How do we fix the milk pricing system?

This is the question at the top of every dairy farmers mind. How do we fix the milk pricing system?
There was a meeting last week in Morrisville, NY about this very subject. There were some very smart people there with alot of suggestions about what we as farmers are doing wrong. We should limit the size of farms. We should lower the somatic cell count limit. We should put limits on the use of sexed semen. But this is the problem. They are all looking at this as if it is something that we did. They should get their heads out of the bulk tank and look at the big picture. We are a small part in a much larger picture.
The milk processing plants do not want us to get a fair price for our milk, because that would limit the profits they make. There are only a few processors left which limits the competition. A few years ago we were looking to leave our co-op, Land O' Lakes, and were looking to go with Readington Farms. They wouldn't take us because they were already getting our milk. They were also getting the milk from the other two co-ops in the area. So they could then set the price that they were willing to pay. If there was some competition then they might be willing to pay an added premium to get you to look at their company.
I spoke with someone from Susquehanna County Farm Bureau who is their state legislative representitive, and she said that there is a state that has a law that states that the stores are only allowed to charge a certain percentage over what the farmer receives. This is a simple solution that benefits the farmer and the consumer. If there is too much milk on the market and the price drops to the farmer it equally drops in the store. Lower price to the consumer, they can purchase more milk products, there goes the excess milk. The processor and the store still get a profit but it is reasonable, not excessive.
The American family is getting ripped-off. When we are getting less than a dollar a gallon and in South Carolina a gallon of milk costs $6.00 a gallon. It isn't right. Even locally a gallon of milk costs between $3.50 and $4.00 per gallon. It shouldn't be any more than $2.00. It is time to fight back. Yell. I have written to President Obama several times and no one from his office has ever acknowleged my letters. I know that the President wouldn't, but someone. Doesn't he care where your milk is coming from. The US government is importing dairy products from other countries, like China, that do not have the same regulation as the USA. Protect your food supply. Let President Obama know that this is an important issue. WRITE. EMAIL. What ever it takes to keep dairy in America.

The daily grind

This will be short and sweet. No ranting today.
COWS: We had a beautiful heifer calf born on the farm today. Mother and child are doing well. The little girl was pretty wobbly on her legs until she got 2 quarts of warm colostrum in her belly. We had a beautiful white cow die. We called the vet when we saw that she needed more help than we could give her. The vet thinks that it was hemoragic bowel syndrom, they basically bleed to death internally. It was very sad, she was seven months pregnant.
HORSES: Our daughter, Sondra, has 8 horses. She thinks that the one is going to have a baby. The mother is a registered paint, and the father is a registered quarter horse. I will post pictures when the baby is born. There is nothing cuter than a baby horse.
GOATS: Another daughter, Victoria, has three nubian goats. Two does and a buck. They are all registered. The one goat Isabelle is going to have babies. A nubian doe can have up to 4 babies. But the first pregnancy they usually don't have any more than two.
DOGS: Our farm dog Camille had a litter of puppies two months ago. They are ready to be adopted. They are so adorable. They are Choc. lab/border collies. The one must have more Choc. lab, because she loves the water.
PIG: Did you notice that there is no plural on that animal. Our daughter, Sabrina, has a pet pig. No it isn't one of those cute little pigs that people keep in their home. No this is one of the biggest pigs I have ever seen. There are estimates at close to 1000 lbs. Her name is Tilly. Tilly's left front foot is bothering her. We will have to find someone that knows about pigs.

That is all for now. Our daughter, Larissa is headed back to D.C. after a visit home and I have to get up early to get her on the bus.

Did you write your Congressman today?

