dairy and tales: on the Today show.....

dairy and tales: on the Today show.....: Every morning after feeding calves and eating breakfast I go online to read quickly up on dairy news that has been emailed to me. Today it w...

on the Today show.....

Every morning after feeding calves and eating breakfast I go online to read quickly up on dairy news that has been emailed to me. Today it was brought to my attention that there was a little thing about dairy and loosing weight on the Today show so I clicked on the link and watch the little clip. It explains how dairy can be a part of a healthy diet and losing weight but only if you watch what you eat and don't add on a lot of calories by eating more dairy. I guess we need the today show to point that one out to us. To tell us you wont lose weight if you eat already 1000 cal a day more then your body needs and add some more ice cream to it .Duh, as much as I would like to promote a diet that is only made up out of butter, ice-cream, cheese and whole milk it is common sence to me that you should eat a little bit of everything  , eating only dairy is not good, just like eating broccoli only is not good either. Start the day with some yoghurt and cereals , eat a cheese sandwich for lunch, cookies and glass  milk for snack and eat ice cream for dessert. Add fruit and veggies and some meat  and there you have your variation .

I tried to put the link here but my computer skills are not that good So here is was was said on the show

However, pointed out Madelyn Fernstrom, diet and nutrition editor for the Today Show, there is a big “if” attached to that.

“The ‘if’ is you have to be in a calorie-controlled diet to begin with,” she said. “You have to trim your calories. So, it’s not magically adding dairy to what you already eat and adding calories. It’s replacing some of the calories you eat with dairy foods, low- and non-fat.”

Studies continue to show there is an association between dairy products and weight loss, Fernstrom pointed out, but she couldn't pinpoint exactly what it is about milk that causes that. "It could be the protein, it could be the milk solids, the stuff that makes milk white; there's a lot of stuff in milk other than calcium," she said. (See video above.)

http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/47040363#47040363

We have a lot of people tour our farm, retired farmers, grandparents with their grandchildren, rotary clubs and school classes. But nobody has ever asked me why milk is white. The answer in the interview made me look into it some more and yep milk is white because of the milk is rich in calcium= casein that helps contribute to milk's white color. In addition , the cream that is found in milk contains white colored fat.
Next week we will have the 8th graders out here for a tour for career day so at least I will be prepared for that question. Now I only need to come up with a good answer for the question if brown cows give chocolate milk ........(will be continued )

dairy and tales: Miracle of live

dairy and tales: Miracle of live: Sometimes when I talk to people about working and living on a dairy farm I realize how many things that are normal for me , are not that nor...

Miracle of live

Sometimes when I talk to people about working and living on a dairy farm I realize how many things that are normal for me , are not that normal for the non farmers out there. One of those things is that a lot of people don't realize  that a cow , in order to give milk, needs to give birth to a calf first. Therefore if you have a lot of cows on your farm you will have a lot of calves too.
Taking care of those newborn once is how I start my day.
So Monday morning when  I got out there mother nature had a little surprise for me. Most of the time cows give birth to one calf at a time, sometimes we have twins and very seldom triplets.
Twins can be identical or not, boys and girls or a mix. Well this week the mix was rely special and something that I did not see for a long time. One of our older cows gave birth to non identical twins, both bull calves. Nothing special I hear you think. Well the special about those two bulls was that they both had a different color; one was almost black and the other one looked more like a deer.

The calf's where born during the night so the mom is not in the picture but she is a black and white Holstein cow.
Sometimes it doesn't take a lot to put a smile on your face and start your workday with a whistle. This morning was one of them..........

back in time, january 1999

This week it will be thirteen years ago that we packed up all our belongings and moved to Michigan to start our dairy farm. It was long in the making and it took a lot of sleepless nights and tough decisions

before we made the call : yes lets do it, lets give it a try. We thought that the hard part was over when the decision was made but that was when the work started. My husband Geert flew on a regular basis to the US to check out farms that where for sale, talk with other Dutch farmers who made the move and meet with people at the MSU extension office to get a better feel about what it would mean to become a dairy farmer in Michigan. In the meantime there was the farm in the Netherlands that had to be dealt with; land that was sold to Geerts brother and cows that went up for auction. Dealing with our oldest daughter who was eight at the time and who did not wanted to move . Also dealing with our son who has special needs and had a hard time understanding all the changes that where about to happen. Trow in our youngest one who would trow tantrums on a daily basis , just because she was in her terrible two's and could. A lot of times I would scratch my head and wonder....And even when we where excited about things to come we where dreading the day we had to say goodbye to our loved ones, relatives and friends. 

After a few month my husband heard about this farm that was up for sale in the Thumb of Michigan. A few weeks earlier the State of Michigan , who had an office in Brussels Belgium, send me this book that had all kinds op maps of Michigan in it. One map would show all the highways and another for example all the universities and I told my husband after studying this book that is was not gone live Up North and not in The Thumb because there was nothing else. Well it seemed that this farm in the Thumb had everything we where looking for so a few weeks later my husband , a good friend and myself flew out to Michigan to check out the place. When we landed they told us it was extremely cold in Michigan and we laughed about it. But when we where waiting for the shuttle bus to bring us to the car rental I was already opening my suitcase and putting all the warm clothes I could find and the next morning our first trip was to a local store to buy , gloves, hats and warm boots. 

We traveled to the Thumb of Michigan and met with the owner of the farm and ended up making an offer. We saw a lot of farmers struggle with the cold and all the snow. I never saw so much snow in my whole life ! We learned a lot. After ten days I was more then ready to leave the snow and cold and go back to my kids . By then the owner had excepted our offer . Back in the Netherlands, the long process of filing the right paperwork began and the next few months we stayed busy with that till finally we could go to the US Embassy in Amsterdam to pick up our visa . On April 12th 1999 we boarded the plain to fly to Detroit and that became the first day of the rest of our lives.

My first attempt

After reading a lot of blogs the last few weeks I think I am ready to start my own and share with the rest of the world what it means to live and work on a modern dairyfarm. But please bare with me because this is all new to me and I guess I have a lot to learn .