Dear Dairy Diary

Avalin Miller
16 years old
Parents: Dan and Karen
Kellogg, Minnesota
Wabasha County

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

Tuesday, July 29

This morning my alarm went off at 7, but I didn’t get out of bed until 7:15. After finally getting up, I went downstairs into the mudroom to get my barn clothes out of the dryer. I put them on and headed outside to the barn for morning chores.

When I got to the barn I was greeted by my dad, who was already milking cows in our tiestall barn, and my two red heeler dogs, Chester and Chelsea. I then headed to the milkhouse, where I started filling up pails for the water calves. I had to carry the pails to the calves in the lean-to shed and the other calves in the calf barn. After they were done drinking their water, I made sure they were bedded with fresh straw and had grain for the day.

When I was finished with the water calves, I moved on to mixing milk replacer for the calves that are between the ages of getting colostrum or water. Once I was finished with those calves, I waited for my dad to get fresh milk for all the new bottle calves.

After I had all the calves fed and my dad was done with milking, I fed all the cows in the barn for the evening milking shift. At around 10 a.m., when everything was finished in the barn, I went back to the house to shower and get ready for the day. After I was done showering, brushing my teeth, and getting dressed, I headed downstairs to make my breakfast/lunch, which was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on homemade sourdough bread from my sister-in-law.

After I finished eating, I went to the laundry room to put in a load of clothes. Then it was back outside to check our raspberry bushes, but no luck finding any berries. My sister Ellie had the day off from work, so we went to the garden to pick zucchini to try a new relish recipe. We canned nine pints and let them seal.

After helping clean up the canning mess, I headed up to my room to start packing for my Costa Rica trip, coming up next week. I am leaving on Friday with my Spanish class from school and will spend eight days there. After getting most of my packing done, I relaxed and watched TV for a bit.

At 4:30 it was time to go back out for afternoon chores, but before heading out, I transferred my load of laundry to the dryer and then went to the barn. I repeated the same calf feeding process as the morning routine.

After the calves were all fed and content again, my 4-year-old niece, Aida Jo, and 1.5-year-old nephew, Tucker, came out to help me with the rest of the chores. We had a bad storm that hit the night before, so I took them to the back yard where we picked up all the apples that had fallen on the ground. We took all the apples we picked up back to the barn for the cows to eat.

After we were done throwing the apples in the feed bunk, my niece and nephew started filling up feed pails with high-moisture corn for me while I carried the pails to feed cows in the barn for the next morning. After the evening milking and chores were done, I got back in the house around 7:30 and headed for another shower. After getting cleaned up I went back downstairs to make mac and cheese for dinner. After dinner around 8, my dad and I sat down in the living room to watch a couple of episodes of Survivor. At 10:30, I brushed my teeth and headed to bed.