Not only are we worried about and focused on harvesting and storing food for our animals in the coming months, but we are also in the thick of stocking our own freezers and pantries at home.
Since the nearing season of fieldwork and different crop harvests are apparently not enough, we have started the harvesting early around the farm. All joking aside, I really do like all forms of harvest, whether it be cut flowers from my garden or making corn silage for our cows. As far as our livestock is concerned, the coming months will include harvesting even more dry hay, haylage, sorghum silage, corn silage, high-moisture corn, and dried corn.
As for our families, we are using these weeks before the hustle and bustle to stock our freezers and pantries with all sorts of goodies. Following the completion of our county fair, my nephews’ broiler chickens were butchered and frozen to be kept for yummy meals all year round. We also took another steer to the locker to replenish our beef supply.
Regarding produce, some was planned, and others were on a whim based on what our friends and family shared with us. We made pails of refrigerator cucumber pickles with a surplus from my brother. The sweet corn patch got hit with high winds, so there was a sudden urgency to pick, cook, and freeze as much sweet corn as we could. Then, a stop by a friend’s house had us strapped with an impressive quantity of zucchini and squash (hello, delicious zucchini breads and sheet-pan veggies all year long!). And I can’t forget our small pickings of strawberries and blackberries that my toddler has been loving lately, as well as the tomatoes we’ll be canning soon enough.
All these delicious harvests are a lot of work, but so worth it when serving up delicious meals for our families, as well as our cows, throughout the year! My favorite harvest of the summer? Cutting fresh zinnias, wildflowers, and sunflowers from my flower garden. While not as practical as the other meat and produce I mentioned, they bring me the most joy. Having a fresh bouquet on our dinner table every day — plus enough to drop bouquets off to friends and family — is one of my favorite parts of summer.
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.
