Dear Dairy Diary

16 years old
Parents: Patrick and Erin
Sauk Rapids, Minnesota • Benton County 

Editor’s note: Dairy Star is having dairy kids journal a day in their life on the farm.

Tuesday, July 1

I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and got ready for my half hour drive to St. John’s University for swim practice. No matter the amount of work that needs to be done on the farm, my dad always makes sure there is time for my sports, which are a big part of my life. Whether it’s swimming, football or track, I always find a way to balance the farm and my hobbies. After my practice, I hurried back home to eat a quick breakfast and then made my way to my grandpa’s across the street, where all the youngstock are. He was scraping out the sloppy runways due to the rain the night before. The calves had already been fed and there wasn’t a job for me to do there, so I was tasked with running to the Gilman Creamery for tarp straps to hold up the hydraulic hoses on the silage boxes and then to finish changing all of them from front to rear unload.

The goal for the day was to get started chopping haylage and get as much done as possible so we could leave for the lake sooner for the Fourth of July. After buying the straps, I brought them back to Grandpa’s and finished prepping the boxes. By that time the first of three fields had been merged and was ready to be chopped. I was surprised that the hay was dry enough already, but I was given the green light to take off with a box in the 1086. This is my least favorite tractor to use. It’s hot with no air conditioning, loud, hard to shift and it barely has enough power to pull a full box. I usually don’t have to drive it, but one of our 7140 Magnums was broken, my little brother Alex was driving the second, and my dad’s friend who was helping took the other, so I was left with the short end of the stick. Even with the bad tractor, hauling silage is still one of my favorite jobs on the farm.

The first load went as well as I could hope for. My older brother, Evan, chopped through the windrows smoothly without plugging it up and I was back on the road in no time. I hauled from the field all the way to our second farm outside of Gilman, where our milk cows are. I dumped it at the edge of our old corn silage pile from the fall and Grandpa pushed and packed it with the blade on the front of the Versatile 875. The drive was only nine miles but it takes about 45 minutes to get there with a tractor that only goes 18 mph with a full box. The long drive can get really boring, but at least the radio works, so I have something to listen to. I continued the long drive back and forth all day long.

We hauled seven loads with silage boxes and three loads with the semi-trailer before we switched fields. Thankfully this field was closer and took 10 minutes off my drive. My first load off that field went just as well as the rest, but every good farmer knows you can’t complete any job without some sort of problem. At around 4:30 p.m., all the problems started happening. The chain that drives the conveyor on the semitrailer broke while my dad was unloading, which cost us our fastest vehicle with the biggest carrying capacity and my poor old tractor ran out of coolant and overheated on the side of the road.

My dad came and rescued me with some coolant and I brought the tractor back to the yard. Luckily, Dad’s friend was done for the night, which left one of the Magnums free for me to take. On top of that, we finished the second field with help from my dad’s cousin, Brad, and his semi-trailer. Having one field left that was right on the farm and finally getting a good tractor made me feel so happy and ready to get all the hay done in one day, which I thought wasn’t possible.

But, then I blew a hydraulic hose while unloading my first box. Just great. I hooked up the 1466 to an empty box and went for another load before realizing that the hydraulics don’t work on that tractor either. At this point, I felt like my night was ruined. I was sick of farming, it was now 7:30 and we still had most of a 30-acre field to chop. Usually by that time, I would be sitting on the couch playing video games or lifting, but I was stuck with no tractor and no dinner to keep me going.

Dad replaced the broken hose faster than I thought was humanly possible and I was back in the field and locked in. The only thing that kept me moving was the thought of getting it done so I could leave for the lake the next day. We finally finished the field a little before midnight. When I got home, I took a quick shower, ate some pizza and then crashed on my bed after being up for 17 hours and working for 14 of those hours.

Regardless of the long hours and the seemingly endless problems, it was the fastest we had ever gotten the crop done, and it was a great feeling to have accomplished a task so big.