It’s Almost Baby Time!

……..yes, we have many, many calves due to be born in the coming months BUT, I happen to be referring to HUMAN baby time! It’s true, my husband and I are expecting our first child, a little girl, sometime in the next 2 -4 weeks!

Pregnancy has slowed me down quite a bit – hence my disappearence from this blog! Thought I’d take a few minutes to update before life gets REALLY crazy once baby arrives.

Things are going great at the farm. We’ve got 35 acres of our corn planted (about half done) and we just mowed our first cutting of hay. Beef calving season is pretty much over, but most of our dairy calves are due to be born in July, August, and September this year. The guys are keeping super busy caring for all our dairy cows – we’ve been milking a record number of at least 70…..though we’ve started drying off a number of them in the past month as they prepare for the birth of their calves (they get the last two months of their pregnancy off …….pre-maternity leave of sorts.) 🙂

We are hosting Country Pumpkins at our farm again this fall! We’ve been in the planning stages since January and are getting really excited about all the fun times ahead. We were blessed with a wonderful 2012 season and hope to continue to build on that growth. Can’t make any formal announcements YET, but we’ve got several FREE Special Events in the works that will be scattered throughout our September 13 – November 3rd season. I’ve been working on updating our brochures, flyers, and website to get a head start before the baby comes.

 

Recipe: Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream

There’s no better way to celebrate a scorching hot 4th of July than with a fresh batch of homemade ice cream…..which is exactly what we did yesterday! I’ve had several friends request this recipe that I’m sharing with you today. You may be getting this a little too late to include in your 4th of July celebrations, but lucky for you, July is National Ice Cream Month! I seriously need to hug whoever thought that one up. 🙂 Ice cream is my number one weakness of all time. I eat it almost everyday – at least once!

This recipe comes from a cookbook by Thomas R. Quinn called “Old-Fashioned Homemade Ice Cream”. My mom picked this up for me at an Amish store in Holmes County, OH a couple of years ago. These recipes are simply the BEST homemade ice creams that I’ve ever had in my life. Leftovers freeze amazingly well (anybody ever had the kind that turns hard as a rock when frozen in the freezer?) and scoop out just like store-bought ice cream.

If you try it, please let me know how much you loved it. 🙂

Strawberry Ice Cream

• 2 2/3 cups granulated sugar
• 4 eggs
• pinch of salt
• 3 cups whipping cream
• 3 cups mashed, sweetened strawberries (about 1/4 cup of sugar will sweeten berries) OR you can use thawed, pre-sweetened strawberries from the freezer section of your grocery
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice (not necessary if you use pre-sweetened strawberries from the freezer section)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• whole milk as needed (about 5 cups)

In a large pan combine the sugar, eggs, and salt. Add the whipping cream and cook the mixture over medium-low heat, stirring constantly to avoid scorching. Remove from heat when the mixture coats the back of a spoon (about 180 degrees). Refrigerate. When cool, add the vanilla.

If using fresh strawberries, either dice strawberries into very small pieces or slice and mash them. Add the lemon juice and enough sugar to sweeten (about 1/4 cup). Refrigerate at least 1 hour to allow the sugar to blend with the strawberries.

When ready to freeze ice cream, add the strawberries to the cream-sugar-egg mixture. Pour into an ice cream freezing can and add whole milk to bring the mixture up to 3/4 full. Freeze in a home ice cream freezer. Makes about one gallon.

Note: I use a 6 qt White Mountain ice cream freezer so I don’t fill to 3/4 full because this recipe is written for a 4 qt freezer. Also, I used raw milk from our cows which has a bit higher fat content than “whole milk” so I used 2 1/2 cups of whipping cream and  5 1/2 cups milk to compensate. In addition, I added the milk at same time I added the cream and cooked to 180 degrees. This is not necessary to do – I’ve made it both ways – BUT I felt this may have given the ice cream an ever creamier texture.

Social Media Interview Published in Progressive Dairyman!

