One of my favorite things about my childhood is growing up on our family farm. I have so many sweet memories, some of which include our large red barn that was used to house our pigs. Growing up, my dad raised hogs from farrow-to-finish (from birth to market weight) and ...
Spring is my favorite time of the year. It’s the promise of another crop, the smell of rain on the soil, and the Cubs on the radio. It’s also one of the most hectic times of the year.
We run two planters on our farm, a 16-row high-speed planter and a ...
Most of the time you will see me “around the farm” with my dad, so I thought I would get his input on this month’s article. My dad has been farming forever and is a wealth of knowledge.
This is especially true since farming has changed so much over his lifetime. ...
It’s February, which means our farm is currently hauling corn to the ethanol plant in Rochelle, working on some of our equipment, finishing up the books for 2021 and putting the final touches on our crop plan for 2022.
When we look back at 2021 it was a good, but challenging ...
Many people ask me, "What do farmers do during the winter?"
While things slow down some, compared to harvest and other times of the year, there is still much to do!
One thing that all farmers do in the winter is participate in meetings. This isn’t something I thought of before I ...
Farming is not just a 9 to 5 job. It is 365 days a year and can include long hours for most farmers.
For my family, we are typically wrapping up our harvest field work for the fall and then I begin my winter business of selling pre-cut Christmas trees to ...
I write this with a sigh of relief that the harvest season is over. I am always excited when it begins and just as excited when it ends.
This year things went pretty well, although there always seem to be some challenges or breakdowns during harvest.For the 2021 harvest, our main ...
Biosecurity is an important measure that farmers take very seriously in order to keep our animals healthy.
For hog farmers, biosecurity practices start even before the pigs show up on our farm. Once the pigs are here we continue our biosecurity measures by limiting unnecessary visitors, therefore reducing exposure to possible ...
It's that time of year again when you see the yellow planes out diving over the corn fields! (At least it was when I wrote this at the end of July.) I love this time of year!
Several years ago I started helping one of those crazy guys dive bombing the ...
As a new self-employed hog farmer it can be challenging to get away for a family vacation, however it is something that is important to my family.Stepping away from the farm for a week means finding someone else to complete daily chores, make feed for the pigs and keep a ...
