December 2015
Season’s Greetings,
May the Reason for the Season fill our hearts and minds and remain with us throughout the new year. We have had many blessings amongst trials and have much to be thankful for. And how much we take for granted! For December, we are having warm weather, in the 50’s? It doesn’t seem quite right, but hard telling what may come, we’ll appreciate what goes with it. No bad roads (unless you count the mud on gravel roads J) less heating bills. In the Midwest you can expect most anything. Milk production is picking up, the “boys” need to do some triple-batch days. After 8 years Galen decided he needs a change. He is now working for Reiff construction, concreting, brick laying, quite a switch from cheese making. He enjoys it. His work is weather related, has some days they can’t work as much. Yesterday he took a few hours off and plowed gardens, his, ours and Marks. Glad that is finished. I didn’t see it yet, it was dark till I came home last evening. Since he and Mark both have jobs that are slow over winter, they are planning a new venture, custom calving of beef cows. New fences have been put up here on the farm, waterers put in. Hopefully it will work out for the effort put in so far.
On the cheese making side, Joseph, Nathan, Jeff, Tony and Stephen are keeping that going. Some days they start early and leave earlier. They seem to like that schedule. Jeff does most of the supply ordering. Joseph is in charge of the SQF. We passed our third-party audit and the SQF audit. SQF stands for Safe Quality Food and allows us to sell to some more stores. There is lots of paper work involved, some of it seems like nonsense and other is good, it makes us do a better job. Mostly, it is getting used to doing it. Jr and Joseph put a lot of effort into it.