If someone would have told me two and a half years ago when I started the Alpine Hills Dairy Farm Facebook page that it would one day have been mentioned on the radio, the DFA Leader Magazine, and now the Progressive Dairyman magazine I would have laughed my head off! Really??? When I got the idea to start the page, I knew very, very little about dairy farming. My husband and I had been married just a few months (we were not working at the farm at the time) and with all our visits to the farm I thought it would be a fun place to share pictures and updates. I felt that it would really be something that people who didn’t live on farms would enjoy reading and learning about. That seems like it has turned out to be true!

As time has gone on, and we starting working at the farm full-time (celebrated our 2nd anniversary working here last week!) I have been able to learn more first hand about dairy farm life and have been here to take more pictures to share. I have absolutely LOVED having the opportunity to manage the Facebook page! Thank you to all our loyal fans who continue to give me such great feedback and encouragement. 🙂

Below is the link to the article recently published online and in print in the Progressive Dairyman magazine. Special thanks to Emily Caldwell for taking all my jumbled thoughts (I get super excited talking about social media! Ha!) and putting them into one cohesive article. She did such a fabulous job and it was a great opportunity to get to meet her! Click the picture below for the link to the entire article or click here.

Surprise! Barrel Trains

Last month at the Dairy Farmers of America Annual Meeting in Kansas City, MO my husband and I by chance (or more like Providence 🙂 ) met a wonderful couple who have changed our farm tour business forever. Upon meeting this couple we found out that they operate a pumpkin patch and tours on their farm in Conway, MO called Gunter Farms Pumpkin Patch. I, of course, piped right up and started peppering them with questions and exchanging ideas about our dairy tour / pumpkin farm businesses.

What an amazingly sweet couple they were! They stood and talked to us for almost two hours about the in’s and out’s of their pumpkin patch operation. One thing that we were especially excited about was the Barrel Train rides that they offer – we had seen these in action before and thought they were SOOOO COOL! They told us that their son designed and built these for their farm. My husband got the son’s number and called him right away. Fast forward a month, and woah-la………we are now proud owners of 12 super fun barrel train cars!!!!

On Wednesday, we were able to surprise our first Spring Dairy Tour group of the season (140 kindergarteners) with our brand spankin’ new barrel trains!  What a hit they were! We are so excited to be able to share them this fall as well during Country Pumpkins with our guests where we will be offering Barrel Train rides (for kids) along with hayrides for the whole family. It’s an exciting year ahead!

To view the photo highlights of our first Spring Dairy Tour at Alpine Hills Dairy Farm of the season, click here.

An Exciting Opportunity!!!

Last week I had the exciting opportunity to guest blog for the Friends of Elsie Borden Cheese Blog!

Borden Cheese is not only delicious,  it is 100% farmer owned – that means when you buy Borden Cheese 100% of the proceeds go back to American dairy farm families! Pretty cool, huh?

I would be so honored if you took a moment to read my post on the Friend of Elsie blog that was published yesterday. Click this link to check it out! http://www.friendsofelsie.com/friends-of-elsie/blog

Many thanks to DFA for recommending me, and to Kelly Goss, Director of Public Relations at Sullivan Higdon and Sink in Kansas City for helping this blog post become a reality.

“Funny Cow Photo: “Wet Willy”

Source: Uploaded by user via Shelley on Pinterest

What a success our first “Caption This” Contest was that we held on our Alpine Hills Dairy Farm Facebook page! We had many hilarious captions submitted for this cow photo that I took last week. It certainly was one of those lucky moments when I snapped the photo at JUST the right time!

Last night we announced the winner of the Caption Contest, our fan Katie Taylor, who submitted “Wet Willy” for our photo. I pinned the photo to Pinterest, and I’ve already had around 95 repins and over 20 likes! How fun! Glad to see that everyone thinks Katie did as great of a job as we thought she did! 🙂

To pin this photo to your own Pinterest account, click the photo above or click the “Pin It” button below.

DFA Member of Distinction Video

Dairy Farmers of America and SC Motion and Stills, LLC did a fantastic job producing this video about our farm and our story as part of the DFA 2012 Member of Distinction award.

If you have a few minutes, please enjoy this video to learn more about us! 🙂

A Princess is Born!

