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Dreams Can Come Alive in Field of Agriculture
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I guess one could classify me as an “oldie”. Being a country boy, I like to listen to country music stations and I never miss the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday night. I must have absorbed this country music stuff into my system when I spent four years at the University of Kentucky. I remember entering college listening to the Beatles and Petula Clark and exiting college trying to find a bluegrass station.
Since I preach “change” all the time, occasionally I turn to a radio station that plays “oldies” from the 1950’s and 60’s instead of country. About every song they play I know most of the lyrics even though I haven’t listen to the music since the early 70’s. In one of the old songs a lady sings “Dream the Impossible Dream” which is the focus of today’s column. Brent and Christine Pence’s farm is a few miles from my place in Pike Township. In the August 2003 issue of American Farmer, the Pence’s adorn the cover and inside there is a three page featured article about their operation titled “Lynn-Alan Farms - A Dream That Became Reality”. Agriculture is a profession that can make dreams become a reality by creating enjoyment and personal satisfaction every hour of the day. It can also be a profession that can become your biggest nightmare, usually by circumstances beyond your control. Regardless of the circumstances, agriculture is always an exciting place to live and work. Usually, we get more excitement than we really want. Agriculture is and will continue to be a place where impossible dreams become reality. Decades ago who would have believed that we could: grow field crops with no tillage; one family farms 2000 acres; grow an acre of corn or soybeans averaging less than three hours of labor per acre; milk 100 cows an hour; spend less than two hours per day feeding 1000 hogs; produce over 400 bushels of corn on one acre; a dairy herd that produces over 30,000 pounds of milk per cow in one year; modify corn to grow legal drugs; John Waymire would sell his hogs and cattle to raise flowers; Louis Clark would raise vegetables; and Gary Hoberty would breed the champion meat goat. One of the few absolutes in agriculture is never-say-never. Last month with my own two eyes I witnessed an impossible dream become reality. As an Extension Agent, I belong to the National Association of County Agricultural Agents. Every year we have a professional improvement meeting in a different state. This year Wisconsin hosted the meeting in Green Bay. On Wednesday of the conference, one can choose an all day tour on agriculture in Wisconsin. I chose the tour, “The New Emerging Dairy Industry” since dairy is making a come-back in Clark and Madison counties. At the last stop of the day, I witnessed the impossible dream: dairy cows that milked themselves! This farm belongs to a couple in their thirties with three children and 450 milking cows. They wanted to dairy but not at the expense of not spending a lot of time with their children, which was their priority. They did not what to hire labor to milk cows so the answer to the labor problem was robotic milkers. When one dreams of doing the impossible, NASA accomplished this years ago by putting a man on the moon. I guess it is appropriate for the robotic milker manufacturer, LELY from the Netherlands, to name the milker, Astronaut. This system’s debut in the U.S. was in 2001 and now several other companies have robotic milkers. It took this couple two weeks around the clock to train these cows to milk themselves. Thanks to computers, computer chips on neckstraps and lasers, cows can milk themselves. These cows rapidly learned how to enter the milker when they want to be milked. Thanks to lasers, the system can detect when to open and close the milk areas, wash the utter, and attach and release the teat cups. The computer records the number of times the cow milks per day and the yield of milk from each quarter. I was there two hours and we just stood around with the farm family watching the cows milk themselves. The young dairy family really enjoys the cows milking themselves, 24 hours a day, seven days a week while the family sleeps, goes to church, attends a movie, softball game, eats out or goes to a theme park. In agriculture the greatest minds are constantly “Dreaming the Impossible Dream”. I guess the reason so many love farming is that dreams can become reality. Just ask the Pence’s. Keith L. Smith, Associate Vice President for Ag. Admin. and Director, OSU Extension TDD No. 800-589-8292 (Ohio only) or 614-292-1868 Updated: August2003 |