Vacation Planning for Farmers

Getting ready to leave on vacation is stressful, right? You have to figure out who’s going to get the mail, watch the house, water the plants, get vacation from work, schedule a place, get the car ready and the worst…pack.

It’s so much work to get ready for vacation, but it’s so worth it while you’re there, right?! Today, I’m going to go through just a few things that we had to do before being gone for 5 days.

We’re lucky to work with family. We know that we don’t have to find a neighbor or friend to take care of our farm. Because there are three of us full time and three generations living off the farm, we have a big farm. We have a lot to take care. Thankfully, we know that Henry and Margaret will take care of it while we’re gone. However, there is still a lot of prep work to do to make it as easy as possible for Henry while we’re gone.

  1. Make sure the cows are situated. This past week, I spent most of it, moving cows to fresh grass, ensuring the water was adequate and filling mineral feeders to capacity. This includes going around fences to hope the cows don’t get out. Because we rotationally graze, I also went around the next rotation fences so that Henry could just open gate, move feeders and cows if they need to move.
  2. Matt has all the machinery ready to go. Whatever might come up, Henry should be able to get in whatever is needed and go. All the equipment should be in working order and ready.
  3. Because when we get back, it’s going to be close to silage season (YUCK!), Matt also had to think ahead and has most of the silage equipment ready to go. While we’re relaxing on vacation and loving every minute, we will return to real life on Monday. That week is going to be much more pleasant if everything is ready to hit the field as soon as it’s ready.
  4. After situated the cows and getting the equipment ready, there is also our personal livestock, our dog and chickens. We had to ensure that they had feed and water for the time that we’re going to be gone. We replaced the batteries in the automatic door for the chickens so that it will function properly. Our dog is a guard dog and trained to protect us. Very few people get along with him. This makes checking him and feeding him more difficult. Along with that, we have an attack rooster. This rooster is so into his job of protecting his ladies, he will attack anything and everything, me and the dog included. He’s fine when he goes to bed at night, which is when we check the chickens. However, asking somebody to come over at 9 at night on a weeknight isn’t very nice. Henry checks the cows around there and will ensure everybody is alright, but doesn’t have to get hurt feeding or watering anybody.
  5. Simply leaving. This might be the hardest part for Matt. Simply driving away from the work, stress and guilt. After we have done everything we can to make it as easy as possible for Henry, we simply have to leave.

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