I had the pleasure of watching this beautiful little heifer being born on Monday, March 19th right before my husband and I left for the DFA Annual Meeting in Kansas City, MO.  As I was packing for our trip that day, my husband called and asked me to check on our Holstein Chickadee who was in the process of calving. I have watched a few births in the past almost 2 years that we have been at the farm full-time, but this one was a little bit different. The mama seemed quite unaffected by the whole ordeal. She STOOD and munched on clover all but the last 5 seconds of pushing that baby out. Must have been some GOOD clover! It was a little bit concerning to watch because I wasn’t too anxious to watch a tiny newborn hit the ground! I was relieved to see the mama go down right before Cinderella slid the rest of the way out.  ha ha!

My husband says I saved the baby’s life by taking time to watch the birth for him. I kept in communication with him and was able to get him there as soon as she was born to remove the birth sac that happened to be covering her nose and mouth. (In all reality HE saved her life, because I certainly would not have known what to do! ha ha) He had to work with her a minute to get her breathing which was so terrifying to watch. She was just a little lifeless, completely still little body until I heard her take her first breath. That was absolutely the most beautiful, joyful moment you can imagine!!!

We decided to name her Cinderella sticking with the “C” theme of her mama’s name. She is now 9 days old, eating good and playing hard!

An Amazing Award

With our field rep, Dave Moore.

Late late summer, we received a HUGE surprise! We were informed that we were selected as our dairy co-op’s (Dairy Farmers of America) Mideast Area Member of Distinction! We were thrilled of course, but honestly had no idea what that meant!  Ha! It truly has been a great honor and a fun experience starting with a photo shoot they came to our farm and did last October.

This past Monday – Wednesday DFA flew us to Kansas City, MO where we attended their 2012 Annual Meeting. Tuesday night my husband and I were honored to be able to accept the Member of Distinction award on behalf of Alpine Hills Dairy Farm and the Colson family. After waiting 5 months since the farm photo shoot they did for us, Tuesday night we were finally able to see some photos and a wonderful video they put together about the farm! It was very special. I so enjoyed listening to the 6 other Member of Distinction stories as well and learning about the outstanding things that they are doing on their farms.

Click here to view more photos of our farm and family from the DFA Member of Distinction photo shoot! I should have access to the video DFA put together about our farm in the next couple weeks.

We were so thankful to be able to attend the DFA Annual Meeting for the first time……for me the people were really the best part. We had a number of wonderful people come introduce themselves to us and share their knowledge. We are truly thankful.

Our family photo as part of a display at the DFA Meeting.

Our reserved table at the banquet.

With our field rep, Dave Moore.

We drank a ridiculous amount of chocolate milk while at the meeting!

Just a portion of the products that milk from our DFa co-op goes into!

Dean (my father-in-law’s) photo in one of the programs at the DFA meeting.

Kansas City Bound!

In just four days my husband and I head to Kansas City, MO for the Dairy Farmers of America Annual Meeting! We are excited to experience this event for the first time – and all expenses paid makes it even better! Last fall, we found out that our dairy farm, Alpine Hills Dairy Farm, was selected as a DFA Member of Distinction. It was hilarious at the time because we all had no clue what that meant or how we even won the award! We were and still are very honored to be chosen for this.

As part of the experience, DFA flew out a writer, and a photographer and his assistant to our farm last October. The writer, a sweet lady named Kara, interviewed each one of us to gather material for the article that will be published in the DFA Leader magazine sometime this spring. The photographer, Shaun Cloud, and his assistant Johanna, spent the entire day (at least 8 hours) filming and taking photos of the farm. They did anything for a great shot: climbed fences, laid in the mud, and even got licked but a few of our friendly Brown Swiss cows! They even came back a second day and shot photos and videos of one of our Country Pumpkins Dairy Tours in action! We have not seen any of these photos or videos yet (5 months is a LONG wait!) but I hear they want to surprise us with them at the convention next week. On Tuesday night there will be a banquet where they will play each of the Member of Distinctions’ videos and display some photos.

I plan on documenting this upcoming Annual Meeting experience from my trusty iPhone to our Alpine Hills Dairy Farm Facebook page. To get in on the updates, visit www.fb.com/alpinedairy and “like” our page. 🙂

Here are some “behind the scenes” photos of our Member of Distinction experience so far……

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