Scouting for Employees

One of our employees is leaving, so I placed an ad on Craig's list for dairy help. We got several replies. One 20 year old sent this amazing resume (she later confessed that her boyfriend doctored the resume). Not knowing that is was BS, I asked her to come meet with me and take a tour of the farm. She had some general knowledge but lacked experience. We are used to this and were willing to train her. I spent several hours with her showing her the farm and explaining the new technology we use. She realized that she was in over her head and started to chicken out. I told her that we would not expect her to know everything, but it would come with time. She said OK. She would be here 5 o'clock Friday morning.
She emailed me today to quit before she starts. But offered to work for 2 weeks until we find someone else. Now why would I put the effort into training someone so that they can leave? Did she need some more BS to put on her resume. ......I worked on a 500 head dairy farm. (cough, cough)
So I emailed her back and said "no thanks" it isn't worth the effort to train someone for them to leave. Then she starts sending me these long emails again telling me how qualified she was but she didn't like the long commute. Ok! Great move on. Then she sends me this one:
"I had also considered you guys in that going $500 into debt every day would be increased if I were to work there. But I guess if you aren't that desperate then it isn't that big of a deal to be losing that much money per day... I just can't comprehend losing $500/day, it seems like a lot to me."
HELLO. Yes it is alot of money to go into debt. But what are our options? Kill the cows? Don't feed the animals? Let them loose to roam free in the streets of Scranton, PA? - That would make a great "The Office" show. Five hundred head of cattle, calves and youngstock wondering around stopping traffic and fertilizing the Steamtown Mall.
This is a farm that was started generations ago, but because Politicians and the Americans that put them in office, have no clue about what it costs to put that gallon of milk on the grocery store shelves we get comments like the ones she made.
So what do you suggest our options are. We have a mortgage. We have a feed bill. We have to milk the cows. We have to feed our family. Where are you going to get your milk if every farmer in America decided that she was right and we shouldn't go into debt one more cent?
If you watched the Michael J Fox special tonight, one of his stories was about the eternal optimism of the American dairy farmer. We stay in business hoping that things will be better tomorrow. Tomorrows a new day.
Maybe when the grocery store shelves are empty, people will appreciate what we do and the sacrifices we make for each and everyone of you.

Milk prices stink!!!

I have to blow off steam for a few minutes. I am trying to pay bills for our farm. HOW!!!! Our milk price is set by the Milk Market Administrator. They decided that we only needed $11.56 per hundred weight for March. Now for all you non-farmers, that means that the milk we gave to the processor (ex: Land O'Lakes) in the month of March, we didn't get paid for all of it until April 18th. The Milk Market Administrator says -hey all you have to give those dumb farmers is $11.56 per hundred weight - what are they going to do about it.
There are 11.6 gallons in a "hundred weight. So what it boils down to is we get less than $1 per gallon of milk. THAT IS NOT PROFIT. It costs us about $1.50 per gallon to break even. We are going into debt 50 cents for every gallon we make.

Do the math - we make 12,000 lbs per day.
That is 1035 gallons per day.
If we are losing 50 cents per gallon, that is $517.50 per day.
In one month that is $15,525.00.
If milk prices stayed at the current level that means in one year we would lose over $186,000.

Then the US government turns around and gives the milk to third world nations. Isn't that sweet. Yeah, it would be if they paid for it first. But they didn't they stole it from every farmer in America. The Milk Market Administrator is a division of the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. The USDA is a department of the government. If you are as mad as I am than write to the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture. The President of the United States. Your Congressman, your Senators. It is time the American people stood up for good safe food that is produced in America. Not unless you want to get milk from China. According to the publication "Progressive Dairyman", in the past 10 years milk production has increased 17% in the United States. In that same period of time, milk production has increased 411% in CHINA. Got milk, yeah ---but where did it come from? Help to keep American Dairy farmers in business.

History of our farm.

