Here at Hillcrest Farms, we take pride in what we do. The good days, the bad days, the hot days, and the cold days. We take pride in the hard work and dedication we have toward our animals. Three hundred sixty-five days a year, Hillcrest Farms is operating, night and day.
We have staff on site 18 to 20 hours a day. And our lactating cows have voluntary milking systems or robots available for milking 21.5 hours a day. Most people though don’t have a clue what it takes to get milk products from the cow to their table.
I think I have mentioned this before but it still gets to me. While I was attending the YDLI (Young Dairy Leaders Institute), one of our tasks was to ask random students at Arizona State University some questions about milk. The lack of knowledge had me baffled. But, it is honestly not their fault.
Most companies pay huge amounts of money to advertise. I hate to break it to all the farmers out there, but money is tight, it has been tight, and it will be tight for some time, so the chances of putting huge amounts of money toward advertising is next to none.
We as a family decided to come together and do agritourism on our farm. It is one way to get more knowledge about our products to the communities around us. We also have a Facebook page that my dad is very active on. He loves posting pictures and videos of what is going on around the farm.
We hope by doing these things for our community and even more through Facebook people will better understand where these products come from and what it takes to get it to their homes.During our tours, community members will be able to see our robots in operation, with cows coming in and out when they feel like it to milk and get a snack. They also will be able to ride around on our tour wagon to see the whole farm operation.
Mark and Caitlin Rodgers are dairy farmers in Dearing, Georgia. Their “Father and Daughter Dairy Together” column appears every other Thursday on HD Notebook. The Rodgers have a 400-cow dairy that averages 32,000 pounds of milk. Follow their family farm on Facebook at Hillcrest Farms Inc.
