by Patricia Grotenhuis, Lifelong farmer and agricultural advocate

In an earlier post, I highlighted what a day in the life of a tie stall dairy farmer looks like. Today, I thought I’d cover the other type of dairy farming – a free stall farm. 

On any dairy farm, days are laid out based on the milking schedule.  Cows cannot miss a milking, so someone always has to be present. Dairy farmers milk their cows two or three times per day.  The farmer makes the decision about how often the cows are milked, and a big factor to consider is how many employees work at the farm.  For farms that milk three times each day, extra workers are required.

At my parent’s farm, cows are milked twice per day.  George and Agnes wake up at 5 a.m. to go to the barn and begin milking by 5:30.  They have a free-stall barn, which means the cattle live in a large open space between milkings, and at milking time walk to a central milking parlour to be milked.  An example of both a free-stall and a tie-stall dairy operation can be found on the Virtual Farm Tours website at www.virtualfarmtours.ca

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Posted by FFC on February 16th, 2011 :: Filed under Animal care,Dairy cattle,Family vs factory farming,Farm life,Sustainability of the family farm
Tags :: agriculture, animal care, dairy cattle, farm, Farmers

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An Unexplainable Feeling

The following post was written by Ursina Studhalter; a student at the University of Guelph studying Agricultural Business. It was first published on the http://farmersmatter.ca/blog/ website and is reprinted here with permission.
She and her family have a diverse farm, raising pigs and milking dairy goats.

Everything comes second to the farm. Without it, I’d feel lost. I know the instant I’ve crossed into my home territory. The road opens up, large barns begin to appear and fields span the horizon. That’s when I know I’m at home. It does not have to be Huron County, I could be driving along Rue 116 in Quebec. I’m at home at any kitchen table where the talk revolves around this coming spring’s planting and the new tractor the neighbour just bought. I’m at home standing between rows of content cows, the fresh smell of hay in the air.

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Posted by FFC on February 11th, 2011 :: Filed under Farm life,Sustainability of the family farm

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Thanks to veteran American food-industry journalist and commentator Dan Murphy for this profile on a young, Canadian hog farmer. As a side note, Stewart has just been named outstanding pork producer of the year in his county. Well deserved, we’d say! – by the Ontario Farm Animal Council

Field Report: Canada’s Stewart Skinner

by Dan Murphy (www.agnetwork.com)

 We often hear about the aging of today’s farmers and the threat that creates for future food production. What we don’t hear about often enough is today’s young farmers, many of whom are not only tech savvy but media friendly, as well.

One such farmer is livestock producer, blogger and family farm champion Stewart Skinner, a pig farmer in Ontario, Canada, who raises some 400 sows on a family-owned farm in central region of Canada’s most populous province.

“Our acreage has been in the family and in production before Canada was a country,” Skinner noted. “We have been farming here since 1859.” (For any Canadian history-challenged readers, Canada became a confederated dominion in 1867 and an independent nation in 1882).

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Posted by FFC on January 31st, 2011 :: Filed under Canada,Family vs factory farming,Farm life,Pigs,Pork,Sustainability of the family farm

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by Patricia Grotenhuis, Lifelong farmer and agricultural advocate

 In Canada, there are two main types of dairy farms – called tie stall or free stall farms. In a tie-stall barn, the cows live in stalls next to each other where they have constant access to water and are fed in a manger in front of them. They are also milked in their stalls. In a free-stall barn, cows are housed in large group pens or individual stalls. They get milked by walking to a milking parlour or sometimes a milking robot. You can actually tour both types of farms on the virtual farm tour website at www.virtualfarmtours.ca  Click on the “Dairy Cow Farm” button when you get there.

Our third generation family farm is a small, family-run tie-stall dairy operation.  As with any dairy farm, all plans are made around the two milking times.

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Posted by FFC on January 19th, 2011 :: Filed under Dairy cattle,Farm life,Sustainability of the family farm

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 By Patricia Grotenhuis, lifelong farmer and agricultural enthusiast

January 4, 2011 – It is common for consumers to have questions about farming practices and a farmer’s care for the environment.  With an industry as diverse as agriculture, no one (not even those who work in it) can be expected to understand all aspects of it completely.  In addition, there are so many different ways to farm that no two farms are ever alike.

The vast majority of farms do have some commonalities.  Aside from managing large amounts of work with limited resources and always being expected to produce more from less, the most noticeable similarity is a farmer’s genuine care for his or her animals and for the environment.

