Eight years later

Yesterday marked eight years since Glen and I said "I do."

We celebrated by taking Dan and Monika to Dairy Queen for lunch.

We always do something special on our anniversary, and after several disappointing meals at fancy restaurants, we've settled on an anniversary tradition of dining at DQ. No one is disappointed with their meal, the kids can come along and, since it's usually a lunch date, we don't have to hire a relief milker.

The other anniversary tradition I maintain is jotting down the happenings of the past year in an anniversary book we received as a wedding gift. I'm always amazed at how much happens in a year. And I always find myself thinking during the process, "Whoa, who'd have thought, eight years ago, that we'd be right here in this place at this time?"

That thought went through my head as we sat in the Dairy Queen in Sauk Centre. Dan had chocolate ice cream dripping down his chin. Monika had tears running down her cheeks because she wanted a chocolate ice cream cone of her own and wasn't allowed to have one (the stuff stains worse than cow manure; I did share some of my ice cream with her).

Glen and I just sat there and grinned as we wiped away tears and chocolate ice cream. We were quite the sight, but what I hope the curious onlookers saw was the happiness in our little family.

We have been abundantly blessed these past eight years. And that's worth celebrating every day.

The girls are going to Expo!

The girls (e.g. our cows) are on their way to World Dairy Expo.

No, we didn't all-of-a-sudden start exhibiting cattle.

The ladies aren't riding to Expo in a trailer. They're going as part of the Dairy Star's new display, which will be unveiled tomorrow morning.

A photo featuring Charlotte, Daphne and Tudie is a central part of the display. The folks at the Dairy Star wanted a photo of cows in a pasture, so they asked if they could come out and take some pictures.

I got to see a mock-up of the display last week and, honestly, it was pretty cool to see our ladies right up front.

What's even more cool though, is I'll get to see the display in person. Since the Dairy Star will have it's own booth this year, they needed a little extra help manning the booth. So they asked me and I couldn't say no. (Hmmm... A trip to the greatest dairy show on earth? Three days without chores and children, no less? I didn't take me very long to decide.)

It's been nearly 10 years since I've been to Expo, so, needless to say, I'm really looking forward to this "work". And, finally getting to see our ladies on display.

If you're heading to Expo, stop by our booth (#MC 34, which is on the Main Concourse in the Coliseum). I'll be there Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I'll be the one with the big smile on my face.

Kids and farm chemicals don't mix

Since it's National Farm Safety Week, here are a couple of the ways we've made our milkhouse chemicals more inaccessible to our children:

This is the barrier we constructed to hide our acid and detergent barrels. As far as physical barriers go, this design will not keep children out. But it does provide a good visual barrier. And since the "out of sight, out of mind" principle works well with young children, we've found that this barrier does what we wanted it to. Between the barrier and the child-resistant drum pumps we now use, our milkhouse chemicals are a lot more inaccessible than they used to be.

I also save all of the child resistant caps off of gallon jugs and use them to replace non-child resistant caps on other jugs. For example, our utensil soap comes with these caps, but one of the stronger cleaner-santizers we use comes with a regular cap, so I replace the cap with a child resistant cap from an empty soap jug. Other products that are often left at ground level – like mineral oil, propylene glycol and oral calcium – get child resistant caps, too.

I shared a couple farm safety web sites earlier this week; here are two more good sites:

• National Ag Safety Database

• The National Education Center for Agricultural Safety

I hope you had a safe week!

Farm Safety Giveaway

We have heard several stories this year about small children having unfortunate encounters with milkhouse chemicals. After hearing these stories, we decided it was time to invest in safer pumps for the chemicals on our own farm. 

We replaced the old pumps in our acid, detergent, pre-dip and post-dip with Ezi-Action Drum Pumps. These pumps are equipped with very child-resistant anti-pumping safety straps. The pumps are also easy to use and have a self-draining spout, so no residual fluid is left in the spout.

Because we like these pumps so much, we're giving away two Ezi-Action Drum Pumps (donated by our milking equipment dealer, Champion Milking Systems of Albany, Minn.). To enter the drawing, email your name, address and phone number to gsfrericks[at]meltel.net (replace the [at] with @).

To qualify for the drawing, you must be a dairy farmer and your entry must be received by midnight on Monday, October 4. The drawing will be held, and winners notified, on Tuesday, October 5.

Keeping kids safe

As a farming mom, one of my constant responsibilities is keeping our children safe on the farm. Since this week is National Farm Safety Week, I'll be posting about farm safety all week.

It seems like all of the safety advice we read about is common sense, but I still think it's a good idea to review the information from time to time, especially if you have children whose skills and abilities are rapidly changing. We tend to become accustomed to the risks associated with routine chores and can easily overlook just how dangerous some of those situations could be to our pint-sized helpers.

These sites have good information on farm safety for children, adolescents and adults. To me, some of the advice seems impractical — like making sure adolescent employees change their outer clothes after working with large animals — but most of the advice is sound.

• Farm Safety 4 Just Kids (scroll down to the Farm Safety Fact Sheets)

• Keeping Farm Children Safe 

• Safety Guidelines for Hired Adolescent Farm Workers 

• North American Guidelines for Children's Agricultural Tasks

• Safe Work Practices on Dairy Farms

I'd also like to know... What do you do to keep your children safe on your farm?

(And be sure to check back tomorrow for details about a farm safety giveaway!)