Daffadowndilly's: Want Milk? Need Milk? We Got Milk!

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Want Milk? Need Milk? We Got Milk!

Earlier this year I had a post about Steffview Farms and the County Fair. Today I went out to find John and Paula, the owners of the dairy. It was early morning, around 8:00 a.m. but that was hours after the Steffen's and the crew were hard at work. Matter of fact, they were just finishing up when I arrived this morning. So I went in to check it out for all of you so you can see where your milk comes from!!

It was raining today so at the farm it was a mud marsh, you really do need your hip waders for this job, needless to say my tennis shoes where a little mushy after tromping around the farm.

These are the two big silos that house the corn to feed the cows, they use to hold silage, which is ground up hay, I really came out to check out these two big monsters. They happen to have a very cool pipe that runs up the side that looks really cool in your house. Ki, over at Junk Revolution, will be filling you in on that one.

Meet the milk machines.... they are all looking the same direction because its time to go out, they have all been milked and the next group will be coming in.

John is giving this cow a shot, that looks like a big needle!

This is the pit where all the milking machines are located that get hooked up to the cows. This is Cecelia, she is charge of changing the milkers. Pretty amazing, huh?

This is the BIG milk tank that holds all the milk that comes from the cows. You can even get a COLD glass of milk from this tank fresh from the cow. I don't think you can get much fresher than that!

This is Steffview Farms "Grade A" Inspection Report, John runs a tight ship....

This is the colostrum, this is the first milk from the cow after giving birth to her calf. It is saved and given to the bottle calves that get fed two times a day, morning and night. When a dairy cow has a calf it is taken away and fed by bottle. This way the cow doesn't have to nurse the calf, but will still produce milk.

Here's Paula, driving her chariot, the skid loader. She was just coming back from feeding the bottle calves. There are so many she has to use the bucket on the skid loader to haul the bottles and buckets over to feed them. Driving one of these is one of Paula's many talents!