Wow, what a beautiful sunrise this morning! It’s cold, but sunny.

The weekend was great! What was so great about it? Glad you asked…..Jake had a buzzer beater in his basketball game on Saturday! He said it was the end of the game, he looked at the clock and from outside the three point line he threw it up and swish! It went in just as the buzzer went off. They were ahead by something like 20 points, so it wasn’t a true “clutch” shot, but it was just as good to Jake. If I saw him reenact that shot once I watched him 27 times over and over and over again in our living room, or should I say our basketball court aka living room.

And while Jake was showing his hoop savvy I was speaking at a ladies day out at the Solid Rock Community Church in West Unity, Ohio. They were the best group of women from so many different backgrounds. After a morning full of fun we had lunch, made by the men, one very special man, Duane Knisely, a good friend of ours. You’ll remember Duane as the retired FFA teacher and beef producer. He and his wife have a farm with beef cattle and they used to milk cows. So when lunch time rolled around his son-in-law walked up and set down a tall glass of milk just for me and said Mr. Knisely told me to tell you this was special milk from a Jersey cow! That Duane!

Well, I’d love to expound more about it, but I just heard the tractor go down to the barn and that’s my cue to head back out to bed the cows.

Later!

Good Morning from a busy Knolltop.

I had to come in early from the barn this morning and passed four sleepy kids on my way across the road. They are taking my place while I head to Ohio to speak at a Ladies retreat.

I sure could use your prayer if you would be so kind. Thank you!
Gotta go, don’t want to be late!

It’s a cold, blustery, sunny day here on the Knolltop. The wind is from the west which means the kitchen is cold and you know what that means????? It’s a great day to bake!

One of the comments from a couple of days ago mentioned singing in the silo. I have an idea who that person was who left that comment since there is only one person in this whole world who has ever sung in the silo with me….and that would be my good friend from my childhood, Nancy. She is a special friend in my life, always will be. She and I shared many, many things and one of the best was singing together. It seemed no matter what, the world was our stage. We would sing all the time, but our favorite place was in the silo.

One of us would break out in a Captain and Tennial song (showing our age)I don’t know how to spell it! Invariably it was this one, “Lonely nights, I cry myself to sleep….tell me what am I gonna do…..” I can hear us now, it was so much fun!

So, now I have to ask, are there any other farm girls out there who did that? Who stood in the silo and sang their heart out? Hearing their voice echo? Enjoying the time all by yourself with no one around to hear you? Come on…fess up!

Yesterday with all the busyness I was still able to get two columns written, now this morning I’ve got another one to write and off to the grocery store, after chores of course!

It’s been a busy day here on the Knolltop. My schedule was interrupted when I was asked to go get hay. When I got back I helped finish up chores all while knowing I had to do my Holstein International Column. They have to get it to the interpreters before Friday and of course in Holland they are 7 hours ahead of me. So…deadlines are a little crazy when you write for an international magazine.

And of course I don’t have microsoft Word on my computer because of…well those computer issues a couple of weeks ago….so I begged Russell Gammon to paste my column into a Word document so he could spell check it and count the words. I can’t be over 350 words with this column….so we are in the middle of emailing back and forth the column for me to edit…now this is crazy!

And of course he only agreed to do it so he could read the column first and because Russell is Russell, he had to send commentary along with the spell checked column. He’s a mess!

So, as I write, I’m waiting for the great Rustico to send it back to me so I can pare it down if I need to and I have to be in the barn in four minutes….all these deadlines…..they govern my world! I need a place without deadlines!

All is well on the Knolltop….just busy running errands and helping the boss.

Just haven’t gotten to the computer yet….but I will….some time.

Another lazy, sunny day here on the Knolltop.

Okay, okay, so now I must confess before Joe Schmoe gets the wrong idea that dairy farming is a breeze and then goes out and buys a farm and a bunch of cows, floods the milk market worse that it already is and discovers I mislead him and then takes me to court for giving false testimony on a blog!

For the record we milk our cows twice a day, I’ve never gotten a professional massage, pedicure, manicure or mud pack. My boys were livid when they discovered I wrote about them getting a mud pack and massage and couldn’t believe I would write something like that. (Obviously they never read this blog!)