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Posted by FFC on January 4th, 2011 :: Filed under Environmental Farm Plan,Farm life,Regulations,Research,Sustainability of the family farm

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 By Patricia Grotenhuis, lifelong farmer and agricultural enthusiast.

December 22, 2010 – During the summer, I attended the Canadian National Exhibition with the Ontario Farm Animal Council’s (OFAC)  spokesrobot Oprah.  Most of the questions we were asked were fairly general, but there was one comment which has stuck in my mind since then.

 It is one I’m sure everyone in agriculture has heard at some point, and if they have not heard it yet, they will soon.  While we were on our way to the parking lot at the end of the day, a gentleman stopped us and asked what Oprah was for.  I briefly explained that she is an educational assistant sent to events such as fairs and festivals by the Ontario Farm Animal Council, and followed up by telling him who OFAC is and what it does.

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Posted by FFC on December 22nd, 2010 :: Filed under Animal care,animal handling,Animal health,Barn fires,Codes of Practice,Consumers,Dairy cattle,Education and public awareness,Farm life,Housing,Innovation and technology,Regulations,Research,Sustainability of the family farm,Uncategorized

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We’re excited to see the amount of farmers that are using social media outlets to tell their stories about farming. Here’s a great article from the July 12 edition of the Calgary Herald that features once such farmer. We’re now following her on Twitter and hope you will too! – OFAC

Cowgirl blogger; A farmer’s wife tackles social media
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Cathryn Hagel can milk a cow and drive a tractor. She helps brand her family’s cattle and she’s chased a coyote or two.

And just for fun, she and her family bought a team of draught horses last year. Y’know: the great big ones that pull wagons filled with people.

But she’s no country bumpkin. Not at all. She’s part of a small but growing number of farm women reaching out to each other and beyond, with the help of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging.

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Posted by FFC on July 12th, 2010 :: Filed under Animal care,Beef cattle,Canada,Education and public awareness,Farm life,Horses,Sustainability of the family farm

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The following is a guest post written for us by Lilian from Food and Farming Canada.

Most of us have very little knowledge of where our food comes from or how it is produced. As a result, misinformation is widely circulated in many different forms – so to get to the real scoop on what’s going on, there’s no one better to ask than a farmer himself.

I had the chance recently to visit with Brent, who raises turkeys on his farm in south-western Ontario, and seized the opportunity to pepper him with questions about one of my favourite holiday meats, turkey.

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Posted by FFC on May 26th, 2010 :: Filed under Animal care,Family vs factory farming,Farm life,Food safety,Poultry,Sustainability of the family farm
Tags :: animal welfare, antibiotics, corporate farming, food safety, Ontario, turkey

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Food From Greener Pastures
Beef Producers: Stewards of the land, for now and for the future

Kim Sytsma and her husband Charlie of Eighth Line Farm in Ontario, like many Canadian beef producers, work every day to ensure both the land they manage and the business they built are not only sustained, but improved for future generations of Canadians. “It’s my job to leave the land better than I found it,” says Kim.

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Posted by FFC on April 21st, 2010 :: Filed under Beef cattle,Canada,Global Warming,Sustainability of the family farm,Uncategorized
Tags :: cattle, earth day, environment, meat eating

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January 6, 2010 – Happy New Year to the readers of this blog. This article was printed in the Toronto Star over the holiday season and we think this columnist got the issue exactly right. Farm animals aren’t pets and they definitely aren’t 4-legged people. And, with only 1 in every 46 Canadians now actively farming, there is a huge disconnect between farmers and consumers. Enjoy the read – OFAC

The annoying tendency to anthropomorphize animals is likely from our lost connection to rural life

by Connie Woodcock, Out There

Toronto Sun, December 20, 2009

When I was a little girl, I fell in love with a series of books about a pig named Freddy and his barnyard friends on the Bean farm in New York State.

I read every one of the 26 books available in my library over and over. I can remember peering at a New York road map in search of fictional Centerboro, the town supposedly nearest Freddy and his friends.

Written between the 1920s and 1950s, the Freddy books disappeared for a while but they were republished a few years ago and there’s even an association called The Friends of Freddy with its own website. I’ve bought several Freddy reprints and reread them still.

I mention this because much as I loved Freddy, Mrs, Wiggins the cow, Hank the horse with rheumatism in his hind leg, and Charles the henpecked rooster, we all grow up and realize there’s no such thing as a talking animal. At least, most of us do.

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Posted by FFC on January 6th, 2010 :: Filed under Activism,Canada,Consumers,Education and public awareness,Farm life,Sustainability of the family farm
Tags :: activists, animal care, animal welfare, Canada, Consumers, Farmers, misconceptions, PETA

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