Just a few more months and I hit the road for most of June. First stop is The Homesteading Festival in Tennessee, where I will be doing two cheese demos and the next stop is The Modern Homesteading Conference in Idaho, where I am doing 2 presentations, one on milk cows and one on cheesemaking. I can’t wait for June to get here…. But wait…! How do you go on vacation when you have a milk cow?!
How we go on vacation when we have a milk cow
Over our years of having milk cows, we have actually ended up taking a lot of vacations and each one is planned for a little differently. Today’s blog post is all about planning for vacations when a milk cow makes the task seem impossible! Anyone remember when Hannah from Ballerina Farm took her cow camping?! That still makes me smile!
Here are 5 different ways that we have been able to take vacations over the years;
1. Go during the dry time
Most years we are breeding our cows back every year, which means we tend to have a 2 month milking break between dry up and calving. Planning our vacations to be during this time, or planning our dry periods for times when we want to go on vacation has been our most common way of getting away in the past.
2. Calf share
Read this blog post all about calf sharing. If you have read it, you know that I never plan 100% if I am going to calf share or not. It depends on a lot of factors. I also never know when the calf will be big enough to handle one of the milking’s, let alone both of them. Usually this is a few months into lactation at least, but sometimes with a really hungry calf and a low producing milk cow, it could be as little as a few weeks. Anyway, because its so variable, I never plan vacations specifically around calf sharing unless I know I have a large calf that can take all the milk. For example, if my cow was pregnant and due to calve soon, I wouldn’t be booking plane tickets for at least a 3-4 months.
On the other hand, once you do have a calf taking all of the milk, calf sharing is nice for on a whim vacations. (All the farmers are like, “what is on a whim vacations?”) For example, in the summer if we happen to have a large calf that is sharing the milking, we can get away with things like going camping for the weekend.
3. Only one person is able to go
Sometimes Zach and I take our vacations separately. The kids and I might go to my dad’s for the weekend. Zach might take a fishing trip with his friends. I was able to go to a cheesemaking workshop by David Asher, the author of The Art Of Natural Cheesemaking last year because Zach and the kids stayed home to milk. We make it work!
4. We go somewhere close
We like to camp, but luckily a weekend away doesn’t need to be far. Often times we will head to a lake that is close by and just come home for milking and other chores each day.
5. Find a friend
I am so lucky to have a friend that loves milk cows, but doesn’t have the time for her own. Come vacation time, I load up my milk cow and take her to my friends house. She has the infrastructure set up and the know how to milk my cows for me and I am so lucky to have been able to find this resource in my community. My friend worked on a dairy farm previously, so she already knows how to milk a cow and all about any troubles like mastitis ect.
If you don’t have a friend like this, cultivate one! It is handy to find someone in your community that wants to learn to milk. Having someone as an emergency back up, really sets my mind at ease! Have them come and milk at least a few times with you, and then make their first solo milking’s ones where you are close by to answer any questions if they have them.