There are a lot of nitty gritty and not-so-glamorous aspects to running a dairy operation. From the outside looking in, most people’s thoughts on the less-than-ideal aspects of farming would be getting covered in manure and grit constantly, dripping in oil and grease, or even dealing with sick or dying animals. While these types of tasks aren’t the most fun at times, they are definitely part of what farmers sign up for when running their own operation or working on someone else’s farm. Still, there are so many other aspects to farming.
Do you want to know one part of farming (or really just running your own business) that might be the most annoying, exhausting, and downright frustrating of all? The bookwork. I’m talking about all that annoying paperwork, accounting, and record keeping that needs to be done, even when farmers are really just itching to get back to their cows or out into the field.
On our family farm, we’re very lucky my mom is good at these tasks. She might not agree with that, but it’s so true! While she’s active outside milking twice a day and managing our young calves, she is the key to keeping bills paid, insurance up to date, tax paperwork organized, supplies ordered, and so much more. These are the types of tasks that I hope to learn from her in the coming years — partially just to help her out, but also to be proactive when the day eventually comes that someone else will need to know everything going on in the paperwork and filing background.
In 2019, my parents and brother put the farm and assets into a formal LLC partnership to clean up the bookwork and help with transitioning ownership of the farm. This year, it was decided to take the next step by purchasing a group healthcare policy through the LLC so each of us could avoid purchasing independent insurance policies. Something like this takes a tremendous amount of research, phone calls, weighing pros and cons, and, in the end, a lot of paperwork to make things official.
So, in addition to getting busy with the start of planting season and looking in the rearview mirror at the extra bookwork tax season brought, we have all been taking some added time to discuss and look over healthcare options. For a family farm solely running on labor from five adult family members, it seems a little crazy to have a formal business/group healthcare policy, but it will surely be a helpful bonus in years to come.
Keeping all this in mind, I hope that consumers, or those uninvolved in the world of farming, realize that farmers are far more than the haggard, physical laborers that likely come to mind. While we do pride ourselves on many long hours on our feet and doing some extreme heavy lifting, running a farm takes a lot of other everyday skills — from phone work, scheduling, accounting, and computer skills to critical thinking, medical knowledge for the animals, understanding crop sciences, and mechanical skills. Farmers are truly jacks of all trades — or at least a lot of trades.
The author dairy farms with her parents and brother near Hawkeye, Iowa. The family milks approximately 300 head of grade Holstein cows at Windsor Valley Dairy LLC — split half and half between a double-eight parallel milking parlor and four robotic milking units. In the spring of 2020, Molly decided to take a leap and fully embrace her love for the industry by returning full time to her family’s dairy.
