A Day in the Life of Your Farmer

What I write on our blog hopefully gives you a glimpse into what we do and what we go through. I could give you only the picture perfect idyllic farm life stories and photos, but I wouldn’t be telling you the truth of our life. Yes, we have those moments, but so many more are heartbreaking and soul-crushing, backbreaking and nerve-wracking. Those are the moments I need you to know about.

The first thing you should know is the way we raise our animals is a lot more work than factory farms.  A LOT more work.  It would be soooo much easier to keep everyone in confinement all year.  Our work would be cut by more than half.  But so would the quality of the end product, the quality of their life, and the quality of our life.  So, we put in the work.

So what does a typical day look like? I have no idea. No day has ever been typical.  Almost every day, something goes wrong.  Cattle are out. Something breaks. Something isn’t working. I remember something I need to do RIGHT NOW, so the whole day changes. But if everything went well, this is what our day would look like.

5:30 am Wake up

• Serena drives the morning school bus route
• Fred feeds the pigs and layers
• Breakfast
• Fred either goes to his off-farm job, or we both start our farm work.

8am Start Chores

Meat birds on Pasture (done twice a day for 5-8 weeks)

• Drain 4-6 five gallon buckets of feed, add 3+ lbs. of supplement, mix, fill three 5 gallon water jugs, load it all on a trailer and drive it out to the pasture.
• Unleash the chick-nado from the tractors (seriously, it is like a tornado of chickens when they come out) wait until they calm down and start to forage.
• Fill feeders.
• Move tractor to new grass.
• Change out 5-gallon waterer.
• Overall health check.
• Move chickens back into tractors.
• Do this for all 4-6 tractors.
• If needed, move three 185′ electric netting fences on to new grass.
• Cart all the empty buckets back to the feeding station, refill with grain and water.  Stir all buckets. We ferment our feed, so the 100 pounds we feed a day, doubles with water weight.

Meat Birds in the Brooder (done 3-4 times a day for 3 weeks)

• Drain 3-gallon bucket of food.
• Clean and refill waterers.
• Stir bedding.
• Overall health check.
• Fill feeders and feed chicks.
• Refill feed, water, and stir all buckets.

Layers (done twice a day)

• Check/fill waterers. Replace 5-gallon bottle if needed.
• Drain feed, add supplement, mix, and fill feeders.
• Overall health check.
• Collect eggs; in the morning, at lunch time, before evening feeding.
• Move wagon every day and move ten 185′ electric netting fences every 2-3 weeks.
• Refill feed, water, and stir all buckets

Cows (once a day)

• Move fence if they need more grass.
• Check/fill waterers.
• Overall health check.
• Haul 300 gallon tank to refill waterer.

Pigs (once a day)

• Drain 5-12 feed buckets, add supplement, mix, load into truck.
• Drive next door and carry buckets to pig area.
• Fill feed pans.
• Overall health check.
• Check waterers.
• Fill waterer reservoir if needed.
• Refill feed, water, and stir all buckets

10am-ish -12pm  This is either project time or business time;  gardening, mixing feed/supplement, fence work, brush hog, general clean up from other projects, paying bills, assessing new pasture for cows and pigs, cleaning equipment, building new chicken tractors/feeders/waterers, work on business advertising, inventory, bills, getting ready for market, packaging eggs.

12-1pm Lunch; dishes and/or laundry if needed

1-3pm Whatever project we were working on before lunch, we try to finish.

3pm Serena drives afternoon school bus route

5:00 pm Start evening chores–same as morning chores.

8 pm dinner and bed.

Whew! But then you have to add things in like cutting, baling, and putting up 1000 square bales, butchering chickens, fixing car problems, getting ready for market, going to pick-up feed or meat, laundry, bathing a calf because of rain scald, putting up fence, wrangling an escapee calf, washing feed buckets, dealing with broody hens and chicks, clearing space for a feed delivery, monitoring heat cycles for AI, brushing our working dogs so they don’t have a heat stroke, animal births, emergencies, etc.–the day gets very full, very fast.  There are some days we are so sore everything just takes longer. There are some days I am so overwhelmed everything I do is with tears in my eyes.

When winter comes, we have a break from some chores, but others get more difficult–like breaking a 6″ sheet of ice in a water tank and our bathtub turning into a fermenting station for feed buckets. The layers still get rotated through the pastures daily, while the cattle and hogs can stay a bit longer in theirs.  We hope the tractor doesn’t break down so we can move hay bales.

Some days, we have farm tours, a friend stops by, or our farm photographer comes out.  Those days we get to see our farm through someone else’s eyes. We get to slow down and appreciate all the work we do and all the progress we’ve made.

Through the hustle and bustle, we enjoy what we do and knowing we’re feeding families food that’s healthy and raised with care and respect. It’s long days and sometimes long nights, but we can’t imagine doing anything else.