Celebrate National Farm to School Month

October is a perfect month for fieldtrips and farm tours. The Farm to School Program strives to connect schools to local farms, with the objectives of serving healthy meals in schools, improving student nutrition and  promoting agriculture, health and education opportunities to support local and regional farms.


In case you aren't able to visit a dairy farm this month,  here's a few dairy facts I'd like  to share with you   for National  Farm to School Month:

Milk travels from local farm families--to inspection,  processing and pasteurization, to you--in 48 hours or less.

There are 51,000 dairy farms in the United States and 98 percent of them are family owned.

It only takes 5 to 10 minutes to milk a cow on today's dairy farm.

Fresh milk straight from the cow is 101 degrees. Milk is quickly cooled and kept cold at 35-40 degrees F.

A single dairy cow yields about 6 to 7 gallons of milk per day.

Today's dairy farms produce almost three times more milk than farms of 19--and with about half the number of crops.

90 pounds of feed and hay are consumed by a dairy cow each day.

Dairy farming provides 130,000 jobs in the United States.

Water used to clean the milking equipment and barn is recycled to irrigate fields to grow crops.

Manure is recycled and is used by dairy farmers to fertilize their crops and for many of us to fertilize our gardens.

                                            I'll be celebrating with milk--how about you?

Flat Aggie Shares Dairy Facts

Flat Aggie, my friend from California, just loves getting his  picture made on the dairy farm and learning how we work every day to produce high-quality milk. After spending the week on our Arkansas  dairy farm, these are a few facts Flat Aggie wanted to share:

 

 We start the day feeding calves. These babies are fed milk and grain twice every day.

Calves grow up to become the cows that produce milk, so we  make it a priority to get them off to a healthy start.

We milk 260 Holstein cows twice every day. Milk is never touched by human hands.

Milking equipment delivers milk directly from the cows to the refrigerated tank to preserve freshness and safety.

Milk is kept cold until it is transported to the processing plant.

The  cows are fed a nutritious, balanced diet  everyday. The feed ingredients include:hay,corn silage,ground corn, and vitamins and minerals. All of the ingredients are mixed together in the big wagon and delivered to the feed barn for the cows to enjoy.

 

The cows enjoy eating as soon as they leave the milking barn. When finished eating, they return to the pasture to rest.

 

 

It's alot of fun to play in the snow!!