Corn Harvest…

In the spring we plant the seed with the hope of moisture, sun light and growth…

With a bit of grace from God, combined with a bit of help to control the weeds…

It grows through the summer months…

We water it with sprinklers when the rains do not come…

Or on some fields we use gravity flow irrigation through pipes instead…

All while protecting our natural resources so that they can provide for our family and for you…

It grows to be taller than my “Ivy League Farmer”, and makes seeds and fiber which will nourish both us and our animals…

In the fall, the plant dies and we harvest its spoils…

The Golden Jewel of the Midwest…

A combine harvests the Jewel…

Tall, Strong, Golden

They sway,

in the wind.

Farmer’s pride

Combine time

harvest season is here.

The corn is picked

leaving bare, desolate fields.

Until next summer,

I bid you well, O Corn

the Midwest’s Jewel.

Poem by Ashley Grace

Striving For Sustainability…

Matt’s grandparents moved from Northwestern Ohio to Cozad Nebraska in 1945.  Originally, they were Mennonite alfalfa farmers in the Archbold, Ohio area.  Converted to the Methodist religion, and desiring to travel west, they loaded their family of four (Grandmother Grace, Grandpa Burky, and sons: Dave and Erv) on the Union Pacific Railroad in 1945 to journey to Nebraska.

Grandmother Grace, Grandpa Burky, Dave and Ann with children Matt and Lara, and Dave’s brother, Erv and his wife Chris and daughter Zoe circa 1976…

The original family farm in Nebraska was a “custom” farm where Matt’s grandpa purchased alfalfa “standing in the field” from neighboring farmers, and then dehydrated the plants into alfalfa dehy pellets.  Over the years, Grandpa Burky and Dave (Matt’s dad) were able to purchase some land as well as lease land to farm.  The farm continued to shift in this direction as Matt and I came home to work, and today our farm is based primarily on family owned and leased land.

Today, Matt and I are raising the 4th generation…

The crop farm expanded to include a cattle feed yard in the late 1960’s.  Surrounded by animal feed and successfully established as an alfalfa farmer, Grandpa Burky and his friend, Ray Bates, dreamed of diversifying the farm.  Matt’s dad, Dave, had just arrived home from Stanford Business school and was a major contributor to the expansion along with my favorite 79 year old (Archie Curtice).

Dave and Archie have made a lifetime of memories together…

What began as a few pens now is home to several thousand animals that are fed locally grown crops, and prepared to become the beef that nourishes your family!  Archie’s son, Doug, and I now manage the cattle portion of our farm and work hard to carry on the family tradition.

Today, we have the ability to trace our animals from birth to harvest: an important component in my plan to raise the highest quality beef using the fewest natural resources…Here I am weighing an animal to track his gain performance at the feed yard.

It has been 67 years since Matt’s family got on the train and moved west.  When I look at what our family has built during that time, I am filled with a tremendous amount of pride.  While I have only been lucky enough to spend the last 15 years contributing, I think that what Matt and I do each day is a testimony to what his grandfather began so many years ago.

So what makes up our farm in 2012?

• 1481 acres of organic alfalfa
• 1579 acres of traditional alfalfa
• 617 acres of organic corn
• 966 acres of traditional corn
• 120 acres of traditional soybeans
• 184 acres of traditional wheat
• Approximately 600 acres of cool season grass pasture
• A cattle feed yard that has between 2300-2900 cattle (depending on the time of year)
• 4 horses, 3 dogs, and 7 cats

Much of the traditionally grown corn and alfalfa are fed to our animals in the cattle feed yard.  In addition, the wheat stubble and a good portion of the corn stalks (what is left after harvest) is baled to feed to the cattle.  We blend these home grown feed ingredients with wet distillers grains to grow our cattle and make beef.  We do also purchase some corn from neighbors to augment our personally grown supply.  In a twelve month period, our cattle farm will prepare approximately 5500-6000 animals for harvest.

Traced from birth to harvest, I am proud to feed the beef from this animal to both my family and yours…

In 2006, with the increasing availability of wet distillers grains for our cattle and the growing demand for organically grown crops, Matt decided to diversify our crop farm by including organically certified alfalfa and corn.  The organic animal feed is sold to organic animal farmers across the country.  While this places a limit on the amount of feed that we grow for our own traditionally raised cattle, it opens up a more diverse marketing plan for our farm.

Matt’s alfalfa dehydration plant…

This diversity is a key player in the search for long term sustainability on our farm…I am pretty sure that Grandpa Burky would have never thought that his grandson would raise a blend of crops that included organic feed, or that his granddaughter-in-law would be the Boss Lady at the cattle feed yard.  But, the combination of team work and outside sales of a variety of products allows our farm to better weather the challenges that both Mother Nature and the economy bring…

Pictures From The Farm…

I laugh that if you do not like the weather in Nebraska, just wait five minutes and it will change…We are still dry, but patches of rain are beginning to crop up in our area.  Apparently Mother Nature still remembers how!

