Dayton937

Hello, I’m Holly Michael –  farm wife, mother, blogger , DMM crazy headline writer and communications professional who has worked at some of Dayton’s largest companies. I straddle the sometimes equally stinky worlds of agriculture and corporate life, so you don’t have to.

Our son joins the farm marketing team. He's our direct mail guru.

Farming is hard work and most people understand this. But farming is also a business.  My farmer husband is worried about the same things as most small family businesses: inventory, keeping the bills paid, retaining and gaining new customers, the competitive landscape, business growth, profits and the price of pig semen. OK, maybe not that last one. While farming isn’t something you do casually—it’s a lifestyle—it is still an occupation.

The point is that our farm needs to market itself and we use some of the same tools that businesses use to reach our customers, find new ones, beat out the competition and generate demand for our products.

We have a pig sale (auction) coming up April 24 in Eaton. Please come and wave your arms around frantically every time you hear that guy talking way too fast.  Also, bring your check book.

Just joking. The auction is geared to young people and parents who are shopping for a pig to take as a 4-H project to the county or state fairs. There are several auctions just like ours that also offer pigs for the fair.

To stand out, we advertise our sale in pig magazines. Yes, there are pig magazines. We also have a Web site: www.bonavistafarm.com that has seen its traffic significantly increase since we started buying Google ads and placed a banner ad at www.showpig.com.

We not only advertise the date of our sale but we use customer testimonials. Photos of smiling kids holding a trophy next to their pig goes a long way to letting customers know that buying at our sale gives you the opportunity to become a champion.

Behind the scenes at our high-tech marketing operation.

We are also sending out a direct mail to our customer database.  As sophisticated as that sounds, let’s not get carried away, the mailer consists of a copy of one of our ads folded by my husband and labeled by his two chief helpers.

I just think it’s important to point out that farming is a business.  Like any industry, there are trade shows, fierce competition, influential leaders and controversy. So if your annual budget has a line item for boar studs and you get up in the night to check and make sure your inventory hasn’t run off, then you know what it’s like to run a small business like ours.

Agricultural Terminology 101

Hello, I’m Holly Michael – farm wife, mother, blogger , DMM crazy headline writer and communications professional who has worked at some of Dayton’s largest companies. I straddle the sometimes equally stinky worlds of agriculture and corporate life, so you don’t have to.

Every industry has its own lingo. Let me take you behind the scenes of agriculture to better understand our language and culture. This way, you’ll have something to say to that guy who shows up on the undeveloped edge of your cul de sac with a tractor.

Livestock:
Cattle – cow (female that has had a calf), heifer (virgin cow), steer (future steaks), bull (big daddy with all his parts intact), also bovine

Sheep – ewe (female), weather (future gyro), ram (see bull), also dumbest animals ever

Pigs/hogs – sow (female that has had a litter of pigs), gilt (virgin pig), barrow (future sausage), boar (see bull), also swine

Crops:
Corn – grown in fields to be used as livestock feed and for commercial products. Field corn is vastly different from sweet corn grown in gardens.

Soybeans – short bushy green plants that produce pods. Harvested in the fall for livestock feed. Endamame is the name of the fresh green soybeans eaten in Asian cooking – they are a separate plant, not commonly raised in greater Dayton.

Wheat – grain harvested on the hottest day of the summer when the term “amber waves of grain” starts to apply. Straw is the stem of the wheat plant, commonly baled and used as livestock bedding or to keep your grass seed from blowing away.

Hay – grasses and clover grown in fields and mowed and baled multiple times over the summer. Each harvest is referred to as a “cutting.”

Equipment:
Livestock Trailer – used to haul farm animals. Farmers are contractually obligated to peer inside trailers they pass on the highway to see what’s inside.

Combine – harvester used for corn, soybeans and wheat. Uses different heads, depending on the crop. Some combines are so large that they haul their head behind them on a trailer when they use the roads.

Gravity wagon – tall-sided wagon built wide at the top and narrow on the bottom—uses gravity to dump its cargo of grain at the elevator.

Where to find a farmer:
Grain elevator – easily located facility, the hub of small town America, where farmers bring their grain to be stored in giant bins. The elevator usually sells feed and serves as a local hangout for farmers, offering free pancake breakfasts and celebrating “poop day.” (A real event I did not make up.)

