Dairy Farm “Tails” from Moo to You

08/23/2026

SUNDAY

A “slower” Sunday morning is always nice but if the trade off is the safe arrival of a 10 day overdue calf you were starting to get worried about…then it’s totally okay with me to forgo the slower morning!!!

Tilly did all the hardest work, of course! Now we just make sure this guy gets the colostrum he needs to get him started right.

08/22/2026

It honestly makes all my hair standup anytime I hear an ill-informed person refer to our Canadian dairy marketing system as a Cartel.

The dairy board...guess what its run by...dairy farmers. And not just any dairy farmers, but some of the most passionate among us...ones who care enough about the dairy industry, preserving family farms, NOT going the route of industrialized large scale milk production and providing our consumer with the best milk possible, to take time away from their own farms and families to sit around tables and attend endless meetings to represent us.

And how do they get that duty...they are voted in....by who.....YUP, their peers, other dairy farmers. Our system is not a government run system, it's a farmer run system...but it does require government support and policy in order to keep it in place and working.

I can't explain it any better than our friend Jenny at Little Brown Cow...so here it is in her words....have a read.

The DAIRY CARTEL controls your milk!!!

That sounds pretty nefarious, doesn't it?

But who exactly is this evil cartel?

Dairy farmers. About 3,100 Ontario farm families. That's it. Those are the shady characters.

And there's a pretty good reason they organized.

Fresh milk leaves a dairy farm every 48 hours. You can't park it in a shed for six months waiting for a better price. You can't put it on Kijiji. And the cows are making more tomorrow whether the market needs it or not.

Now, imagine a little farmer with a tank full of highly perishable milk, negotiating with a giant corporate buyer.

"We'll give you $20."

"But it cost $30 to make."

"Okay. Keep it."

Well... s**t.

A handful of enormous purchasers could habour an extraordinary amount of power over thousands of individual farms.

So beginning in 1965, Ontario dairy farmers organized under what became supply management. Instead of 3,100 little farms individually begging processors to buy tomorrow's milk, farmers collectively market it through Dairy Farmers of Ontario.

Basically, dairy farmers formed one giant union and took the bargaining power back.

Is it a perfect system? Of course not. Find 3,100 farmers who agree unanimously about anything and we'll go vegan for a week.

But dairy farmers overwhelmingly support supply management because it gives family farms something remarkably rare in agriculture: the ability to bargain collectively with companies much, much bigger than they are.

So where do you hear words like "cartel"?

Mostly from the people on the other side of the bargaining table.

Large milk processors and other major purchasers have plenty of reason to dislike supply management. Organized farmers are considerably harder to bargain down than desperate individual ones.

So processors and their allies lobby against the system — and "cartel" makes a much better headline than "3,100 farmers bargaining together."

So yes, Virginia: the DAIRY CARTEL controls your milk.

Fortunately, cartel headquarters are mostly barns, the uniforms are rubber boots, and the morning meetings start at 4 am.

08/21/2026

IT MATTERS.

What you put in your coffee, in your cart and on your table matters.

Canadian dairy means high standards, local goodness, family farms and believing that OUR farmers should produce OUR food to OUR standards.

Thank-you for supporting Canadian dairy,
today and always.

08/21/2026

WHATS ON THE MENU?

The cows had been enjoying last year’s third cut haylage and corn silage but as of this week they have officially begun to enjoy the first of some of this season’s forages.

We opened up the triticale bunk, harvested in late May and, together with the rest of last year’s corn silage, they’ll be eating this ration for the next couple of months.

The forages and grains we grow on the farm here always make up the bulk of what the cows eat. And as important as all our work inside the barn is, the work we do outside of the barn is equally as important. The feed we grow impacts the health of the cows, the quality of milk they produce and the bottom line of the farm.

Planting, growing and harvesting feeds for the cows can be stressful at times, but it’s also hugely rewarding to watch the cows happily eating up what we grew just for them.

08/18/2026

Reese’s TIP for starting your day off right….always take a moment to say “good morning” to your favourite cows.

08/18/2026

FEAST or FAMINE.

It seems to be that way when it comes to growing cow feed…There are plenty of years that August is so dry that we barely get a third cut from our alfalfa fields. Heck, there’s plenty of years that even second cut is scarce. But with all the rain we’ve had this year, our third cut of alfalfa is thick and plentiful. BIG windrows took my full attention while chopping today to keep from plugging the harvester when some of the big slugs of hay came through. After this field is chopped we still have the later field to go too and there’ll be so much that we’re not totally sure where it’s all going to go! It’s a good problem to have!

My tractor office had some pretty great views today, as we worked away under a beautiful blue sky with the biggest, puffiest white clouds. The type of perfect summer day that I reminisce about in the winter time.

08/17/2026

Bluster doesn’t have any other heifer calves that were born around the same time as her which has made adding her to a group more difficult. She has had a pen all to herself for a while now but it’s high time for her to incorporate into a group.

Initially I added her to a group of 3 calves that are a little bit older, but not much bigger than her, physically. But that didn’t work so well for Bluster. Although the size difference was very minimal, Bluster is a bit timid and the three older calves were not very nice to her. After trying that for a couple of days, I decided to pull Bluster back out of that group and add her instead to a group of calves quite a bit younger. Even though this size difference is quite a bit, this grouping works much better.

Bluster is not at all pushy towards the smaller heifers and they were happy to let her join their group. Often times whether groupings work out depends more on the temperament of the individual calves/heifers than their size. And because we usually have enough extra space in the heifer barn, I usually have the ability to put heifers like Bluster in a grouping that works best for everyone.

08/14/2026

After wheat harvest is a great time to haul out some manure!

The cows make manure every day but, no matter how we apply it, there are a limited number of days each year available to get it out to the fields. Some of our manure is custom applied with a drag line. At this time of the year we can use our tank to get manure out too. The tractor and tank are heavy and it needs dry fields in order to minimize compaction. WIDE tires also help to spread the weight across a larger surface area.

Manure is not a waste product but, rather, an important source of nutrients to our fields that help offset fertilizer needs. The nutrients in manure will help to feed both future crops and beneficial soil microbes.

Later this fall soil samples will be taken from all of our fields again so that we can monitor the health of our soil and, with the help of our agronomist, put together a crop plan for each field that will include the right amount of plant nutrients to feed the crop and maintain (or improve) the nutrients in the soil.

Because when it comes to making the best use of our limited farm land, ensuring we replace what we remove is essential.

Feeding our cows efficiently means focusing on a high quality, home-grown diet. AND doing that requires growing healthy crops. AND doing that means proper care and management of our soils, for today and the future.

08/14/2026

Turns out supporting local farms is actually kinda chic.

In a world full of fleeting trends and feigned authenticity, wholesome milk from Ontario farms, rooted firmly in generations of caretakers, is one thing that never goes out of style.

08/13/2026

Our calf pens are always pretty clean but the gates and hutches were definitely due for a power washing. That’s the project my daughter and I tackled yesterday for a couple of hours.
After yesterday’s clean out the baby calves are enjoying they’re especially clean pens!