How could my heart not be filled with hope as I see this beautiful sight?

God’s paintbrush is incredible. It brings me a sense of peace as well as hope…

In spite of the dry and hot summer, Matt and his crew have been busy growing wheat, alfalfa, corn and soybeans…

The morning sun shines on “wheat straw bales” in the field. Wheat is able to grow with relatively small amounts of moisture, so we do not irrigate our wheat fields…After harvest, we bale the left over plant stalk to feed to our cattle…

This is the field of alfalfa behind my house. It is almost time to cut it again (this will be the fourth cutting)—I can tell because it is starting to get small purple flowers amongst the green leaves. The leaves are a bit smaller than normal due to lack of rain—we do not actively irrigate most of our alfalfa ground…

Today our corn is tasseled and looks pretty good—we have been irrigating the crop since late May so that it has enough water to grow. Some years we irrigate very little, some years (like this one) we are forced to irrigate regularly because Mother Nature does not provide rainfall…

We grow a few (irrigated)  soybeans on our farm as well, but it is a very small percentage relative to our other crops…

We are blessed in the Platte River Valley to have access to irrigation water when it fails to rain.  As long as we are diligent in our care, our crops are able to grow despite the dry weather.  The terrible heat in late June and July was tough on everything, but we are hopeful that harvest will bring the resources that we need to make it through another year.

Thursday’s post will bring an explanation of how all of the different components of our farm (pasture ground, alfalfa, irrigated crops and cattle) all work together to ensure that our farm remains viable despite Mother Nature’s challenges.

My High-Tech Redneck…

There are certainly times when Matt and I use a scoop shovel and a pitchfork as depicted by the main picture in the Business Week article.  However, our farm is no longer as labor intensive as it was in Matt’s grandpa and Archie’s generation.  Machinery and electronic innovation has been prolific over the past 50 years, and this has vastly improved the efficiency of farming.

The early morning sun on one of our corn fields. One of our irrigation pivots is watering the field and can be seen in the background…

I fondly refer to my husband as my high-tech redneck.  It blows my mind when he sits in our living room and turns his irrigation pivots on with his cell phone.

Irrigation pivots are huge sprinklers that move in a circle to irrigate crop ground.  One pivot can irrigate about 140 acres…

Additionally, Matt’s phone is set to automatically call him when a pivot stops working or malfunctions.  The girls laugh that daddy’s girlfriend (the irrigation pivot) calls in the middle of the night and daddy has to go out and see her to fix the problem.

While we still lay pipe to irrigate about 60% of our corn and soy bean acres, the creation of central pivots has eased the labor and increased the efficiency on the other 40% our irrigated farm acres.  Additionally, Matt has surge valves on several of the farms that we still gravity irrigate with pipe.  These valves switch the water periodically between two different sets of gates so that the water is spread more evenly across the field as the water flows from one end of the field to another.

Irrigation pipe that waters one of our corn fields using gravity and the natural slope of the field…These pipes have gates that you can open and close to determine water flow.

Matt took technology one step further this summer with the addition of soil moisture probes on two of our fields.  These probes report electronically on the moisture in the soil so that we only water the crops when they are deficient.  The soil moisture probes have a cellular phone component that sends data to a website every 15 minutes relating the moisture level in the soil.  Matt then accesses moisture graphs via the internet to determine the amount of irrigation (water) needed to grow the crop.

Moisture Sensor Graphs

Raising crops and growing food in 2012 involves a beautiful blend of old school hard work and physical labor and new technology. This allows for increased efficiency and reduces the environmental footprint of that food.

Matt with our favorite 7 year old continuing the tradition…

Matt laughs that he is glad that our farm will never go back to 40 acres and a mule.  I smile every time that we are able to use new technology to protect our farm’s natural resources.  I was never able to meet Matt’s grandpa, but I can envision Burky smiling down from heaven as Matt and I use new science to take our family’s farm into the next generation!

The 21st Century Family Farm…

We are simply two determined people who love the life that we are building…

When I received a phone call from a Bloomberg reporter from Washington DC about two months ago asking for my opinion of the Farm Bill that was circulating throughout Capitol Hill, I had no idea that he would decide to pitch the idea of a article about our farm to his editor and catch a plane to visit our farm near Cozad, Nebraska…

What followed were a volley of phone calls, a long day on our farm in May, a second visit again in June from the photographer, and quite a few more phone calls as the press deadline quickly approached.  I have to admit, I experienced a myriad of emotions during this entire process.

• I was excited that someone thought that our life was interesting enough to write about.
• I was nervous about my ability to share the extent of the love and the personal commitment that Matt and I have toward our farm.
• I was just plain scared of what the end product would look like since I had no control over it.
  

