finally by mid-June we were able to move forward on several components of our project including finishing up a heifer barn and starting to pour the footings for the robotic milking barn. There were several other delays that held us up but now things are happening and happening fast.

The last few weeks we have been battling harvest and will continue to do likely into mid to late November (fingers crossed, no snow); but the building continues to get worked on and we are hopeful to have it completely enclosed by Winter so we can still plug away at things regardless of the outdoor elements.

Beams and trusses have arrived and those are being put up this week. Yesterday we had gusts of 40 mph wind so it wasn’t ideal for putting up trusses and beams. Today is much more calm so they will get a lot of stuff done.

Next up is the steel on the outside of the building in the weeks to come which will really make things look different out on the farm; followed by plumbing, electrical, anything that needs to be underground.

Still a long way to go, but my oh my how far we have come.