We have reached Grandma status!

My Grandma McCollum is who started our family dairy.  This year marks the 52nd year that we have been milking.  Dad has always told us that they had to start the dairy because six kids was too many.  Either way my grandmother was awesome at taking care of her milk cows.  She continued milking until I was a toddler I think, then it just became too much for her physically.  Up to this point she had 150 head of milk cows and milked them everyday twice a day.  The milk man was picking up 10,000 pounds of milk every pick up which was every other day.  We get paid by pounds, but 10,000 pounds is a little over 1,100 gallons of milk.  This much milk meant we were very productive and ever since my grandmother passed away 6 years ago it has been my dad's goal to get back to that point. 

Last week we got back to that point! It is the most milk that I've ever had picked up since I came back to the farm two years ago.  I had three 10,000 pound pick up's last week and my last one was just barely under because we had a few thunderstorms come through the area.  Storms can mess with milk production since it can stress out the cows. 

The reason this is so awesome is because we are hitting that benchmark with less cows.  I am currently milking 109 cows :) I've got an excellent mix of older cows and younger cows at this point and as you can see my milk production shows that. 

So far 2014 has been a rough year.  On top of everything that I went through Josh lost his Grandpa a few weeks ago and then over this past weekend we found out that someone stole 8 of my dairy heifers that I fattened up last summer.  In some ways it's been one bad thing after another and in other aspects, like the milk production, we are kicking ass. 

May is always the busiest month of the year for us.  With my two younger sisters still in school we have graduation's.  Brenda will be graduating from high school this month and she also went to China the first week of May to compete for Junior Team USA.  Amid all the stuff going on the farm is still chugging along and at this point we are pro's at working our schedule's around milking, planting, and everything else that's going on. 

Hopefully our milk production will continue to stay as high as it is and we will get done with planting soon, assuming the weather cooperates.  When we had our first 10,000 pound pick up I texted my sisters telling them that we reached Grandma status!  Hopefully here's to many more of those pick ups!

 

These are my twin babies that are now about 10 days old and they are both still happy and healthy :) In all the bad times there are always still silver linings and happy moments.  You just have to remember to look out for them.