  The next generation of determined Burkholders…

Those of you that follow me on Facebook are aware by now that the article about Matt and I and our farm appeared in the July 2-July 8^th issue of Business Week magazine.

For those of you that have not seen it, here is the link to the story: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-28/the-21st-century-family-farm.  In addition to the story, if you click on the left hand side of the page at the first picture (the one of the Will Feed, Inc. sign) adjacent to the printed story, then you can see the slide show of photos that the magazine chose to use along with the print story.

My farm is both my livelihood and my passion—When you care about something that much it is a very personal thing to share…

Thursday’s post will have my thoughts on the article, the pictures, and what I learned from the experience.  Matt and I shared so much with the magazine’s team while they were with us, and I find it incredibly interesting to see what things resonated with them and ended up in the article.  I would love to hear feed back from you all as well so feel free to comment!

A Sea of Grass…A Bountiful Food Supply!

As I drove around in a jeep across Central Kenya last December, I saw a sea of grass that brought me a sense of déjà vu.  This visual image is a familiar one to me… I see it every time I drive across Nebraska visiting ranches and procuring cattle for my feed yard…

A black rhino wandering through a sea of grass...

In Kenya, much of this grass is used to feed wild animals which drive one of the largest industries in the country: tourism.

Some of my cattle---amidst a sea of grass in Nebraska...

In Nebraska, much of this grass is used to feed millions of cattle which drive the largest industry in the state: beef production.

Nebraska is home to the top three cow counties in the United States which means that we have a very large number of cow/calf ranches where baby calves are born.  Nebraska also ranks 1^st in commercial red meat production and 2^nd overall in all cattle and cattle sales.  This means that there is also a large number of cattle feed yards (like mine) where millions of animals are finished in preparation for harvest, and several packing plants to harvest the animals.  With a reported statistic of 99% family owned and operated the vast majority of these cattle farms are like Matt’s and mine.

Megan learns great life lessons learning the personal responsibility that it takes to care for cattle...

Grass is a wonderful resource which is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also a critical component to raising beef.  Cattle, as ruminant animals, have a digestive tract that is made up of four compartments.  This unique digestive process allows for cattle to be tremendously efficient grass converters. This provides a core component in our effort as farmers to convert a non-edible resource (grass) into a nutrient packed and great tasting human protein source (beef). Because the average beef producing bovine spends the first 12-18 months of his life grazing, and reproductive herds spend their entire lives grazing, it requires a large amount of grass to sustain Nebraska’s herds.

The great converters...

The topographic blend of 23 million acres of grassland (more than ½ of Nebraska’s land mass) with millions more acres of fertile crop ground make Nebraska a truly unique ecosystem.  It is this blend of resources that enables us to be The Beef State.  I mentioned this fact to my girls a couple of weeks ago when they were dramatically exposing their disappointment of being left out of Jason Aldean’s new song The Flyover States…

You see, we may be a "left out" fly over state, but we are The Beef State!

My oldest daughter responded to my proclamation with a toss of her head and an eye roll that both appear to me to be attitudinal actions unique to teenagers…She then remarked, “Yeah, they’ll figure out how important we are when they don’t have anything to eat!”  This is the same child that periodically asks me if I think that she would make a good President of the United States someday—I am thinking that she will require some intense media training before she will be able to successfully infiltrate the world of politics…

I I vastly prefer this expression over the “eye roll” attitude expression…

So, Nebraska has grass…Nebraska has crops (corn, alfalfa, wheat, soybeans)…Nebraska has cattle…We make BEEF! This is our claim to fame…

I have, at times, run across articles and statements that liken corn to something evil.  I am always at a loss when faced with this because I believe corn to be a very diverse and useful plant.

It can be used for many different things...

The main source of grain that I feed to my cattle is something called wet distillers grains and it is made from corn.  It is what is left of the corn kernel after the ethanol has been extracted, and it makes a wonderful feed for my cattle.  We blend it with forages (alfalfa, cornstalks, wheat stubble, or soybean stubble) in order to make a palatable and nutrient balanced diet for the cattle.

Wet Distillers Grains presented by one of my favorite blondes...

In fact, a large percentage of my cattle ration is made up of stuff that is left over.  The wet distillers grains, cornstalks, wheat stubble, and soybean stubble are all things that are left over after the primary harvest of the plant.  Cattle serve a very important purpose with their ability to convert these leftovers into a great tasting human protein source.

A blend of ground corn stalks and wheat stubble that we feed to our cattle shown by my other favorite blonde...

The next time that you look at the beef in the grocery store, remember that cattle are great recyclers, and that there is a good chance that the beef that you are buying came from The Beef State (which you all now know is Nebraska)! 

Fortunately, you can purchase this product from a friendly butcher instead of a teenager who might have a bit of a chip on her shoulder...

Thanks to Certified Angus Beef for sharing their friendly butcher with us!