County Fair – A weeklong celebration of all things agriculture. Farm families don’t visit the fair—they live it. An important time for farm families to celebrate their heritage and show off their livestock, crops and gardens. The Montgomery County Fair is always on Labor Day weekend.

4-H Meeting – Most farm kids are involved in 4-H, a national youth organization founded in Ohio more than 100 years ago. The four H’s are head, heart, hands and health – part of the 4-H pledge. 4-H’ers are not only farmers these days, including kids who take a variety of projects like art, cooking, sewing, and science to be evaluated at the fair.

You might not be ready for the Farm Science Review but this guide should help you converse with any farmers you run into while waiting in line to buy organic couscous at Dorothy Lane Market.

So just remember, during harvest you can dump your gravity wagon at the elevator, but follow this advice: never stay for the pancake breakfast when it falls on poop day.

Hampshire piglets stay warm under a heat lamp.

Answers to your most pressing agricultural questions from a real Dayton area farm wife

Hello, I’m Holly Michael –  farm wife, mother, blogger and communications professional who has worked at some of Dayton’s largest companies. I straddle the sometimes equally stinky worlds of agriculture and corporate life, so you don’t have to.

So how did you end up living on a farm near Dayton? Where did you meet a farmer?
I grew up in Jackson Township (contrary to popular belief, people living on the outskirts of Centerville did not invent townships), which is near Farmersville and Valley View Schools. I was a 4-H member but didn’t live on a real farm. I met my husband, a full-time farmer, where else, but the Montgomery County Fair. We live on a 100-acre crop and hog farm only 15 miles from the Dayton Marriott. We have three adorable children who have long ago gotten over giggling every time a pig poops.

How many pigs do you have on your farm? Do you sell them to Bob Evans?
The number of pigs on the farm varies by season. In the winter, many of the piglets are being born, so we swell to about 500 pigs. We raise purebred hogs that have papers through a registry, just like dogs or horses. Farms like ours are the “quality control” of the swine industry. We focus on raising lean, muscular, easy-moving hogs that we sell to other farmers and exhibit at the State Fair and other national shows. These pigs will go on to be the breeding stock (parents) that produce the pigs that end up in the grocery.

I love pigs. Will you let me have a baby pig to be my pet?
Pigs grow fast. They weigh about two pounds when they are born but in six months, with proper nutrition, they are fully mature and weigh 250-280 pounds.

Why are pigs always so muddy?
Pigs are actually quite neat and can be easily trained. If they have a basically clean pen, pigs will designate one area for sleeping, one for eating and one for pooping. Unlike sheep and cattle, pigs can be trained to open their own feeder to eat when they wish and push on a nozzle with their nose to get water. Pigs can’t sweat, so when they get hot they need to cool off and get their skin wet. When pigs were kept outdoors in open lots, the best thing they had was shade and a mud hole. Our pigs love to get sprayed with the hose when they are really hot and so do the farm kids.

What do you raise on your farm besides pigs?
We raise corn to use in making our own pig feed and we raise soybeans as a cash crop. We also grow hay. Note that hay is clover and other grasses, grown in a field and mowed and baled multiple times over the summer. Hay should not be confused with straw which is a by-product of wheat and by some unwritten law of agriculture must be harvested on the hottest day of the year.

Is it difficult to work in a corporate environment by day and be a farm wife on evenings and weekends?
I try to be an ambassador of agriculture as the “token farmer” that many people have ever met. Once I held a contest among my co-workers in three states to name our new boar (male pig). I have had many bosses who were puzzled when I said I needed time off to travel to the World Pork Expo. My kids love living on a farm and I can’t think of any better environment to raise them to be curious and independent.

That’s all the time we have folks. Tune in next time when we will  have the balls to discuss the difference between a boar, a ram and a steer. Got any pressing agricultural questions? Leave them in the comments and I will try to answer them as honestly and humorously as I can.

Wait! Before you go, who is having sex with the chicken?
The rooster has sex with all of them.

My thanks to Seinfeld’s Mr. Costanza for the inspiration for this column and confirmation that no agricultural fact is too minor to share.