My In-laws started this farm when they were first married. They started off with 8 cows. Sixty-five years ago when you had to milk the cows by hand and the milk was kept in milk cans in the cooler. That was enough cows to make the day long, and you appreciated a soft chair at the end of the day.There was no drilled well, so everyday at noon my mother-in-law would walk the cows from the pasture up to the water spring to get a drink of cool water. In the cold winter months that was a difficult task, to trudge in knee deep snow, try to keep the herd together as you braved the long cold winter storms to get to the spring and break the ice so that the cows could drink.With a lot of hard work they purchased more land and added to their herd of cattle. As the herd of cattle grew, so did their own family. Eventually, they had over 100 head of milking cows and 5 children. The children all learned to work hard. There was little time for playing, that could be done between the many loads of hay bales that had to be unloaded in the steaming hot hay mow. If you were older and stronger you could pick which spot you wanted. On the hay wagon, where there was a breeze once in a while, was where you wanted to be. If you were younger you did as you were told and went to the hay mow. It was stifling hot up there stacking hay. Sometimes you didn't know if you were going to survive till the last bale was taken off the wagon and put on the elevator going clank, clank, clank up to you in the hottest place you had ever been. When the last bale was placed in the mow, you took a deep breath of air as you pushed your head out into the sunlight. Then headed for a drink of water. That was the best tasting water. It quenched your thirst and cooled you off at the same time. Then it didn't matter what you were wearing, you poured the water down over your head and arms to rinse off the hay seed.In 1984, my husband and his brother took over the farm from his elderly parents. I met my husband in the fall of 1985. I remember one of our first dates (or maybe it was a job interview) was him setting me down with the stack of bills he had paid over the past year and asked me to enter them in the accounting record book. The accountant was coming and he needed the records caught up to date. Well I guess that I passed the test because I not only became his wife but also the bookkeeper/secretary on the farm. Our family also grew. We have five beautiful daughters. I always get comments like "what - no sons to take over the farm?". I tell them that the girls can work just as hard and if they want they can take over the farm.In 1998, my brother-in-law left the farm. So I stepped in and helped my husband run the farm. It was only eleven years ago, but a lot has changed since then. Back then we milked 120 cows in a stanchion barn. We milked 60 cows turned them out to pasture and milked the next 60 cows. We had to put the corn silage in the silage cart and push it from one end of the barn to the other. Scrapping our knuckles on the cinder block walls. We had heavy milkers that we carried over our shoulders so that the hoses didn't drag on the floor. There was a lot of physical labor and you were tired at the end of the day.On March 23, 2002 was when life changed for ever on our farm. I was getting my daughters ready to go to a birthday party. My husband had been to the barn about an hour before to check on a cow that was in labor and was going to have a calf. Now, he was changing his clothes to get some supplies at the farm store before it closed. As I stood at the kitchen table wrapping the child's birthday gift, I looked out the window as a low gray-white cloud drifted past the window. It was a windy winter day, but that didn't look like snow blowing past the window. It was finer. I had never seen anything like it before. As I looked in the direction from where it was coming, I realized that our cow barn was on fire. My God! What do I do first? I yelled for my husband as I ran for the phone to dial 911. I could hear the fear of the unknown in his voice as he yelled back to me "I know...!?". He yelled this after he happened to look out the bedroom window and realized that his cows and his lively hood were in trouble. Those were long moments waiting on the phone with the 911 operator giving directions to our farm, yet knowing that my husband had run into that burning building to save the cows. As soon as I could hang up the phone I ran to the barn. I tried to open the door to go into the barn, but the vaccume created by the heat would pull the door knob out of my hands as the door slammed shut. I stood outside the barn, yelling for my husband, torn between my duty as his wife to be by his side and the thoughts of my children and not wanting to leave them motherless if something should happen when I ran into that burning building. As I stood outside the barn yelling for my husband, the aluminum siding kept making a swooshing noise as each piece fell off the wooden shell of the barn. As I would reach for the door, the swoosh of the falling siding would cause me to take a step back. Just then a neighbor came to tell be that Paul was safe on the other side of the burning barn. Amazingly, my husband and our employee got all of the cows and calves out of the barn. I have heard other farmers tell of the horror of not being able to get their cows out of a burning barn. But we were fortunate. Our cows were used to leaving the barn and going out to pasture. It was later determined that a light fixture in the hay mow was the cause of the fire. The wind caused the light to swing. As it swung the wires were rubbed bare. So when the light switch was turned on in the barn, the light in the hay mow sparked and caught the hay on fire...............Tune in tomorrow to see what happened on the farm.