I don’t have any hired help when the boss goes away, that’s why we had children. (JOKE)

The kids have been getting up early on their days off and this morning they were dragging. I’d have to say that Sarah is the most punctual, she has been out there at 6 am every morning. And I’ll also add that she doesn’t wait to be asked to do something, she sees what needs to be done and just does it. I love that in a kid! Well, the boys are good about that too, but it took them a lot longer to learn it.

Furthermore, after we got all done with chores, which included a fresh cow and a new bull, I came in from the barn and Sarah was making french toast for breakfast! All I can say is Wow!

Dairy prices may be down and things are going to get tougher but when your kids pitch in and take over without complaint to keep the farm running smoothly…..that is worth more than all the money in the world! I’ll go ahead and say it…..I’m blessed!

The sun rose again this morning on the Knolltop, even though the boss is no where to be found. Yep, Bobby’s gone, I practically had to shove him out the door, but he left at 4:30 am yesterday morning and headed to meet his best friend, Bobby Binger, for breakfast. He called mid morning to check on us…he must have been having a good time, otherwise he would’ve called much earlier to make sure we were getting along without him.

After breakfast and visiting some farms near Clyde, Ohio, he went to Brookview to visit with Eric Havens and ended up spending the rest of the day with the Havens family. They had lunch and then just sat around and visited about old times.

This morning the report was that he was headed south to Delbert Yoder’s farm. I know he’ll have a good time rumbling around in Wayne County.

Meanwhile, back at the Knolltop, we’re surviving without him. I’ve got the cows down to milking once a day so we don’t have to do so many chores. It’s a great program, it leaves so much more time for shopping, eating out, playing games and just laying around. I don’t know why more dairy farmers don’t do it this way!

Better go, we’re headed to the spa where we are getting family massages, Sarah and I will get facials, pedicures and manicures while the boys get their hair cut and faces packed in mud. After that we will head for lunch out and then to an MSU men’s basketball game where we get to sit in VIP seating, right behind the bench so I’m available to Tom for coaching tips. This dairy farming is the life!

14 more days until the launch….of Dairy Agenda Today!

It’s a very sunny morning here on the Knolltop! And I”m loving every minute of it.

Do you ever have those days when your phone doesn’t ring once and it’s quiet all day long? And then the other days when you get interrupted all day and you can’t seem to get anything done? That was my day yesterday. Interruption after interruption. Phone calls, field men, Schwanns man, more phone calls, emails asking for press releases, columns to write, email that won’t go through because it thinks your spam….but through it all, I persevered! I got the column written, the press release done and I did all the maid’s work besides! (She’s really getting on my nerves with this not showing up business.)

So, today I will press on with more writing to finish and phone calls to make and a basketball game tonight. And now it’s time to head back out to the barn and do more chores!

17 more days until the big day!

Through the faint showers of light streaming from the yard light I could see hoof prints tracking through the front yard as I made my way across to the barn this windy, cloudy morning on the Knolltop.

Since the tracks were small, I knew it was the heifers that had been partying all night long. And sure enough when I walked into the barn, Bobby met me with a flashlight and said, we’ve got heifers out somewhere. He hopped in the van and I went on foot, looking for the elusive bovines. There at the bottom of Horse Hill was one springing heifer and lucky for me, the gate was open behind her so I just chased her through the gate and closed it behind her.

We had four younger heifers to put back into their pen and with that, we were done chasing. Apparently they had run around all night long and were happy to be back home by the time we got out there to milk. At that point, I was happy we had an aged dog that didn’t hear a thing all night. Otherwise she would’ve woken us up and we would’ve been out chasing cattle by moonlight. Thank God for old dogs!

Good Morning from a rainy but warm knolltop.

The kids had a two hour delay this morning because of fog, so I’m just now getting to the dishes and other routine matters of my wonderfully, exciting day. Which reminds me, it’s way too quiet in here. Yep, the washing machine isn’t going, I forgot to start the laundry.

Last night we traveled to Tekonsha and Luke’s team won , while JW’s team lost. Luke was tackled a couple of times in the process, it was a very rough game. In fact at one point he was slammed against the wall, they actually called a foul that time.

I finally saw my column and how it looks in Holstein International. We received our February issue yesterday. Now I’m formulating what to write about for March and I have an idea, which is strange for me to have an idea ahead of time.

Well, since the kitchen is full of dishes and I have to actually wash them myself because the maid called in sick…I’d better go!